Current game suggestions and tips

[Chidge]

Hi all,

I've been lurking here for some time, reading very helpful threads and following some of the games like the nobles club etc.

Basically, i'd like some suggestions and tips on my current game as the Khmer. I'll be the first to admit i'm not the best player and i'm playing on warlord difficulty/marathon. I seem to be doing quite well in this game, and (to my knowledge) seem to have the tech lead. This is making it very difficult to utilise the trade bait techs that i've researched...though it worked well initially once i hit alphabet. My economy has been running in deficit for quite a while, and i think the only reason i have a positive treasury at the moment is from the brief war with england.

I have had good relations with most of the other civs, but am now at a point where i'm wondering what my next move should be. I've already eliminated Asoka and Victoria and now i share borders with saladin who is pleased with me and shares the same religion. There is no other access to the rest of the continent (and subsequently the other civs) unless through his lands or via the sea. In this save game, i've just noticed the bar city to my north, which i should probably go and destroy obviously not vigilant enough with the fogbusting

I have a hefty SoD ready, though i lack siege (that is next on the research list)

Any help you could offer would be appreciated as i'm still learning the game, and have never actually finished a game as i keep restarting to try and find better ways of doing things What have i done well/badly? what's a good course of action from here? Thanks in advance

 

[Meatbuster]

I think Warlord is too easy for you. Time to go up to Noble or Prince. You have twice the score of the next guy. Your rapid expansion looks really rapid and you've even conquered India in the BC's. Way to go. I noticed that you already have a GP farm set up, and a production city near the front lines. Brilliant.

If I'm to nitpick, with such a large empire, you should be teching Code of Laws and Currency instead of Construction. Looks like your army has thinned out from the war against India though, I would build more to take over the next guy.

 

[Chidge]

Funnily enough, Inda was conquered very early (with only 3 warriors i might add )and Delhi was my 3rd city Unfortunately i didn't get to steal any workers, and oddly enough, asoka didn't found any religions I delayed taking the fight to england as i had boxed them in, and they couldn't really do anything. This turned out to be a mistake IMO as they then dug in and made it much more difficult to wipe them out. I lost a fair few chariots in that war...and the silly woman wouldn't capitulate. i was kinda hoping for a slave state

Anyways, the stack i have near the front lines is the largest my army has ever been, though i've been hesitant to attack because of the possibly displomatic fallout with the other hindu's and having no siege.

On another note, i can never seem to pass over certain wonders. The urge to build things like the pyramids, oracle, hanging gardens etc very strong. Is this generally detrimental? The mids especially seems to help immensely with the unlocking of the civics.

 

[AySteve]

OK, first of all I definitely agree with the last poster, you are in such a strong position I would recommend next time moving up to noble. With regards to this game, you seem to be worried about your economy running at a slight deficit, but you are not even close to trouble. You can run at this science slider level for many turns. Also, note what happens when you turn the slider right down to zero – you are now making around 30gpt and your research is still respectable (consequence of your scientists+representation), so you can expand a lot more, and you don’t even have currency/courthouses yet.

I get the feeling you are reluctant to attack saladin as you are friendly with him, but I would be inclined to do so. Your large SOD is only 4 moves away from his capital (which is also the holy city for a reasonably spread religion) and you can also easily capture the city you are next to currently as it has only 2 defenders; just move to the other side of the river first. Unfortunately this city will be razed when you take it as it is only size 1. It is probably worth doing this now rather than waiting for siege because, if you notice from your espionage, saladin is currently researching feudalism, which means longbows and much tougher defence. Currently he will only have axes/archers, both of which are weak against x-bowmen. Some of your cities are currently at or above their happy cap. Taking these cities from saladin will let u get the elephants (also for your unique unit) and gold.

If you are having problems noticing when cities are about to grow into unhappiness, I would recommend using the BUG mod. It is extremely useful for this and many, many other things. I would probably ignore the barb city for now and concentrate on saladin. It will not get any stronger but he will, just don’t let an AI grab it! Saladin is so happy with you right now he will probably still be pleased even after you have got the -3 diplo hit for declaring war (and possibly -2 for razing his city) and the other AIs seem to like him, so he could make a decent vassal if you get feudalism. Personally tho I would probably finish him off

Your strong production city, I would say, should be producing military. I wouldn’t bother with the shawah pedagon (sp?), one of the weaker wonders IMO. Try and get a unit promoted to level 4 when you war and then build the heroic epic in this city.

If you don’t want to attack saladin I would recommend sending a fast unit through his territory into the other AIs land to see where their borders/cities are and what sort of defence they have. Even if you do war with saladin you should probably do this anyway as it is easy when you have open borders with nearly everyone as you do.

One other point, you seem to have open borders with some of the distant AIs, but no trade routes with them. Try to get trade routes ASAP as it will mean more profitable trade routes for your cities and the ability to trade for happiness resources. The easiest way to do this is probably just to send a boat round there, but if you need to do it over land remember that a) you can build roads in opponents territory if you have open borders b) these routes will probably be blocked if you war with saladin

 

[Chidge]

Thanks for the tips In regards to the happiness issues, i knew they were going in to unhappiness, and i have been changing tiles around to attempt to limit growth such that it doesn't happen, but the land that i have there is so food rich with the way i've developed it...perhaps i am thinking about having them reach sizes that are unrealistic at this point. The main issues i'm having are with figuring out the best times to whip. I've been using it wherever i see an opportunity but i seem to be creating happiness issues or a later lack of production/science due to losing citizens. Perhaps i just haven't got a proper undestanding of whipping techniques *shrug*

Does the tech trade situation become more beneficial when you're not leading the tech race early on? i seemed to gain almost no filler techs when i beelined some trade bait, as they didn't really seem to have anything to trade, and as you can see now, there's nothing really they can trade with me. I guess this is just a "move to noble difficulty" thing.

For some reason i had thought that building that wonder in the production city would provide a decent culture boost to the city such that (if i hadn't attacked saladin) his culture would not become a problem, and i may have been able to flip him (can capitals flip?) eventually if i'd pushed more culture there by wonder whoring and developing/defending the land i currently hold, with him as a friendly buffer zone from hostiles.

 

[Meatbuster]

Yeah, in higher difficulties, Aesthetics is the trade bait. (Or if you're stradding the south route with great merchants, Metal Casting.)
In Noble->Monarch, Alphabet can be the trade bait.

In Noble or lower, you are often ahead of the AI, so you will need to know what they like researching and avoid it, so you actually have something to trade.

 

[Ecori]

In the city screen there is a button called "Avoid growth". Turn it on and your city won't grow any further, preventing unhappiness. Just remember to turn it off once your increases.

 

[AySteve]

In the city screen there is a button called "Avoid growth". Turn it on and your city won't grow any further, preventing unhappiness. Just remember to turn it off once your increases.

Like you say, the key thing here is remembering to turn the growth back on again when you need to. I generally prefer to let my cities accidently grow and then whip them back into size again, rather than realise I have forgotten to turn avoid growth off and the city has been stagnant for 500 years!

Dont get me wrong with the happiness thing, its good that you have some really nice big cities and having lots of developed food tiles means you get them up nice and fast. In terms of slowing down growth, theres usually some farm tiles which you can either switch to using other tiles, or even change the farm for another improvement. For instance in this case, in Haryharalaya you can switch from working the food resource to another cottage (built on one of the spare grasslands) and in Yasodahrapura (whats with these city names!) you could change the riverside farms into watermills, slowing growth and gaining a few hammers. You can always easily change these back to farms later if you want to grow again, as workers tend to have little to do as the game goes on anyway. The only improvement you cant really change into and out of like this is cottages because of the huge time they take to mature.

In terms of culture the arabs currently aren’t even touching your right hand border with mecca (it is still 100% khmer). It probably wont give you any serious culture problems until it reaches legendary status, which you wont need to worry about for ages. Baghdad could be a bit more of a problem but again, its going to be a while before that is developed enough to be taking tiles from your cities.

In terms of culture flipping, I believe you can culture flip capitals but you need to put a lot of effort into it, it takes a very long time, and you usually have to place your cities with this goal in mind to do it. Its very rarely worth the investment when you could just do it with a big stack of units . In your case it is definitely not, I think the culture from your production city will not overlap with mecca until legendary if I counted right, and even then you would need an enourmous amount of culture to overcome theirs, due to the distance involved and the length of time since they founded it.

For whipping advice read the excellent article by Voiceofunreason - ‘Vocum sineratio: the whip’. Basically you always want to whip away at least 2 pop at once because you only get 1 unhappiness regardless of how many people you whip. You also want to make sure you put at least one turn of ‘normal’ production into the item first, as you then get a more favourable conversion of pop into hammers.
Post another save when you have got a bit further, I would be interested to see what ever happened to saladin

 

[TheWilltoAct]

For whipping advice read the excellent article by Voiceofunreason - ‘Vocum sineratio: the whip’. Basically you always want to whip away at least 2 pop at once because you only get 1 unhappiness regardless of how many people you whip. You also want to make sure you put at least one turn of ‘normal’ production into the item first, as you then get a more favourable conversion of pop into hammers.
Post another save when you have got a bit further, I would be interested to see what ever happened to saladin

Good advice.

I remember when I first started trying to use the whip...........

ehhhhhh

 

[bestsss]

>>Basically you always want to whip away at least 2 pop at once because you only get 1 unhappiness regardless of how many people you whip.

Well sometimes you want to overflow hammers from a whip into a wonder (for instance), so 1 pop whip, 1 turn before the production is over.

 

[AySteve]

Well sometimes you want to overflow hammers from a whip into a wonder (for instance), so 1 pop whip, 1 turn before the production is over.

Agreed. This 2+ pop whipping rule also goes out the window when you see monty marching on one of your poorly defended border cities with a stack of jags

I was referring mainly to the original posters situation of using the whip to deal with happiness issues, in which case whipping one pop is probably only going to make things worse (apart from maybe raising an army under hereditary rule)

 

[Chidge]

I was actually meaning the use of the whip in general I tend not to use it in my production cities unless i need something out fast, but in those high food commerce/science cities that have very poor production...the population never likes me very much

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Well just like AySteve is saying, don't stack whip unhappiness (if you can avoid it). Your people need those 10 turns between whips to start liking you again. That's why if your goal is to "whip away" unhappiness you should whip at least 2 population at once. That way your city will be small enough that the people will be happy again.

-5 pop city, 1 unhappy face
-Whip 2 pop: pop goes down by 2 as expected, +1 unhappy face; net change: + 1
-(5-2) = 3 pop city, (5-2+1) = 4 unhappiness; + 4 base

In this case I believe you should end up with a 3 pop city with 4 unhappy faces balanced out by the base 4 happy faces (for a non Charismatic resourceless leader).

Maybe you already get all this, I've played quite awhile and I still had to sweat that one out.

 

[Chidge]

argh, i'm not explaining myself well here am i? heh...what i meant was that i am using (or trying to) the food production as hammers by whipping. to get the few buildings i need in those cities, it works well to get the buildings out, but they seem to grow back into unhappiness (though i didn't know about the avoid growth button, thanks for that) and i am behind where i started from. I prefer to play in marathon speed, and the unhappiness lasts for 30 turns. Does the speed make whipping less desirable? In any case I'll try and stick to the 2 pop whip where possible and see how things go

Savegame will be uploaded soon

 

[TheWilltoAct]

It's OK for your pop to grow back into unhappiness. If you are still running the Slavery civic that situation is when you will want to do a 2 pop whip. Your city will be happy again and you will have gained 60 ! Hope that helps.
Questions are goooood

 

[Chidge]

So...The mighty Khmer have progressed steadily through to 1AD. Sally looked at me funny, and he wouldn't go to war with gilgamesh to slow him down, so my stack of death went forth to wipe the smug look off his face. He doesn't like me very much anymore you can see in the save that i have taken his old capital and another close by city that had gold, i razed the city that was on my border and re-settled in a slightly better position (i think). This has all net me ivory, gold, and the hindu holy city (but with no shrine) and now my happy caps are looking good

My stack is somewhat split at the moment due to needing the garrison troops and having a lack of a medic unit. But overall the war has gone fast and well. I've held off eliminating him cos i wanted to try out the whole vassal thing, but i'm thinking it may be better to wipe him out. He won't be much use now he's whipped away all his population and has only a couple of token cities left.

I see a problem with Gilgamesh though. He's researching quite fast, and seems to be fairly un-opposed in his far off position. I've bribed zidong to go to war with him to try and slow him down, which made zidong try to get me into the war too, which i didn't really want. All up it seems gilgamesh hasn't been slowed any. He's currently teching theology, which i can't beat him to, and if he gets the AP, he'll probably make it confusionism, which i don't have. might have to finish off with Sally and send a stack to deal with him perhaps...though him being so far away might cause some nasty army support costs.

I'm at a point now where i usually end up abandoning a game to try something differently, and i haven't progressed much further than this previously. So exploring new territories here now. Lets hope i don't screw it up

Suggestions?

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Your score is over double that of anybody else...... game won!
With a score that good there is zero chance that Gilgamesh will pose a serious threat. And man you've got Saladin down to 2 cities with 1 pop each!

I don't dare give any advise or further comments as I barely have a clue what I'm doing myself. Looks pretty good though.

 

[Chidge]

Well...after conquering much of saladin's lands, he capitulates and continues to stagnate where i left him. I then had Cyrus to contend with. He too was very pleased with me and of the same religion...nevertheless i go to war As i'm moving my stack towards cyrus, Zidong decides that i'm too powerful for him, and voluntarily vassals to me. I take his offer, but keep some troops ready in my lands just in case he decides to rescind while i'm trolloping through the persian lands. Cyrus capitulates after i take and raze just 2 cities. he should make a powerful slave...i mean ally

Anyway, after Cyrus capitulates, i basically took my 2 SoD's of era ahead troops (i had macemen and knights by this time...shortly followed by muskets which never got a chance to be used) and steamrolled all the other civs into capitulation. Their archers and swordsmen never had a chance. Only zidong had longbowmen towards the end, though if he wasn't a vassal, i don't think he'd have been a big problem with all the catapults i had.

I didn't know whether i'd make the land area required to get domination and as i'd never finished a game, whether or not a voluntary vassal will count towards a conquest victory. Turns out vassalling all the civs gave me about 46% land area, not enough for domination. But, obviously, was enough for a conquest victory Victory happened in 750AD and ended up with a score of ~136,000

Looking back, i was so far ahead for practically the entire game, i think noble would be a better place to start Thanks for all the tips and suggestions everyone, though i think i had the game in the bag from the start, I have learned a great deal.

 

[Syiss_]

I wouldn't give up. As others have said, having double the score of the next AI basically means you have already won. You would have to sabotage yourself intentionally to lose at this point on Warlord. The best advice I can really give you is to decide what victory condition you are going after and pursue it accordingly. Oh, and move up to Noble (maybe even Prince). I can't open the save game here at work, but from the discussion here it seems like you have a decent understanding of some concepts that I didn't even begin to understand until I started playing (and winning) on Monarch.

EDIT: You beat me by a couple minutes.

 

[Shafi]

yeah dude --- 750 AD, Score 130,000

I've never done that on warlord, i just recently moved to noble and actually thinking of moving aother level up .... i've never scored more than 65,000 or so ...

You should skip noble altogether and move to prince ...