Any general tips on Game Pacing?

[rarmonio8920]

Any general tips on game pacing?

There are some games where I slowly but surely overcome my opponents on Prince mode, but that's just me having a peaceful game... avoiding war... and working the Tech and Policy trees toward a science or cultural victory.

In watching a few replays and reading about how people do in the game, I'm realizing I take way too long to get the job done. Also, the way I play, if someone were to rush me, I would be overwhelmed.

Any general tips or rules of thumb you guys can share in progressing through the game? Specifically, when it comes to number of cities, I never know if I'm expanding too fast or too slowly. I know it all depends, but I don't think 4 cities by 1800 A.D. is very good.

I want to try a Japan strategy where I build up Samurai and dominate.

 

[Misterboy]

You're asking a lot of questions, but let me point out that expansion in this game is directly related to your happiness. *Generally speaking* if you're running a huge happiness surplus, you should be expanding more.

My guess is that you are a "builder" and like to get cities up and running before you move on to the next one. That's fine, but if you want to become a "better player" than you'll need to abandon that habit. I could be totally wrong, but I'm guessing you build too much in your cities too early.

Feel free to correct my assumptions.

 

[rarmonio8920]

You're asking a lot of questions, but let me point out that expansion in this game is directly related to your happiness. *Generally speaking* if you're running a huge happiness surplus, you should be expanding more.

My guess is that you are a "builder" and like to get cities up and running before you move on to the next one. That's fine, but if you want to become a "better player" than you'll need to abandon that habit. I could be totally wrong, but I'm guessing you build too much in your cities too early.

Feel free to correct my assumptions.

Yup. Exactly. I'm just trying to figure out how to "trim the fat," so to speak.

Just two questions:
- I'll try to keep an eye on happiness. I think I've started to get a good handle on that, and I've normally got about 3 cities of my own by the start of the Medieval Era. Does that sound about right?

- I'm also trying to specialize my cities, according to some of the guides and articles out there. Does it make sense that some of these specialty cities will just be "modestly sized" in comparison to others?

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

I remember a lesson from Starcraft 2 tactics that has stuck with me. Be ready to expand when warring. Whether by puppets, or having a settler ready to plop on sweet spots that you chose to raze.

Puppets would mean having workers in tow to get trading posts/lux improvements online. Get that puppet producing for you benefit.

This also means having your happiness at a level where you can actually expand.

I think specialty cities is a bit of a misnomer. Most of the time I'm switching worker tiles and the city management focus, so every city is a multi specialist city in a manner of speaking.

When they get bigger and later in the game, I will tend to lock a couple of cities down... usually they have most food/less production, and I'll have them loaded up a little more with the specialists, but in early stages I'm not thinking about specializing yet... i'm thinking expansion which usually means getting enough cheap military built by a tech/upgrade jump.

3 cities by medieval is good number, hopefully you control 3-4 different luxuries, and they have a couple of solid production tiles to get a military up.

 

[bo_jesus]

I used to play a lot like you (and still do to a large degree) but as others have pointed out you have to expand to really exceed in this game.

How many workers do you typically build in a game? I used to focus on putting buildings in my cities more than getting improvements on my tiles. I now try to build 2 or maybe 3 workers and hunt for captured workers to give me 4 or 5 total early. Getting improvements up early in your cities will really help you grow faster.

As far as expanding new cities I'd say any site that has a new luxury resource that you didn't have before is worth expanding to.
Any site that has Iron is worth expanding to.
I typically have 2 cities before Iron Working and then save up my settlers or policies to settle my next city after I discover where the iron is and then start spreading again.
Keep in mind that science is based on population and the more cities you have the more population you will have. Use that to your advantage.
Also understand some of your cities won't be as good as others. Prioritize what to build there and be prepared to buy what you can't (especially if you want to continue building national wonders).

I don't put a cap on the number of cities I'll build, it all depends on the terrain and what resources are nearby.
I typically play small or standard maps because I hate wait times in between turns so I typically get 6-8 cities out before I get crowded.

Settle your cities on hills if possible. This will give you +2 +2 in that city to help it grow fastest.

Also don't build trade routes to connect your city until the population of the connected city exceeds the distance in tiles between the cities that you're connecting. This is because roads cost 1 to maintain and the trade routes generate 1/population

Also remember isn't a bad thing as long as its above -10. You shouldn't play the whole game with but I wouldn't drop everything you're doing to get it either. Anything above -10 just slows population growth. Anything below that has a production penalty and combat penalty.

 

[Rockit]

...
Also don't build trade routes to connect your city until the population of the connected city exceeds the distance in tiles between the cities that you're connecting. This is because roads cost 1 to maintain and the trade routes generate 1/population...

Well now that's the most helpful & obvious tid-bit of advice I have read in a while. It fits right into the "just look at the numbers & think about it for a second" category which I personally just never took into account!

Thanks!

 

[joncnunn]

That's a good guideline for when you only have 2 cites; but it starts breaking down when you have 3 or more.

That's because overall population of your empire is also a factor.

Chances are by the time you build the 4th city that if the other 3 are already connected the road to the 4th won't lose too much money.

And if you adopt one of the Liberty policies, getting that -3 per city knocked down to -2 via a trade connection trumps the maintenance costs.

Also don't build trade routes to connect your city until the population of the connected city exceeds the distance in tiles between the cities that you're connecting. This is because roads cost 1 to maintain and the trade routes generate 1/population