[BTS] Expediting the finish

[Oaq]

After about 150 tries at Emperor difficulty with default settings, I have finally achieved (due to your sound advice) what seems to be a probable winning position. It is the late 1800s. My random leader is Louis XIV. Fission and Rocketry are in research. Mining Inc is mine and it looks as though I will soon get Cereal Mills, too. I have 20 good cites and some spare land on which I could, but need not, build a few more.

But now there are too many little fighter planes and destroyers and such to move around. Deciding where to place my next Machine Gun or Infantry or Artillery or whatever has become an unengaging task. Managing my spies is no longer fun. The game grows tedious. I doubt that I will finish it.

The failure to finish disappoints me.

I liked the game better when I was losing.

Is there a reasonable way to finish the game without wasting 20 uninteresting hours on its completion?

(Thank you for the past sound advice, by the way. I appreciate it. Had you not advised me, I would not now have the problem I have.)

 

[5tephen]

It sounds like you're in a winning position.

As you improve you'll likely avoid playing to such a late date which avoids so many units.

As it stands what is your planned victory condition? If space, maybe you can stop building/delete units and save money? If military, do you have a tech advantage so you can turn off research and concentrate purely on war? What would you have to do to get UN victory?

What will you do with Cereal Mills? Does it speed up your victory or would it be a distraction?

My experience of spies and machine guns is to generally avoid.

 

[Oaq]

As it stands what is your planned victory condition?

Thank you for asking. Military might be surest but I have already eliminated the other two civilizations that started on my continent. A naval world conquest sounds too tedious, so I was going for space.

If space, maybe you can stop building/delete units and save money?

The annoying Boudica, whose civ ranks fourth, won't stop attacking me. Hence the units.

I would eliminate Boudica but, realistically, her neighbor Augustus (whose civ ranks second) would probably net most of the gains, after which I assume that Augustus would start attacking me.

If military, do you have a tech advantage so you can turn off research and concentrate purely on war?

I lead by a margin of one tech.

What would you have to do to get UN victory?

I would love that. Don't know how.

What will you do with Cereal Mills?

Well, I do not know. I assume just feed people and thereby breed more specialists. Is this a mistake?

My experience of spies and machine guns is to generally avoid.

I did not know that. Is counterespionage not worth the effort, at least?

In my geography, counterespionage can only be effected by tedious shipping.

 

[Major Tom]

After about 150 tries at Emperor difficulty with default settings, I have finally achieved (due to your sound advice) what seems to be a probable winning position. It is the late 1800s. My random leader is Louis XIV. Fission and Rocketry are in research. Mining Inc is mine and it looks as though I will soon get Cereal Mills, too. I have 20 good cites and some spare land on which I could, but need not, build a few more.

But now there are too many little fighter planes and destroyers and such to move around. Deciding where to place my next Machine Gun or Infantry or Artillery or whatever has become an unengaging task. Managing my spies is no longer fun. The game grows tedious. I doubt that I will finish it.

The failure to finish disappoints me.

I liked the game better when I was losing.

Is there a reasonable way to finish the game without wasting 20 uninteresting hours on its completion?

(Thank you for the past sound advice, by the way. I appreciate it. Had you not advised me, I would not now have the problem I have.)

Some mods have AI autoplay integrated. Ctrl+Shift X and just write the number of turns you like the AI to control. However, it may do incredible stupid things but at least it is fast. Not sure what mods have this component. Use Better BUG AI myself, where it works.

 

[5tephen]

Can Augustus be persuaded to attack Boudica or vice versa? Or another civ against her?

I feel your pain with naval invasions. Ultimately whipping out ~10 transports and just going for it militarily might be less painful than death by a 1000 cuts in a protracted war.

Some screenshots of tech trades, resource trades, map and diplo would be interesting. Not sure I'll have time to look at a save but could pop one up in case I can?

Corporations can be good but state property is great and negates the benefit of corporations and corporations require a lot of micromanagement to leverage well and you seem fed up of late game micromanagement already... I think general consensus is Sushi and Mining Inc are the only good ones if being used at all.

UN victory probably worth having a look into via search function. I'm an OK player but not sure I'm best placed to guide you through this. However with 20 cities you're probably number 1 for population? If so, you'll be a candidate for the votes. Need Mass Media to build UN. A cute tactic would be to gift this tech to a small, unpopular AI and befriend everyone else as whoever builds it and the biggest civ (which needs to be you) should be in the votes. Can build farms and get biology to maximize population.

I am sure there is a place for spies and Kaitzilla wrote a brilliant guide on the matter but I win regularly on immortal and haven't built a spy in years or an espionage building so think it's best to ignore espionage unless you have a specific purpose.

As always, there are some really great players who frequent these forums and if they contradict any of this, go with their advice not mine.

 

[coanda]

With the caveat that multiplayer is a very different beast, and this advice is all geared towards espionage in single-player...

You can simply ignore spies and espionage entirely if you want. The AIs won't generally do enough damage to make counter-espionage worthwhile (with sometimes the exception of during the space race). Most aggressive espionage actions are not that worthwhile.

A "cheap and easy" use for a modest number of espionage points picked up incidentally is to use a spy to either revolt a city, or sabotage a city walls, right before you attack it - to remove most or all of its defensive bonuses without needing to waste precious siege unit time on that.

If you have a good understanding of how all the espionage modifiers work, and are prepared to do some moderately unintuitive cheese to make espionage as cheap as possible, influence civics, influence religion, steal technology, and sometimes steal treasury can become very worthwhile. But that really requires building your whole empire around espionage, it's not something you do halfway.

 

[Oaq]

Not sure I'll have time to look at a save but could pop one up in case I can?

It is unnecessary for you to look at a save as far as I know, though I appreciate the thought. Nevertheless, the save is attached.

 

[5tephen]

Good news is you've basically won.

Spoiler :

Can either go diplo or space. Even before playing your save it looks Gandhi is heading for mass media and will build UN and given Augustus is at war with Boudica too and she is half the size of him she won't be causing trouble too much longer.

I won within an hour of opening your save.

Spoiler :

Cancelled building everything everywhere and built research (would have been preferrable to build wealth instead but wasn't concentrating.) Was hoping for diplo but planning space too. You're tech situation is great and you can produce so much research. I rarely get this far down the tech tree so I'm unsure what's optimal but thought I'd get The Internet therefore avoiding trying to research any techs the AI already had which I'd get for free - should have gone for rocketry though as earlier Apollo is earlier spaceship. Given that you had two great engineers I built the Space Elevator with them but I'm told this is not worth the effort usually. I gifted away techs to Gilgamesh and Augustus which got us to friendly -> diplomatic victory. Have attached the save for the turn before victory.

Things that might help you win earlier:
- 3 great engineers sitting in Paris with nothing to do - try and adjust your cities so they produce better great persons or at least a mix for more golden ages. Paris was running 3 engineer specialists even at this point and there is a risk of getting another great engineer that may well not be that useful to you.
- Chop the forest much earlier - would have given you a boost earlier and not worth keeping around for lumber mills. State property with caste system makes workshops great with a 10% civilization wide boost in production and avoids corporations (which are of course useless if you do go state property.)
- look for trades every turn - Gilgamesh had 12 gold available for trade for uranium.
- build less buildings - I used to build every possible building in every city but over time, I find the only ones that are truly useful are granary, library and forge and even forges don't go everywhere nor libraries later in the game. If you're not building buildings you can build wealth to speed up research, get a tech advantage and win the game by hitting fast with superior units or build units en masse to overwhelm your opponent.

 

[5tephen]

A couple of other things.

Stacking your destroyers would be better so if one gets picked off you can retaliate against your weakened opponent.

This game rewards a strong commitment to short term goals coupled with a longer term strategy. War with Boudica might fit an overall strategy of domination win by establishing a foothold on that continent and taking out an opponent. If war isn't part of your long-term strategy diplo should be manipulated as much as possible to avoid it. Once you're on a path to war, full commitment works best - producing the odd destroyer and fighter won't overwhelm or deter her - if you spend 10 turns with every city producing transports, a few destroyers for escort/bombard purposes and a bunch of cannons and rifles you could eliminate Boudica in another 10 turns and stop having to worry about her repeatedly declaring on you.

Fractal is my favourite map script so I understand your choice of map but for learning and if you don't like naval warfare, panagea may be better. If you like playing with events on, that's cool but huts and events can really skew the game making results much more luck dependant so maybe better to turn them off for learning - have to choose custom game rather than play now when starting a new game to choose these options.

Anyway, well done on eliminating England and Egypt and setting yourself up into a winning position. Hope to see you posting your own victory screenshot!

 

[Oaq]

Hope to see you posting your own victory screenshot!

Thanks for asking. It's not as suave as yours, but here it is.

Spoiler :

 

[Jivilov]

Good news is you've basically won.

Spoiler :

Cancelled building everything everywhere and built research (would have been preferrable to build wealth instead but wasn't concentrating.) Was hoping for diplo but planning space too. You're tech situation is great and you can produce so much research. I rarely get this far down the tech tree so I'm unsure what's optimal but thought I'd get The Internet therefore avoiding trying to research any techs the AI already had which I'd get for free - should have gone for rocketry though as earlier Apollo is earlier spaceship. Given that you had two great engineers I built the Space Elevator with them but I'm told this is not worth the effort usually. I gifted away techs to Gilgamesh and Augustus which got us to friendly -> diplomatic victory. Have attached the save for the turn before victory.

Things that might help you win earlier:

- build less buildings - I used to build every possible building in every city but over time, I find the only ones that are truly useful are granary, library and forge and even forges don't go everywhere nor libraries later in the game. If you're not building buildings you can build wealth to speed up research, get a tech advantage and win the game by hitting fast with superior units or build units en masse to overwhelm your opponent.

OK so what's to be done about pollution and unhappiness if you don't build the requisite buildings and trading for resources isn't enough? Since more pop=more unhealth/unhappiness do you settle for maybe size 15-20 pop so you may still build factories, power plants and research labs for the SS? Noticed that in Oaq's save he had several cities with over 20 pop, while no AI Civ had any beyond that. Is there an "optimum" city size for producing units, wealth, etc. without getting mired in pollution or unhappiness? Thanks for your kind attention. (BTW an experienced intermittent player here who's won on Emperor three times---twice on BTS, once on Warlords---without knowing basic stuff like this.)

 

[coanda]

Smaller cities is a by-product rather than a goal in itself of another, more important priority.

Faster payoff from new cities. You want cities overlapping each other and sharing tiles, so you can trade off which city is working which tile depending on which one needs food at the moment, which one needs more production, which one can take time to grow new cottages and which one has good multipliers for working highly-developed cottage tiles, that sort of thing. It also means however much land you manage to box out from the AI (which can become a real sticking point on Immortal or especially Deity) you get all the decent tiles there worked earlier in the game, without needing to wait until late-game when you can get your health and happiness caps super-high to use them, so you start making full use of your land earlier. Plus it makes worker micro easier (fewer roads needed, fewer wasted turns walking workers from one city to another) and keeps distance upkeep costs down.

Closer-packed, denser settling is usually the way to go. And when you do that, you naturally end up with more, smaller cities by the end-game.

 

[Gumbolt]

As above way too much forest left here. Especially round your capital
You have 6 destroyers but spread out. They will never stop an AI fleet unless you have 7-8+ in a stack.
You have no real army here. You only require 1 unit per city then a stack of 20+ units. |With rail road this is ample. If you use scouting air units you will see AI stacks a mile off.
Not sure the AI has any stack over 10 units.
Your 2nd and 3rd city were miles away from your capital. If you are leaving a gap of 6-7 tiles you will not win at higher levels.

Settling dates for 2nd and 3rd are too late. Aim for 3-4 cities by 2000bc.

You destroyed Memphis around 2200bc. Then took Thebes 900bc.It sounds like the early war was a mistake. Capturing size 1 cities for them to be razed is a bad idea. Ideally you wanted to rex to 3 cities by 2000bc. Wait for the ai to settle 2-3 cities then rush with axes once you have chopped out 10-11 axes.

Your start leaves a lot to be answered here. You likely sat on 4-5 cities till 1ad or later? You won't win comfortably at emperor with just 5 cities by 1ad.

The start here required worker with growth to size 3 once worker complete. Farm the 2 corns and build 2 settlers. Or if you go bronze working consider whipping/chopping settlers with double corn start. Hopefully you can build 1-2 warriors while you grow to size 3-4. If you had a lot of forest you can always add another worker or worker steal from AI.

If you don't play with a strategy on Civ 4 you will just stagnate and not win game or have fun. Buildings beyond granary and library at start not really worth it. Maybe barracks in unit producing cities. That or stables.

State property here would reduce all cities maintenance costs to 7 gold a turn. It also allows workshops that can give 4-5 hammer a turn which with other production multiplier can be huge.Watermills are nice later on but hammer economy very strong.

Enough for you to think about. Try a play through game on forum. Make it clear you want to improve basics. Basics are missing here for sure in first 50 turns. That defined your game here. 1953ad should of been 1400ad?

 

[Jivilov]

Many thanks to coanda and Gumbolt for their succinct, cogent advice concerning top-level play. Been reviewing Grimith's Immortal Julius Caesar game in which he ruthlessly whips out War Elephants and Cats to the point he's teetering on bankruptcy (or Civ-wide strike), destroys Commerce Tiles with Farms, Workshops and Watermills over just about anything which isn't a Town, and then whips again to put Courthouses, Libs and Unis in almost all Cities while beelining to Cavalry in order to eliminate his Continent's last rival. First saw it several years ago and couldn't believe what he was doing but now it's starting to make sense.

BTW in a recent game---first win (SS) on Monarch in quite awhile sad to say---had Capped Monty and Alex to rule the game's biggest Continent. Was well ahead in Techs and contemplated going after the others but as so often happens the other Civs were Pleased or Friendly with each other (Ragner was still Pleased with Joao even after suffering the latter's recent invasion and loss of two Cities) while being Cautious towards me (except for a Pleased Hammurabi). Assuming I stopped focusing on eliminating unhealth and unhappiness would it have been possible to bribe or otherwise convince the others to join a prospective war against one of their buddies? In Civ3 this would usually be possible after first making a DOW but in Civ4 it hasn't worked and I was afraid of getting dogpiled if I went in alone. Cheers and thanks again.

 

[lymond]

...would it have been possible to bribe or otherwise convince the others to join a prospective war against one of their buddies? In Civ3 this would usually be possible after first making a DOW but in Civ4 it hasn't worked and I was afraid of getting dogpiled if I went in alone. Cheers and thanks again.

I recommend perusing this strat article, and bookmarking it:

Know Thy Enemy

It's based off code in a readable format.

Bribing others into war is often a good way to break up friendships are avoid getting DOW'd by A if you attack B, and so forth. Once you get an understanding of what AIs will do based on their attitude toward you and others, you can think about ways of making mischief. Also, I should note that having vassals can change how an AI feels about you, though it's not readily visible. For example, game shows they are Friendly towards you, but they don't like your vassal(s)...well, they really are not Friendly with you.

Also, identify ways that you can change civics and/or religions to change AI attitudes toward one another, or you. For example, Rags and Joao both share a fave civic in Monarchy. They'll likely adopt it early and build up max diplo points as a result over time, meaning they will likely at least be Pleased. If same religion, highly likely they will be Friendly unless Rags has attacked Joao at some point.

Joao will not plot or be bribed if Pleased with someone. Rags will.

Lastly, obviously look to build up diplo as fast as possible. Quite a few ways to do that..

 

[Jivilov]

Thanks Lymond. Came across this article before. It's a bit intimidating for someone who's reached a Biblical life expectancy but will give it a shot. One mustn't be mentally sedentary at any age!

 

[lymond]

Thanks Lymond. Came across this article before. It's a bit intimidating for someone who's reached a Biblical life expectancy but will give it a shot. One mustn't be mentally sedentary at any age!

Keep those synapses firing!

Anyway, it meed not be intimidating. Just use it as a reference when needed.