Common major strategic errors in BNW?

[TheGrandWazoo]

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

Not necessarily a major error. A lot of wonders will help depending on play style. The major error here is going for wonders that you are likely to miss on higher difficulty levels, or going for a wonder when a normal building would help you more.

 

[digrosz]

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

Play on Prince huh?

 

[superliminal]

I used to never build scouts, because I didn't realize how useful early exploration was. Likewise, I would try to expand too quickly and would frequently find myself with negative happiness. I didn't fully understand how important it is to keep your cities growing early on in the game.

 

[Arazok]

-I used to ignore the top half of the tree for the bottom half (I’m a warmonger). Now I’ve realized that if you focus on science/growth, everything else comes naturally.

-Beelining for Stonehenge. I’ve found simply building a shrine early, and taking a faith producing belief first will accomplish the same thing without the wonder.

- Stealing workers/settlers and never building them. It rocks, and also cripples the AI for the whole game. I’ve seen civs that are normaly expansive stagnate at 3 cities because of this tactic.

-Hammering out archers and ignoring melee units until you have about 6. Way better. Build 6 archers, 3 horse, 2 melee, and 2 seige in that order. I’ve destroyed entire empires with that army.

- Limiting growth. I hit 4 cities fast then just focus on growing them. It’s hard because theres usualy tons of places to grow still, and some neighbours might be expanding aggressive. You feel like you need to compete. Don’t. Those 4 cities will carry you for a long time. I’m in the process of decimating my neighbor who exploded to 15 cities and DOW on my 4 city empire. First I picked off his army, with the help of some CS’s I had allied. Then I began eating cities. It took a long time to get the first 3 cities, and after that they just fell one after another. I’ve been at war for over 100 turns now.

-Do CS quests. Alliances can save your life. I had one game where my much stronger neighbor was preparing a sneak attack on my capitol (it was undefended as it was somewhat far from neighbours). I got the spy warning, then watched as he marched 80% of his army towards my capitol. To get there, he had to pass through a CS ally of mine. I denounced him. Then waited a few turns. Just as his swarm was in the middle of the CS territory, I DOW’d him. The CS riped him to shreds with the help of only 1 range and 1 mounted unit of mine. Meanwhile, my main army was free to take the offensive. If I did not have that alliance, I might have lost that war.

Still to learn:

I’m still struggling with war. I find it impossible to avoid them after turn 70-100, and once they start I’m scared to stop. The AI rebuilds to quickly and once I’ve got them on their back, I feel like I need to keep them there. I end up taking cities I’m not really ready for just because I want to make sure I never have to deal with an AI making a comeback.

Caravans. I suck at defending them. I loose way to many.

 

[Law Lord]

This is a good thread so far.

I would add that internal trade routes should not be ignored in the early game. Until a couple weeks ago, I wasn't realizing the potential power in having my capital ship food out to other cities for some early game growth. Like many BNW strategies, it is a situational move - but if you have peaceful/no neighbours, it is often far more powerful than gathering 2-3 GPT in the early game. You can switch to external routes after the science benefits become big enough.

Also, even though it has been mentioned above, try to actively manage your specialists (though I often forget about them too).

 

[Vidszhite]

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.

THIS. Hey how come I havent gotten any Writers yet? OH NOBODY WORKING IN THE WRITER'S GUILD BECAUSE I SET IT TO PRODUCTION FOCUS 50 TURNS AGO. /facepalm

 

[Vidszhite]

This is a good thread so far.

I would add that internal trade routes should not be ignored in the early game. Until a couple weeks ago, I wasn't realizing the potential power in having my capital ship food out to other cities for some early game growth. Like many BNW strategies, it is a situational move - but if you have peaceful/no neighbours, it is often far more powerful than gathering 2-3 GPT in the early game. You can switch to external routes after the science benefits become big enough.

Also, even though it has been mentioned above, try to actively manage your specialists (though I often forget about them too).

I too found internal trade routes to be quite powerful. Easily half my trade routes in my most successful games have been dedicated internal trade routes. Yes, you can get all the gold in the world by using all your ships externally, but food ships are insanely good at growing cities very huge, very quickly. It is a real boon to a wide empire when you know you can grow your new cities to staggering proportions with food and production ships, and best of all, you don't even need to keep them that way if you settled on good land. Once they're self-sufficient, take off the training wheels and get some gold!

 

[WC4J]

- Stealing workers/settlers and never building them. It rocks, and also cripples the AI for the whole game. I’ve seen civs that are normaly expansive stagnate at 3 cities because of this tactic.

Does this mean you declare war on the AI as he is moving his settlers? From what I understand, that's the only way you can steal a settler.

To me, the warmonger penalty you take from that wouldn't be worth the theft of a settler.

 

[rattlejaw]

Stealing a settler is absolutely worth a diplomatic penalty. You've denied a neighbour's expansion (and if you caught him out, chances are it's because he was forward settling on you to cut off your ability to found good cities), and you've gotten a worker out of it. Even if you can't keep the worker, it doesn't flip back to a settler, which means said neighbour will need to spend another ~10 turns not growing. Sure, it sets the tone and you're not going to be friends after, but when you do attack him, he's going to be that much weaker.

My biggest mistake is usually getting greedy with infrastructure or science when I really should be preparing for war. I had a game recently when I popped a hut for Writing literally the turn after Pottery finished researching and I had a great production capital with marble. I just had to go for the Great Library, since it's not every day that it's actually worth taking a shot at it on Immortal.

I did get it.

Then I got steamrolled by my neighbour's six siege towers because I thought I'd have enough time to build an army and was very, very wrong.

 

[z284pwr]

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.

Do you mind expanding on this strategy and what you do to stay behind and when you usually start expanding at archeology. Do you just limit growth with production focus? What exactly makes this strategy so much better than focusing on science right away?

 

[Cromagnus]

Best strategy tip: Turn off the hints on what to build in your cities. It cripples your learning curve and is flat out wrong half the time.

Only build buildings in cities that need them. If you have a jungle city with no production, don't build a workshop! Plan on buying buildings instead. You can create research powerhouses very fast in jungles if you plan on buying library/university/public school/market/research/lab/bank. Eventually, you can set enough citizens to unemployed to build stuff, but all the gold rolling in from trading posts should pay for the buildings. (Also, build trading posts)

Growth > Everything... in the early game. If your start position doesn't have good food, instead of restarting, you can salvage this by building a worker earlier. IE before building your shrine or second scout, or maybe even before building a monument, if your first ring of tiles contains arable farmland...

Salt > Everything. Being able to get food + gold + production + happiness, all for the price of one tech?? Salt is imho overpowered. If I get a salt start, *I always win*. If my neighbor has salt, I invade as early as possible. If you don't he'll outclass you. It's like Petra. It's that good.

PS I *really* wish there was an option to make the growth notifications keep appearing after 5pop. Forgetting to assign new population can be a very costly mistake.

 

[adwcta]

Do you mind expanding on this strategy and what you do to stay behind and when you usually start expanding at archeology. Do you just limit growth with production focus? What exactly makes this strategy so much better than focusing on science right away?

You just prioritize your buildings differently. Not rushing for schools probably makes the biggest difference in terms of science (get there eventually, obviously, but prioritize growth and production and gold over science). Not working science specialist slots is also a good way to stay behind. If there's 12 trade routes between me and civs total, and I get 4 beakers per, that's 48 beakers. If it's 2 beakers per, that's 24 beakers. So, working those scientist slots, if it results in you getting ahead of tech, actually doesn't get you ahead in tech. Tech-ing the "non-AI" path also gives you more beakers per trade route (you'll also help its science, but you're only one civ, whereas you get the benefit from more civs, thus more trade routes, so you win overall even relatively). I mean, don't do any of this for 100 turns... it's more of a 50-60 turn respite.

And never stop growing!!! Growth is almost always the most important. If you sabotage your growth, you'll never catch up in science when you want to to win the game.

 

[Calouste]

The most common strategic error commenters on this board seem to make is that they have already decided on their first 100 turns of research, policies and build queues before they have seen their starting location or maybe even their civ.

Another common strategic error is people not buying tiles. The math is easy, a tile costs 50-60 gold in the beginning and working say a cotton over a unimproved grassland gives you 2gpt unimproved, 3gpt improved and 8gpt if you can sell the luxury. You get your investment back in 10-15 turns.

 

[Law Lord]

.

Salt > Everything. Being able to get food + gold + production + happiness, all for the price of one tech?? Salt is imho overpowered. If I get a salt start, *I always win*. If my neighbor has salt, I invade as early as possible. If you don't he'll outclass you. It's like Petra. It's that good.

This is key. When you consider that you can get Salt up and running without any opportunity cost in taking Calendar/Masonry, I agree that it's far better than any competitors. I don't know if it is game breaking, but it is a significant early advantage. Early invading a neighbour that has salt is good strategy.

 

[z284pwr]

This is key. When you consider that you can get Salt up and running without any opportunity cost in taking Calendar/Masonry, I agree that it's far better than any competitors. I don't know if it is game breaking, but it is a significant early advantage. Early invading a neighbour that has salt is good strategy.

I don't see it as game breaking more of real life. Salt is a human basic taste and of course look at what it is used for. Having access to salt in the real world is worth a lot too

 

[Mrdarklight]

Failing to ally a critical CS before a war. For example, when, say, Napoleon is the ally of a CS right next to his territory, it would behoove you to steal that ally just before declaring war. If you do, you have an ally and he has a problem. If you don't, he has an ally and you have a problem, and you lose any influence you had with it.

 

[Xyuta]

Mistakes i used to make :

Not explore enough early, the more CS you meet the more likely you are to get friend or even ally by just playing your game, if a CS is difficult to access you can even gain mission your empire is not build for because you 're the only one knowing it.
Don't trade my embassy for gold first.
Forget to sell all my extra lux to the AI ASAP to drain them from gold and make good relation.

 

[Arazok]

Does this mean you declare war on the AI as he is moving his settlers? From what I understand, that's the only way you can steal a settler.

To me, the warmonger penalty you take from that wouldn't be worth the theft of a settler.

Yes. Sometimes the AI will build them and keep them near a city while they build a warrior to escort. You can pick them off then as well. I've done it with scouts.

I aim to do this by turn 30-50. Turn 60-70 at latest.

Generally they will offer peace within 5 turns after. It's to early in the game for them to do much about it, and the warmonger flag isn't a big deal at that point. The pros outweigh the cons.

I also pick off 1 worker from a CS. You can get them a bit sooner from CS's then AI.

 

[Plumfairy]

Best strategy tip: Turn off the hints on what to build in your cities. It cripples your learning curve and is flat out wrong half the time.

How? I've looked & looked & can't find any way to remove those damn recommendations.

 

[SolDelta]

Hey bro you should totally settle here, there are two horses and six marsh tiles, you're gonna love it
That said one of the most common mistakes I've been making lately has been focusing on science without backing that up with population. If you fall behind in total population you're probably going to die. An exception to this is if you can get a good wide empire going, but they are fragile as hell early on, with a huge boom potential once you work out the kinks in your economy and get decent enough happiness to catch them up in pop.

One issue I've always had is building more than I can maintain. I'm still learning how to play on King and with more varied strategies, but I always find my economy just can't keep up early on unless I go colossus, or get my ass to markets ASAP. I've taken to building walls and castles in my cities if I'm low on cash and can't really do much about it, that extra defence can help in a pinch, and it costs nothing to maintain, so I figure, why not?