Cultural Victory - Help Needed

[PsychopathicWarmonger]

I've played up to 1AD now.
Something very wrong happened with my economy around 300-200BC. Lack of cottages probably caused it, but I went from having good research points down to 10% now.
I've been building cottages from when I opened Save 8, but the problem doesn't seem to be alleviating itself. I feel as if I'm expanding too fast.
I've gone to war with Fredrick, and have had to make swordsmen to replace the chariots, they're not cutting it anymore. I've taken 2 of his cities. Should I stop the war now, and rebuild my economy?
I also have my espionage pointed at the French.
I think it's at this point of the game where I begin to start crumbling. I've a couple of more settlers planned for some more locations but should I still be expanding?
How am I meant to recover from this?

Edit : Also, what's a "mid"? I've been searching up for the acronym but I can't find anywhere saying what it is.

 

[lymond]

Mids = Pyramids

Took a look.. Not sure what your goals are here but I'll give some pointers.

First off, you really are not in a bad position. There is absolutely no point in running Espionage slider on Noble level. Don't do it.

Second, get in the habit of just lowering research slider to 0% until you fund the next tech. You are making decent gpt at 0% so you are not the bad.

The problem here, among other things, is you really must have Alpha and Currency much much sooner than now. Apparently you have been focused on war, but Chariots are way more than sufficient on Noble level.

Iron Working is a very very bad tech diversion on pretty much all levels. You can always trade for it later. On Noble level, beelining Alpha> Currency is most always a good play.

Unhappiness..you want to avoid this. You can adjust tiles as need to slow grow. I understand you are whipping but still adjust. You have way more units that needed right now anyway. You don't need more units.

One city needs MP.

Close stone..most definitely build mids. Chop it out fast in best production city or forested city as soon as stone hooked up. Boost research and happiness.

Ceasefire with Fred right now (no Peace treaty). No reason to be at war at the moment when units need to heal. Send a chariot back home for MP in that far city without it for happiness.

I think that flood plain city could be good Bureau cap so look to move palace there. Work cottages in Madrid. And build settler until happy.

Get in the habit of spawn busting. Lots of land around you for barb spawn. Set up warriors out there early to reduce/eliminate barbs. A single unit can spawnbust a 5X5 area so set them up strategically (only fogged or unlighted tiles spawn barbs)

Probably stay friendly with Louie for now. He is far away and you need to build up your economy and then start expanding again. So much land.

Make sure you are running scientists where you can. another way to slow growth and produce GS's for bulbing.

After Alpha> Currency then CoL>CS should be your target. Although Louie might have alpha soon by this point.

Again, next game focus on Alpha>Maths>Currency beeline after initial worker techs needed. It will change your game. (as you move up levels..Alpha not always a good play as AIs may have it sooner anyway, Aesths is good trade bait to get alpha)

Otherwise, your game not that bad. You been focusing so much on war and just neglecting the economic side of things, but I think you can easily recover this. Your not as bad off as you think, but the early research decisions and city management is what has hurt you. As long as you have positive gpt at 0% then you are in business.

Also, if you have Alpha long before now instead of something useless like Iron Working, you could be doing a bit of research building instead of building useless stuff to get to Currency faster. (Currency IMO is the most important tech in the game)

Lastly, why in the world do you have a monument in Madrid. (oh..did you build Stonehenge? that wonder is a waste)

 

[PsychopathicWarmonger]

Close stone..most definitely build mids. Chop it out fast in best production city or forested city as soon as stone hooked up. Boost research and happiness.

Which government civic should I be choosing? Representation? Sufferage?

I think that flood plain city could be good Bureau cap so look to move palace there.

I've never used Bureaucracy, didn't seem useful enough. Is it best to switch to it from when it's unlocked?

You can always trade for it later.

Civs never seem to want to trade stuff with me. They don't like me enough. Will gifting gold be enough? Or heavily biased trades work better?

 

[pigswill]

I played your game from 4000bc. As lymond suggested I went for alphabet fairly early (1500bc) then built research to get to HbR, then built Horse Archers while researching currency. Killed Fred with HAs, economy ain't doing too badly, expanded up to ?13 cities. I notice that your cities are working unimproved tiles, as a rule of thumb I'd suggest that having one improved tile her head of population is a good idea (I'm not a good player so may get over-ruled) and takes precedence over chopping. (edit; having looked at my save I'm also working a few unimproved tiles, probably swop wealth to worker builds for a few turns even if it means delaying MC slightly)

 

[Lennier]

Which government civic should I be choosing? Representation? Sufferage?

Representation. You won't have enough towns (for the +1 ) to make Universal Suffrage worthwhile at the time you build the 'mids. And Rush-buying is very expensive so switching into US just for the ability to rush-buy is usually only done if you're close to winning and want to rush-by (vs. whip, or in addition to whip) the required units (or spaceship part) needed to win.

I've never used Bureaucracy, didn't seem useful enough. Is it best to switch to it from when it's unlocked?

The boost to your capital is definitely worth it unless you really need the abilities of one of the other civics.

 

[elmurcis]

Reason #1 to switch from Bureau would be Nationhood and Drafted Rifles - yes, its most powerfull food->military transformation. Reason #2 /Free Speech/ would be going for Cultural Victory (2x culture with max culture slider gives huge difference on finish date). Reason #3 - empire big enough and total extra commerce from towns exceed extra commerce (with Academy and Oxford number of towns to outweight this research power-plant can be pretty big) from Bureau + extra production it gives (not just basic but also whip-production is increased, so its possible to work many towns tiles + run some scientists and still be able to whip big stuff cheap) minus upkeep difference (with big empire Bureau extra upkeep cost vs Free Speech might be big)

 

[Gumbolt]

Yep starting to lose your way here a bit. Why did you not build the mids?? It went 125bc. With 4-5 chops this should of easily been yours. That was the answer to your happiness issues. That and the silver city/

Why is that barb city razed??

Agree about not running espionage slider. Waste of time.

I never really commented on IW. You had already mostly teched it. To be fair there is quite a bit of jungle here. Normally I skip it. Currency and mids would of worked best here really. With hammer heavy cities wealth from currency would of been a huge bonus here. I mapped out several options for you in my previous thread. I wanted to give you options. Alphabet for research build was also good.

Your capital is not working the cottages?? Those hammer tiles are not great. 1f2h is bad. 1f1h is a lot worse than a cottaged river.
Barcelona should be running 2 scientists. Why are you running 1f1h tiles in the city? Really bad micro.

You need to stop building units here. You have nearly 20 units. Germans probably have about 2 archers per city. Maybe a few roaming. Take a cease fire and then declare once you have your full stack healed. You will have 4-1 units against those defending.

I suspect the main issue with your German war was the following. 1. Did you scout out the Germans defences first with open borders? 2. Did you then build up a large stack? 3. Kingpin. Always try to go for the capital first. Chariots are not great for late rushes. Albeit if the AI had only archers it might of worked. Chariots struggle against hill cities.

Athens - You want 2-3 workers for the spices.

On plus side you have 9 cities by 1ad but you could of been much more focused here. You needed a strong overall plan here and I am not sure you had this.

 

[lymond]

I think his plan was killing peoples

Bureau is a very powerful civic. Probably in the top three of the top civics (Slavery and Rep are the others). They idea being to tailor your starting cap, if suited, or another better location to be your research hub. Name of the game there is cottages. Civil Service is a priority tech for most games beyond an early stomp fest. A good Bureau cap will provide a large chunk of your research for a good portion of the game, if not all, and is the location of Ox if going late.

And yes, if you have groomed a good Bureau cap it is a civic you want to be in immediately..it's a huge boost (and you should have an Academy in that city much earlier as well)

Mids is all about Representation, although there may be cases where you might run Police State for war, but only when really ready to pump units. Spiritual really helps with that.

Civs not liking you. Ha..well you are pissing them off. In seriousness though, while there are some leaders that require a certain temperature to trade like Toku, most of the leaders will do some trading at Cautious. And some leaders that will trade all the time. Regardless, be more mindful of your diplo situation. You may have a bad leader or so who doesn't care much for you, but try to keep the peace with as many as you can. Open Borders, trade resources will boost relations over time. Obviously staying out of religion will eliminate that malus. However, you could also choose some leaders religion to gain favor, especially if others adopted it as well. Again, just try to be cognizant of what is going on with each leader. Who likes who and who does not like who. Maybe give into requests or demands if the price is insignificant - like an extra resource or some old tech. Ofc, note that when you declare on someone that anyone who liked that someone will not like you so much.

Honestly, I'd focus less on early rushes and more on empire building, research, economy, worker management and diplo. Just practice the early game (50 to 100 turns), even replay those turns again. You kinda have the cart before the horse here, and not really learning.

 

[PsychopathicWarmonger]

Alright, so I ticked back the clock to Save 8 and went from there again.
I've built the Pyramids, as suggested. I also switched to Representation.
I've put off the idea of war with Germany, and instead decided to get expanding. I've built 3 cities and have another 2-3 planned for a couple of more sites.
I've built cottages in all of the cities and switched the cities over to working them.
I've also made a bunch of more workers, aswell as the Hanging Gardens (couldn't find anything I needed to make in Madrid)

My situation is far better now than it was before. My research % is up, aswell as the overall points I have to work with.
I have calender on the way, and plan to hit Civic Service after that.
How's all this sounding?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Sound great!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Don't be concerned about research %, unless it gets down to 0% with negative gpt. Specialists with Representation can generate a lot of research which is independent of the research slider %. Your actual Bpt is almost always more importnant than the actual research %.

 

[Gumbolt]

Scrap the aqueducts. Waste of hammers. Same for the courthouse. -5 gold per turn is nothing. Why are you afraid of running wealth as a build? Better wealth than hammers into aqueducts and Court houses.
Barcelona is working unimproved tiles? Why??? Grab mine from Seville. Work scientist.
Same for Mardid. Both cities should be running 2 scientists.
Seville is running unimproved grassland? What is wrong with the stone. 1f4h vs 2f? Easy decision.
Sparta should be building a palace here. A library would also be useful. Lack of hammers here is a problem. Not sure how to best resolve this. It could grab the second gold.

You don't have enough workers near Madrid and Barcelona. Working unimproved tiles is a big no no. Why are you building a cottage near cordoba?? Plains cottage ahead of a grassland river near madrid?? Easy choice for me.
Too many workers roading to santiago. If you built the city on the river you would not need all these roads to hook up the silver. The silver is already on the river so it would of been connected to your trade routes too.
Salamanca is already connected to your trade routes. Not sure this road and worker use is optimal for now. Focus your worker actions on what cities will need most. No workers near your first 2 cities is a big mistake.

1 turn from calendar. Plans to improve the spice? Incense too?? You still need happiness. You could settle on the lower coastal fur? Not an ideal city but if you trade for hunting instant +1 happiness in all cities. Hunting for myst and 10g seems fair.

What to do with great scientist?? He could bulb philosophy? You need mediation first to do this. I would also like to grab music for the free great artist too. Shame to waste GS on a golden age. Academy is also a great use for a GS in your capital.

Still much to improve on here. If you don't plan to whip much here caste is useful to run more scientists instead of dead tiles. I accept some cities are short of food.

Do you adopt conf religion? Hmmm. See what Taoism gives you culture wise?

Are you checking to see what gold French will give you for resources??

Lots of learning points here.

 

[lymond]

Hey Psycho -

Well, your economy is in much better shape than last time,and you have alpha/currency sooner (did not check timings). Still seems you teched IW or maybe did not go back that far when restarted..not sure. Still, you should have CS by this point. Calendar was a bad decision for now. I think Alpha before Maths may have been better, but really not critical at this level.

Regardless, and it is better, there still is very much wrong with your game.

I've attached a save in which I place some signs all over to point out some issues. Hopefully, they will make sense to you but will also by reinforced by some forthcoming points below. I did a cursory glance so there's many things I did not point out directly with signs, but once you get the point it will apply elsewhere:

1) Why is your GS heading to Santiago? What is your thinking here? Why not put an Academy in Sparta

2) I see Sparta as a good bureau cap. Madrid is okay, but Salamanca is prime and should have been tailored already. You do have some cottages running, but you have so many flood plains. Nearby helper cities could be working some of those cottages to keep them growing. Murcia better placed 1S to be able to work 2 of those flood plains for Sparta. The sooner you have all of this in motion, the better you will be later. More stuff more soonerer

3) Madrid, as well as other cities are i terrible shape. So many unimproved tiles. If you are not going to improve more tiles or don't have the band width, the run scientists or merchants. You are in Representation. Don't just work bad tiles like forest plains hills or plain grass. You are missing out on much research and productoin

4) City specialization. Not all cities need cottages. Designate logical cities, like your cap or future cap, with good cottageable land (green riverside, floddplains). Don't just randomly plant cottages on bad tiles. Also, note that cottages do not grow(improved commerce) unless you citizen work's them (you may not have realized that)

5) Worker management is still quite poor. You have several workers building roads to far off cities. However, you have sailing. Open your cities and note that they already have trade routes. Those workers should be improving cities, not creating roads right now. You have neglected cities. That far east coastal city could have had a worker chopping out a workboat for that city that it could grow on next turn. All these things pay off in production and everything else later.

6) Several cities have citizens working unimproved tiles. In each of those cities, unless you just run specialist. queue up a worker>put 1t into the worker>2pop whip the worker the next turn. Voila

7) Trade extra resources for GPT (gold per turn). Do this always after Currency. More gold for you. Check trades every 10 turns or so to keep tabs on what GPT the AIs have to offer. Renegotiate trades accordingly. (usually when the offer more than 1gpt available)

Trade Myst to Fred right now for 30 gold. Always look to trade old techs for chunks of gold. Note when a wonder is built. Sometimes AI has a lot of fail gold the next turn..trade for it if you can. Ofc, don't trade strategic or valuable monopoly techs you don't want to give away at a given time...later on you might though. Oh, and of course look to trade for techs you don't have, but not dead end techs like Archery if you don't really need it.

(note: I had more but got sidetracked hours ago by stuff, but will post this and the save now and await your questions)

You are improving and much to learn. Be patient we've all been there. And more important ..have fun!

 

[Gumbolt]

Maths vs alphabet. Maths helped secure mids quicker. Not sure how close this would of been. With all that forest maths had some positives. He was struggling for good builds here.

IW i think he could of traded from an AI eventually. His last save he had pretty much tech 70-80% of the tech so that was point of no return. To be fair he has not attempted to settle near the jungle.

Part of his worker issues stem from fact he has built 8 plains cottages. That is the best part of 32 worker turns. Maybe even more if they were covered by forest. Building cottages on forest is not great play. Chopping grassland forest before plains forest is good play.

What could you of improved in those 32 worker turns? 5-6 flood plain cottages?? Tiles around Madrid and Barcelona?
Also on worker turns try not to create lost worker turns. So if something to improve is 2 tiles away I will often put 1 turn into a cottage/farm or road. Then next turn move to the spot I want to improve. Otherwise you move 2 tiles and improve nothing.

Barcelona has 8 mountain tiles. Maybe a great HE site?

Don't take the critisms too harshly. As it stands you should easily win this game with 11 cities. However the purpose of this exercise was always to improve your game play. Maybe enough to get you up to Monarch level or even higher. Pends how serious you are about improving your game here.

 

[lymond]

Good point on using 1/2 worker movement to put turns into a future improvement

ha..yeah, please don't consider these criticisms..it's advice

Yeah, I meant to expand further on the cottages and city specialization. The thing is to be judicious about worker turns. Improve things that benefit you now and based on that city's needs and responsibilities. Keep in mind that all those cottages build on bad tiles are not doing anything at all for you right now and may never be worked anyway, as opposed to say Madrid having some Grass Hill mines (always grass hills before plains hills)

Thing about forest chops and what they do for you now. You can chop a forest and then build the improvement, getting the chop sooner as opposed to when the improvement is finished. You can also save forest for specials builds or unit production when needed. You can also pre-build improvements on a tiles - say a mine - and then finish it at the optimal point. Ofc, this gets more complex and you will get a feel for these things over time.

note: pre-Maths chops are 20H on normal speed, 30H after Maths...regardless you are generally going to want to chop some forest early before Maths to get you initial expansion going or to build a key wonder.

Oh..and to expand on a point Wu made above about the research slider. Start getting into a habit of running 0% research to fund some bank to then finish a tech. As he mentioned, don't get caught up with the slider being at X%. You do get a beaker of research at 0% so a bit of research is going on, plus that which you get from running scientists (or better Rep scientists or specialists). However, it best maximizes your gold output to be at 0% when in deficit research. Once you have enough gold, then run 100%.

Later, after currency, things can get better as you can trade for GPT and chunks of gold to fund research at 100% longer. yeah, you want to be at 100% as much as you can. you can also use wonder fail gold and generate Great Merchants for trade mission for huge sums of gold. As the game progresses, Great Merchants actually become more valuable than Great Scientists once you have the key GS bulb path taken care of (and the initial Academy in your cap)

Ofc, when you just start you can run 100% research until usually settling your first city which starts deficit research. Try to get to Writing first and then based on the gold situation, start using the binary research approach. (i think you play with huts - many here do not - but huts will give you some early gold often as well that keeps you going for a while)

 

[NineOneSix]

One thing that can help is to name cities according to their purpose. This is especially true if you play in short bursts and take 15 to 20 play sessions to complete a game. It forces you to decide how to specialise the city and focuses your game play accordingly.

When settling decide what the city can be good at based on its terrain, e.g.if choosing a site with few/no hills and lots of river grassland or flood plains, change the city name to commerce or the like. If its got the best food potential call it GP farm, if food and lots of hills call it military pump. Some early cities are there to work cottage tiles for the capital so call those ones "Helper". That way when workers are in place to improve the city you know which improvement to prioritise. It also helps you with making useful build choices for the city. If you get the message "Commerce1 has built a library" you are unlikely to make the mistake of building a stable next.

 

[PsychopathicWarmonger]

Yeah, I've named cities according to their purpose before. It didn't stick as a habit, I'll start doing that again.
I don't play for all too long, an hour at most. Usually 45 mins.


Also don't worry, I'm not taking all of this as criticism. I know it might seem that way with all that needs to be corrected. XD


I went about and tried to improve all the tiles that needed improving in my various cities, and getting some workers over to the neglected cities, aswell as building new workers.
None of the cites are working unimproved tiles now aside from Seville, which has to work a grassland tile, or otherwise starve.
I've a palace being built in Sparta, and I see why it's best to do that now (plenty of cottages giving lots of commerce, and the palace will boost that, aswell as being the Bureaucracy capital)

All of the micromanagement is becoming overwhelming, having to check every city making sure everything is working as it should.

The thing is to be judicious about worker turns. Improve things that benefit you now and based on that city's needs and responsibilities. Keep in mind that all those cottages build on bad tiles are not doing anything at all for you right now and may never be worked anyway, as opposed to say Madrid having some Grass Hill mines (always grass hills before plains hills)

I find myself to just trying to keep the workers busy, I think I just don't have the eye to spot where they should be building improvements yet.
I'll make it a priority in the future.

I also don't think I look too much into my relations with other AIs. I often ignore them as long as I think they won't declare war on me, or they expand towards me.
I rarely seek out trades with the other AIs. Maybe it's a subconscious self-sufficiency thing, that I don't want to be relying on the AI for anything, such as Iron-working. The French and Germans don't seem to want to trade anything useful anyways, and I can't trade any of my older, less useful techs. I should probably dedicate a short game to that.

I see now that Maths, Civil Service, Alphabet and Currency are all important, though I don't think I'm fully getting how the whole trade aspect is important as regards Alphabet and Currency.

Thanks again for the all tips everyone, here's the next save, I have another settler on the way for the beaver site, and am working on making Sparta the Bureaucracy capital.
I have paper coming up, which should give a huge boost to the commerce.

 

[Gumbolt]

yep the purpose of these comments is to improve your game. Sugar coated comments won't help you beat higher levels.

The reason you ignore the Ai on Noble is because it will take them to 500-1000ad just to pull off any kind of DOW. Even if they do you will have 10-15 cities easily.

The effort on micro does take effort. Pends if you want to play this game for fun or if you really want a challenge. Your play so far could easily beat monarch or higher in my opinion. You need to get away from all the low level bonuses. You really do have a big advantage on Noble. Your tech rate is soo much faster than the Ai too.

 

[Gumbolt]

Cordoba should be running the southern cottage.
Athens should be growing more?? Farm that grassland? Run cottages for a bit?
Workboat in Salamanca?? Probably would of 3 pop whipped that library a while ago.
Sparta really needed that second gold ages ago.
Santiago does not need a CH here. Same for Seville.
Still not sure about all these fog busters on Noble.

If your not planning to whip here consider a switch to caste to speed up these great people.

GS for part bulb of edu is nice. I still like free great artist from music. 6 turns to reach music. Easily beat French. On higher levels 700ad would be way too late.

The artist for a golden age would be great.

A cuirs rush here on French and Germans might be good.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

City Starvation: This usually means negative Fpt that will result in losing 1 Population next turn. The game will say a city is starving whenever Fpt is negative, but if total Food is greater in absolute magnitude than the current negative Fpt, it can be ok to do this to keep more specialists working and thus generate a Great Person in this city 1 or more turns sooner.

In most cases, you will want positive Fpt in cities that are under their happiness cap (they can grow in population without causing citizens to become unhappy). You can also grow into unhappiness, when you plan to whip something soon, especially when you want to whip something big, and need more population to enable the whip (if the whip button is greyed out, hover over it to see the population that need to be whipped away; your city must have twice that population to enable the whip.

If you are at happiness cap (no excess happiness), it is best to be at 0 Fpt and working specialists. Or at negative Fpt to speed up Great Person generation as mentioned above, but avoid population loss.

Caveat for BtS, after the AI has Alphabet (This may be more of an issue at levels above maybe Prince): They might poison your water supply via a spy. This causes an additional -8 Fpt that is reduced by 1 Fpt each turn until its effect is reduced to 0 Fpt:

0. If your city can manage 8 Fpt, you can manage the effects of this spy mission regardless of the amount of food in the bin.

1. If you can muster 7 Fpt, you must have a least 1F in the bin, which will be lost the first turn of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 7 Fpt = -1 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

2. If you can muster 6 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 = 3F in the bin, which will be lost the first two turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 6 Fpt = -2 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

3. If you can muster 5 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 = 6F in the bin, which will be lost the first three turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 5 Fpt = -3 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

4. If you can muster 4 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10F in the bin, which will be lost the first four turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 4 Fpt = -4 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

5. If you can muster 3 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15F in the bin, which will be lost the first five turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 3 Fpt = -5 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

6. If you can muster 2 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21F in the bin, which will be lost the first six turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 2 Fpt = -6 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

7. If you can muster 1 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28F in the bin, which will be lost the first six turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 1 Fpt = -7 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.

8. If you can muster only 0 Fpt, you must have a least 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36F in the bin, which will be lost the first eight turns of the poisoned water mission; There will be -8 Fpt + 0 Fpt = -8 Fpt the first turn of the poison water supply mission.