Common major strategic errors in BNW?

[Edgehopper]

I just discovered last night a huge thing that was ruining my games on Immortal; I was reaching the medieval era still way behind because I hadn't prioritized food and city size, thinking I was prioritizing science by building Libraries ASAP. I restarted with Shaka, devoted my first caravans to food production, and with the help of a quick little war stealing Venice, am leading at the Renaissance.

Before that, I was still thinking of Great People as the pseudorandom events from Civ 4 rather than something you build, and never thought about prioritizing them--that was wasting a lot of effort in the mid to late game.

Strong players, if you were offering general strategic advice to intermediate players, what would you say are the common mistakes you're seeing? Use of early caravans for international trade at 4 gpt rather than for internal trade at 4 fpt seems like a huge mistake. Connecting cities too small to be worth the road cost seems to be another big one. What else?

 

[eewallace]

My play style has changed quite a bit with BNW. My early mistakes were: Prioritizing exploration and city defense over tile development (much needed for both gold and happiness). It turns out that my cities are pretty safe until medieval usually with just an archer. Trying to get 3 or 4 cities up and running too early--this one is annoying because the AI has no problem doing it. Now I look pretty carefully at gold and happiness before I decide whether I can afford another city. Trying to war too early--ancient and classical wars generally don't seem to accomplish much (admittedly I haven't played Shaka though).

As mentioned above, for roads, don't bother until cities are at about 7 population, and then if you can connect them with about 5 road sections. (Also, for connecting 3 cities, use a Y shape for the roads--don't automate the workers or they will use 15 road tiles where about 9 will suffice.)

 

[headcase]

Getting my caravans and cargo ships plundered by barbarians is a bit of a running theme for me.

 

[Tachii]

^ lol. It became a bit obvious after a few games how dangerous barbarians are in BNW. I typically just do caravans to get my second city running now, so it can make another wonder pretty quickly.

Obvious errors: Wonderhog without building military units in Ancient/Classical era when Shaka/Genghis is right beside you.

 

[mrwho]

I sometimes forget to put my cities on production focus for a wonder, or lock all the tiles to production tiles, and forget so that 50 turns later I notice my capital is still at 0 growth and a third of the size of the AI. Always a major facepalm moment.

 

[Scott Jegg]

Adhering to a strategy when there are other more pressing issues. Beelining for national college and ignoring the fact that Shaka/Atilla/Montezuma are nearby is a death sentence. Defence first in those situations, and accept that you are going to have a slower start.

Funnily enough, you see the AI do this all the time. Venice under seige, yet still produces a wonder 2 or 3 turns before it gets captured. Why were they not building units?

Ignoring growth is a big mistake.

Not selling luxuries and strategic resources for cash/gpt. I did not know about doing this until I started playing immortal. Seems crazy that it wasn't even a requirement at lower levels.

Ignoring great person generation, or letting the governer control the working of specialists. Not a good idea.

Ambling through the game is probably the biggest thing that new players need to cut out. It takes a while, but learning what to do and when is pretty important, as well as timing events to coincide for maximum benefit - maybe having a great engineer spawn just at the time you are about to tech to a wonder you really want, or making sure you have ampitheatres in all your cities before you pick legalism from the tradition tree so that you get free Wats in all your cities as Siam, etc.

 

[Edgehopper]

Adhering to a strategy when there are other more pressing issues. Beelining for national college and ignoring the fact that Shaka/Atilla/Montezuma are nearby is a death sentence. Defence first in those situations, and accept that you are going to have a slower start.

This happened the last time I played Poland on Immortal. Thought I was defending myself with a smallish army of 3-4 horsemen,a few pikemen, and a few archers. Shaka's obscenely overpowered Impi proved me quite wrong.

 

[chazzycat]

early & sustained growth is key to everything. grow as fast as possible and keep acquiring happiness aggressively to keep growing.

everything else comes from that. Growth literally feeds every single other system in the game. The four important resources to win the game (science, production, gold, culture/tourism) are all improved dramatically by growing your cities. It really is the key to everything.

 

[aljung]

My biggest mistake is/was "ignoring" cs-diplomacy, resulting in embargos and banned luxuries I can't do anything about.

In BNW its really more difficult to beeline 1 victory type - which is actually cool.

 

[Calouste]

I just discovered last night a huge thing that was ruining my games on Immortal; I was reaching the medieval era still way behind because I hadn't prioritized food and city size, thinking I was prioritizing science by building Libraries ASAP. I restarted with Shaka, devoted my first caravans to food production, and with the help of a quick little war stealing Venice, am leading at the Renaissance.

Before that, I was still thinking of Great People as the pseudorandom events from Civ 4 rather than something you build, and never thought about prioritizing them--that was wasting a lot of effort in the mid to late game.

Strong players, if you were offering general strategic advice to intermediate players, what would you say are the common mistakes you're seeing? Use of early caravans for international trade at 4 gpt rather than for internal trade at 4 fpt seems like a huge mistake. Connecting cities too small to be worth the road cost seems to be another big one. What else?

Writing is usually one of the last Ancient techs I research these days. Any resource techs go first, with the Wheel for a Watermill if possible. And Bronze Working if I have no Horses or am going wide.

 

[adwcta]

yeah, on Deity, even immortal, early writing is not longer important unless you're Babylon or China, since you get almost as much science for a good part of the early game with 1-2 trade routes (sailing + AH, or even AH + aqueducts tech). unless you plan on doing a NC start, a delayed NC means the no maintenance caravan >> 1gpt library.

the tricky part of the early game now is that you simply cannot build everything if you are hard-building any settlers. so, cutting/delaying certain buildings is now a much bigger part of the early game strategy.

i now have a huge focus on hammers after I hit 5-6 pop (depending on # of bonus resources in start), favoring vital buildings (for earlier gold and culture), wonders, and expansion; and delay food/science until post-aqueducts, using food routes to catch up.

staying BEHIND in science on purpose is now the most efficient way to play the early game, as opposed to G&K, where you want to catch up in science immediately. generally, I shoot to hit architecture before the AI on deity, and then purposefully fall behind on science again so i can level up my spy (who then becomes much more useful for CS coups) while getting free science from trade routes and techs. I'll catch up again by being first/second to an ideology w/ Oxford, while having a very good infrastructure and population to be able blow by everything immediately after that. as far as science/diplo wins go, you get much lower turn times doing this than trying to go for science right away.

 

[Securion]

early & sustained growth is key to everything. grow as fast as possible and keep acquiring happiness aggressively to keep growing.

everything else comes from that. Growth literally feeds every single other system in the game. The four important resources to win the game (science, production, gold, culture/tourism) are all improved dramatically by growing your cities. It really is the key to everything.

This.

 

[Seabastian Civ]

Not a major mistake, but worth mentioning...

Go for theming bonuses. Theyre not that hard to get and really make a huge difference if you're going to adopt an ideology before the AI.

 

[Lrd Dread]

I usually focus on production until I have the Great Library (and maybe the Parthenon) and then go for food focus.

 

[Mercurio]

One for multiplay: people (friends) expecting their singleplayer strategies work on multiplay. No Arabia I am not buying all your stuff for loads of gold when I can do more useful things with it. People are also able to see through your strategy a lot better than the AI is and when I see you neglecting military, I just might go and wipe you off the map.

 

[Matthew.]

early & sustained growth is key to everything. grow as fast as possible and keep acquiring happiness aggressively to keep growing.

everything else comes from that. Growth literally feeds every single other system in the game. The four important resources to win the game (science, production, gold, culture/tourism) are all improved dramatically by growing your cities. It really is the key to everything.

More specifically, strong capital = win. I'd take a size 30 capital over three size 10 cities.

 

[earthwulf]

I am not a strong player. The best I can beat on the regular is King... that being said, I know my faults: I like to build as many buildings as possible. I'm a completist, and that's a detramental strategy.

 

[FrostK]

Common major error - building wonders. There are some key wonders, but most of wonders should be skipped.

 

[uncle bulgaria]

I focus on growth early, I like to get a religion out with growth or happiness giving beliefs and try to get 2 solid cities up and runing with the NC built.

I try to time the 3rd settler to arrive at the chosen spot for when the NC finishes then build that city up. 4th city up if possible. I play the tradition tree so 4 cities maximises the bonus with that. I try to get the Temple of Artemis too as it's a good growth pusher and bonus to ranged units. I try to use a few internal trade routes to pump food/hammers into my cities to speed up growth and use a few externally for gold. I find I usually lag behing the AI in no of techs discovered until the medeival era so I trade with other civs give me a science boost. Tall cities with lots of population can support tonnes of specialists and population = science.

After that I beeline for the science building techs of each era first (education/sci theory and plastics) and use the city build queue to make sure they're built in every city asap then catch up the other techs. It's risky it's so neighbour dependant (i'd not do this next to say the Zulu's or Atilla for example) as sometimes i'm behind on military tech but once you're into the renaissance you can usually pull away.

I used to rush writing & great library before BNW, now I focus on growth, happiness and economy, no gold off river tiles hurts if you don't do something about it.

Wonders I always try to hit:

Temple of Artemis
Forbidden Palace
Hanging Gardens if possible (ai beats me to this 90% of the time because of ToA)
Hubble Telescope
The one that gives 3 missionaries (sorry I forget the name) is a regular one too

 

[troublmaker]

My first time jumping up the difficulty in BNW I realized how insanely hard it is to maintain trade routes