[BTS] Please Critique My Game

[May Day 10]

Attached is a save game from Dutch/Prince.

I have always loved the game and broken it out every few years... But havent been able to really achieve consistent success on Prince. I am always able to stay at or near the pack.... But mid game I stall out.

Not a great start, not a very food rich start and I got closed off to the South that I was slow to get. I have a nice tech advantage.... was thinking of building a catapult rush to take out the weakest opponent (China)..... raze the city near my territory and keep Beijing

 

[nate46]

Ok. The reason you are boxed in here is because you took too long to build settlers. I'm not sure what you were building instead (granaries, maybe?), but instead of doing that you need to build settlers faster.

you still have a good 5th city spot available top of the rice -- you should build a city on the rice -- within range of that gems and those flood plains. You also have a 6th city spot available on the grassland river next to the grassland hill. should probably have settled this at some point but its a bit late now.

You build too many buildings. You have stables and barracks even though you didn't actually attack anyone with horse archers. There's no reason to build courthouses in cities that close to your capital -- Courthouse cost 120 hammers and saves about 2 gold/turn. Not a good investment. Don't worry about courthouses until you have around 15 or so cities and your economy is in the dumps.

I would recommend attacking Mao, i mean he has the pyramids, and the only one who likes him is hatshepsut who probably won't declare war on you. Mao doesn't have alphabet so he isn't going to be able to bribe any help from anyone. Catapults and swords and horse archers should be able to take him down. Don't even finish those buildings you're building now and just start building military units in all of your cities. I recommend not even attacking shanghai, just ignore it and go straight for beijing. once you take beijing make peace. You'll need a little bit of defense in case he sends out some of the units in shanghai. Consider switching to slavery in case you need to whip more defense. edit: actually you should definitely switch to slavery you have hardly any hammers. would take forever to slow build the catapults.

 

[lymond]

I'll be honest, dude, it is pretty bad. You really need to rethink how you play the game.

A few thoughts:

1) Teching: If I see things correctly, Alpha was obtained - I assume in trade - way way late. On this level it is generally a good idea to beeline alpha and back trade many techs. Instead it appears you teched Archery and IW among probably several other things you could have obtained for free. In other words, you need more focus in your tech path. Also, tech with purpose. Choose a path and go for it - more on that later. Generally, make a choice between AH and Pottery. Based on resource usually or desire to find horse. Since Dam is not the best cottage cap and you have pigs and cows nearby - AH is the right choice here. Then..finding horses makes you ask other question like ...War?

2) Ugh - too few workers and too many unimproved tiles. 2 workers are simply not enough. You should have at least 4 - one for each city - and at your experience level I'd fail on the side of more though, like 1.5 per city. Not hard to build more or 2 pop whip them, or just steal some from neighbors as well.

3) Caste System is just silly to run now. You can use it in a golden age at some point to pop out more great people (Great Scientists or GMs), but you need slavery. I don't know if you have even run slavery at all. Get this in your head - Slavery is the most powerful thing in your game. The lack of basic infra in cities like Rotterdam at this point is shocking. Yet you are building useless Courthouse in a small 4 city empire...that is pointless right now.

4) City Placement: Your cities are not exactly bad. Utrecht is decent, but I suspect you are adverse to overlapping cities. Rotterdam would probably be better placed further south and West to simply have better land - ice marble is certainly not better than more green tiles and a riverside grasshill. Cow horse could probably be a bit north as well with a 5 city to the south for rice/gems.

5) I really see no directions in this game. It is like you are just going through the motions. You've built a couple of HOrse Archers and, I think, a chariot, and have them on the other side of the map doing lord knows what.

6) Make sure you are trading for every bit of gold per turn you can and renegotiate trade whenever possible to get more. Trade old techs for gold. If you don't have the gold to finish a tech, run some binary (or 100% tax) until you do.

7) Absolutely no reason to have just 4 cities at 150 AD on Prince. That should simply not happen. No reason you cannot peacefully expand more, but ideally you can start conquering early

Here's what I would have recommend you do here:

1) As this is prince, I probably would have expanded quickly to 3 or 4 cities, getting horses online. On Prince it is fairly easy to rush run or two neighbors with chariots, or you could just wait to get HBR

2) Beeline Alpha, or just get AH/BW and tech HBR..either way, get HAs online asap and go kill kill kill. Much of your expansion here could have been done via war. Currency would be next priority for trade routes and gold.

3) Keep killing and taking

So, overall, you are simply not being aggressive. Even if your goal in the game is to play a longer game - like Space - you should look to expand your empire one way or another. But you could also just use HAs to destroy the map fairly quickly - potentially winning conquest in the BCs or thereabouts.

Again, note that if your cities are working unimproved tiles, you either should be whipping or you dont' have enough workers - or you are poorly managing your workers.

Keep in mind here though that I can't see the actual actions you have performed between 4000BC and now. What I mean is what your cities have been doing and how you manage them. Were you using Slavery? etc...I'd assume there is much improvement in this area such as how fast you get out settlers and workers. How fast you get up granaries and stuff.

 

[nate46]

Keep in mind here though that I can't see the actual actions you have performed between 4000BC and now. What I mean is what your cities have been doing and how you manage them. Were you using Slavery? etc...I'd assume there is much improvement in this area such as how fast you get out settlers and workers. How fast you get up granaries and stuff.

you can actually click the book icon under where his gold stores are listed to see a list of all events for the game. This shows city founding dates, civic changes, etc. Doesn't show when he built is his buildings though or his workers but he's clearly building settlers too late based on city founding dates. One of his workers is labeled "worker 3" but i only see 2 workers so maybe he lost one of them to a barb.

according to the log he adopted slavery in 2000 bc.

His biggest problem is just not building enough settlers early enough IMO. Or maybe he just doesn't build workers until late, its hard to tell from the log.

Honestly, I think the love fest people have on this forum for granaries may confuse some people. I bet he built a granary in his cap before any settlers or maybe even before he built a worker!

OP: more general advice, not sure which of this you already know:

1) its almost always best to build a worker as the very first thing you build. If you're not doing this, start doing it. The only exception to this is if you have really good seafood and you don't, you have mediocre seafood.

2) build more settlers/workers and less buildings generally. Almost all of the buildings in this game suck.

3) Have a plan. If you want to catapult rush mao, you should plan it out sooner if not from almost the very beginning.

 

[Fippy]

Learning games usually means ignoring large parts of it's contents and focusing on basics first, Civ4 is imo a very good example for that

If i think about AIs, relis, (advanced) tech paths, units, barbs, everything a city could build and so on, it's no surprise that i will never really train in stuff like getting more settlers (they look expensive & stop growth), workers so all new cities are worth something, slavery & chopping forests.

I would suggest you play a little challenge for yourself, how many cities can i found by 1AD and can i improve tiles for all of them so that i see cottages instead of forests worked, food and mines?

I would turn off barbs, use only 1 AI with always peace, no huts or events, no teching besides food stuff, wheel, pottery, mining and BW.
And only slavery as Civic, basically removing all distractions.

Improving in Civ is really hard, unless i can see 1x what kind of empire i could build if i turn off everything else. Once i get better with that, i can add more stuff to my games and really start seeing connections between them & my goal:
how can i make my basic empire building skills work under real game conditions, what does help me and what not.

 

[lymond]

you can actually click the book icon under ...

Honestly, I think the love fest people have on this forum for granaries..

yeah, I know..I was referring more to the micro we can't really see, i.e., tiles worked/improved, when to whip, when to build roads, city micro/worker micro (agree ..the slavery comment was confusing, as you can easily see if he adopted it, but I was typing all that after having closed the game)

As for granaries, I don't want to start another argument here regarding this, but the importance of granaries has no argument. However, I or no one else said to build them before the settlers in your cap.

 

[lymond]

I would suggest you play a little challenge for yourself, how many cities can i found by 1AD and can i improve tiles for all of them so that i see cottages instead of forests worked, food and mines?
.

I think My's advice here really trumps anything else any of us have mentioned so far, although I might reword it to "so that I see food,mines or cottages instead of forests" )

Treat your playing more like an exercise for the time being...

(arg..didn't mean to make another post)

 

[Fippy]

Yep bad wording lol, thanks Lymo..
Food > all other improvements, that goes only for food resources thou.
Normal farms (3 food, or 4 on floodplains) are usually not that good..well they are sometimes needed, but for learning purposes cottages are much better here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yeah not looking good. All those court houses you are building are pretty much worthless. They will save you 1-2 gold per city. I really only build them when costs hit 8-10+ gold a turn in a city.

Agree with others your expansion is way too slow here.

2 workers for 4 cities is a joke. Aimn for at least 1-1 if not 1.5 workers per city. Pending on what tiles you need to work.

Your capital has 8 forest in its BFC. That's eight tiles which are pretty much useless. That is 4 grassland cottages you could be working. 2 mines you could have up and running. That is also 160-240 hammers you could of used on wonder, units or buildings.

I agree with others an HA rush here could of been nice.

Overall you are doing what I did when I started playing this game. I got used to the Ai slow expansion and then wondered why at 1000ad with 4-5 cities why I was struggling. The reality is 10-12 cities by 1ad is very possible. You just have to be more ambitious.

 

[May Day 10]

thanks for the tips.

I do make a worker first normally. I had 3 but barbs took 1... should have more.
I was running slavery. Is there a good article somewhere on how to best use it? I dont think I am good at optimal slavery timing.

I have the random stuck units because I cancelled open borders with a couple civs (from the urging of others). Was exploring and got stuck.

Spamming buildings and not being aggressive enough are always issues with me. Also, I find it always seems like I quickly run out of things for workers/engineers to do. So as a result I sometimes don't build enough.

 

[Fippy]

Never close borders cos another Civ "demands" that
You want trade possibilities with everybody, and it's just -1 diplo (can even fade over time i think).
They are not plotting war cos of that. But those you stopped trading with might not talk for half of the game now.

For slavery, perfect timing is not that important (for now), just getting used to whipping stuff would do so much for your game.

Size 4 often works nicely for settlers and workers, you create 60 hammers for 2 population, so settlers only require 40h waiting time if you whip from 4 to 2.

Why can this be so good? New cities being founded faster has many advantages, you might get spots before AIs. Or you stop barbs from spawning sooner. Or just that new cities get a bit more time to catch up now, while your whipped city has improved stuff already and will recover quickly.

Whipping also makes cities with high food resources (and not much else) really good, if not great.
Example coastal city with 2 fish, those often have not much else cos most is covered by sea tiles.
Whipping at size 4, you keep your fishies at all times and convert 2 low yield tiles into 60h.

So you could say, with slavery that 2 fish city = production powerhouse.
That's not obvious for players not used to slavery yet, if we would put 2 iron mines there it would be

 

[Lexicus]

Is it actually true that you always want to refuse a stop trading request? I do sometimes stop trading and declare war when the AI asks me, to keep them happy, and if the object of the request is already pissed at me for whatever reason.

 

[Izuul]

Is it actually true that you always want to refuse a stop trading request? I do sometimes stop trading and declare war when the AI asks me, to keep them happy, and if the object of the request is already pissed at me for whatever reason.

Not always, but you would need sound reasons not to refuse.

 

[georgjorge]

Spamming buildings and not being aggressive enough are always issues with me. Also, I find it always seems like I quickly run out of things for workers/engineers to do. So as a result I sometimes don't build enough.

I too run out of things to do with my workers around 200AD in games where I have to stop expanding for a bit. But until then they have a lot to do: they improve all special tiles, make roads for trade routes, lay down a few farms and mines, and CHOP DOWN EVERYTHING (not necessarily in this order - I usually start chopping as soon as Bronze Working is in, and if I do an early rush I will chop down every forest in sight for that). Unless you have very few forests that will keep them busy for quite some time, and greatly speed up your expansion (either via military or peaceful). Keeping two or four forest for a big capital is alright, beyond that don't hesitate to chop.

 

[lunfa_reo]

Workers can default to building roads everywhere once they run out of things to do. Having roads in every tile (provided your workers don't have anything better to do anymore) can be beneficial for faster relocating of units and for defensive wars ("road the front").
I don't know what the higher level players do in this situation though. Do they usually disband most workers to save on unit maintenance?

I'm not the most versed in Slavery but I think the best timing is to whip when the city is about to grow and when overflow is at its max (e.g. now you can 3-pop whip with 30 overflow, but if you don't, next turn it would be a 2-pop whip with little or no overflow).
It is usually a good idea to micro which tiles your city works, adjusting the amounts of and output leading to a planned whip, so when the time comes the two aforementioned conditions are met at the same time, at which time you hit the whip. BUG mod (or most of its variants) greatly helps you do this.

 

[Izuul]

Once i get workers without anything important to do i like to take 2-3 with my attacking stack for building roads on critical tiles.

 

[May Day 10]

Never close borders cos another Civ "demands" that
You want trade possibilities with everybody, and it's just -1 diplo (can even fade over time i think).

I never have never accepted, but was asked by the 2 strongest civs who liked me and just wanted to see if it would improve relations and such.... but it has turned into a pain with the units and also locked out of dialogue.

 

[May Day 10]

I'll be honest, dude, it is pretty bad. You really need to rethink how you play the game.

A few thoughts:

1) Teching: If I see things correctly, Alpha was obtained - I assume in trade

2) Ugh - too few workers and too many unimproved tiles.

3) Caste System is just silly to run now.

4) City Placement: Your cities are not exactly bad. Utrecht is decent, but I suspect you are adverse to overlapping cities. Rotterdam would probably be better placed further south and West to simply have better land - ice marble is certainly not better than more green tiles and a riverside grasshill. Cow horse could probably be a bit north as well with a 5 city to the south for rice/gems.

5) I really see no directions in this game. It is like you are just going through the motions. You've built a couple of HOrse Archers and, I think, a chariot, and have them on the other side of the map doing lord knows what.

6) Make sure you are trading for every bit of gold per turn you can and renegotiate trade whenever possible to get more. Trade old techs for gold. If you don't have the gold to finish a tech, run some binary (or 100% tax) until you do.

7) Absolutely no reason to have just 4 cities at 150 AD on Prince. That should simply not happen. No reason you cannot peacefully expand more, but ideally you can start conquering early

Here's what I would have recommend you do here:

1) As this is prince, I probably would have expanded quickly to 3 or 4 cities, getting horses online. On Prince it is fairly easy to rush run or two neighbors with chariots, or you could just wait to get HBR

2) Beeline Alpha, or just get AH/BW and tech HBR..either way, get HAs online asap and go kill kill kill. Much of your expansion here could have been done via war. Currency would be next priority for trade routes and gold.

3) Keep killing and taking

So, overall, you are simply not being aggressive. Even if your goal in the game is to play a longer game - like Space - you should look to expand your empire one way or another. But you could also just use HAs to destroy the map fairly quickly - potentially winning conquest in the BCs or thereabouts.

Again, note that if your cities are working unimproved tiles, you either should be whipping or you dont' have enough workers - or you are poorly managing your workers.

Keep in mind here though that I can't see the actual actions you have performed between 4000BC and now. What I mean is what your cities have been doing and how you manage them. Were you using Slavery? etc...I'd assume there is much improvement in this area such as how fast you get out settlers and workers. How fast you get up granaries and stuff.

1. I got Alpha with a GS

2. Agree with workers. Messed up and lost one to a barb, but should have >3

3. Caste System. I intended to keep running slavery. Its been awhile I thought caste was in a different column.

4. I am averse to overlapping out of habit. Need to learn to consider it

5. My eternal issue here is I rarely really have a direction. I normally internalize and build a pretty isolationist empire with building packed cities, great defense, and hold a tech advantage into the space race. If things go wrong, then they go way wrong and I will eventually be attacked and decimated by a stronger foe. Not even sure I would know how to begin to prepare for a cultural or Diplo victory.

6. Yes. I need to try to maximize gold. I am always tentative to trade away techs though, especially since it is about the only advantage I have.

 

[lunfa_reo]

I normally internalize and build a pretty isolationist empire with building packed cities, great defense, and hold a tech advantage into the space race. If things go wrong, then they go way wrong and I will eventually be attacked and decimated by a stronger foe.

I think you are a builder at heart, as I am. Nothing wrong with that, but the thing is such a gameplay is only sustainable at Noble IMO. Whenever I do that at Prince or above I struggle as well. But if I'm more aggressive regarding expansion and early wars I usually do fine.

 

[lymond]

1. I got Alpha with a GS

2. Agree with workers. Messed up and lost one to a barb, but should have >3

3. Caste System. I intended to keep running slavery. Its been awhile I thought caste was in a different column.

4. I am averse to overlapping out of habit. Need to learn to consider it

5. My eternal issue here is I rarely really have a direction. I normally internalize and build a pretty isolationist empire with building packed cities, great defense, and hold a tech advantage into the space race. If things go wrong, then they go way wrong and I will eventually be attacked and decimated by a stronger foe. Not even sure I would know how to begin to prepare for a cultural or Diplo victory.

6. Yes. I need to try to maximize gold. I am always tentative to trade away techs though, especially since it is about the only advantage I have.

GS for Alpha not really a good idea..again, at this level..and probably up to Emperor, you should generally beeline Alpha

Overlapping or really a more compact empire becomes even more important as you move up level. There's several benefits of which reduced distance maintenance is one. Also, it allows you to manage workers better and share resources and cottages between cities. Some of it depends on the map and location of resources. It's certainly ok to settle a bit farther to get that all important resource.

Anyway, ultimately the point I think I and many here are making, besides getting better at the basics, is simply be more proactive in your approach.

I'd highly suggest posting a game from the start getting advice from the beginning and every few turns if you really want to improve.