Would anybody mind watching me for 10-20 minutes?

[inthesomeday]

Expo= expand.

I haven't watched but as to comment on the build order mentioned in the OP, there's too many libraries and too few settlers. I'd say instead of the worker just nick one off a city state. Also, a second scout may be necessary depending on the map type and size. Library way way too early, meaning you're also getting writing tech way too early. Better to go pottery, animal husbandry, mining, bronze working, that way you can get strategic resources which give you more good tiles to work. During settler production, manually lock tiles-- something you should always do anyway-- to work production and gold, food is extremely inefficient while building settlers and you can't starve. I believe the conversion is 4 apples to one hammer during settlers, rounding down, though I'm not certain on that. Usually though moving from, say, a 2 1 tile to a 1 1 2 tile doesn't affect the number of turns until the settler is completed, and the gold during settler building is crucial for future crisis times in case you start to run low; when not building settlers, food is priority with a mix of production, but during settler building it goes production then gold then food, though gold edges out production if the number of turns doesn't change. Usually unless you're very good at rapid math it takes a couple tries with comparisons to get down what works best for turn time and gold, but it's always worth the time to save some turns or make some money.

 

[Ahzired]

Expo= expand.

I haven't watched but as to comment on the build order mentioned in the OP, there's too many libraries and too few settlers. I'd say instead of the worker just nick one off a city state. Also, a second scout may be necessary depending on the map type and size. Library way way too early, meaning you're also getting writing tech way too early. Better to go pottery, animal husbandry, mining, bronze working, that way you can get strategic resources which give you more good tiles to work. During settler production, manually lock tiles-- something you should always do anyway-- to work production and gold, food is extremely inefficient while building settlers and you can't starve. I believe the conversion is 4 apples to one hammer during settlers, rounding down, though I'm not certain on that. Usually though moving from, say, a 2 1 tile to a 1 1 2 tile doesn't affect the number of turns until the settler is completed, and the gold during settler building is crucial for future crisis times in case you start to run low; when not building settlers, food is priority with a mix of production, but during settler building it goes production then gold then food, though gold edges out production if the number of turns doesn't change. Usually unless you're very good at rapid math it takes a couple tries with comparisons to get down what works best for turn time and gold, but it's always worth the time to save some turns or make some money.

Okay, so I just tried to steal a worker like right before I read this as Denmark, but they didn't get it until turn 39. Is this a normal time for a CS to get a worker on king? And is it late for me?

 

[inthesomeday]

On king that's about normal yes, and that is a bit late. I suppose on King or lower its okay to hard build workers. Usually on emp and up cs have them out around turn 25-35, my mistake

 

[Ahzired]

On king that's about normal yes, and that is a bit late. I suppose on King or lower its okay to hard build workers. Usually on emp and up cs have them out around turn 25-35, my mistake

Alright, thanks man.

 

[fyar]

Thanks so much man. I knew this was a bad start, but couldn't really tell what made it bad. I'll start moving my warrior first. When I do move it should I aim for areas where I can move two hexes or on top of a hill? How should I decide where to go with him?

Also, kind of unrelated question. What is a good warmongering civ? I kind of like to fight early and I'm a fan of the Songhai.

You're quite welcome! I'm no "expert" but I'm happy to help, good of you to come in with an open mind. My first choice is usually to move the warrior two hexes, and if possible, the second onto a hill for the extra sight. You need as much vision as you can get. But it's always a case-by-case basis, you can't always do exactly that. Often you might be able to see one tile further than you can see, by which I mean just by looking closely at the borders you might be able to see a coast (the next tile must be water) or trees (next tile must have forest) and from that decide if you want to see those tiles or not.

These are some good videos on settling your capital. Pretty long, but if you're asking people to watch a 1-hour video, you should be willing to watch two half-hour videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhn_GGKDDuQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSxF2yb0xQ8 (although these guys play with the strategic balance setting, which I don't usually play with but guarantees iron and horses from your initial location)

 

[gobbledydook]

1. I don't think it's advisable to lock tiles and use production trick on King level. Production trick is less than a 5% production boost at the early game, and becomes insignificant later on. If you are having trouble with King, then there are much better things to spend your attention on. In the same vein don't bother about locking tiles; you will just forget to unlock them. Just click food focus and grow.

2. Read the Tradition 3 cities approach guide in the War Academy (Link here). The Tradition opening gives you a strong early game start for anything you would want to do later on.

3. Don't bother stealing workers on King. I'd say only Immortal and Deity the AI builds the worker (or gets a free worker) early enough.

 

[inthesomeday]

1. I don't think it's advisable to lock tiles and use production trick on King level. Production trick is less than a 5% production boost at the early game, and becomes insignificant later on. If you are having trouble with King, then there are much better things to spend your attention on. In the same vein don't bother about locking tiles; you will just forget to unlock them. Just click food focus and grow.

2. Read the Tradition 3 cities approach guide in the War Academy (Link here). The Tradition opening gives you a strong early game start for anything you would want to do later on.

3. Don't bother stealing workers on King. I'd say only Immortal and Deity the AI builds the worker (or gets a free worker) early enough.

1. Disagree, production trick and tile locking are crucial bits of strategy, the governor is a terrible idiot and any logical human intervention at all is much better than his poor skill. It's good practice for higher levels and focus is not a finite resource.

2. Interesting, I've never found tradition nearly viable for war, especially early game. Liberty is far better for war in my experience, though if someone else made it work then by all means try it out.

3. Worker stealing saves so many hammers on workers; I'd say four workers total is usually enough and usually I steal two, meaning I have to hard build one and I get one off of citizenship. But maybe on King and lower it makes sense to hard build the one earlier. There's no penalty whatsoever to stealing a worker off a bad military CS with no unique lux, though, and it saves multiple turns of production.

 

[fyar]

1. Disagree, production trick and tile locking are crucial bits of strategy, the governor is a terrible idiot and any logical human intervention at all is much better than his poor skill. It's good practice for higher levels and focus is not a finite resource.

As someone who made many, many mistakes when playing those lower levels and I would forget to change my locked tiles and/or forget to move the citizens who were set to "unemployed" because of the so-called production trick after city growth, I do think it's actually perfectly reasonable to set it to food focus or default focus at lower levels. Now I play at Deity with EUI, so I'm better at the game, and I also get notifications for city growth or border growth. But those are not givens for someone playing at, say, King. I was aghast with myself sometimes to discover that my size 12 city had 6 unemployed citizens because I tried to save a few hammers 50 turns ago.

The biggest difference though I think is the EUI. If you downloaded this mod, you get notifications for city growth past size 6, so I think it's good practice to lock your tiles. If not, then most non-"professionals" like myself forget to lock their cities, and default/food focus actually does better most of the time.

 

[linaker]

You had marble in your capital, lots of river tiles, nearby mountains where you could plant cities and build observatories and a lot of one resource - cotton, but not much variety of resources nearby. Your start screamed Tradition/Science Victory, but the Songhai are a Liberty/Domination Civ. Hard to make that one work.

Liberty is about quickly founding small, close together cities that work the premium tiles. You were playing like you had selected tradition. I strongly agree with the suggestion to watch Filthy Robot's videos. They are for multiplayer, but do also apply to single player and he has ones on: the early game, settling your capital and tradition vs liberty that really helped me.

Sorry if I'm doing you a disservice, but you don't seem to have a plan and having one and having a reason for taking an action is the way you would most improve, I think. eg Scouts. Obviously, you want to search for City States and ruins, but you also need to do a sweep around your capital so you can discover prime spots for new cities. Your first settler headed north into the dark, rather than towards a spot you had identified as a prime second city spot from scouting. You also need to update your plans. One scout also got upgraded to a spear - that's now a valuable unit. Build another scout and bring your spear back home so you don't run any risk of losing it to a barb ambush in the wilds somewhere.

Your empire also went unhappy when you founded your second city. You should have built/stolen/built the pyramids to have got a worker to improve Gao's marble and cotton before or just after the liberty settler appeared. Never go unhappy, especially not in the early game. It's hard sometimes with liberty - that's why you need to be seeking out places with luxury resources you don't already have (if you see a city location with 2 luxury resources go for it) and keeping an eye on happiness. If you do go unhappy, your food tiles are virtually useless, so switch your workers to production/gold tiles without starving your cities.

The Songhai are a civ that need a religion. Otherwise the Mud Pyramid Mosque is virtually useless. You built a shrine early but then selected the 2S per city connection pantheon. You had no city connections even by the video's end. So why build an early shrine? Another reason why you had a bad start is that there wasn't a decent faith pantheon. You could have gone for the +2F with quarries one, but that would have been pretty poor here. This is another reason to scout around your capital - if there is more stone or marble nearby then that pantheon makes more sense. You wondered in the commentary how other civilisations had got religions already. Arabia is nearly always quick to get one, because of the desert faith pantheon. Playing the Songhai, you need a plan on how you are going to get a quick religion. With the marble in your capital, I'd have thought about building Stonehenge and going for a pantheon that was going to give a more immediate benefit. Of course, that's not going to work at higher difficulties, but that's not a bridge you need to cross yet.

You didn't seem focussed on using the Songhai's triple gold from clearing barbarian encampments. As I said, bring back your scout turned spear, build a couple of archers and send them out to clear camps. Riga probably had a quest to kill the camp north of it. Protect Riga and when you have 5 influence, hang about ready to kill barbs invading its territory (+12 influence per kill I think). Then clear the camp and Riga will probably be your ally. Extra food and enough extra happiness from its pearls to found another pop 1 city.

I wouldn't have built the caravans. You were lucky they weren't pillaged with all the barbs nearby. Build a couple of small armies of ranged/melee units and send them out to clear barb camps, prioritising those that City States have quests to remove. With the Songhai's unique ability, you'd probably make more gold than from the caravans, plus get alliances with city states and several military units with 2 promotions to use in your quest for domination victory. The luxury resources from City States would help with happiness and enable you to build more cities and you start to snowball....

You missed that there is a decent liberty city spot south of Gao on the coast next to the deer. It would have 2 fish, deer and two iron as well as lots of forest. The fish and deer would enable production tiles to be worked and with a forge it would be a nice little (pop 12 - 14 which is fine for liberty) military production city.

Finally, if you want to win, there are easier choices than the Songhai on a Pangea map!

 

[Illianor123]

Worker stealing, though helpful, is still not necessary to win, even on Diety.

Tile,locking can be very important, I've seen it work multiple 3H tiles, over 3H 1F tiles, and other similar things where the governor has just used primary desired yield, but ignored the secondary yields. Also make a citizen unemployed, turn on manual specialist control and then you'll never have a problem with unemployed citizens.

Don't build your library too early, the early hammers are more importan to spend on other things. I often don't build it till after my first 2-3 settlers.

Scout, scout, monument, shrine, (granary - 2 wheat/dear/bananas) settler, (warrior/archer), settler is a start I like. Two scouts are particualry important for Pangea.

 

[sixty4half]

1. I don't think it's advisable to lock tiles and use production trick on King level. Production trick is less than a 5% production boost at the early game, and becomes insignificant later on. If you are having trouble with King, then there are much better things to spend your attention on. In the same vein don't bother about locking tiles; you will just forget to unlock them. Just click food focus and grow.

2. Read the Tradition 3 cities approach guide in the War Academy (Link here). The Tradition opening gives you a strong early game start for anything you would want to do later on.

3. Don't bother stealing workers on King. I'd say only Immortal and Deity the AI builds the worker (or gets a free worker) early enough.

1- I'm not saying use the Production Focus. I'm just telling him he needs to pay attention to what tiles his citizens are working. Like I said, the first 3 yield tile that his borders expanded to, I don't even know if he worked it immediately. We can assume the governor moved a citizen there, but he never checked. His governor was probably also working 2F 2G tiles instead of 2F 1H or 3F tiles.

I mean, the guy came here asking how he could get better at the game. It doesn't help him to say, well some things you're not doing, don't worry about it because you don't play a hard enough level to make a difference. Then when he decides to move to Emporer or Immortal, he still doesn't have the info he needs... doesn't make sense to me.

2- Good point. Somebody probably should have directed him to the guides earlier. My bad. @inthesomeday - The "War Academy" is just where Guides and Info Writeups are kept on this site. I don't think he's implying that Tradition is built specifically for War.

3- I think worker stealing is probably sound advice starting at Prince. However; anyone suggesting it should also suggest that you hard build your first worker and steal your second. You are right that before Emperor the AI Civs and CS don't build workers early enough for you to be able to avoid hard building the first.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I find it interesting about the opinions of getting out more military units sooner.

I think I posted something about one of my games last year, and the general consensus was "why do you have three or four archers?" I was like--because of a ton of barbs.

"Relax," I was told. Barbs aren't that difficult. Never mind there were four barb camps all in close proximity to my capital.

Maybe barbs aren't that big of an issue at higher difficulties (according to some in that thread) because the AI handles them well, but at lower difficulties if you don't take care of them quickly, they will spawn and spawn and spawn. It always seems that barbs are never a big concern in the immortal or deity videos.

In that game I had kill the barb in one particular camp, and immediately another one spawned. That is common and I expected it. But then I killed that one, and another one spawned. And while killing that one, another one spawned outside the camp. And again and again. I think the same camp spawned seven barbs. Definitely kept one archer busy and I had to retreat several times and bring in reinforcements. And that didn't count the other camps. And no--rabing barbs was not turned on.

Units are by far the best early-game investment. It is true, if you are having trouble with barbarians you probably are doing something wrong. Barbs are not the reason why you want (really) early units.

They help you with close-range scouting for City spots while your scouts spread out. They protect Workers and Settlers. They check barbarian camps for Workers the AI might have lost. They farm City State rep by camping out next to a Barb camp (do not take the camp out)- They obviously also give you City State rep by clearing adjacent Barb camps. They steal Workers from the AI and City States. They allow you to tribute, which often ends up being a Quest anyway. They improve your standing army score, meaning the AI is less likely to declare on you (only really important on Deity). They pillage Trade Routes of the Civ you stole the Worker from.

Those are just a few examples. Early units, which means early City State friendships and alliances are key to winning a game optimally. Having a cultural City State ally and one friend can give you things like Tradition finisher way earlier, which is absolutely crucial. Especially culture is important, because there's only Monuments until you get your Trad/Lib finisher (Amphis are not worth it) so you're bottlenecked in terms of culture very hard.

My build usually is something like Scout into Scout into Scout/Shrine(Trad)/Monument(Lib). After that I hardbuild a Archer or Warrior, depending on if I want to tribute City States or not. Whilst producing Settlers I almost always buy 2 military units, either Spearmen or Archers.

 

[docbud]

^^I realize the use of the military units when it comes to barbs, and how useful barbs are so far as quests and getting promotions, etc.

I always try to fulfill the CS quests when it comes to barbs, and I take the captured workers (or if I don't need one, I return it to the CS for influence).

What I was referring to was posts elsewhere (a while back) where I was told that barbs weren't a big deal and I should be working on infrastructure and not a military. That I could simply bombard the barbs who attacked my city.

And if one starts a game and there are three or four barb camps very close, I don't see how it's my fault or that I'm doing something wrong if they are attacking my city on turn 4 or 5.

I had one game which I had shared, and I had played the Middle East map. There were five or six barb camps and I couldn't keep them cleared out. I'd wipe out one, go for the next, and the one I had previously cleared out respawned. I shared the map when I was told that I was doing something wrong, and they couldn't clear all the camps, either. Then I was told it was because of the map and because I had an isolated start.

Anyway--I always do build a few military units early (or buy them). It's for the barbs and for defense when someone like Atilla or Shaka attack me on turn 80.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

units the best early game investment ? wtf no

You need growth. The best early game investment is anything that provides you more food and production per turn. Granaries, Settlers, Workers (if you dont steal them with your scouts), ToA if the difficulty level allows it.

Units are a very unfortunate investment sometimes needed to protect your stuff. Fortunately the fact that they can fight barbs for CSes gives you some payback.

1-2 scouts at the start, 2 more archers somewhere in the first 100 turns when you have spare time to build or coin to buy them. Thats all you need.

 

[gobbledydook]

1- I'm not saying use the Production Focus. I'm just telling him he needs to pay attention to what tiles his citizens are working. Like I said, the first 3 yield tile that his borders expanded to, I don't even know if he worked it immediately. We can assume the governor moved a citizen there, but he never checked. His governor was probably also working 2F 2G tiles instead of 2F 1H or 3F tiles.

I mean, the guy came here asking how he could get better at the game. It doesn't help him to say, well some things you're not doing, don't worry about it because you don't play a hard enough level to make a difference. Then when he decides to move to Emporer or Immortal, he still doesn't have the info he needs... doesn't make sense to me.

2- Good point. Somebody probably should have directed him to the guides earlier. My bad. @inthesomeday - The "War Academy" is just where Guides and Info Writeups are kept on this site. I don't think he's implying that Tradition is built specifically for War.

3- I think worker stealing is probably sound advice starting at Prince. However; anyone suggesting it should also suggest that you hard build your first worker and steal your second. You are right that before Emperor the AI Civs and CS don't build workers early enough for you to be able to avoid hard building the first.

I play on deity and I largely stick to food/production focus. I often lock some specific tiles that I want to work, but I wouldn't be micromanaging every locked tile every turn like some people do.

 

[Sclb]

They improve your standing army score, meaning the AI is less likely to declare on you (only really important on Deity).

Do you realize how many units you need to have to actually make a difference on deity?

 

[Sebulous]

I want to get better but I don't know how. I read guides and stuff to see what I'm doing wrong, I follow it, and then it still feels like I'm doing something wrong. I've got about 200-300 hours in and I just beat King today playing Venice with a diplomatic victory. So, with all that, could somebody watch me play for like ten or twenty minutes and just tell me what I'm doing wrong and what I can do better? I plan on going for a domination victory on King. My Steam IDecember is Ahzired and I'll probably be on for 2-3 more hours until I go to sleep.

My general build is like this:
Scout
Monument
Shrine
Library
Settler
Worker
And then I just build whatever building is available. If there's nothing that I wanthink and I don't have enough gold I'll usually just start working on any wonder I think might help me.

For policies I usually go down tradition or honor opener then liberty if domination, then commerce and rationalism.

Thanks for helping out.

I almost always go tradition so my build order usually looks something like this:

Scout
Worker
Swap Worker to Shrine when Pottery has finished (better chance at Religion or at least a Pantheon on the higher difficulties)
Worker after shrine
Granary
Settler (epic speed, I usually build my first settler at 4 pop unless I'm forward settling)
Library and so forth, obviously changing a bit depending on the game.

 

[docbud]

...1-2 scouts at the start, 2 more archers somewhere in the first 100 turns when you have spare time to build or coin to buy them. Thats all you need.

And you better hope Atilla or Shaka doesn't send a carpet of doom on turn 80 or 90.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

And you better hope Atilla or Shaka doesn't send a carpet of doom on turn 80 or 90.

On anything below deity, no AI has ever sent my anything meaningful. And even if they send their army, you dont need many units to stop them because they AI is a total idiot with its units. If you have your units out to see them coming so that you can gather your few units and upgrade them, probably quickly build 1 more before they hit you and if you have the coin, purchase another one, you can hold pretty much anything an AI throws at you.

 

[danaphanous]

On anything below deity, no AI has ever sent my anything meaningful. And even if they send their army, you dont need many units to stop them because they AI is a total idiot with its units. If you have your units out to see them coming so that you can gather your few units and upgrade them, probably quickly build 1 more before they hit you and if you have the coin, purchase another one, you can hold pretty much anything an AI throws at you.

I'm guessing you usually bribe them to keep them off your back early then? Because this is not my experience if I don't do this. A military of only 2-3 archers in my games that I've played lately would be like asking to get DOWs from multiple fronts. I've been playing a string of games with no early war bribing to watch the AI do their thing unaffected. On immortal they regularly rush early even when you have a moderate military larger then you describe. I've seen France and Greece produce a 15 unit army and rush border cities between T60-80 on this level and your description of 2-3 archers was not enough to push them back either. I had more then this even, but it didn't help when the carpet could take out your city in a short 3 turns. In fact even buying walls wasn't always enough to halt such rushes. So I definitely build a couple more units then 2 archers now. Have you tried bombarding some of the special units like hoplites with archers lol? It does hardly anything. Usually 3-4 archers and 2 melee minimum for safety imo and an early walls on the city closest to AI that are accumulating military and look like they might try this rush. Otherwise you are taking a definite risk. Anyway, we've had these discussions before, you go for time I go for what is most likely to win me the game. Risking it all with a puny military of 2 archers when I see neighbors building up is not a good plan in my opinion.

To clarify, I think the AI also sucks at war, but early war against relatively low-pop cities without walls they don't need to do that well. They just need to carpet in, surrounding the city, and take it down in 2-3 turns with melee spam. Sure I can recapture, but it sets me back more turns then I gained skimping on a proper defense force. I was pretty happy to see these rushes. the AI had good composition (a lot of composite bows in the back) and at least 6 melee in the front. It was a perfect ancient city-taking force and I think the AI has improved since the earliest BNW patches because they pillaged and withdrew more too. Greece in particular pillaged my iron and horses so I couldn't build more advanced units. That might've been a fluke but it made me happy to see them playing smartly for once. They still have no idea how to fight with modern units though...