adwcta
King
I think there are a couple of the more subtle and imo underrated skills in this game that aren't captured by the general discussions that go around of "how to best use unit X, ability Y?" or "how to do Tradition start?". But, they often determine whether you end up victorious.
Here's what I hope will be a good read for anyone working thier way through Emprorer/Immortal with a Tradition start, to at least get your mind to start thinking about these issues. I think most of this stuff is more important than how to properly do a Tradition opener if your goal is to just win the game, and not necessarily to win by turn X or be pretty about it. Although I've stumbled my way to a few sub-250 turn victories on occassion in Immortal, I don't focus on that and prefer a flexible approach that just emphasizes the victory itself (i.e. a turn 400 victory is just as good to me as a turn 200 victory...).
Disclaimer: I am not a pro at this game, actually pretty new to the fanchise and game (started "post-patch"). But, I've won all my Emporer games, and am 9-3 in Immortal games (2 of those are as Maya; I hate Maya), despite usually not playing particularly well imo, so I thought I might share some of the small thing I do to help me win. I play G&K single player w/ all DLC, no mods, all settings default besdies policy saving, all standard map types (pref: Fractal). I have never used a civ twice (except for Maya; I hate Maya), prefer Tall over Wide, and almost never build the NC or Oxford early because I think they speed the early game up too much and make diplomacy difficult. Map Size / Speed is either Standard/Standard or Small/Quick.
Tips (divided by their most applicable in-game era):
1) Scouting is the most important part of Ancient Era game. You can't know what you should be doing, whether it's building, buying, researching, or settling, unless you know what's around you. You also get gold for scouting (CSs, runes, and most importantly, finding other civs), which is incredibly important in early game. Each civ will pay you 25 gold to put an embassy in your capital. This is good unless you feel that civ may be hostile (in which case, letting them see your capital will make them attack faster). If you already know the rough location of the civ's capital, don't ask to have an embassy there. 25 gold is more important for now. More importantly, the more civs you find, the better deals you get. Civs don't keep gold hanging around in the early game, so knowing more civs lets you get more gold when trading away your resources. If you haven't scouted 3 civs, make every effort to get some open-boarders or ships to continue your scouting in the early-mid game. If you're not at war, this is more important than an extra archer/spearman. In fact, I've found that with proper scouting, I can make sure I expand in ways that don't make the AI civ mad. In cases where there is no bold red "covet my land" nieghbor, 2 archers with my initial warrior is enough to hold me until Medieval Era, double that to defend with catapults following if someone wars against me early. After fully scouting your surroundings, you should know where the "safe" areas to expand are (not within 10 tiles of AI capital; not toward AI capital). If you have to expand into a conflict area (and this should be your third city earliest), make sure it's on a hill. This is more important than any coast/river/extra luxury consideration. It will save you several units needed to defend this location and/or deter attacks.
2) Trading is the most important part of Classic Era game. Expanding on what was mentioned in 5, don't trade for things you don't need. Everything has a price, and you can get something for everything you trade away (if the other civ wants it). This means if you don't need open borders, don't just reject an open borders proposal, but charge a civ for it. If you don't need an embassy, charge for it. If you don't need that many horses (and you never need that many horses), trade them. This has a double use if you trade the resource to your neighbor/enemy. First, they have less gold, which means less units. Second, if they go to war against you, they no longer have your horses/iron, and those units take a large combat penalty. Finally, if you don't need a luxury for happiness in the next handful of turns, trade it. I don't like being above 4 happiness, it makes me uncomfortable. All of this gold is how you get your Settlors. For a tradition game, I never build a settlor; I think it's actually just plain wrong if you're building more than one of your first three. A late second/third city, after knowing what your neighbors are doing is better than an early one that pisses someone off.
3) Growth Management is the most important part of Medieval Era game. At this point, you have expanded to at least 2 other cities. You have happiness problems. The important thing to realize is that growth should be your #1 priority pre-Renaissance. But, that a since turn of unhappiness wipes out 4 turns of good growth, and growth causes unhappiness, there is a circular effect that causes counter-intuative effects. This means you should only prioritize growth to the extent your future happiness can handle it. This means sometimes, it's really not that important to have all your citizens working an improved tile, or having that grainery, and that 1 less food in your capital may actually HELP your overall growth 10 turns down the line. This is hard to manage, and you'll get more used to it with experience. It involes thinking 10-20 steps down the line and knowing when you'll hit certain policies, be able to build certain buildings etc. Since all of this adjusts based on the game, there's no "order" here, and you really have to go by feel. For example, you will notice that if you have Aquaducts researched, once you pop the Tradition finisher, your cities will start growing like crazy for a long time, and you should prepare adequate happiness (and not expanding during this period) to accomidate this. If you go through more than 9 turns of unhappiness at any time before you reach the Renaissance, evaluate what you did wrong and learn from it. You should try to keep the total # of unhappiness turns in a Tradition start down to 4 at most. If there's more unhappiness, get less food and do something else with your production/worker-time next time the next game. Also, spread your religion if you plan on doing that at all. This is the easiest time to spread it. Later on, it will not be worth it. Remember that religion only spreads from fully converted cities. If you need to cover part of the map for your strategy, it's not a horrible idea to send 2 GPs out and Enhance with your 4th GP. Never spread religion to a civ that already has another religion unless they are already hostile. If they only have a Pantheon, only spread there if you are confident you can cover their area with influence in a short period of time (before they get a religion).
4) Diplomacy is the most important part of the Renaissance Era game. Sometime during this era, the entire world will go haywire. This is when the AI has enough powerful Medieval units to launch civ-ending attacks, and enough exploration power and speed to find everyone and get there. This is where games are won and lost. If you have G&K, and are not isolated in a corner somewhere with only 1 neighbor who can reach you, use your spies to scout what each civilization is doing, and gather intel to share, before you start protecting your tech or stealing tech (only steal from enemies). At this point, you want to amass as many green diplomacy points as possible with all civilizations that have a reasonable ability to reach you physically. Start by paying each of your neighbors at least 5gpt as a gift (think of it as purchasing protection). Agree to every research agreement offered, unless you want to attack that civ soon (AIs hate breaking research agreements). Next, find a scapegoat civilization. Usually, it will become increasingly clear who the civ everyone hates is. This is usually a bad actor, probably backstabbed some other civ (maybe you!). Once a civ has 2 denunciations, denounce that civilization. If more powerful/closer civs ask you to go to war against a bad actor, ask for 10 turns to prepare, then on turn 8, denounce the civ and ask every other nation to go to war against that nation with you on turn 9. I usually don't have to lift a finger in this war, just pay defense, snipe a city here and there opportunistically. If you have only one ally, sue for peace as soon as you can without giving up too much (don't be afraid to pay a small amount). If you have multiple allies, hold out until you get something for your efforts. Congrats, you now have allies, friends, and a common enemy. You should be protected until the Atomic Era. Continue paying your neighbors for the rest of the game. Only stop payment if a civ becomes very very weak (left with 1-2 cities).
5) Relax in the Industrial Era. Now that you have alliances, friends, enemies, you should be well set up to win the game, whether through war or peace. You should fee secure that you are in no danger at this point, and even if you are "at war" the war is not threatening. Focus on your infrastructure, economy, now is the time to catch up on all those buildings you missed before this. Maybe settle another city or snipe one from the bad actor or an unfriendly neighbor. Build walls in your capital and all frontier cities if you haven't already. Keep in mind the diplomacy penalties for taking an Industrial policy. Do another spy sweep to collect information just to make sure nothing crazy is happening. Begin to use spies defensively to hold key city states after the sweep.
6) Militarize is the most important part of the Modern Era game. At this point, start building up your military to the best of your capabilities. Ideally, you will have at least 3 cities in production mode. Units now will last you well into the late game with only one further upgrade, and you should be ahead, or at the very least caught up by this point tech-wise. Plus, by now, the runaway civ is probably starting to run out of other targets to destroy besides you. Be prepared. Take a weak neighbor or the runaway's buddy if you are going for science/domination victory. Have a general plan. If you're playing science/UN, focus on defense against what the runaway is focusing on. If he has ships, get submarines. If he has tanks, get planes and anti-tank. If he has air, get AA-guns. If you're playing domination, make sure you are building units that can reach the runaway's capital. Ships/planes if there's water in the way, tanks if there's no water, etc.
7) Victory Planning is the most important part of the Atomic Era game. By this point, you should be able to see exactly how you will win this game. If you are science, you should be ahead in tech already, and preparing defense; you should know exactly which city/GE is building the Hubble, which city is building each part. If you are UN, you should have the UN out (great scientist/Rationalism finisher jump makes Atomic/Information the same Era for this victory condition) and be trade-post spamming and focused on gold and paying off people to not kill CSs. If you are domination, you should know exactly how to take out each remaining capital (including having incited wars so the runaway does most of your job for you). Regardless, continue to militarize.
8) Winning is the most important part of the Information Era game.
Seriously though, the game is already won/lost before this point (usually before the Modern Era), so at this point just enjoy the ride. Last-ditch-effort tips in close games: Preventing a Spaceship victory (1. keep the AI in multiple wars, so they build more units; you shoudl be doing this anyway; 2. send spies everywhere to location where they are building the final spaceship parts; intercept with a surgical strike so it doesn't reach the capital; you can only do this once or twice, and it will buy you a couple dozen turns; 3. or, if you have a good fast military, destroy those cities first on your way to destroying the entire civ.). Preventing a UN victory (1. take out city states; 2. pay other civs to take out city states; 3. borrow money to buy vulnerable city states, the ones that are currently seeking funding; 4. use high-leveled spies to coupe; this is better if you figure out they're doing UN path before the UN comes out, which isn't hard, because they'll be allied with at least half the map of CSs). Preventing a Domination victory (1. keep your capital alive, but short of being able to do that... ; 2. pay the runaway civ to attack all the city states, this will buy you a couple dozen turns, but you have to do this before they declare war on you, obviously... AI will still do this even if they are hostile/denouncing you; 3. pre-emptively attack the runaway civ, at the opposite part of his empire distance-wise to your capital, this will force his army to travel the map and then back to get to your capital; good for a couple dozen turns, as opposed to just playing a hopeless defense).
Here's what I hope will be a good read for anyone working thier way through Emprorer/Immortal with a Tradition start, to at least get your mind to start thinking about these issues. I think most of this stuff is more important than how to properly do a Tradition opener if your goal is to just win the game, and not necessarily to win by turn X or be pretty about it. Although I've stumbled my way to a few sub-250 turn victories on occassion in Immortal, I don't focus on that and prefer a flexible approach that just emphasizes the victory itself (i.e. a turn 400 victory is just as good to me as a turn 200 victory...).
Disclaimer: I am not a pro at this game, actually pretty new to the fanchise and game (started "post-patch"). But, I've won all my Emporer games, and am 9-3 in Immortal games (2 of those are as Maya; I hate Maya), despite usually not playing particularly well imo, so I thought I might share some of the small thing I do to help me win. I play G&K single player w/ all DLC, no mods, all settings default besdies policy saving, all standard map types (pref: Fractal). I have never used a civ twice (except for Maya; I hate Maya), prefer Tall over Wide, and almost never build the NC or Oxford early because I think they speed the early game up too much and make diplomacy difficult. Map Size / Speed is either Standard/Standard or Small/Quick.
Tips (divided by their most applicable in-game era):
1) Scouting is the most important part of Ancient Era game. You can't know what you should be doing, whether it's building, buying, researching, or settling, unless you know what's around you. You also get gold for scouting (CSs, runes, and most importantly, finding other civs), which is incredibly important in early game. Each civ will pay you 25 gold to put an embassy in your capital. This is good unless you feel that civ may be hostile (in which case, letting them see your capital will make them attack faster). If you already know the rough location of the civ's capital, don't ask to have an embassy there. 25 gold is more important for now. More importantly, the more civs you find, the better deals you get. Civs don't keep gold hanging around in the early game, so knowing more civs lets you get more gold when trading away your resources. If you haven't scouted 3 civs, make every effort to get some open-boarders or ships to continue your scouting in the early-mid game. If you're not at war, this is more important than an extra archer/spearman. In fact, I've found that with proper scouting, I can make sure I expand in ways that don't make the AI civ mad. In cases where there is no bold red "covet my land" nieghbor, 2 archers with my initial warrior is enough to hold me until Medieval Era, double that to defend with catapults following if someone wars against me early. After fully scouting your surroundings, you should know where the "safe" areas to expand are (not within 10 tiles of AI capital; not toward AI capital). If you have to expand into a conflict area (and this should be your third city earliest), make sure it's on a hill. This is more important than any coast/river/extra luxury consideration. It will save you several units needed to defend this location and/or deter attacks.
2) Trading is the most important part of Classic Era game. Expanding on what was mentioned in 5, don't trade for things you don't need. Everything has a price, and you can get something for everything you trade away (if the other civ wants it). This means if you don't need open borders, don't just reject an open borders proposal, but charge a civ for it. If you don't need an embassy, charge for it. If you don't need that many horses (and you never need that many horses), trade them. This has a double use if you trade the resource to your neighbor/enemy. First, they have less gold, which means less units. Second, if they go to war against you, they no longer have your horses/iron, and those units take a large combat penalty. Finally, if you don't need a luxury for happiness in the next handful of turns, trade it. I don't like being above 4 happiness, it makes me uncomfortable. All of this gold is how you get your Settlors. For a tradition game, I never build a settlor; I think it's actually just plain wrong if you're building more than one of your first three. A late second/third city, after knowing what your neighbors are doing is better than an early one that pisses someone off.
3) Growth Management is the most important part of Medieval Era game. At this point, you have expanded to at least 2 other cities. You have happiness problems. The important thing to realize is that growth should be your #1 priority pre-Renaissance. But, that a since turn of unhappiness wipes out 4 turns of good growth, and growth causes unhappiness, there is a circular effect that causes counter-intuative effects. This means you should only prioritize growth to the extent your future happiness can handle it. This means sometimes, it's really not that important to have all your citizens working an improved tile, or having that grainery, and that 1 less food in your capital may actually HELP your overall growth 10 turns down the line. This is hard to manage, and you'll get more used to it with experience. It involes thinking 10-20 steps down the line and knowing when you'll hit certain policies, be able to build certain buildings etc. Since all of this adjusts based on the game, there's no "order" here, and you really have to go by feel. For example, you will notice that if you have Aquaducts researched, once you pop the Tradition finisher, your cities will start growing like crazy for a long time, and you should prepare adequate happiness (and not expanding during this period) to accomidate this. If you go through more than 9 turns of unhappiness at any time before you reach the Renaissance, evaluate what you did wrong and learn from it. You should try to keep the total # of unhappiness turns in a Tradition start down to 4 at most. If there's more unhappiness, get less food and do something else with your production/worker-time next time the next game. Also, spread your religion if you plan on doing that at all. This is the easiest time to spread it. Later on, it will not be worth it. Remember that religion only spreads from fully converted cities. If you need to cover part of the map for your strategy, it's not a horrible idea to send 2 GPs out and Enhance with your 4th GP. Never spread religion to a civ that already has another religion unless they are already hostile. If they only have a Pantheon, only spread there if you are confident you can cover their area with influence in a short period of time (before they get a religion).
4) Diplomacy is the most important part of the Renaissance Era game. Sometime during this era, the entire world will go haywire. This is when the AI has enough powerful Medieval units to launch civ-ending attacks, and enough exploration power and speed to find everyone and get there. This is where games are won and lost. If you have G&K, and are not isolated in a corner somewhere with only 1 neighbor who can reach you, use your spies to scout what each civilization is doing, and gather intel to share, before you start protecting your tech or stealing tech (only steal from enemies). At this point, you want to amass as many green diplomacy points as possible with all civilizations that have a reasonable ability to reach you physically. Start by paying each of your neighbors at least 5gpt as a gift (think of it as purchasing protection). Agree to every research agreement offered, unless you want to attack that civ soon (AIs hate breaking research agreements). Next, find a scapegoat civilization. Usually, it will become increasingly clear who the civ everyone hates is. This is usually a bad actor, probably backstabbed some other civ (maybe you!). Once a civ has 2 denunciations, denounce that civilization. If more powerful/closer civs ask you to go to war against a bad actor, ask for 10 turns to prepare, then on turn 8, denounce the civ and ask every other nation to go to war against that nation with you on turn 9. I usually don't have to lift a finger in this war, just pay defense, snipe a city here and there opportunistically. If you have only one ally, sue for peace as soon as you can without giving up too much (don't be afraid to pay a small amount). If you have multiple allies, hold out until you get something for your efforts. Congrats, you now have allies, friends, and a common enemy. You should be protected until the Atomic Era. Continue paying your neighbors for the rest of the game. Only stop payment if a civ becomes very very weak (left with 1-2 cities).
5) Relax in the Industrial Era. Now that you have alliances, friends, enemies, you should be well set up to win the game, whether through war or peace. You should fee secure that you are in no danger at this point, and even if you are "at war" the war is not threatening. Focus on your infrastructure, economy, now is the time to catch up on all those buildings you missed before this. Maybe settle another city or snipe one from the bad actor or an unfriendly neighbor. Build walls in your capital and all frontier cities if you haven't already. Keep in mind the diplomacy penalties for taking an Industrial policy. Do another spy sweep to collect information just to make sure nothing crazy is happening. Begin to use spies defensively to hold key city states after the sweep.
6) Militarize is the most important part of the Modern Era game. At this point, start building up your military to the best of your capabilities. Ideally, you will have at least 3 cities in production mode. Units now will last you well into the late game with only one further upgrade, and you should be ahead, or at the very least caught up by this point tech-wise. Plus, by now, the runaway civ is probably starting to run out of other targets to destroy besides you. Be prepared. Take a weak neighbor or the runaway's buddy if you are going for science/domination victory. Have a general plan. If you're playing science/UN, focus on defense against what the runaway is focusing on. If he has ships, get submarines. If he has tanks, get planes and anti-tank. If he has air, get AA-guns. If you're playing domination, make sure you are building units that can reach the runaway's capital. Ships/planes if there's water in the way, tanks if there's no water, etc.
7) Victory Planning is the most important part of the Atomic Era game. By this point, you should be able to see exactly how you will win this game. If you are science, you should be ahead in tech already, and preparing defense; you should know exactly which city/GE is building the Hubble, which city is building each part. If you are UN, you should have the UN out (great scientist/Rationalism finisher jump makes Atomic/Information the same Era for this victory condition) and be trade-post spamming and focused on gold and paying off people to not kill CSs. If you are domination, you should know exactly how to take out each remaining capital (including having incited wars so the runaway does most of your job for you). Regardless, continue to militarize.
8) Winning is the most important part of the Information Era game.
Seriously though, the game is already won/lost before this point (usually before the Modern Era), so at this point just enjoy the ride. Last-ditch-effort tips in close games: Preventing a Spaceship victory (1. keep the AI in multiple wars, so they build more units; you shoudl be doing this anyway; 2. send spies everywhere to location where they are building the final spaceship parts; intercept with a surgical strike so it doesn't reach the capital; you can only do this once or twice, and it will buy you a couple dozen turns; 3. or, if you have a good fast military, destroy those cities first on your way to destroying the entire civ.). Preventing a UN victory (1. take out city states; 2. pay other civs to take out city states; 3. borrow money to buy vulnerable city states, the ones that are currently seeking funding; 4. use high-leveled spies to coupe; this is better if you figure out they're doing UN path before the UN comes out, which isn't hard, because they'll be allied with at least half the map of CSs). Preventing a Domination victory (1. keep your capital alive, but short of being able to do that... ; 2. pay the runaway civ to attack all the city states, this will buy you a couple dozen turns, but you have to do this before they declare war on you, obviously... AI will still do this even if they are hostile/denouncing you; 3. pre-emptively attack the runaway civ, at the opposite part of his empire distance-wise to your capital, this will force his army to travel the map and then back to get to your capital; good for a couple dozen turns, as opposed to just playing a hopeless defense).
