How to win this situation?

[NintendoTogepi]

I got dealt a most unfortunate map and starting location today



Yeah...six cities. No room for ANY more. I've got two religions and two wonders. (Pyramids, and The Great Library with a GE)

Civics are Representation/Bureaucracy/Slavery/Decentralization/Paganism.

Game is at Noble difficulty and normal speed.

How do I win? Culture? Space? Should I run a SE or a CE? I'm baffled honestly, but I want to try and win. I didn't get dealt a very good island and I've got a ton of overlap. Which cities should I focus on making great cities and which ones should I just let sit there?

I'll attach the save as well, thanks for help in advance

 

[troytheface]

i voted "No, you'll definately lose" because of intuition which is indicating a really bad player that reloads alot. Good luck.

 

[Everest]

Since you got the mids - SE. Beeline for Optics as hard as you can. Find the others.

Edit: Any game on Noble can be won.

 

[vale]

The picture is small so I may be misreading things.

Did you move your starting Settler? That capital is ridiculously bad.

No roads? You have several cities in unhealth but the rice is not hooked up. It seems like you don't have enough workers really.

Is your entire military really just a warrior garrison in each city? That is going to be a problem when the AI's start showing up. You will get DoWed repeatedly the second they have Astronomy.

Why teching Education? Winning liberalism would be nice but it definitely is not as important as say optics or astronomy. Especially Astronomy to unlock your UU which will go a long way to at least preventing an invasion of Dutch soil. I guess if you want a cultural win, free speech will be important but you won't win a cultural victory with no military.

Pyramids was a pretty huge investment for what its giving you. Hereditary rule might have given you almost exactly the same results or even better. Great Lighthouse would have been better both short and long term economically and fit in more ideally with the goal of pushing hard for optics and then astronomy.

This might be a rough game to win at this point as it is very late.

Edit to add: I opened up the save and there are tons of empire management points that need to be addressed:

1. 2 workers is not enough. Things you need urgently:
Road to the rice - health
Road to the ivory - happiness
Road to the horses - military
Road to the dye - happiness
Road to the corn - oh you should really turn on resource bubbles. I didn't even see you had corn until I opened up the save. This was actually a fairly strong start for the circumstances.

Things you don't need urgently:

A farm over the forest near amsterdam or a mine on the hill near that pop 1 city.

2. Moai Statues in a city without a lighthouse is odd. The whole point is to make those water tiles productive, not turn them into really lame riverside plains hamlets that don't improve over time. Definitely would immediately switch to a lighthouse and whip it. Then finish the statues.

3. It doesn't seem like you have used the Pyramids much at all. For instance I count a total of 3 specialists being run in your entire empire not counting the GL and some settled great specialists. And one of those "specialists" was a citizen which is about as lame as you can get.

4. Where did that great artist come from? Music? Or just spawned? Or an event? It is hard to justify settling a great artist like that unless you have a plan for cultural victories. They are really lame and a golden age might have been better or maybe he could have lightbulbed something.

5. I'm not a big fan of the cottaging of the elephants.

6. Not one city has a single turn of whip anger on it. That's a problem.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

The picture is small so I may be misreading things.

Did you move your starting Settler? That capital is ridiculously bad.

Uh, no...though I should have

No roads? You have several cities in unhealth but the rice is not hooked up. It seems like you don't have enough workers really.
Shouldn't the rice be connected via the ocean?

Is your entire military really just a warrior garrison in each city? That is going to be a problem when the AI's start showing up. You will get DoWed repeatedly the second they have Astronomy.
Yeah, I'm working on that, but the land is so production poor that I felt I needed basic infastructure (granary, forge, library) first.

Why teching Education? Winning liberalism would be nice but it definitely is not as important as say optics or astronomy.
I was hoping to grab Astronomy with Liberalism, it should be pretty possible considering that Christianity didn't get founded till like 800AD (I just grabbed it while teching to Paper and Education) and Taoism didn't get founded till 1000 AD, and Islam still isn't founded so I think the others are pretty far behind in Trechnology.

Especially Astronomy to unlock your UU which will go a long way to at least preventing an invasion of Dutch soil. I guess if you want a cultural win, free speech will be important but you won't win a cultural victory with no military. I suppose although a culture victory might be hard if I don't get Sid's. I'll have to try for a Great Merchant.

Pyramids was a pretty huge investment for what its giving you. Hereditary rule might have given you almost exactly the same results or even better. Great Lighthouse would have been better both short and long term economically and fit in more ideally with the goal of pushing hard for optics and then astronomy. I probably shouldn't have built the Pyramids...I wasn't thinking about the Great Lighthouse either....but why is Optics and Astronomy so important? So I can meet the AI and they can DoW on me?

This might be a rough game to win at this point as it is very late. I suppose I probably should have beelined the Great Lighthouse, then I might have done ok. It's a shame I got such a tiny and resourceless island.

........................

i voted "No, you'll definately lose" because of intuition which is indicating a really bad player that reloads alot. Good luck.

Uh?

Since you got the mids - SE. Beeline for Optics as hard as you can. Find the others.

Edit: Any game on Noble can be won.

I still don't understand the Optics obsession. And tell that to a player who has never won a game above Prince

 

[Mesix]

I think you will be alright.

You should beeline for Steam Power as soon as possible to get your special building. A dyke in every city will take care of your production shortfall. With the start that you have, a cultural victory sould be easy to achieve. If you are right about being ahead in the tech race then a space race should be doable as well.

Have fun and let us know how it turns out.

 

[vale]

When I said that about the capital, I didn't see the corn so that makes it much more reasonable as a starting location.

No, the ocean won't hook up resources for you. The only resources your cities are getting is the work boat resources.

 

[Mesix]

The ocean will share the resources between your cities, but roads or rivers have to connect each resource to a city for it to be networked.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

When I said that about the capital, I didn't see the corn so that makes it much more reasonable as a starting location.

No, the ocean won't hook up resources for you. The only resources your cities are getting is the work boat resources.

Ah okay.

And the capital is still one of the worst I've ever seen, 2 resources in the BFC

 

[vale]

It has horses but yes having only 2 early resources is not great.

If plan is to take Astronomy off of Liberalism, it is still worth it to switch focus to Optics before Education. Get some caravels out there to at least find out where you stand in the race. If you really have a tech lead then you are safe from DoW until they get Astronomy and can backfill the guilds line/work on diplomacy/make trouble for the AIs with war bribes.

And its not that bad of an island. Two grains and 2 fishes, 1 early happiness, 1 calendar happiness. It really could have been worse. You have the initial save?

 

[DMOC]

Because you have the Pyramids, and plenty of grasslands at your disposal, I would (in your case) start growing your populations, which really should be around 10-15 at this stage of the game considering you didn't have any wars which cause War Weariness. You are in Representation, right? Stay in there and start destroying cottages and replacing them with farms. Oh yeah, final point: start running specialists-espeically scientists.

Tech Optics first, then Education, to find out where you stand in the tech race.

Near the endgame, you can build your dykes which should take care of production problems.

 

[guitarpoet]

People truly are rude. I`d vote "Maybe, it'll take some effort". It`s a noble game so i dont think you have to wet your pants because you dont have any military yet. Although you should take it in to consideration... Especially since your UU is a galleon-thing and the no roads, if that is true, is a somewhat big mistake, if not fatal.

you dont have to build roads directly incase you dont need the resources, witch is rare.. but now you do. Anyway I sincerly wish you good luck.

 

[Wilhelmus]

Ah okay.

And the capital is still one of the worst I've ever seen, 2 resources in the BFC

Three actually: Corn, Dyes and Horses. It might pop up some late game strategic resources like coal, oil, alluminum or uranium. I'm very surprised to see that peak right next to Amsterdam. I didn't know those can appear in the BFC, or the ring directly around it.

I'd say your island is okay. It has good resources and good grassland terrain. Being Dutch, your cities can all upgrade the water and riverside tiles by 1.

Some extra tips:
Don't forget to remove the jungle from your elephant. It will give you one more food, and doing so will increases the health of both Utrecht and The Hague.

Switch out of Paganism to either Organised Religion, Pacifism, or Free Religion.

On the military side, If you achive naval superiority, your land based army can remain as small as it is. Get those east indiamen, and also start pirating early. Once they get frigates, declare war, to keep pirating, and stay ahead in naval/air technology. Be the first to ships of the line, airships, destroyers, etc. You can keep the civs without iron friendly while they cannot make frigates or ships of the line.

I noticed the date was 1250 AD (late!). Seeing your still building granaries in two cities, all those jungle tiles, and the inexistence of your road network, I'm wondering what you were doing the past 1.000 years. Also Moai statues, available with sailing, is still under construction.

Your city placement is okay (though it could actually be optimised a bit by reducing overlap if Utrecht was one north, Nijmegen one south, and Maastricht one west). All are coastal and can contribute to your navy.

I see from opening the save I have some further comments.
You don't have any iron. Definitely, you will have to take optics ASAP, and locate a source of iron. Take it by force if you have to (road your horses and make an army).

Also, you should use the whip more often if you run slavery. None of your cities has been whipped recently, while many 2/3pop buildings are available to big unhappy and unhealthy cities. Considder whipping a temple in Utrecht for instance. If you would have whipped the granary in Nijmegen while at size four, with only as little one invested in its construction, this city would have been size 6 by now, and completing the next building.

Move your spare warrior from Amsterdam to Nijmegen for military protection.

 

[mystyfly]

With two religions, creative and probabely even more religions (?) you sould be able to win cultural easily. However you're now a bit lat to go that direction.

 

[DaveMcW]

Press Ctrl+R to see your resources.

Build roads to hook up the resources.

 

[Kesshi]

NintendoTogepi,

Do you still have the initial 4000 BC save?

If so, would you mind posting it? I'd like to take a stab at it. With all the fresh water and food resources I think I could make a nice Specialist Economy.

Also, I noticed this: Civics are Representation/Bureaucracy/Slavery/Decentralization/Paganism.

You haven't met anyone, are learning Education, are running Rep, and haven't learned Banking yet... Why not? (Or you have learned banking and you haven't switched to Merc.)

With 6 cities, you instantly gain 6*3 more beakers from switching to Merc (before modifiers) if you only run citizens. If every city has a library (+25%), and you made every specialist a Scientist (+3 beakers each) you'd end up with 6*6 * 1.25 or 45 extra beakers. You're currently producing 152 beakers. Add 45 and you end up with 197 beakers. (The numbers won't be exact due to rounding, but approximates.) One simple civic change could net you almost 33% more beakers at the cost of 1 turn of anarchy.

 

[Clam Spammer]

What are the map settings for this game? Looks like an Islands map (I just played one of these).

What you need to do now: (most of this should have been done already)

- Get more workers.

- Improve every tile on your island. They are all inside BFCs so no reason not to. Workshops are your friend on a grassy island (not too many since you want to run scientists, but atm your production is terrible). Guilds is a priority tech if you don't have it yet.

- Build roads on every tile of your island (connect up the resources first, then the rest once your workers have nothing else to do). If an AI comes knocking you'll need maximum accessibility to send reinforcements to any cities that come under attack.

- Research optics and explore with caravels. You might find uninhabited lands (depending on map type). Take a spy along to pop huts (if there are none then just explore AI territory). Plus you definitely want that +1 movement bonus on this map.

- Once you have met every AI civ (and not before) start tech trading. Depending on how big your tech lead is, and how many AIs there are, this could be very lucrative.


From what I can see of this map (I can't play the save since I don't have BTS), I would say a Space win is the most viable option. If you can get hold of some aluminum then the game is yours.

My vote? "Yes, easily". Islam still isn't founded - AI is way behind (they could be isolated too). Rep + scientists will ensure your tech lead is safe.

 

[Kev]

Switch out of Paganism to either Organised Religion, Pacifism, or Free Religion.

Free Religion won't be available until Liberalism, but it's a nice thought if you don't plan to visit the others until after Liberalism/Astronomy. Nice from the standpoint of not having a state religion when you meet the others and thus would not cause any immediate dislike.

Still, I would do what the others have said and beeline Optics quickly right now and send a caravel or two out onto the seas. Possibly even pick up the circumnavigation bonus... When doing so, if you do not plan to get a great deal of use out of OR or Pacifism, then you may not want to have a state religion when you begin to explore (for reasons mentioned above). However, OR and Pacifism are great civics, and given the others' suggestions about different civics, you may want to consider adding a change to your religious one as well. I'd be apt to choose Pacifism - depending where you are in terms of great people. If you can find a way to speed along a scientist, he/she may be able to help with bulbing you along the Liberalism path. Though it might be a waste on Education as you only have 8 turns left there, it could mean the difference of getting there first. You should know more once you visit.

What map choice was this?

Have you had messages about great generals being born or anything like that?

 

[Clam Spammer]

I forgot to mention religion and civics before.

Caste System. With Guilds workshops (I mentioned them before) you don't need to pop rush. Before you switch though you may wish to whip some angry/unhealthy people.

Mercantilism. You don't have foreign trade routes anyway. Get Banking soon.

Pacifism. Military upkeep obviously isn't an issue right now. More GPs = more Rep beakers = bigger tech lead.

As for religion: If you find an isolated AI with no state religion, spread one of yours. Pick one religion and shrine this one only (hopefully you haven't shrined them both yet). Once you get Astro this will spread like wildfire to isolated civs (if there are none then this probably won't work. I doubt you're alone in being alone though ). If you can bulb Divine Right (Artists and Prophets can do this) then go for it - you will have to finish it yourself but it won't take long. This potentially means one more civ without a religion. Keep a state religion - you need it for Pacifism to work and no one can touch you for a while.

I just played an islands map where everyone was isolated. I founded 4 religions and only 3 other civs had their own. They were sorry

 

[CivCorpse]

i voted "No, you'll definately lose" because of intuition which is indicating a really bad player that reloads alot. Good luck.

That was kind of rude, uncalled for and surprising. You normally have positive input.