[BTS] Worst game ever (Noble)

[LuiGGi]

Hi civfans! lemme introduce you the worst game you've ever seen?

Jesus! The game was absolutely upsetting, no way I could ever win... My start was a complete disaster and the gap between me and the others civs never stopped to widen!

I DO need some advise, some points where I think I failed:
*City emplacement: One of my cities was placed on the cost and could only produce ONE HAMMER... JEEZ! Producing a unit or making a building there was impossible!
*City specialization: I've built two "production cities", but their hammer output wasn't high enough... In fact, by 1600AD, I took each city two or three turns to create a maceman...
*Tech trading: I just traded Calendar later in the game cause I thought I was the techleader so I didn't want anyone to have the same techs I had...
*Missuse of leader's traits: well I didn't manage to become rich either to get GP (in fact, only two great merchants during the whole . .. .. .. .ing game!)... what about my cottage spamming? good enough?
*City growing: I guess all my cities couldn't grow as they should have done, maybe I didn't build enough
*Tech researching: I got lost very early and my path wasn't very clear, in fact I never researched Music for example
*Wonders: No wonders...
*Culture: well, that's quite shameful but... I didn't create buildings that would output culture! Then every city had very close borders...

that's all for now, I'll leave the savegame and some screenshots that should be self-explanatory...

Spoiler:

Please, help me note my mistakes and how should I have done

Thank you all in advance guys!

[Ignorant Teacher]

I will open your save after dinner, but one thing I can tell you already is that you shouldn't be improving tiles you're not going to work. On the seventh picture you started to build cottages by the river but you haven't settled cities to work them. The improvements only bring you their yields if they're worked by cities, not by their mere presence.

[civver_764]

I'm not sure what's so unwinnable about it. You could probably use more cottages and cities(especially with all that grassland :O).

Hint from looking at the WB:

Spoiler:

The British Isles up north are completely uninhabited. You could quickly REX your way and claim all that territory. Your empire would be like twice as large as anyone else's and land=power.

[PimpyMicPimp]

I will open your save after dinner, but one thing I can tell you already is that you shouldn't be improving tiles you're not going to work. On the seventh picture you started to build cottages by the river but you haven't settled cities to work them. The improvements only bring you their yields if they're worked by cities, not by their mere presence.

I saw that, too. It's a good tip, because I didn't realise that at first either :P

[DMOC]

Too many ... roads.

And not enough conquering going on.

[LuiGGi]

Originally Posted by Ignorant Teacher

I will open your save after dinner, but one thing I can tell you already is that you shouldn't be improving tiles you're not going to work. On the seventh picture you started to build cottages by the river but you haven't settled cities to work them. The improvements only bring you their yields if they're worked by cities, not by their mere presence.

To tell the truth, this is a thing I realised not long ago... First, I thought that any improvement will increase the output by simply being there, but before reading the forum and playing the game I've posted in this thread I undertood how it works... Yet, I've got a question: do cottages work as any other tile improvement? I mean, i'm only getting the commerce if I'm working that specific tile with a city, amirite?

Originally Posted by civver_764

I'm not sure what's so unwinnable about it. You could probably use more cottages and cities(especially with all that grassland :O).

Hint from looking at the WB:

Spoiler:

The British Isles up north are completely uninhabited. You could quickly REX your way and claim all that territory. Your empire would be like twice as large as anyone else's and land=power.

It's quite unwinnable if you think that I've too few well-placed cities... It's quite hard to build up an army with the current production cities... BTW, what's the best size for a production city? the bigger, the better? cause I let my barrack city grow til size 6, then I maximized the hammer output by making the city stop growing (it was stagnant)...

Spoiler:

I should try to go overseas, but I'm not good at all expading Must improve you know!

Originally Posted by DMOC

Too many ... roads.

And not enough conquering going on.

THAT's my problem! The roads are there because before creating too many workers, I activated the trade-network automatization, so they started building up roads, roads and more roads...

You're right about the little conquering effort... actually, I've never been in an active war during the game...

If anyone has something else to comment, please, do it... I'll keep up posting my questions when they come across!

thx guys!

[Ignorant Teacher]

It's a wall of text, so it's spoilered.

Spoiler:

I took a look at your save. I didn't do it in more detail because I'm sleepy and my PC has problems dealing with huge maps.

The cliche is true here: you don't have enough workers. You have 9 cities and 7 workers. With those many cities, I'd probably go for something like 16 workers. I normally don't automate my workers and make them work in pairs. That way I can control what and where they build the improvements.

You asked about cottage spam. I think cottage spam is something a little different. Here are two examples of games I played where I spammed some cottages. One example is really early in the game and the other is when I replaced my farms with cottages.

Spoiler:

As you can see, I built the cottages and was working them. If you just build the cottages they are as good as nothing.

About your civics. You've just reached Liberalism and switched to Free Speech and Free Religion. While Free Religion may make some sense in this map with many religions, Free Speech is not your best friend now. You only have 7 towns and FS gives more income to towns. If you replace London's farms with cottages, you'll get much more income with bureaucracy.
You're running caste system. It's a very good civic because it allows you to run as many scientists, merchants and artists as you want and it also makes workshops more productive. The problem is you don't have workshops and aren't running many specialists.

This leads us to your production problem. You're playing where France is. The map is really good: lots of green tiles, food, rivers and hills. However, this is the type of map that shines in the late game, when you have a lot of towns. When you run US, FS and Emancipation, your rich cities also become production monsters. The problem is getting to the late game. I suggest you switch to slavery because it allows you to turn your excess population to production. That way you can get more infrastructure and troops than you'd otherwise have.

Talking about troops, I noticed Montezuma is preparing for war. You can see that by using the BUG Mod or by contacting the civilization and trying to ask them to declare war on other civilizations. If it's red, you mouse over it and see what motive they say. If they say "We have enough on our hands right now" it means they're preparing for war. WHEOOHRN is a very common expression around here. There was also an Aztec spy caught in your land. That leads me to believe that you are Montezuma's target. Montezuma is famous for being a militaristic bully, so you should always build more soldiers when he is close. The same goes for Shaka. If you can whip, you can get an army quickly.

I suggest you start replacing some of the farms by cottages. One thing I like to do is cottage every riverside tile, except for one (can be the city itself), which I'll use to irrigate the rest of the tiles. In the south you should do the opposite: build farms in Canterbury to allow it to work more mines. The objective of farms is let your cities grow to whip population away, work specialists or become able to work more tiles. You can only control that well if you control your workers. In the case of London, you have already grown as much as it can without becoming unhappy - switch farms to cottages in the capital. Whip infra and troops in the rest.

Your GP Farm is really sad. It is working one merchant and two citizens. Citizens do not produce GPP, only specialists do. Besides, you don't even have a library there and that's something you normally want to have in a GP Farm because it allows you to build the National Epic, that doubles the production of great people.

There are some spots that would make good cities. In the continent you can build four new cities at least:
1-One SE of the Iron, E of Newcastle. It's an average city that has some production.
2-One on the hills 2N of the rice, north of Oxford.
3-One between London and Coventry.
4-One north of the hill, NE of Hastings. This can become a good GP Farm. It has fish and clams.

Without looking at the World Builder you can see that Britain is empty. Settle that land. You normally get better results when you're bigger than the others. You can almost double your size by settling that area. At first your research will suffer, but when the cities become functional, you're going to make the AIs eat dust.

Start trading! You're not the tech leader, you have researched one line of the tech tree and the AIs another. By trading with Asoka and Zara, I got Feudalism, Literature (the Great Library hasn't been built yet if you want to build it, but I think you should build troops, settlers and workers and some infrastructure like libraries), Engineering, Banking, Guilds and Theology and a map of the world. You can't see all the techs they have because some of them only become apparent when you have the pre-requisites. With tech trading you can get to tech parity.

There are some things that make no sense to me, like an archer fortified on a hill far away from your borders. It's doing you no good. If you move him to London, you can get support for one more population.

Sorry if I sound harsh, it's not my intention. I'm not an expert in the game, there are many others much better than me, who could give you better advice. Anyhow, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[Kesshi]

Originally Posted by LuiGGi

It's quite unwinnable if you think that I've too few well-placed cities...

This is so very not un-winnable. I could win this, but it would take planning, organization, and work.

Attached is a save. I changed some civics (yay Nationalism) and started to solve your unhappiness problem using more military cities and spreading around the religions you already have. I turned London into a GP farm, and have been settling the Great Merchants there. This will be a future WallStreet city...maybe. Depends on if we get a GP to make religious shrine in York. Chances are we won't get a GP however, so focus on building up the economy the good old fashioned way....Cottages!

If you look at the techs, I did a lot of trading around with allies, and not only am I at tech parity, I'm actually in a position to push ahead. Bee-line rifiling then Military Tradition for Cuirassers. 12 strength 2 movement units will annihilate anything the AI has at that time except maybe an army of Pikemen. Even then, it's still a 12vs12 fight, and I'll be using Seige. Once I get Assembly Line it's all over.

War Weariness is going to be a problem. However with the new Portiguese lands I hope to be able to spread more religions faster. When I first saw you in Free Religion I was like "Do'h" but after seeing your happiness issues, I figured it was worth it...so long as you're actually using it! This is very important. You had Free Religion and 1 to 2 religions per city with unhappy citizens all over the place. Don't do that!

Back to the issue of WW. After Rifiling and Military Tradition I'm going to assess the situation. Maybe I won't need to reduce WW, but chances are I will... Still, if I can get another military city on line (Santarém looks good) chances are I can brute force my way through the happiness issue with cheap Longbowmen being pumped from two cities, while keeping 3 other cities building offensive units. Maybe I'll be able to Beeline Assembly Line right away, maybe I'll have to detour through Constitution, Democracy, and/or Communism to handle my War Weariness.

At the time of the save, I'm reluctant to swap over to Free Market and Slavery just yet. I'm thinking that one more turn gets me Gunpoweder, and because Joao has Crossbowmen and Macemen all over the place, it is in my best interest to research Gunpowder and spam Muskets from every military city to negate his +melee bonuses. Then again maybe Knights are the way to go here, too. I haven't used Knights in too many games to be honest.

Anyways, here's your save. I'm not too many turns ahead of where you left off, and I can easily see the demise of both Joao and Monty, even given their superior power when the war was first started. (Btw, I'm not at war with Monty. I'm going to try to wait until Rifiling to declare on Monty.)

[a0161613]

What map is this?

[TheMeInTeam]

Expand faster.

Work improved tiles (none of this corn unimproved near 1 AD)

Improve the cap in your cities.

[Killroyan]

A few remarks about the early game:
1) Your first city goes south for the corn and some hills but there is copper next to you which is incredible important. Copper has to the south corn or to the north fish so that is an excellent city already if you settle that. This should have been your priority city number 1. It takes about a 1000 year before you even settle that city.
2) Your workers are building cottages outside the BFC (in the picture where you just settled your second city). This is totally useless. Have them do stuff in your BFC. Build a mine there or just chop some wood to get the hammer boost.
3) At 1040 BC with Mehmed in the picture you are building a mine on a hill. Your cultural borders still need a pop. Why not build a monument and mine the grassland hill with the forest. Then you would have had a fast monument.
4) Now I see why you are not building a monument because at 500 ad you still have no AH or mysticism. Trade for these things as soon as possible. They are cheap and open up a lot of possible techs to trade even more, especially because you are leading in techs and can trade for them easily.
5) Expand a lot more. You are in the plus at 60% so you can at least get 3 cities more out without problems.
6) You farmed all the grassland in your capital. You only have 3 grassland hills to work so besides the irrigated corn you do not need anything. Cottage that place up. It would make an incredible capital with bureaucracy.

Hope this helps a bit. And it is not lost yet. Your situation is far from bad with the solid tech lead. You can easily trade some techs with Monty and come on top of the food chain.

[LuiGGi]

In overall, I guess one of my worst mistakes was not to research/trade literature and drama... I should have built a library and a theatre in almost every city... As I haven't, all the cultural borders are quite close...

Unfortunately, I thought that I should only cottage the tiles that already had one coin in it to take advantage of being financial... Now I see my missunderstanding, I should have cottaged far more tiles!

Little question about WAR: My little empire is settled between two big ones, the portuguese and montezuma's... I've no weak neighbours, which would have been my first choice to conquer... What do I do now? Who should I attack? Joao first, am I right? Plus, how many units should I have to attack? Cause I felt I had enough with the stack that is in Canterbury, but jeez, 15 units and 10 catapults won't do it...

@Ignorant Teacher: Your remarks are quite helpful... I still have some questions:

1) In Utrecht you've tiles producing three food and three/four commerce, how have you improved them (1SE and the one that is 1E to this tile)?
2) About whiping, I tried to get some units but I would get just one unit (say one macement) by turn and I couldn't get more that three or four per city as an overall... That's what you mean by building up an army by whiping?
3) My GP Farm produces only one hammer because of the terrain type... I should add some specialists that would produce hammer so the city would become more useful...
4) thanks for the spots, I MUST expand, that's undeniable!
5) Oh, the archer on the hill, he has his own tale! I've been constantly under barbarian attacked for a looong while during the early game, so I put him fortified on a hill and he stopped any attempt to enter to my borders... He did a good job, unfortunately I forgot he was there

@Kesshi:
1) Now that I come to think of it, turning London as a GP farm is quite clever since its production output wasn't very high and building units there (a bit slow and also a bit far from the battlefield) wasn't that helpful...
2) I should have researched some techs on the military path... My unique unit is a redcoat, now I wonder why I haven't made any effort to get it...
3) I see you too consider I should be preparing for war... I've got some doubts about how to face this situation as I've written above...

@Killroyan:
1) Absolutely true, big mistake here! I was quite foolish because I didn't even realise there was copper there when I settled the city! Then, when I got the tech that would let me mine it, copper was just one tile outside my borders... You guess what I did, dont you? I just waited my borders to expand hoping it wouldn't take long, BUT IT TOOK AGES!
2) This is the first game I play since I've started reading this forum, and one of the main lessons is that I could understand some game mechanisms, including how the cities work tiles... I improved tons of tiles unnecessarily, tiles I may never work during the whole game!
3) No AH or Mysticism... I always thought they were crappy techs, now I've realised they aren't...

@a0161613: the map is EUROPE from the expansion Beyond the Sword... In the first screenshot in the first post you'll see the settings

@TheMeInTeam: I've been considering doing this, yet I failed... For instance, I'm quite bad at having in mind which city needs more troops to increase the happiness cap, so I just forgive to send more troops there even I have them!

thank you all!

[Kesshi]

LuiGGi,

Open up my save. You'll see that I'm lowering Joao's power and score down to the same level as yours. Seige units are key here! I've taken out two of Joao's SoDs, and even after taking two cities I noticed his Production hasn't taken much of a hit. This worries me because I should be nipping at GDP, Crops, etc., and I'm not. Oh well, his 3rd city and 3rd SoD is about to fall.

In my save, Joao's empire is larger than yours, and his cities are bigger, yet the scores are equal. What does that mean? It means you are ahead in tech! I'm going to use this to the best of my abilites and try to beeline some key military techs to destroy him. It's going to be a long drawn out war, full of warweariness and upsets, but I believe I can take out Joao and monty, placing me as the world's (continent's?) leading superpower.

Basically I'm going to try to juggle the war weariness by declaring on Joao then Monty, and back and forth. They're going to be bloody bloody fights, and I imagine I'll be pincered by both of them at times, but by then I hope to have Assembly Line before they have Rifiling. 20 Strength vs 9 strength units should give me quite the advantage, even being outnumbered and pincered.

I'll play more today and we'll see how it turns out.

Edit:

Check out what I was able to do with one of your cities:

Spoiler:

Now this is a military city! A new unit every 2 turns. And about every 5 turns another unit in 1 turn!

Replaceable Parts is in, and I need to get the forests lumbermilled up. That'll help with the military problem drastically.

[LuiGGi]

Jesus, you know how to play on noble, seriously... in which level do you usually play?!

You even managed to improve the financial situation, you've got 530golds (+75 per turn)!

I'll be joining you later, probably tomorrow since today I'm preparing for an exam... But as soon as I've some free time, I'll give it a go...

BTW, who has traded worldmap with you? I couldn't make Monty trade it with me, I guess mine was far too poor!

[Kesshi]

Originally Posted by LuiGGi

Jesus, you know how to play on noble, seriously... in which level do you usually play?!

When I played Civ heavily I normally played on Emperor, but I really should have been playing on Immortal. I was at a point where I could easily beat most Emperor games with a set formulia, thus offering me little challenge past the initial growth and expansion. Right now, however, I've been struggling (but winning) Monarch games. I quit Civ for many months, and I'm not sure I'm interested in getting back up to Emperor/Immortal level. Far too much memorization. Like a friend of mine once said "I stopped liking CivIV once I realized I was playing a Spreadsheet."

Originally Posted by LuiGGi

You even managed to improve the financial situation, you've got 530golds (+75 per turn)!

That's -75 gold per turn. I'm running at a deficite to get Rifiling faster. :P

And actually, you managed to get all that gold. You had a Great Merchant enroute to one of Monty's larger cities further away. I didn't know this and would have otherwise recalled him, but since he was out there, I used him for a trade mission and made some money.

I've also been trading around techs. I try to trade only with people who will give me gold AND a tech for one of my techs. It's worked out very well so far.

Originally Posted by LuiGGi

I'll be joining you later, probably tomorrow since today I'm preparing for an exam... But as soon as I've some free time, I'll give it a go...

BTW, who has traded worldmap with you? I couldn't make Monty trade it with me, I guess mine was far too poor!

I don't remember. I think I got it in a tech trade. Someone offered me a nice deal, and I said "Hey, throw in a world map" and they were fine with it. Now every time I make a tech trade I ask for a world map, usually I can get it without any reduction in gold they're willing to give me, too. It's basically a bonus to all the other trading I've been doing.

[JBossch]

York would make a far better production city. Coventry has no food resource, 2 cottages, and isn't even fully mined. Leaving all those forests around til 1785 for lumber mills is crazy. Chop them in the BCs for units and this game would already be over.

[blitzkrieg1980]

WTF? Size 14 city working unimproved tiles feeding themselves for 1? That's so incredibly inefficient! Whip the hell out of that city! I would have whooped that city a new one.

[Ignorant Teacher]

Originally Posted by LuiGGi

@Ignorant Teacher: Your remarks are quite helpful... I still have some questions:

1) In Utrecht you've tiles producing three food and three/four commerce, how have you improved them (1SE and the one that is 1E to this tile)?

They are floodplains. They produce 3 food. I built cottages on them.

2) About whiping, I tried to get some units but I would get just one unit (say one macement) by turn and I couldn't get more that three or four per city as an overall... That's what you mean by building up an army by whiping?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. But let's think. You can get three maces per city. You have 8 cities (let's ignore Oxford because it's still too small) times 3 equals 24 Macemen in no time.

3) My GP Farm produces only one hammer because of the terrain type... I should add some specialists that would produce hammer so the city would become more useful...

I think you've seen by yourself that city is not the best place to build a GP farm. Whip that city till your arm gets tired. It's not going to be a production city at least until the Industrial Age, but it can get you a lot of commerce.

Originally Posted by JBossch

York would make a far better production city. Coventry has no food resource, 2 cottages, and isn't even fully mined. Leaving all those forests around til 1785 for lumber mills is crazy. Chop them in the BCs for units and this game would already be over.

I agree with the cities.

I don't know about the forests. Sure you can get a lot of troops that way, but forests have other uses as well. A Lumbermill with a railroad is as good as a mine. Say you have few health resources and are saving them to be able to build factories and coal plants. Of course you could chop the forests and go claim more land but it gets tiring playing the same way over and over. Besides, sometimes you want to save a couple of forests thinking of the National Park. In most cases chopping is the way to go, but it's hardly crazy to keep the forests in all circumstances.

[Kesshi]

Originally Posted by blitzkrieg1980

WTF? Size 14 city working unimproved tiles feeding themselves for 1? That's so incredibly inefficient! Whip the hell out of that city! I would have whooped that city a new one.

He wasn't in Slavery when I inherited the game. At the same time, Banking wasn't too far off. So I decided to wait until I had Banking to swap to Slavery and Merc so I only wasted 1 turn in Anarchy instead of 2. And by then, I already had workers en route to Coventry. Oh yeah, he had less than 1 worker per city, and I've actually lost 2 workers from war (but I think I've gained 1 or 2 from war, also, so I think I'm about even.)

[blitzkrieg1980]

No doubt. I wasn't so much commenting on your game correction as I was commenting on the status of his city in general. Having a size 14 city with that many unimproved tiles is just bad form.

You did some good recovery work, though