Please help, I can't ever get past the industrial era on immortal.

[jmeyer73]

Every single time, without fail, everything falls apart in the industrial era. I have no delegates because I can't get enough gold to both buy cities state allies and buy research agreements. My unhappiness every time plummets to -30 because of public opinion. Oh, and everybody hates me. My last game as china I did really well. I got a strong religion, I conquered venice and got to 6 cities. Then everybody declared war on me. And they did it again. And again. And it never ended. I defended and even managed to get the first ideology, but then everybody chose freedom while I chose autocracy.

I was leading in science, as I always am, but it doesn't matter, because everything else goes to horsehocky.



I don't have enough production to build science buildings, as well as culture buildings, as well as production buildings and other buildings like granaries. I just can't do this horsehocky fast enough. What am I doing wrong? Here's a screenshot of my last game before I gave up.

 

[Gori the Grey]

What victory condition are you going for? I only ask because you talk about both being high in science and concerning yourself with how many delegates you have. If you are going for a science victory, you don't terribly need to concern yourself with how many delegates you have. For almost every kind of victory, you have to be mindful of where science lies, but beyond that, you should be focusing throughout the game on your desired victory condition. This matters for things like the happiness problem you're reporting. Most people going for science just have four or five cities and try to get each of them to the maximum population they can. You're playing on epic. I always play on standard, so I don't have a very good feel for where the population of your cities should be, but on standard, I try to have my capital track with the turns/10, and my three other cities track no less than 5 or so behind that.

If you're playing for science, there's little value in conquering cities. Building and maintaining an offensive army costs a lot of production and money. Most people going for science just build a defensive army, as long as they have enough area around their capital to get another 3-4 cities up, which (with Venice as a neighbor) you did. Here Venice is probably costing you a lot of happiness, but not providing your empire with much in return.

If you're bothering to build enough of an army to conquer a nearby capitol, then you should perhaps go for domination. Having built the units, you try to keep most of them alive, while you go conquer other civilizations. You end up having a "wide" civilization, so there are some tricks to managing happiness in that case.

I just think you're splitting your attention between too many objectives, rather than settling on the single objective that will get you to whichever victory condition you want. Once you know that, you tailor everything to it: number of cities, population of cities, what you build, how big a military you maintain. And it's that tailoring that makes you feel as though you are getting the buildings you need, helps you know how to keep your happiness high, helps you know what to bother doing with your money, etc.

Also, if it's true that everybody picks a particular ideology, you have to shift over to that one yourself, because the happiness hit is too high otherwise.

 

[jmeyer73]

What victory condition are you going for? I only ask because you talk about both being high in science and concerning yourself with how many delegates you have. If you are going for a science victory, you don't terribly need to concern yourself with how many delegates you have. For almost every kind of victory, you have to be mindful of where science lies, but beyond that, you should be focusing throughout the game on your desired victory condition. This matters for things like the happiness problem you're reporting. Most people going for science just have four or five cities and try to get each of them to the maximum population they can. You're playing on epic. I always play on standard, so I don't have a very good feel for where the population of your cities should be, but on standard, I try to have my capital track with the turns/10, and my three other cities track no less than 5 or so behind that.

If you're playing for science, there's little value in conquering cities. Building and maintaining an offensive army costs a lot of production and money. Most people going for science just build a defensive army, as long as they have enough area around their capital to get another 3-4 cities up, which (with Venice as a neighbor) you did. Here Venice is probably costing you a lot of happiness, but not providing your empire with much in return.

If you're bothering to build enough of an army to conquer a nearby capitol, then you should perhaps go for domination. Having built the units, you try to keep most of them alive, while you go conquer other civilizations. You end up having a "wide" civilization, so there are some tricks to managing happiness in that case.

I just think you're splitting your attention between too many objectives, rather than settling on the single objective that will get you to whichever victory condition you want. Once you know that, you tailor everything to it: number of cities, population of cities, what you build, how big a military you maintain. And it's that tailoring that makes you feel as though you are getting the buildings you need, helps you know how to keep your happiness high, helps you know what to bother doing with your money, etc.

Also, if it's true that everybody picks a particular ideology, you have to shift over to that one yourself, because the happiness hit is too high otherwise.

Is it just expected that without the forbidden palace you are not going to be able to propose anything until at least when you get delegates from city states? I usually try to rush an ideology but usually it backfires because I can never enact world ideology since the AI always builds forbidden palace and I'm not host.

 

[Gori the Grey]

And, probably, not only that, but if people are of a different ideology, they're not going to vote for your proposal (unless, yeah, you basically have command of the votes such that you're on your way to a diplo victory).

I myself don't rush to be one of the first founders of an ideology. I sit back and see how things fall out, then join the one with the most diplomatic pressure on my behalf. Just so I don't have to worry about the unhappiness situation that you're describing. Others can advise you better; this is not a particular strength for me in the game.

As a game dynamic, I like the ideology system precisely because it's hard to game (you can only choose one out of three, so there will always be "double" the pressure against you as there is for you). For me, it livens up the late game, having to make these judgments. One way of approaching it (since you say your games always crash at exactly that spot) is to set yourself the goal, in the early game, of banking happiness--having way more than you need just to get by, so that when you take that -30 hit, you can weather it, or at least some of it. There's a ton of happiness in the ideologies; you can pre-build toward that. I don't in general build many walls and castles, and so on, but there's a policy that gives happiness for those. Well, if I know I'm dead-set on that ideology, then I do build those. So examine the ideology policies closely and plan your pre-industrial game so that you'll get the biggest boost from your favorite one.

 

[dumpstertrash]

Every single time, without fail, everything falls apart in the industrial era. I have no delegates because I can't get enough gold to both buy cities state allies and buy research agreements. My unhappiness every time plummets to -30 because of public opinion. Oh, and everybody hates me. My last game as china I did really well. I got a strong religion, I conquered venice and got to 6 cities. Then everybody declared war on me. And they did it again. And again. And it never ended. I defended and even managed to get the first ideology, but then everybody chose freedom while I chose autocracy.

I was leading in science, as I always am, but it doesn't matter, because everything else goes to horsehocky.



I don't have enough production to build science buildings, as well as culture buildings, as well as production buildings and other buildings like granaries. I just can't do this horsehocky fast enough. What am I doing wrong? Here's a screenshot of my last game before I gave up.

I know I'm late on this, but I primarily play on Immortal and recently Diety, and I love to go Liberty so I feel as if I know what I'm talking about when it comes to happiness issues. 15 Unhappiness is nothing to worry about. Just build happiness buildings and take policies that help with the happiness. Your big issue is all the civs hating you. It looks like you wiped out Venice entirely. They probably had good relations with the other civs, so you should've let them keep Ur.

Also, since civs hate you they won't trade their extra luxes with you. So ya, that's even more happiness you're missing out on. In my current game I went Freedom and no one else did. I am getting a revolutionary wave of -47 happiness, but I'm still positive at around =13 happiness because I built the right buildings and took the right social policies.

Lastly, there is a HUGE EXCLAMATION POINT ON YOUR SCREEN. Maybe it's from a mod because your interface looks different than mine, but from my recollection it's because you have too many units, which majorly hurts your production. But maybe it's a UI mod reminding you that your empire is pissed off.

Lastly, maybe switch to Order. This is a very winnable game and hardly even what I consider a "bad situation". This is just a mid-game nuisance. If you just deal with it and figure it out you'll be fine.

 

[Kokutenko]

I not high tech guy so I always check what ideology other AI have. And chose the same to not have tons of unhappy people. Or you can wait and first finishing some systems and when other big AI's chose their ideology you can take the same after.
Or you can just load game from save point before you chose ideology and take most popular in world but I am not sure about AI's can change chosen ideology to other because you chose one first and they dont want the same I dont know

 

[martindo]

I not high tech guy so I always check what ideology other AI have. And chose the same to not have tons of unhappy people. Or you can wait and first finishing some systems and when other big AI's chose their ideology you can take the same after.
Or you can just load game from save point before you chose ideology and take most popular in world but I am not sure about AI's can change chosen ideology to other because you chose one first and they dont want the same I dont know

AI will definitely grab the bonus 2 tenets by choosing an ideology that has no adherents yet.

There are other threads that discuss how to increase happiness via Religious Beliefs, Social Policies, and wonders (Notre Dame, and later Neusschwanstein which AI rarely try for). I generally play Freedom at King or Emperor, so I can't say how much worse it is at Immortal when you're alone in the ideology. On rare occasions, I bail out and conform to the dominant ideology.

In this particular game, OP gobbled a largish Venice -- you don't say when you annexed it, but that would be a big chunk of negative happiness to deal with. One strategy is to delay the Circus Maximus if you're likely to grab a nearby capital or other large city with good infrastructure and culture. Build it there, reducing City Unhappiness, which I occasionally check via the Economic Overview / Resources & Happiness/ Local City Happiness on left and City Breakdown (of unhappiness) in the middle column.