AI researching faster than me

Try posting a savegame, that way the experts here (I'm not arrogant enough to count myself as one ;) ) can tell you how to improve your game instead of just giving general advice.
 
Try taking a look in the succession game forums and read about some of the games. You will see how some of the top players play their opening moves on the highest difficulty levels.
 
First the Mounted Warrior is a horse with +1 attack. So it has only 1 for defense. This means a sword/legion has a 3 att vs 1 def. This is going to go badly much of the time. The MW will get a retreat in here and there, if it is a vet.

On attack the Legion has 3 def so it is three times as good on defense as the MW. You will need lots of MW's if that is your primary unit or lots of cats/archers to back them.

Second you probably have a few flaws in your empire management to get into trouble. Things like not expanding to get your share of th land, not improviing tiles and of course getting to weak compared to them.

Third, I would not use a civ like the Iroq at low levels, until you are playing well enough to win at Monarch or Emperor. This is because the ancient UU will be pressed into service and trigger a premature GA way to often.

I love the Iroq at sid, but would not want to play it at say Regent, unless I was isolated.

Researching faster than you is a function of your empire economics. If you epxanded into your fair share of decent land and improved it in a timely fashion, they cannot out research you. Especially since you are AG and Commercial. Holy Cow, they should be falling behind rapidly.

Your having top score sort of suggest one reason you are now starting to break down. The early score is mostly tiles and culture. You should not be doing all that well in culture. Those Religious civs, should and those that build wonders. So you probably made some wonders and lots of temples.

That take resources and production that could have gone into more cities and more troops. I was running a test on emperor recently where the #1 and #2 scores were by civs that each had their own island. They stayed high on score for a long time as they have wonders and culture.

It was plain they were paper tigers and had no chance to win.
 
It's quite true that culture should be bottom of your priorities in the early game, unless you are going for a 20k culture win (and to a lesser extent the 100k), but culture counts toward the Power graph, not the score. The formula for score calculation is:

(Territory + HappyCitizens*2 + ContentCitizens + Specialists) * Difficulty

So in general I'd say it was good to be climbing the score table as early as possible, unless you are scoring highly because you have more happy citizens than you need.
 
So, you should expand early, and often! That is one point in favor of an early GA, possibly a despotic one if you gain ground and luxuries (see below). It also means you should fight over luxuries and adds weight to the religious trait because its easier to make people happy. Third, you should get as many specialist as soon as you can. Maybe shoot for one per city. This would require a food bonus under despotism, and adds weight to getting out of despotism asap, go monarchy and again favors religious.
 
Stealing isn't that expensive; try to buy a monopoly tech, it won't be cheaper.
It also deserves to be mentioned that stealing techs isn't affected by levels; thus, this method is actually the by far cheapest way to aquire Industrial/Modern Techs on Sid (as long as you get away with it, that is). Buying such a tech costs about as much as 3 safe steals on a standard map, and you rarely have sufficient research capacity here.
But even on Deity, especially the Gov techs are far cheaper to steal; already stealing Feudalism is often a good idea on Archipelago maps. Costs only a couple 100gp, and the risk to get beaten up is almost zero.
 
Here you go, my last save game with the iroquois. I say I improved much, for I never had more points than the AI on the third easiest level with normal aggression. :king:
 
Ok, check.
First, the good news:
Your city placement is ok in general. Some cities one tile off the coast, but definitely not bad.
Your army composition is appropriate for Regent. Lots of Cavs, fine. Not a single piece of Artillery; but, on Regent you can get away with this. 13 Workers are definitely too few now - you know Steam Engine. But, was fine before; your lands are improved well.
Tech situation: Acceptable. Most Civs are up Medicine, Greece is up Industrial as well. Definitely not a problem. You could gift Germany into the Industrial age, hoping they don't get Steam as freebie, and you can trade with them.

Now the :nono:'s:
It's 1650AD, you're researching Nationalism - and you are still in Despotism???
You have one single native Marketplace.
Researching Nat is usually not needed; head directly to RP, and trade for Nat.
You are not trading a single resource. While it may be a good move to not trade Luxuries to the tech leader (Greece), you could give Germany some outdated techs for Gems. Essentially for free.
You have no Coal - but, there is a source on the German borders next to Niniveh. You can simply found a city there; this coal is outside any city borders, so a city of yours will be not aggressive at all.
Greece and Rome have defintely too many units running around your ill-defended Southern cities. You could never hold them.

Since you're in Depsotism, you'll need 13 turns for Nationalism without going bankrupt...

I'll revolt and play a couple of turns into it.
 
Some more:
Producing Wealth is nearly always a waste; especially when you lack Marketplaces everywhere.
You should starve all those Babylonian and Russian citizens.
You have captured London with the Colossus ages ago, yet the city has not a single improvement??? It’s only 50% corrupt, in Despotism! That city needs everything available…
Scientists are always more effective than Taxman; as long as you research, use those.

Ok, I skim off a Settler for the Coal, and Workers wherever they’ll finish in one turn. Get Gems from Germans for Incense, PP and Metallurgy.
Ok, your reputation is toast. Another :nono:. No offers for your luxes otherwise; give Alex two luxuries for one. Note I wouldn’t make such a deal normally, but we need as much Luxuries as possible to not starve during Anarchy.
And, you really need culture in your border cities.
You are not using MapStat or CivAssist. How do I know ;) ? ‘Autosave’ is disabled.

Played the Anarchy out. Republic will get you Nat in 4, and your economy could even support the 46gpt for units. Of course, you could as well disband reg Warriors...
Frankly, everything else is a non-issue compared to that Government thing. Why on Earth did you stay in Despo? Even if you'd expect too much WW, Monarchy would still have been a lot better.

Just switch to Republic, build Markets everywhere, found that Coal town, rail everything, and your empire will rock :).
 
"You are not using MapStat or CivAssist. How do I know ? ‘Autosave’ is disabled."

Good assumption, but not always true. You can use either and point to any save directory and manually save.

That is good advice, get out of depost asap.
 
Doc Tsiolkovski said:
Some more:
You have captured London with the Colossus ages ago, yet the city has not a single improvement??? It’s only 50% corrupt, in Despotism! That city needs everything available…

Why on Earth did you stay in Despo?
Click to expand...

I just cant get the corruption off, and sometimes I forget building stuff in some towns... :sad: I just built that 2nd palace thingy to lower corruption which was done some 10 rounds before the save. I didnt change from despo because I wanted to go for fascism without having to go into anarchy twice.


Doc Tsiolkovski said:
Greece and Rome have defintely too many units running around your ill-defended Southern cities. You could never hold them.
Click to expand...

Well, they just got there to attack Babylon and we have a MPP and entered war against those Egyptians. It would be wiser of them to attack Egypt than attacking me.
 
Don't bother about Fascism.
In 75% of all cases, Republic is the best Gov (no exaggeration, and it applies to your game as well. On Regent, you'll NEVER need to exceed Republic unit suport by a wide margin).
10%, Monarchy (lack of Luxurus/Commerce, Always War situations)
8%, Communism. Large (and I mean really large) empire, horrible late game WW.
7%, Demo. Peaceful builder.
1%, Feudalism. Horrible lack of food.
0%, in other words, NEVER (unless you are the AI) Fascism.

And, even if you want an industrial Gov (Commie), by all means get out of Despo ASAP. That is simply not debattable ;).
 
Doc, I have some objections...

Fascism is good when you, for some reason, just lost a whole bunch (like maybe 95%) of your workers due to some mistake right before the great railing...
 
Ok ;)

"0.01%, Fascism, when you, for some reason, just lost a whole bunch (like maybe 95%) of your workers due to some mistake right before the great railing, and you're happen to play a REL Civ, and your game is greatly geared towards war, and no AI is nearby where you could grabb lots of Slaves, and you learn Fascism by some odd means before the great railing."
 
I would like to add that it is possible to learn Fascism at the great railing with a GL slingshot. ;)
 
Better yet, never even research Facism. Never steal it and the AI will almost never trade it to you, so you are good.

Communism is a bit tricky as they are some times when it can be useful. To me most of those times are still not worth switching, even if Religious. That is because rushing is basically off the table.

What a mess to be acquiring cities and not be able to rush temples or libs or much of anything and here you are with lots of cash.
 
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