Hello civfanaticians!
I've been playing civ off and on for years, starting with civ 1 way back when i was in grade school. I've also been playing Civ IV off and on since it came out. I reluctantly bought BtS off steam, wondering if it would break the vanilla game I enjoyed so much, but I've come around to it ('cept espionage. Need to wrap my head 'round that one.)
I'm a solid Prince player who wins from pretty much any start, but I've been struggling with monarch. I used to be a builder, but I've shaken - most! - of that habit. However, I'm not always sure to do with my hammers, especially in the midgame. I know what CE entails, and until recently I did not know anything else. I beat my last game without building a single cottage though :]
This thread will contain many of the questions and difficulties I've faced in my struggle to become a better player. I've read a lot of threads and articles on the forums, but I may have missed just what I need and thus still could use pointers to FMs to RT. This is a very long post, but I figure different people can help me out with different parts of it
. I realize most of my questions have the answer "it depends on the situation", but since I can't figure it out from the situation alone, I hope someone more skilled is willing to step in and give me a hand.
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== Similar win dates ==
First off, win dates. On this install, I've beat Prince 10 times using the Domination victory condition. After mopping up the world a few minutes ago, I noticed the win dates all almost all fall within several turns of one another - except for my highest-score 1903, they all lie within the 1918-1925 range. This would indicate that I tend to play rather samey, at least when not going for a more esoteric win condition.
I usually play Continents or Fractal. Normally, I might go to war early ("early" as in I've got many metal units while my enemy has a few) to take out a weak neighbour, then sit back and tech until I have some sort of military advantage, usually rifles and trebs (not cannon) over Longbowmen. By the time my first war is done I've usually destroyed or vassalized a strong rival civ, and the others have Riflemen too, or are uncomfortably close to getting them. Thus I sit back and tech for further military advantage (usually infantry). Once gained, I use it to take out another, then I tend to grab flight or tanks, and I go into endgame steamroll mode. There might be a large body of water to cross which delays each later invasion, but that is how my games tend to pan out.
It's getting a bit boring. I ought to have more opportunity for war in the early game, and with the tech lead I tend to get, I should be able to win earlier. What tends to happen is that I have a very strong tech lead, win liberalism, and then kind of get bogged down teching up to riflemen, while the rest of the world somehow catches up somewhat in tech. There should be some kind of advantage I could push in the middle, but I've yet to find it. Perhaps knights / trebs for another war before rifles? Some ideas would be wonderful!
== How to SE, the SE midgame & SE production ==
I've read around on the forums and started doing some tentative steps into SE. If I can build (usually with a strong production capital / 2nd city and lots of forests) or capture the Pyramids and have strong food, I like to farm up and get tons of scientists in a few cities. In my last game, I did not build a single cottage, but rather relied on my capital and a conquered neighbours old capital (that held the pyramids) which provided strong research into around ~1450 AD, when Hatshepsut, on another continent, caught up with me in research and eventually overtook me in raw science production (with my lead, she didn't catch up in terms of techs entirely before dying in 1914).
My beaker acceleration curve started stalling somewhere around 900. I got to 1050-ish before Scientific Method, which dropped me back to 890 or so. At this point I had a huge tech lead, but no one to fight on my island. I had rather few useful cities - 2 insanely strong, 2 good, and 5 acceptable. What i did was to build siege units and sea transport units until I hit Industrialism, then build infantry until I had enough to invade the large continent with all the other civs. This worked well, and once I landed I pretty much warred for 200 years straight until I had won, but I think I could have done better.
I pondered whether I should switch to cottages (emancipation being on hand), but it seemed like it would set me back a lot. When is switching out worthwhile, and how do you do it? For my SE, I've pretty much been farming green tiles and workshopping brown ones, which gives me the choice between very strong science (work green tiles, put everything else into scientists) or very strong production (working several 1F/4H tiles seems good to me, but I have a feeling this approach is suboptimal).
I also wonder whether I'm using my cities right. Most of the time I end up with lots of scientists in my capital and another city, but not speicalizing the others. How big should one make cities for science using SE? Is it good to have a city with 4-5 specialists (which could be built on pretty damn marginal land), or should one only use the ones with tons of food resouces, grow them big, and then really go nuts on the scientists?
== Great People usage ==
Before, I settled pretty much every specialist I got except prophets, which went to a shrine. Now, I'm enlightened to the power of bulbing, but I still tend to only bulb really key techs - Philo, Education or Liberalism with a GS. I usually don't GS-bulb things that are outside my current immediate techpath. I rarely bulb with the other ones -bulbing away a GE seems like a waste (the old builder in me speaking), the artist tends to want to bulb cheap techs that I usually leave behind, the GS likewise, and the merchant I want to hold on to either for a trade mission or Sushi (which I rarely build as I end up in state property).
What is proper to bulb, and what is proper to settle? When I have around 400 beakers a turn, I'm reluctant to bulb a GS when it would give me 20 or even 30 (post-oxford) beakers a turn in my main science city. I have a feeling the temporal advantage of getting a few turns of research done in one go is strong, but it feels wrong to me. 60-80 turns until break-even feels OK to me, the hammer nonwithstanding, but I have the feeling here that I'm not playing as well as possible. What's the way to think about this? When should one settle and when should you bulb even for out-of-the-way techs?
== Early library & alphabet ==
Someone posted a disparging comment about noobs not getting their academy up until the 1000 AD's, which hit me right where it should. I had no idea how that was possible until I figured out that hey, one can actually use specialists actively. Now I often get my library up early and crank out a quick GS. What value should one place on this ? How early is too early, how late is too late, and how much should one forsake for the early academy?
Recently I've been playing on monarch and I've had trouble getting my tech going early. How worthwhile is it to bulb alphabet if you've got a poor commerce start? Should one settle the scientist or make the academy to get at least a little science, or is it better to bulb "low-beaker" techs worth ~400-600 beakers instead?
== Tech trading reluctance ==
I'm a low-difficulty player, so I often get a tech lead, or take a different tech path from the AI. I realize that I could get a real bang for the buck by trading for techs I haven't elected to get yet, but I'm often reluctant to trade away techs to the AI. Some, like philosophy, I can toss out without a heavy feeling, but I tend to be real careful about giving away Caste System, Civil Service, Economics, Nationalism and the like. Some, like Civil Service, I think it's good to hold on to. Others, like the trade-route-increasing techs, I should probably let go. Is there a guideline one could follow for this? How reluctant ought I be trading techs to the AI, and what is there to be afraid of?
== Earlygame as ruler without mining and resource techs ==
I used to grow my cities a few steps before building workers and settlers. This worked fine on noble, but gave me difficulties on prince, and I've not really tried it on monarch. These days I usually beeline bronze working and go worker in order to chop worker, then worker again (or settler if I need a resource / block quick). This gives me difficulties when I play (always Random) a leader without Mining or a resource tech. The Bronze Working comes out several turns after the first worker, and without Farming he has nothing to do.
Depending on the map, I either research Farming or (with 3F) build a unit first. Having size 2 and a warrior/scout is nice, as is hooking up a quick farm, but I've also had the situation that I'm so forested that there is no immediately farmable land, or only poor farmable land. What's the best play here? However I do it, I feel behind when I can't chop out my settler or worker.
== My first monarch win, drafting & the all-in ==
This came out as something of a battle report, with no clear questions. It was an awesome game and I felt I just had to share it with someone. I would also like to learn from it - comments are very welcome on my play - what could I have done instead?
I recently had my first win on monarch after a few tries. I started out on what turned out (fractal) to be a pangea map. I started in the NW corner of the map, with three players to my south eventually ending up slotted in fairly narrow N-to-S corridors neighboring each other. To my east, Pericles, and South and to the East of him (out of contact with my borders) two other civs. I took a fair bit of land, got a tech lead, and watched as pericles got really big. I was in my usual post-liberalism rut, getting Rifles, when I realized I'd lose the game unless I was proactive. Into nationhood I went, producing in my strong cities and drafting in my weak, got an army, and eventually took out Pericles after a long war.
During this time, the Sumerian in the middle of the three southern civs had gotten insane research and had bypassed me in tech. He had the militarily strong (absolute SW) Hannibal as a vassal, and a strong military himself. I had to choose between trying to go to war with him to stop him from going space or eventually crushing me with military, or taking out the weaker chinese (eastmost of the thee slotted civs) and eventually Joao and Huayana to the east.
While in hindsight it was a bad decision, I did not dare to face the combined military might of Sumer and Carthage. My 30-ish infantry and 15-ish cannons rolled into china, taking the border cities and splitting up. One went for Beijing, and took it. The other was about to take a major mid-deep city when I hit up the Win condition screen to see how much I had to take for domination. Still tons of land and people to capture. How much culture do I have? not a lot. How much culture does - ACK. Sumer would win a culture victory in 40 turns.
I stopped the war against China (which gave me a Beijing 10 tiles away from my nearest city, entirely surrounded by chinese culture, with my strongest army trapped in it), and regrouped in my border city near sumer. I had infantry and cannon, he had tanks, fighters, and sundry. I considered waiting until I had tanks too, but I was too afraid of him getting bombers, which would totally ruin my day.
I spent fifteen turns getting ready for the war, drafting and building and whipping. I handed most of my captured cities back to China (who still had half of his military, which was ~.7 of mine), in the hopes that I would get open borders so I could bring my beijing army out. No such luck. I handed back beijing to China, got that army, and after a military buildup of a caliber I've never done before, had a stack of 100 units ready to go.
This military buildup, incidentally, cost a lot of money and happiness. I wasn't doing too well commerce-wise before the war, but now I was a wreck. Even at 20 % tech I was barely breaking even, but since I knew I'd lose in 25 turns unless I could capture one of his culture cities, I - with fear in my stomach - went for it.
I declared war on Gilgamesh. My doomstack moved into his territory. It got bombed - he did get bombers anyway. Crap. Hannibal sent a few units to help, but sent most of his forces to my border with him. I'd built the Globe Theatre in that city, though, and new recruits spilled out like ants to tacke his assault. The city held, and stalemate ensued on that flank.
The chinese declared war, sending out ~30 cavalry and several cannon, right up my weakly defended south eastern flank. I had moved all my units from there to the main sumerian assault force. All that was left was the too young and the too old, making up a squad of riflemen in each city. My main army would easily have crushed him, but that was 10 turns away, and if I moved away from the Sumerian front my old cities would have been captured and the game lost. I looked over the situation and found that the cities bordering china were either captured in the recent war, or fairly weak anyway. I decided that I should try to make Mao take the lesser cities, stalling him while drafting up an army that could stop him in a more well-developed city.
Back on the sumerian front my stack of infantry and cannon clashed with his forces - and they held! The sheer number of units I had, poorly-trained as they were, was simply too much for his stack to handle. His initial assault killed a fourth and badly damaged half. The remaining fourth and some of the wounded killed what was left of the force that had hurt my stack so, covering the retreat of more than half of my initial assault. I had been driven from the field of battle, but stepping into my own territory and healing, I knew his victory was phyrric.
When healed, I took his border city. While I suffered terrible losses, the bulk of his army had been broken. The chinese front had stabilized - I had managed to draft and build enough units to stop him at the gates of the greek shrine, and eventually I could destroy his stack and retake my losses.
In Sumer, my army had reached his outermost culture city. It had 45000 culture, stood on a hill, and had elite defenders. After the bloodbath, I knew I could win the game.
... which sums up the awesome part of the game. After that, it was a long, long war taking the rest of sumer, conquering hannibal with drafted infantry and eventually tanks and taking china. After getting rifles I was in war pretty much constantly until the game ended with my tanks rolling into the last chinese city. For long parts I was running at 0-20% research and still with a 50-200 gold deficit, city captures and pillaging keeping me afloat.
It was the first time I really went for a large quantity of units, and the first time I desperately went all-in, and I learnt that after a certain threshold there's really not a lot that can be done to stop such an attack without nukes. It was exhilarating to play, not the least because I eventually took my first monarch scalp. To paraphrase sir Alex: Civilization, bloody hell.
I've been playing civ off and on for years, starting with civ 1 way back when i was in grade school. I've also been playing Civ IV off and on since it came out. I reluctantly bought BtS off steam, wondering if it would break the vanilla game I enjoyed so much, but I've come around to it ('cept espionage. Need to wrap my head 'round that one.)
I'm a solid Prince player who wins from pretty much any start, but I've been struggling with monarch. I used to be a builder, but I've shaken - most! - of that habit. However, I'm not always sure to do with my hammers, especially in the midgame. I know what CE entails, and until recently I did not know anything else. I beat my last game without building a single cottage though :]
This thread will contain many of the questions and difficulties I've faced in my struggle to become a better player. I've read a lot of threads and articles on the forums, but I may have missed just what I need and thus still could use pointers to FMs to RT. This is a very long post, but I figure different people can help me out with different parts of it
. I realize most of my questions have the answer "it depends on the situation", but since I can't figure it out from the situation alone, I hope someone more skilled is willing to step in and give me a hand.-------------
== Similar win dates ==
First off, win dates. On this install, I've beat Prince 10 times using the Domination victory condition. After mopping up the world a few minutes ago, I noticed the win dates all almost all fall within several turns of one another - except for my highest-score 1903, they all lie within the 1918-1925 range. This would indicate that I tend to play rather samey, at least when not going for a more esoteric win condition.
I usually play Continents or Fractal. Normally, I might go to war early ("early" as in I've got many metal units while my enemy has a few) to take out a weak neighbour, then sit back and tech until I have some sort of military advantage, usually rifles and trebs (not cannon) over Longbowmen. By the time my first war is done I've usually destroyed or vassalized a strong rival civ, and the others have Riflemen too, or are uncomfortably close to getting them. Thus I sit back and tech for further military advantage (usually infantry). Once gained, I use it to take out another, then I tend to grab flight or tanks, and I go into endgame steamroll mode. There might be a large body of water to cross which delays each later invasion, but that is how my games tend to pan out.
It's getting a bit boring. I ought to have more opportunity for war in the early game, and with the tech lead I tend to get, I should be able to win earlier. What tends to happen is that I have a very strong tech lead, win liberalism, and then kind of get bogged down teching up to riflemen, while the rest of the world somehow catches up somewhat in tech. There should be some kind of advantage I could push in the middle, but I've yet to find it. Perhaps knights / trebs for another war before rifles? Some ideas would be wonderful!
== How to SE, the SE midgame & SE production ==
I've read around on the forums and started doing some tentative steps into SE. If I can build (usually with a strong production capital / 2nd city and lots of forests) or capture the Pyramids and have strong food, I like to farm up and get tons of scientists in a few cities. In my last game, I did not build a single cottage, but rather relied on my capital and a conquered neighbours old capital (that held the pyramids) which provided strong research into around ~1450 AD, when Hatshepsut, on another continent, caught up with me in research and eventually overtook me in raw science production (with my lead, she didn't catch up in terms of techs entirely before dying in 1914).
My beaker acceleration curve started stalling somewhere around 900. I got to 1050-ish before Scientific Method, which dropped me back to 890 or so. At this point I had a huge tech lead, but no one to fight on my island. I had rather few useful cities - 2 insanely strong, 2 good, and 5 acceptable. What i did was to build siege units and sea transport units until I hit Industrialism, then build infantry until I had enough to invade the large continent with all the other civs. This worked well, and once I landed I pretty much warred for 200 years straight until I had won, but I think I could have done better.
I pondered whether I should switch to cottages (emancipation being on hand), but it seemed like it would set me back a lot. When is switching out worthwhile, and how do you do it? For my SE, I've pretty much been farming green tiles and workshopping brown ones, which gives me the choice between very strong science (work green tiles, put everything else into scientists) or very strong production (working several 1F/4H tiles seems good to me, but I have a feeling this approach is suboptimal).
I also wonder whether I'm using my cities right. Most of the time I end up with lots of scientists in my capital and another city, but not speicalizing the others. How big should one make cities for science using SE? Is it good to have a city with 4-5 specialists (which could be built on pretty damn marginal land), or should one only use the ones with tons of food resouces, grow them big, and then really go nuts on the scientists?
== Great People usage ==
Before, I settled pretty much every specialist I got except prophets, which went to a shrine. Now, I'm enlightened to the power of bulbing, but I still tend to only bulb really key techs - Philo, Education or Liberalism with a GS. I usually don't GS-bulb things that are outside my current immediate techpath. I rarely bulb with the other ones -bulbing away a GE seems like a waste (the old builder in me speaking), the artist tends to want to bulb cheap techs that I usually leave behind, the GS likewise, and the merchant I want to hold on to either for a trade mission or Sushi (which I rarely build as I end up in state property).
What is proper to bulb, and what is proper to settle? When I have around 400 beakers a turn, I'm reluctant to bulb a GS when it would give me 20 or even 30 (post-oxford) beakers a turn in my main science city. I have a feeling the temporal advantage of getting a few turns of research done in one go is strong, but it feels wrong to me. 60-80 turns until break-even feels OK to me, the hammer nonwithstanding, but I have the feeling here that I'm not playing as well as possible. What's the way to think about this? When should one settle and when should you bulb even for out-of-the-way techs?
== Early library & alphabet ==
Someone posted a disparging comment about noobs not getting their academy up until the 1000 AD's, which hit me right where it should. I had no idea how that was possible until I figured out that hey, one can actually use specialists actively. Now I often get my library up early and crank out a quick GS. What value should one place on this ? How early is too early, how late is too late, and how much should one forsake for the early academy?
Recently I've been playing on monarch and I've had trouble getting my tech going early. How worthwhile is it to bulb alphabet if you've got a poor commerce start? Should one settle the scientist or make the academy to get at least a little science, or is it better to bulb "low-beaker" techs worth ~400-600 beakers instead?
== Tech trading reluctance ==
I'm a low-difficulty player, so I often get a tech lead, or take a different tech path from the AI. I realize that I could get a real bang for the buck by trading for techs I haven't elected to get yet, but I'm often reluctant to trade away techs to the AI. Some, like philosophy, I can toss out without a heavy feeling, but I tend to be real careful about giving away Caste System, Civil Service, Economics, Nationalism and the like. Some, like Civil Service, I think it's good to hold on to. Others, like the trade-route-increasing techs, I should probably let go. Is there a guideline one could follow for this? How reluctant ought I be trading techs to the AI, and what is there to be afraid of?
== Earlygame as ruler without mining and resource techs ==
I used to grow my cities a few steps before building workers and settlers. This worked fine on noble, but gave me difficulties on prince, and I've not really tried it on monarch. These days I usually beeline bronze working and go worker in order to chop worker, then worker again (or settler if I need a resource / block quick). This gives me difficulties when I play (always Random) a leader without Mining or a resource tech. The Bronze Working comes out several turns after the first worker, and without Farming he has nothing to do.
Depending on the map, I either research Farming or (with 3F) build a unit first. Having size 2 and a warrior/scout is nice, as is hooking up a quick farm, but I've also had the situation that I'm so forested that there is no immediately farmable land, or only poor farmable land. What's the best play here? However I do it, I feel behind when I can't chop out my settler or worker.
== My first monarch win, drafting & the all-in ==
This came out as something of a battle report, with no clear questions. It was an awesome game and I felt I just had to share it with someone. I would also like to learn from it - comments are very welcome on my play - what could I have done instead?
I recently had my first win on monarch after a few tries. I started out on what turned out (fractal) to be a pangea map. I started in the NW corner of the map, with three players to my south eventually ending up slotted in fairly narrow N-to-S corridors neighboring each other. To my east, Pericles, and South and to the East of him (out of contact with my borders) two other civs. I took a fair bit of land, got a tech lead, and watched as pericles got really big. I was in my usual post-liberalism rut, getting Rifles, when I realized I'd lose the game unless I was proactive. Into nationhood I went, producing in my strong cities and drafting in my weak, got an army, and eventually took out Pericles after a long war.
During this time, the Sumerian in the middle of the three southern civs had gotten insane research and had bypassed me in tech. He had the militarily strong (absolute SW) Hannibal as a vassal, and a strong military himself. I had to choose between trying to go to war with him to stop him from going space or eventually crushing me with military, or taking out the weaker chinese (eastmost of the thee slotted civs) and eventually Joao and Huayana to the east.
While in hindsight it was a bad decision, I did not dare to face the combined military might of Sumer and Carthage. My 30-ish infantry and 15-ish cannons rolled into china, taking the border cities and splitting up. One went for Beijing, and took it. The other was about to take a major mid-deep city when I hit up the Win condition screen to see how much I had to take for domination. Still tons of land and people to capture. How much culture do I have? not a lot. How much culture does - ACK. Sumer would win a culture victory in 40 turns.
I stopped the war against China (which gave me a Beijing 10 tiles away from my nearest city, entirely surrounded by chinese culture, with my strongest army trapped in it), and regrouped in my border city near sumer. I had infantry and cannon, he had tanks, fighters, and sundry. I considered waiting until I had tanks too, but I was too afraid of him getting bombers, which would totally ruin my day.
I spent fifteen turns getting ready for the war, drafting and building and whipping. I handed most of my captured cities back to China (who still had half of his military, which was ~.7 of mine), in the hopes that I would get open borders so I could bring my beijing army out. No such luck. I handed back beijing to China, got that army, and after a military buildup of a caliber I've never done before, had a stack of 100 units ready to go.
This military buildup, incidentally, cost a lot of money and happiness. I wasn't doing too well commerce-wise before the war, but now I was a wreck. Even at 20 % tech I was barely breaking even, but since I knew I'd lose in 25 turns unless I could capture one of his culture cities, I - with fear in my stomach - went for it.
I declared war on Gilgamesh. My doomstack moved into his territory. It got bombed - he did get bombers anyway. Crap. Hannibal sent a few units to help, but sent most of his forces to my border with him. I'd built the Globe Theatre in that city, though, and new recruits spilled out like ants to tacke his assault. The city held, and stalemate ensued on that flank.
The chinese declared war, sending out ~30 cavalry and several cannon, right up my weakly defended south eastern flank. I had moved all my units from there to the main sumerian assault force. All that was left was the too young and the too old, making up a squad of riflemen in each city. My main army would easily have crushed him, but that was 10 turns away, and if I moved away from the Sumerian front my old cities would have been captured and the game lost. I looked over the situation and found that the cities bordering china were either captured in the recent war, or fairly weak anyway. I decided that I should try to make Mao take the lesser cities, stalling him while drafting up an army that could stop him in a more well-developed city.
Back on the sumerian front my stack of infantry and cannon clashed with his forces - and they held! The sheer number of units I had, poorly-trained as they were, was simply too much for his stack to handle. His initial assault killed a fourth and badly damaged half. The remaining fourth and some of the wounded killed what was left of the force that had hurt my stack so, covering the retreat of more than half of my initial assault. I had been driven from the field of battle, but stepping into my own territory and healing, I knew his victory was phyrric.
When healed, I took his border city. While I suffered terrible losses, the bulk of his army had been broken. The chinese front had stabilized - I had managed to draft and build enough units to stop him at the gates of the greek shrine, and eventually I could destroy his stack and retake my losses.
In Sumer, my army had reached his outermost culture city. It had 45000 culture, stood on a hill, and had elite defenders. After the bloodbath, I knew I could win the game.
... which sums up the awesome part of the game. After that, it was a long, long war taking the rest of sumer, conquering hannibal with drafted infantry and eventually tanks and taking china. After getting rifles I was in war pretty much constantly until the game ended with my tanks rolling into the last chinese city. For long parts I was running at 0-20% research and still with a 50-200 gold deficit, city captures and pillaging keeping me afloat.
It was the first time I really went for a large quantity of units, and the first time I desperately went all-in, and I learnt that after a certain threshold there's really not a lot that can be done to stop such an attack without nukes. It was exhilarating to play, not the least because I eventually took my first monarch scalp. To paraphrase sir Alex: Civilization, bloody hell.
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so plan your research with regards to working tiles in that order, i.e. agriculture/animal husbandry>bronzeworking/archery>pottery/writing. anyway, worker first, then warriors while growing to size two, then maybe chop-assisting another worker or settler is likely the strongest open on 85% of maps. 
