I'm a Deity player from Civ 3, 4 and 5, and here I'm playing Emperor and barely going past the middle ages before ragequitting.
....and that's with China and Germany.
So here I've uploaded two games. I really like the Germany one and I'd like to salvage it.
However I find myself hitting two walls.
1) Troops become insanely expensive past ancient and classical, and the production boosts don't seem to be there to help you build them.
2) Its nigh impossible to keep your religion short of always war. If you're trying to find off hordes of magic monks with your own, it kills your chances of say using faith for other purposes.
The biggest early production boost usually comes from Apprenticeship thanks to Industrial Zone (it will be much better later with Factories) but mostly +1 from mines. Your Grassland hills with mines will be 2food/3production, a couple of those will really help your production. Another large boost if you have lots of riverside forests is Machinery as lumber-mills next to a river gives you +2 production (so a flat forest on grass is 2food/3prodcution while a hill forest is 2 food/4production!). Add some Civic Cards on top of that and you can get units in a reasonable amount of time.
2) Its nigh impossible to keep your religion short of always war. If you're trying to find off hordes of magic monks with your own, it kills your chances of say using faith for other purposes.
I find it perfectly possible to defend on Emperor. If you can get a pair of "Debater" apostles you're almost out of troubles. Of course you can't guarantee one early but you get every promotion once and need to get all of them once before you can start another cycle so you will get one eventually. The trick is to stay close to your holy sites as they will heal you. Killing their Apostles will reinforce your religion and lower theirs. If you notice an enemy Debater apostle (especially if they are running Theocracy with more bonuses), just hide your Apostles in your cities and let him use his spread, you'll get your religion back after killing a few easy targets.
Inquisitors are also good at defending your land. Within your borders they are as strong as an Apostle for the cost of a missionary. You need an apostle to start the inquisition of course but it can pay back.
Of course, you shouldn't try to go for Jesuit Education or run Theocracy to buy units with faith if you don't have a large faith generation, probably from a good Pantheon. There are less faith hungry options for your religion
EDIT. Had a look at that Germany game. It's hard to tell without a T1 save whether you had better options or not, but you're in a vast flat area without any sort of production and only overlapping factories could give you a good production. Magdebourg has some potential but is only pop2 so it's hard to turn it into your production center right now. Speaking of Magdebourg, i wouldn't lock a 3 food tile when you have a 2food/2prod tile available in a city with only 2-3 housing. It won't grow anyway so better get that Aqueduct built ASAP.
Jesuit Education was definitely a mistake without a lot more faith and you should probably have bought more missionaries to spread early so that your passive pressure helps your city keep your religion or switch back.
I consider Stonehenge a huge loss of efforts. Hanging Gardens might be good for growing big cities but they are not that big so not sure how you managed them, probably a housing issue.
I see you're in Monarchy. I've never used this government as i couldn't care less for so many military cards. You're on your way to Merchant Republic which is good, i would have kept Classical Republic until then personally.
Seems like your problem right now is Gorgo. You have XBows which is nice. You could get Stirrups and then go with Knights but you lack the money to upgrade those chariots. Not sure what you bought with this money.
Oh, and Yerevan is the best religious CS so i would probably have tried to become Suzerain rather than conquer them.
If you could post the T1 save, i could try to play it until approx T150 and see what i get.
I don't have the ability to look at your saves, but I'll offer a couple pointers based on your post.
Skip religion entirely. It's not worth the investment and tedium of fending off the AI. You get to keep your pantheon the whole game so pick something useful there and move on from the religion game. You therefore don't have to worry about building Holy Sites or using your early wildcard slot for the Great Prophet points, and can focus on infrastructure in the beginning of the game.
Which brings us to the next point; building up your infrastructure is so important so that you can be ready to shoulder those increasing costs. Make sure to run the relevant policy cards that increase production for military units when you need them...I like to save a few low cost culture techs so I can research them real quick when I need to switch policies on the fly. Specializing a couple cities to focus on production early on can be helpful; get a good site for the Industrial Zone adjacency bonuses and run the policy that gives you 100% improvement on that bonus. Or the more popular option is spam Commercial and Harbor districts and use those internal trade routes to ramp up production.
Personal preferences. I like my own Religion so i can keep those Apostles out of my lands and prevent an AI from going for Religious Victory in case the other AIs are bad at defending their religion.
I like to save a few low cost culture techs so I can research them real quick when I need to switch policies on the fly. Specializing a couple cities to focus on production early on can be helpful
A really good advice. Having 4 military slots is useless cause most of the time you won't have all those cards active. Just use them when you need to crank out a few units, even using the Classical Republic wildcard slot.
District wise, I build the commercial in every city, and the harbor in the available ones. I'll even build a harbor on a lake, just because I want the trade route. You can leave the buildings in these districts for later, but the routes are the valuable part.
Then I build industrial in every city.
Once you start having cities that provide +6 and +8 production per trade route, you can send a bunch of trade routes from one city to your others, and that city can pump out whatever you want quickly.
Especially with Barbarossa, i would avoid Monarchy as you don't need that many military cards. If you have a lot of faith and want to go for religious victory or domination i would choose Theocracy. Otherwise Merchant Republic for the great slots and +2 trade routes.
Also, assuming I have say 6 cities, how many of each district should I really have? Also, when should I be building these districts?
This really depends on your target victory condition.
If you go for Science you'll need science so 3-4 campuses is the minimum. 1-2 theater squares is enough to get the policies you need. Industrial Districts everywhere because the Mars projects require 3000 production.
For Culture (apart from the very random reliquaries culture victory) you'll probably need 2-3 of each campus and Theater Square. You could go for more TS but there are other late game tourism sources. You need Holy Sites (even if you didn't found a Religion) as you need faith to purchase Naturalists. Some Industrial Zones will help you later, try to get them to cover as many cities as you can.
For Religion, spam Holy Sites everywhere and you hardly need anything else.
For Domination i would get 2 Encampments, one for Barracks, the other for Stables. Industrial Zones for more production and a few campuses/theatre squares to stay in the course for science and civics, but you don't need that many as you can skip some parts of the tree and will get more from your conquered cities. If you start to conquer early you might not even need any.
Apart from this, Commercial Zones will help you to get the useful Trade Routes, even thought prioritizing those everywhere seems strange to me as early TR don't have very big yields, but you definitely want enough TR to help your new cities so 2-3 early Commercial Districts is a good idea.
Entertainment Complex depends on your overall Happiness (Amenities) situation. If you are short, 2 with zoos (and later Stadiums) should be enough. if you are high with many luxuries, you don't need any.
Once you start having cities that provide +6 and +8 production per trade route, you can send a bunch of trade routes from one city to your others, and that city can pump out whatever you want quickly.
It seems like each time you build a district, it increases the cogs you get for sending a trade route to that city. I'm not 100% sure, I've only completed 2 games so far. I don't think I've had 8 yet, I can't remember, but I assumed it just kept scaling.
You know what happens when you ASSume!
It seems like each time you build a district, it increases the cogs you get for sending a trade route to that city. I'm not 100% sure, I've only completed 2 games so far. I don't think I've had 8 yet, I can't remember, but I assumed it just kept scaling.
You know what happens when you ASSume!
Each district has its own contribution to yield; check the civpedia.
E.g. a campus at the destination of a domestic trade route increases the yield by 1 food, and of an international trade route by 1 science. Industrial zone gives 1 cog in both cases.
Yes, i know it comes from districts. I just wonder how he can reach +8 as it would require 8 districts contributing to production (i think City Center gives 1 but that's still 7 more districts so 19 population assuming he didn't build any food district). Maybe it's possible at the very end of the game , but by this time you should have between 35 - 42 production in every city from overlapping industrial zones (if you are bad at optimizing industrial zones location like me , more if you are good)
Beeline production.
Industrial zones in every city.
Build cities close to take advantage of radius bonus from factories.
Give cities internal trade routes.
Someone said on these forums that if you lay down districts but don't complete them the districts will stay at the original cost. So lay down the districts you want as soon as you can and finish them later. Don't know if it works for sure...
Did you look at his saved game? In the Germany game he hardly has any hill so no mines. Before Factories his Industrial Zones won't give him much. +2 from the workshop is hardly enough, he would get more production from encampments buildings plus some housing.
Industrial Zones are very powerful once you get factories, but he's not there yet and they take a lot of time to build unless he has some production already to build them. I get the feeling a lot of players think IZ are the magical answer to lack of production but they don't reach their full potential until rather late in the game.
Of course, Hansa are better then normal IZ so could help him, but still it's a long term investment when he's involved in a war.
I think it also depends on his target victory. For science you need tons of late game production so your advice is good. For domination you need units quickly so early IZ could slow him down.
Did you look at his saved game? In the Germany game he hardly has any hill so no mines. Before Factories his Industrial Zones won't give him much. +2 from the workshop is hardly enough, he would get more production from encampments buildings plus some housing.
Industrial Zones are very powerful once you get factories, but he's not there yet and they take a lot of time to build unless he has some production already to build them. I get the feeling a lot of players think IZ are the magical answer to lack of production but they don't reach their full potential until rather late in the game.
Of course, Hansa are better then normal IZ so could help him, but still it's a long term investment when he's involved in a war.
I think it also depends on his target victory. For science you need tons of late game production so your advice is good. For domination you need units quickly so early IZ could slow him down.
From what I have read elsewhere, multiple workshops within a city's radius stack. I have yet to test this myself, but if true it can certainly help civs that are lacking in hills.
I highly doubt it since the database shows 0 RegionalRange for Workshops. Factories and Power Plants have 6 and Estadio do Macarena has 10000 to cover your entire empire.
Maybe with Toronto workshops would have 0+3 = 3 Range so they could cover a couple cities depending on how it's coded.
I highly doubt it since the database shows 0 RegionalRange for Workshops. Factories and Power Plants have 6 and Estadio do Macarena has 10000 to cover your entire empire.
Maybe with Toronto workshops would have 0+3 = 3 Range so they could cover a couple cities depending on how it's coded.
Something to investigate. Someone reported seeing a +6 workshop bonus in his city. The original assumption was that workshops stack, but it might be more complicated than that (or even something else entirely). The community will figure it out eventually.
First of all, it seems your overall empire planning is pretty poor. Your cities seem really far apart for seemingly no reason. Also it looks like you aren't really taking advantage of what makes germany great, at all.
Priority number one is beelining industrial district for a multitude of reasons, least of which is that industrial districts are generally great, but more importantly;
The Hansa doesn't synergize with mines, it synergizes with resources and commercial hubs. Which means as you beeline toward apprenticeship you're also setting up Commercial hubs in all of your cities in the pre-planned ideal spots. So every industrial district is an automatic +2 production in each city, more if there are any resources. Aachen alone could have a +4 Hansa in between the 2 stone and 2 tea, yet it's turn 154 and it sits blank.
The above strategy might give any other empire pause due to district constraints but not Germany, because in addition to the fact that they can build 1 more district than usual in every city - the Hansa, a unique District, is both half cost and does not count toward the district cap, as all Unique districts. So you get two free districts in every city. There is virtually no excuse not to have an industrial district and commercial hub synergizing off of each other in every single city. Certainly not for the germans.
Sidenote to the above; Workshops don't have a stacking radius - the stacking comes with Factories - which, as Germany, you should also beelining. You're wasting your time researching castles.
Further emphasis on your district problem though; it's turn 154 and you only have 1/1 trade route. Even if you aren't going to be spamming commercial hubs in every city, this is just unacceptable. The commercial hub should be one of your very first districts - for any empire. Regardless of your strategy. Internal trade is immensely powerful as your empire is growing.
So really, your problem is just overall poor planning. Let's have a look;
Spoiler:
In the above two shots, why aren't your hubs being placed next to your hansas? You're forfeiting 2 production by doing this. 3 production and 1 gold, in the case of the first city.
This is a better spot for Frankfurt's industrial zone. You lose 1 hammer but you gain an entire city brought under the influence of your factories once you unlock them. Furthermore, you can just build a commercial hub on the river and get more bonuses. The more important factor for industrial zones is factory overlap. Sacrificing a few adjacency hammers is always worth it.
This last image gives you an idea of where I would have expanded my cities. If done this way, you would have gotten two more cities in the exact same amount of space. Given the same amount of spacing; more cities is always better.
Lastly, some overall tips;
Don't switch into monarchy just cause. Especially as germany. Military policies are the weakest. Also, why do you have diplomatic league in your wildcard slot? That is literally doing nothing for you. Even if you discover a new City state you can switch out Charismatic leader before you assign the first envoy to it, and then swap them back out. Always run charismatic leader and then shuffle in league when you're ready to assign. Switch to the gold policy later on.
You have the right idea teching to merchant republic next, though.
You're not going to catch up in science unless you spam some campuses. In fact, you're building your districts way too late in the game. First of all, that's squandering Germany's bonus - secondly, unless you have more pressing concerns, you should be building districts in your cities as soon as they're available. Plan your first cities out, Commercial hubs are a big priority but at least 1 of your first 3 cities should build a campus as either it's first or 2nd district. It's not a huge deal to fall behind in science because you can catch up, but only to an extent.
Beeline more. Stop teching evenly; Pick goals, get to those goals, and then assign new goals. Unlocking the hansa is priority 1. This synergizes really well since commercial hubs are unlocked on the way. Then either tech up to education, or beeline factories, supplementing military techs as needed. Most of my wins, I barely even touch the bottom half of of the tree; I often tech computers before castles and stirrups, in all honesty.
Finally, the greatest tip of all;
Chop. Everything. You have far too much forest. Beautiful, lush, bountiful forests. as soon as you hit feudalism, chop it all. Chop for districts, first, then other infrastructure. Don't waste chops on units unless it's another builder or a settler. Chop that jungle, chop past your housing cap. You recently unlocked feudalism; set fire to the country-side and stoke the forges - let the flames of industry burn hot.
OK, i haven't played Germany yet and didn't know any resource worked. I thought it synergized with mines and hubs so it was just a small bonus to production prior to factories. Thanks for correcting this. So Germany is the only civ able to get good production out of a flat area prior to factories.
Of course, if he wants to win by Domination he hardly needs Computer but definitely needs Stirrups which is why i asked what was his target VC.
In case you haven't decided yet, this is another tip : try to decide a victory condition early and work on it. Civ6 makes bee-lining VC much more efficient and easy than previous iterations so you must choose early (eventually with a plan-B in case your VC proves unattainable - this could happen with religious victory).
Also, Guilds should be a high priority as germany - 100% industrial district adjacency bonus. Adding a hansa to Aachen and getting to guilds can add 10 production before you even put a building there.
It's important to cluster your districts when they get good bonuses. Do something like this;
Spoiler:
A commercial hub from magdeburg can contribute 8 overall production aside from internal trade once you use guilds. It will add production to Aachen's hansa as well as it's own. Aachen's hansa will influence 5 cities. Alternatively you can swap Magdeburgs hansa and hub and mag will go from influencing 4 cities to 5
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