Took about a year off

Came back, loaded up a new game. Egypt, Emperor. Founded my first city on turn 2: on top of a silver deposit on a hill. Next to the coast and a river. Adjacent to cattle and horses. Had another silver and a marble within 2 tiles. Turns out I also had iron (2), coal (6), oil (4), and fish all in my city radius.

Founded my second city 8 tiles away in the middle of some lovely flood plains next to some wheat, stone, silver and Mt. Siani. Turns out I was next to much oil as well.

Third city had some sugar, cattle, horses, and much coal and uranium.

AND....

I got slaughtered. How did I blow that fantastic setup?!? Picked bad beliefs for my religion. Got beat to almost all techs by everyone else. Let war opponents off the ropes too many times.

When Washington won a tech victory, I was still 6 techs away from the end, only had 3x5 and 1x4 on social policies, hadn't even built a spacecraft component.

Wow, I'm not as good as I remember being.

Dude post that save. And replay that map. Now that you know that they are all good for nothing evil AI opponents, you must smash them.

please provide screenshots and/or a Turn0 save

I always delete my saves (except for the last one showing W or L), so i pulled a screen shot from the last turn:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673003549

I immediately started another similar game as Egypt (but this time kept restarting until I had marble and a river). So after that play through (which I won, Culture around 1950), I realize what I did wrong on the first one.

Most importantly, I just didn't commit to Tall with enough passion - should have used food focus much more in the early game. Further, my beliefs were just bad (did take Tithe, but took the wonder building one and faster spread - should have gone for a food bonus). Also, I got snaked out of Petra because I didn't beeline for the tech; that city next to Siani with Petra would have been fierce. Finally, I had to fight almost everyone around me 2 or 3 times because I kept letting them off the ropes.

In my second game (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673009866), I made much better decisions (although, I should have liberated Columbo instead of annexing it). the Chinese made a late game push to beat me at Tech, but my culture was pretty far along by then (I was just trying to win before everyone started nuking me).

BTW, how do you post a a turn 0 save file, storm? (not that I have it, but would just be good to know).

You need to explore more. Even nearby oceans are black in your first game.

Volcanon said:

You need to explore more. Even nearby oceans are black in your first game.

Click to expand...

Yep, I got caught in 2 drawn out wars each with the Maya to my West (that western city is their capital - which has 4 wonders in it) and Carthage to my SE (I liberated Japan and the Mongols from them after beating them far down that continent). Whilst doing that, Washington and England got so far ahead of me that I was just trying some way to catch up (foolishly, since that was never a possibility - ah well, live and learn).

The maps look to be large size with many cities. Is this correct?

It should be noted that the tech costs and penalties change with increasing world size. On large settling new cities costs less happiness, less culture, and less science % penalty. Techs also cost about 15% more on average for the world size being large. And 30% on huge. So on these kinds of games settling the standard tall 4-cities is less effective then it is on small and standard world sizes. The AI can run away with 20 cities and beat you on science, especially on high levels Emperor+. They tend to do better then on small map sizes too.

That said, even though you can't do as well as record small-map sizes with 4 cities (T200-220 science victories) on these big maps due to the tech penalty, you can still win over even the large AI if you learn to optimize your early game. If you don't care to micro early game you can try settling a large empire and win out of sheer force of cities and science. I think this was the intended path to victory for large worlds. It's why the reduced settling penalty and increased % tech costs. The optimal number of cities you need to stay effective shifts up by about 1-2 cities per world size in my rough estimate. On huge you should build 6 even if you take tradition in my opinion. Happiness penalties are lower and there are more AI to trade with so it isn't that hard to keep 6 cities growing at max rate for a better science game.

danaphanous said:

The maps look to be large size with many cities. Is this correct?

Click to expand...

Huge map. Full civs and city states. I should have gone more cities on the first, but was always running from behind. On the second, I had plans to take Mombasa and put another city out east, but went patronage so I didn't need to.

Thurman Merman said:

I always delete my saves (except for the last one showing W or L), so i pulled a screen shot from the last turn:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673003549

I immediately started another similar game as Egypt (but this time kept restarting until I had marble and a river). So after that play through (which I won, Culture around 1950), I realize what I did wrong on the first one.

Most importantly, I just didn't commit to Tall with enough passion - should have used food focus much more in the early game. Further, my beliefs were just bad (did take Tithe, but took the wonder building one and faster spread - should have gone for a food bonus). Also, I got snaked out of Petra because I didn't beeline for the tech; that city next to Siani with Petra would have been fierce. Finally, I had to fight almost everyone around me 2 or 3 times because I kept letting them off the ropes.

In my second game (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673009866), I made much better decisions (although, I should have liberated Columbo instead of annexing it). the Chinese made a late game push to beat me at Tech, but my culture was pretty far along by then (I was just trying to win before everyone started nuking me).

BTW, how do you post a a turn 0 save file, storm? (not that I have it, but would just be good to know).

Click to expand...

Click on one of the Post Reply or Quote buttons (not Quick Reply). Then scroll down to the Manage Attachments button and use that. You might have to turn it into a zip file first.