Liquidated
Goofed Up on Cough Syrup!
Yeah what a well rested silver said. Keep in mind that in the start of CIV, it is crititcal to get off the right foot. One way to work to a higher level of solo difficulty is to just repeatedly play the BC years with all manner of leaders and maps to try out openings that lend to their strengths. Getting a handle on how to build up strong for the AD years is critical as it gets much harder to overcome a bad start as you ramp up in difficulty.
So a *few*
extra thoughts about starts (fear!)
The one magic resource to tie in all manner of starting gambits is food.. if a town doesn;t have food, first in it's home square and later in it's fat cross, it's gonna grow very slowly and not contribute well to the rest of the empire. Prioritize food before all other shiny objects when placing towns.
It's well enough to have one good town in an area but it's far better to share the wealth a bit and fit two or even 3 viable towns in the same region. Nothing is hard and fast here as the overall land/map type is going to dictate just how densely you can be expected to pack those towns in. Don;t fall in the trap of always picking food rich games, taking a ride on colder settings or even maps like Ice Age really make you treasure mere grasslands/coastal areas much less multiple corn/rice.
Another layer to consider potential new towns is how long is it gonna take to get the show on the road? One of the first hurdles to overcome is getting that first culture bounce so a town can work the cross as opposed to the home square, not to mention to hold it's land against other cultures.
The universal early culture building is the monument, which needs a tech known as mysticism. The main issue with these hunks of stone that it's really only good for that initial culture bounce and not much else normally (charisimatic trait gets a happy from em). Instead of building a grainery or courthouse, you get to ensure that a town can get it's culture footprint going. Getting a monument going in a town can be a chore if there's not a lot workable hammers or food to slave away, so what else can be done?
Stonehenge in BTS now actually plops a real live monument into every town (past and present) as soon as the wonder is built, eliminating the entire step, but what cost? Early game hammers are critical to getting the empire going so that at no time is this wonder a freebie. Stonehenge gets built faster and faster as you ramp up the difficulty such that without the industrious trait it's often not even possible as even stone in the fat cross might not come into play fast enough to snag this thing. Add in that it obsoletes early and in essence, this is not a wonder to break the bank on.
Next up is religion. Getting an early religion going helps a lot but unless your leader is setup with mysticism and has a food+coin happy tile to work, not a realistic goal. If all systems are go, understand that's 15ish turns that expansion is hindered so here again, it's not a freebie!
So lets say we get a religion, yay! How the heck to get it to towns without trade via roads/water/techs or external hammers to spam missionaries? Getting your chosen religion to new towns can be like waiting for Godot if you don;t have worker cycles building roads, generous rivers linking towns naturally and coastal linking with the sailing tech. Even then it's not 100% that your effing religion will spread. All hail RNG, God above gods.
One consideration if you founded the religion is to force a great prophet via temple specialists to get the holy shrine going.. yes it's good cash but it's main attraction early on is to speed up natural spread of your creed a substantial amount. This spread is not only in your own lands but also to other civs whom you want converting to your flavor of religion for not only the shrine cash but the weighty diplo bonus.
A singular consideration here is the creative trait. It's difficult to overestimate the fact that as soon as you plunk a town down, it's gonna pop it's borders in 8ish epic turns. This speeds the overall growth of a town in that not only can you work it's extended tiles quickly but you can now build those graineries/courthouses/workboats/theaters/WTH's right off the bat. Once a town is in place as creative, it's now like a black hole sucking up the tiles all around it, even past it's BFC. When the time comes to compete against other culture it's fiendishly difficult to dislodge a creative AI who keeps placing towns far too close to you for he is dumping culture every turn his town exists while it take you time to get the flow going. If you are creative, well you can plunk towns down expressly to steal immature borders instead of it happening to you. Keep in mind tho that the longer a town has hold of the land, the less likely it's ever gonna lose it, so don;t be plunking annoyances next to established towns thinking you can take their BFC bananas!
Whew, ok lets leave culture aside..
Next is just what techs/labor do you need to even begin to take advantage of a tile. In start one, we have gems (!!) sitting close by on a hill and we have the mining tech to get it into play.Added to that difficulty is that the jungle on the tile needs iron working as opposed to bronze working. This means it's not as accessible as it might have been. That delays it's usefulness.
Forested areas are mixed blessings as it rules out hidden resources like metal and Jim's food... er I mean horses. Also to get the tile worked means you need BW and worker love to get going. Yes lots of chops are nice but all chops makes the early going hard as you need to grow before pumping out said workers.
Jungled areas are beautifully ugly as well with lots of fresh water, special resources and nasty plantlife clogging it all up. Jungle needs IW to chop and lots of of worker cycles such that it's gonna take time to get that town going. Once you tame the jungle though you have some of the best land anywhere as you now have all grasslands with a good mix of hills and rivers. Add to that plenty of calender resources which need their namesake tech... not something easily nabbed like IW is. Curse of starting areas all over are calendar resources in the capitol's fat cross. Yes they are nice but if there is one, more are lurking about and it takes so long for them to be exploited properly.
Desert areas will never be friendly but having them in cultural borders is good as they hide oil and uranium and often have incense. Add a river to them and you get those lovely flood plains and gold likes to live close by as well.
Incidentally, gold tends to pop on desert hills which will always be food poor, gems on grassland jungles which need worker attention and silver normally near tundra/ice. All three resources are Grade A tiles to hook up (not necessarily work) as it's a happy that never goes away and is big trade bait.
Polar regions are never good for the capitol but viable towns can be plunked to catch the many specials lurking down there, living off the coast wherever seafood lurks... Stuff that lives down(or up) there includes deer, beaver, sheep, silver, whales, crab, fishies, clams, coal, aluminum, uranium, and oil such that placing towns living mostly off the water is an eventuality. Again though, the number one consideration for these outposts is just how much food can it get as without population it's more hindrance than help.
A few random thoughts more specific to this SG and our glorious civ....
Fast workers are amazing when you consider how they go about chops. They have 3 move which means they can move into a non-hill forest or jungle and still have movement left to begin their action. This means they get a free turn of chop going over mundane workers, which really helps speed things up.
We need to prioritize which wonders we want. As you ramp up difficulty, the AI's are gonna grab wonders regardless of what you do so you must pick and choose which to go for and tech accordingly. Once you get into the mind set of building only a few select wonders and allotting chops to account for them, shiny toys like marble and stone lessen in impact as you realize just how limited their use is overall.
If you read enough sg's/reports you see the same wonders mentioned over and over.
The mids are major for any specialist civ in that you can swap to representation hundreds of turns early. The major impact of this civic is that those nice, food rich towns running specs are getting the +3
's and each spec is giving 2 more beakers, regardless of it's base type.
This leads to the first GL, The Great Library which plunks down two free Scientists in the town that builds it.. that's more beakers under rep and more great people accelerated by dr. phil. Obsoletes with corporation which leads to the corporation sid's sushi (with medicine) so not all bad.
The other GL is The Great Lighthouse which is a boon to any coastal Civ (since it needs a lighthouse to start) +2 trade routes which is free commerce to every town, and more when you have a friendly neighbor to trade with and an island fishery to nab the intercontinental mod.
The other main early wonder is the oracle to get the free tech, normally code of laws or metal casting. The days of the great civil service slingshot are largely over now that you need machinery for maces (as well as civil service) not to mention a much better AI which won;t stall building oracle that long normally
Mids obviously. Missing mids means our main aim as a phil is compromised. Need masonry tech and BW for chops + whip.
Great Wall is out as we want the mids and the wall always goes fast.
The Great Lighthouse would require a boffo coastal town with lots of forests or a naturally hammer rich setup, not at all possible in the capitol of map 1. See how it goes.
The Parthenon would be a coup as we stall scientific method hehe. +50% great people generation? Oh that's worth some trees. Needs poly and aesthetics , we will have poly as first tech so not a huge burden as we want writing (libraries!) posthaste after worker techs as it's the cornerstone to everything else.
That leads to literature, which is home to The Great Library mentioned before. We really do want that little gem.
A bonus would be the Hanging Gardens which is off math, which is off writing. Another major tech we need sooner rather than later as it adds to chops and opens the door to so much more. Actually if we want to chop assist the hanging gardens, do it only after math comes in.
A midgame wonder I'd seriously consider is Notre Dame based on engineering (machinery and construction is a long way off) tho this is more about how the game preoceeds as it's off the beaten track if we are allowed to operate peacably. Then again, construction and machinery are a core set of techs if Gandhi has to go medieval on one of the usual suspects*
That a book or what? note never trust anything liq writes at effing 1 pm... surely that is the asymptotic peak no nyquil induced rant has ever survived.
Cheers!
-Liq'd
* monty, alex and the intolerant izzy are the traditional idiots you get plunked down next to. Khan seems to have undergone a lobotomy and gone builder recently.
So a *few*
extra thoughts about starts (fear!)The one magic resource to tie in all manner of starting gambits is food.. if a town doesn;t have food, first in it's home square and later in it's fat cross, it's gonna grow very slowly and not contribute well to the rest of the empire. Prioritize food before all other shiny objects when placing towns.
It's well enough to have one good town in an area but it's far better to share the wealth a bit and fit two or even 3 viable towns in the same region. Nothing is hard and fast here as the overall land/map type is going to dictate just how densely you can be expected to pack those towns in. Don;t fall in the trap of always picking food rich games, taking a ride on colder settings or even maps like Ice Age really make you treasure mere grasslands/coastal areas much less multiple corn/rice.
Another layer to consider potential new towns is how long is it gonna take to get the show on the road? One of the first hurdles to overcome is getting that first culture bounce so a town can work the cross as opposed to the home square, not to mention to hold it's land against other cultures.
The universal early culture building is the monument, which needs a tech known as mysticism. The main issue with these hunks of stone that it's really only good for that initial culture bounce and not much else normally (charisimatic trait gets a happy from em). Instead of building a grainery or courthouse, you get to ensure that a town can get it's culture footprint going. Getting a monument going in a town can be a chore if there's not a lot workable hammers or food to slave away, so what else can be done?
Stonehenge in BTS now actually plops a real live monument into every town (past and present) as soon as the wonder is built, eliminating the entire step, but what cost? Early game hammers are critical to getting the empire going so that at no time is this wonder a freebie. Stonehenge gets built faster and faster as you ramp up the difficulty such that without the industrious trait it's often not even possible as even stone in the fat cross might not come into play fast enough to snag this thing. Add in that it obsoletes early and in essence, this is not a wonder to break the bank on.
Next up is religion. Getting an early religion going helps a lot but unless your leader is setup with mysticism and has a food+coin happy tile to work, not a realistic goal. If all systems are go, understand that's 15ish turns that expansion is hindered so here again, it's not a freebie!
So lets say we get a religion, yay! How the heck to get it to towns without trade via roads/water/techs or external hammers to spam missionaries? Getting your chosen religion to new towns can be like waiting for Godot if you don;t have worker cycles building roads, generous rivers linking towns naturally and coastal linking with the sailing tech. Even then it's not 100% that your effing religion will spread. All hail RNG, God above gods.
One consideration if you founded the religion is to force a great prophet via temple specialists to get the holy shrine going.. yes it's good cash but it's main attraction early on is to speed up natural spread of your creed a substantial amount. This spread is not only in your own lands but also to other civs whom you want converting to your flavor of religion for not only the shrine cash but the weighty diplo bonus.
A singular consideration here is the creative trait. It's difficult to overestimate the fact that as soon as you plunk a town down, it's gonna pop it's borders in 8ish epic turns. This speeds the overall growth of a town in that not only can you work it's extended tiles quickly but you can now build those graineries/courthouses/workboats/theaters/WTH's right off the bat. Once a town is in place as creative, it's now like a black hole sucking up the tiles all around it, even past it's BFC. When the time comes to compete against other culture it's fiendishly difficult to dislodge a creative AI who keeps placing towns far too close to you for he is dumping culture every turn his town exists while it take you time to get the flow going. If you are creative, well you can plunk towns down expressly to steal immature borders instead of it happening to you. Keep in mind tho that the longer a town has hold of the land, the less likely it's ever gonna lose it, so don;t be plunking annoyances next to established towns thinking you can take their BFC bananas!
Whew, ok lets leave culture aside..
Next is just what techs/labor do you need to even begin to take advantage of a tile. In start one, we have gems (!!) sitting close by on a hill and we have the mining tech to get it into play.Added to that difficulty is that the jungle on the tile needs iron working as opposed to bronze working. This means it's not as accessible as it might have been. That delays it's usefulness.
Forested areas are mixed blessings as it rules out hidden resources like metal and Jim's food... er I mean horses. Also to get the tile worked means you need BW and worker love to get going. Yes lots of chops are nice but all chops makes the early going hard as you need to grow before pumping out said workers.
Jungled areas are beautifully ugly as well with lots of fresh water, special resources and nasty plantlife clogging it all up. Jungle needs IW to chop and lots of of worker cycles such that it's gonna take time to get that town going. Once you tame the jungle though you have some of the best land anywhere as you now have all grasslands with a good mix of hills and rivers. Add to that plenty of calender resources which need their namesake tech... not something easily nabbed like IW is. Curse of starting areas all over are calendar resources in the capitol's fat cross. Yes they are nice but if there is one, more are lurking about and it takes so long for them to be exploited properly.
Desert areas will never be friendly but having them in cultural borders is good as they hide oil and uranium and often have incense. Add a river to them and you get those lovely flood plains and gold likes to live close by as well.
Incidentally, gold tends to pop on desert hills which will always be food poor, gems on grassland jungles which need worker attention and silver normally near tundra/ice. All three resources are Grade A tiles to hook up (not necessarily work) as it's a happy that never goes away and is big trade bait.
Polar regions are never good for the capitol but viable towns can be plunked to catch the many specials lurking down there, living off the coast wherever seafood lurks... Stuff that lives down(or up) there includes deer, beaver, sheep, silver, whales, crab, fishies, clams, coal, aluminum, uranium, and oil such that placing towns living mostly off the water is an eventuality. Again though, the number one consideration for these outposts is just how much food can it get as without population it's more hindrance than help.
A few random thoughts more specific to this SG and our glorious civ....
Fast workers are amazing when you consider how they go about chops. They have 3 move which means they can move into a non-hill forest or jungle and still have movement left to begin their action. This means they get a free turn of chop going over mundane workers, which really helps speed things up.
We need to prioritize which wonders we want. As you ramp up difficulty, the AI's are gonna grab wonders regardless of what you do so you must pick and choose which to go for and tech accordingly. Once you get into the mind set of building only a few select wonders and allotting chops to account for them, shiny toys like marble and stone lessen in impact as you realize just how limited their use is overall.
If you read enough sg's/reports you see the same wonders mentioned over and over.
The mids are major for any specialist civ in that you can swap to representation hundreds of turns early. The major impact of this civic is that those nice, food rich towns running specs are getting the +3
's and each spec is giving 2 more beakers, regardless of it's base type.This leads to the first GL, The Great Library which plunks down two free Scientists in the town that builds it.. that's more beakers under rep and more great people accelerated by dr. phil. Obsoletes with corporation which leads to the corporation sid's sushi (with medicine) so not all bad.
The other GL is The Great Lighthouse which is a boon to any coastal Civ (since it needs a lighthouse to start) +2 trade routes which is free commerce to every town, and more when you have a friendly neighbor to trade with and an island fishery to nab the intercontinental mod.
The other main early wonder is the oracle to get the free tech, normally code of laws or metal casting. The days of the great civil service slingshot are largely over now that you need machinery for maces (as well as civil service) not to mention a much better AI which won;t stall building oracle that long normally
Mids obviously. Missing mids means our main aim as a phil is compromised. Need masonry tech and BW for chops + whip.
Great Wall is out as we want the mids and the wall always goes fast.
The Great Lighthouse would require a boffo coastal town with lots of forests or a naturally hammer rich setup, not at all possible in the capitol of map 1. See how it goes.
The Parthenon would be a coup as we stall scientific method hehe. +50% great people generation? Oh that's worth some trees. Needs poly and aesthetics , we will have poly as first tech so not a huge burden as we want writing (libraries!) posthaste after worker techs as it's the cornerstone to everything else.
That leads to literature, which is home to The Great Library mentioned before. We really do want that little gem.
A bonus would be the Hanging Gardens which is off math, which is off writing. Another major tech we need sooner rather than later as it adds to chops and opens the door to so much more. Actually if we want to chop assist the hanging gardens, do it only after math comes in.
A midgame wonder I'd seriously consider is Notre Dame based on engineering (machinery and construction is a long way off) tho this is more about how the game preoceeds as it's off the beaten track if we are allowed to operate peacably. Then again, construction and machinery are a core set of techs if Gandhi has to go medieval on one of the usual suspects*
That a book or what? note never trust anything liq writes at effing 1 pm... surely that is the asymptotic peak no nyquil induced rant has ever survived.
Cheers!
-Liq'd
* monty, alex and the intolerant izzy are the traditional idiots you get plunked down next to. Khan seems to have undergone a lobotomy and gone builder recently.
could anyone please show me how to do this? 
after all i am new here
, even though Ill try keep it as thorough as I can!!
moves but we aren;t ever mad hehe. Just try your best and post if you lose interest 
. It's bad form to reload saves hehe.
tbh im a bit 2 lazy to do that stuff 
