Recent content by MysteryX

I don't use hard numbers to make decisions like that. If I'm hurting for gold I avoid upgrading. If I have some excess gold, I'll start upgrading. If you have excess gold, you want to ask yourself if you are researching fast enough. If you have some gold in the bank after completing one...

It depends. Upgrading can be very expensive. If you have established a few ultra-productive cities, you may be better off building new units and disbanding the obsolete units in cities that can use the extra shields from disbanding. Either upgrading obsolete units or building new units are...

If you are already in a position of strength, I would think you would be pressing your advantage against the other civilizations rather than taking time out to go to Democracy. Other civilizations can make a comeback if you leave them hanging around. They will start trading tech around to make...

The last game I played found me in a very similar situation as far as strategic resources went. I went the route of trading for saltpeter, building as massive a cavalry / artillery force as I could for 20 turns, and went for the capture. I had to go about three cities deep, and I lost most of...

The question is why going to Democracy is the way to go for the English. The corruption reduction from Democracy is a significant benefit to your economy. However, you are going to lose some turns of production and research to anarchy in the process, giving your opponents a chance to catch...

I meant succession as in one after another. The easiest way is, when you are at war with an AI, bribe other AIs to join you. Pay attention to AIs that start making mutual protection pacts. Drawing them into one war could make a war to last a lifetime. If A and B have a protection pact, and...

Don't forget that AI civs suffer war weariness too. It's possible to get AI civs involved in long successions wars that see their cities frequently in revolt and even suffer some devastating government overthrows.

Overall, it is more efficient to wait for your towns to grow to a decent size before pumping out the settlers. However, if your enemy AIs overrun your borders while you are waiting for your first couple of towns to grow in size, you are in big trouble. For me (on large maps, 8...

I play on maps with generally default settings as far as terrain goes, size (large), and opponents (8) on Monarch or recently Emperor difficultly. I use build first / war later strategies, and my games usually make it to at least the beginning of the Modern Age (usually some time in the late...

I have not done a mathematical analysis, but my casual observation is that artillery bombardment seems to fail more when attacking units on hills or mountains. That makes some sense; hills and mountains give more opportunities for cover than flat land. I have not noticed whether bombardment...

To keep your AI neighbors friendly, build embassies as soon as possible. And give in to their early demands. They tend to demand more if they perceive you as weak. You can also keep them off your back by setting them off against each other. If you do have an unavoidable early war, bribe...

Don't let governors control your production. Control it yourself. You can queue ten units for production so you don't have to change the production of every settlement every few turns.

It is difficult to take a city unless you can bring technologically superior units, a stack of artillery to soften up the defense, and/or overwhelming numbers. Defenders always have an edge with the various defense bonuses (from city size, city improvements, terrain, fortification), so you will...

If they have gold in the treasury but a negative gpt income, they cannot accept gpt trades but can buy stuff for cash.

Someone probably knows the exact odds somewhere. But I'd say on average I see resources shifting like that maybe 3-4 times a game, and usually my games last in the 300-400 turn range. I'd say the outlook isn't good.