Help me w/ getting up a level

[BigNHuge]

Hi. I got alot of questions. So bear w/ me.

1st.- How come if i play on Cheftain, I am always double the other nations, then when i go up to the next level, Im always "moderaly advanced" and my people get rioting because of population w/ just 2 people in the city?

2nd.- I play as France and w/ Cheftain I end up w/ 20000 gold at 1990. (I played Domination and had 60% of the map. But i was making 23 gold a turn in the middle-industrious ages. Near the switch mostly.) But, I go up to the next level and ALWAYS end up w/ going from + something and then itll drop like 5 gold a turn every time. What am i doing wrong?

3rd.- How come if I end up on an island w/ just 2 nations, and i take over the whole island b4 knowing anyone, people still get annoyed w/ me and say something like, "We know about your sneak attack on Japan." or something like that. What wrong there?

Thanks for helping me and hopefully itll come ASAP.

 

[island007]

1) You can check the reason why they are unhappy by clicking on them. It may be: War weariness; Stop the aggression, cruel treatment, or the draft. It certainly is not overcrowding at such a low level.
3) Your reputation stays with you. You should try not to break any treaties and formally declare war before you attack.

 

[kidd546]

First tip: read through these forums, especially the "training day" succession games, many great strategies to be found there. The war academy has some great articles also.

#1: You shouldn't have pop 2 rioting on warlord, unless you rushed production in despotism. Make use of the happiness(lux) slider, it seems you accumulate lots of money, and this gives you cheap happy faces, avoid entertainers if you can use lux slider.

#2: I wouldnt let 20k accumulate, switch to monarchy/republic/democracy, and that cash would equal ~5,000 shields, which is a lot of units!! As for deficits, go to domestic advisor to see whats costing you money, if its unit costs, then maybe a few new cities for unit support would help. Make sure you have large enough cities and enough cities before building a large military.

#3: maybe those nations had contact with Japan already, but you didnt? Dunno about this one.

Hope this helps!!

 

[Grille]

Welcome on CFC!
1st: The number of citizen born "automatically content" decreases with a higher level. Starts with 4 (?) on chieftain and drops to 1 on deity. The next ones born are unhappy. In general, you have to have an eye on moods. At game start, you have despotism, so can use up to 2 military units to keep 2 citizens content (later, if you swich to monarchy, you can use 3 units and 4 w/ communism, allthough I only support the latter under certain cicumstances). You might build temples and such earlier as used to. On higher levels, don't bother to use the lux slider to face the moods, especially at game start.
2nd: If I got your problem right, increase commerce. Build a road on every working tile. Don't let your cities' population drain at game start - build a granary in the capital to have a settler factory (you might read Bamspeedy's article "Babylon's deity settlers" in the war acadeny to get an idea of this - other articles there are also very useful). Build marketplaces (that'll increase moods, too, if you have more than 2 luxs hooked up), later banks. Trade with other civs. A nice tech/gold-per-turn-deal is always good for your economy. Use the right form of gov, i.e. republic (when you want to go to war often) or democracy. Don't wait too long to switch. If moods drop dur to despotism->republic switch, use the lux slider again. A 20% lux, 40% tax/science or whatever choice under republic is always better than a 50/50% tax/science adjustment under despotism.
3rd: Keep your reputation clean until you know you don't need a clean reputation. It's always good to have a continent on your own, but make *honorable* wars: Don't break any treaties (let them expire, wait 20 turns if needed to) and don't declare war when you have units on enemy territory (it's like right-of-passage-(ROP)raping). Move everything out, declare war (e.g. renegotiate peace), then go for it. Thus, your reputation stays, you can make agreements,deals later in game. Any major rep hit (like ROP-rape) will affect negotiations for the whole game. The only exception is when you play tricks on a civ that is completely unknown to others, but this fact might be not clear to you at a certain point of time.

Generally, check out war academy (cracker's advice to get started is great, for example) and read strategy articles. Nice stuff. You may also spy around on the succession games (SG) board. Here you can get an idea of other players dealing with certain situations. If sth is still not clear, don't bother to ask *dumb* things (they aren't dumb) in the newbee thread.
You may also load up a save game file (in a seperate thread) to have others have a look and a comment on a current game. Have fun.

 

[BigNHuge]

Well actually, I do build roads on every square, and later rails. This is my usual beginning strat for getting ahead.

Warrior
Warrior
Setteler
Spearman
Pyramids.

I do this so ALL my cities will have the Granery and I can get expoing like twice as fast. And I sorda answerd my own economy question cause some buildings need maitnence ( i murdered that word). And the third one i figure i should just start demanding gold or tech if they got it and Then attacking. W/ Japan I just attacked them, but i dont no how any1 found out, we were on island and i just went up to swordmen and "liberated" The Cities of Kyoto and whatever other was and played on, then China to the EXTREME south would never do treaties w/ me. Thanks for helping me, and another thing is, is for the year 2000 in Easiest level, 525 a good score?

 

[BigNHuge]

Ohh and w/ tip #2 I had 20000 gold in Democracy, But then since it was domination, i put my money in Mechinized Infintry and took out most.

 

[Grille]

Hmm. Building the Pyramids *that* early should work up to monarch level. Maybe you even don't build a settler before starting pyr, but do build a granary before that (*could* be faster to finish pyr). Research pottery first, build two warriors, make eventually a pre-build for the granary, switch to granary if pottery is in, chop down a forest to speed up granary progress while researching masonry, then pre-build/start pyr.
However, IMO not relying on pyr is better. Maybe you can capture it later in game.

 

[Bamspeedy]

For #1, most people heavily anwered this one, but I will tell you that on chieftain you start with 4 content, and on warlord it is 3 (you must be playing a harder level, or have some unhappiness due to whipping in despot or war weariness if you are republic/democracy.)

Also, the other part of #1 that nobody answered is that on chieftain you have a 100% advantage over the AI in growth and production. It takes the AI TWICE as much food to grow and shields to build stuff. On warlord, this advantage drops down to only a 20% advantage for you, so there is a 80% difference going from chieftain to warlord. The AI also gives each other bigger discounts (for trading purposes) as you go up in levels.

Pyramids is great, but it does cut your early expansion if you build it yourself. If you build it after only building one settler, then you effectively cut your expansion in half (1 out of your 2 cities is devoting to the wonder). True, after the pyramids is complete, you will start catching up, but this depends on how much room you still have to expand by the time the pyramids is complete. On smaller maps and higher difficulty levels, the expansion phase will be over by the time you complete the pyramids.
On warlord, you shouldn't need to start the pyramids that early, unless one of the AI had a very generous starting location, or you are building it in a low production city, that really shouldn't be building a wonder in the first place.

 

[squidd]

mr. speedy has posted a very interesting point about building the pyramids. from what i've learned in this forum, the basic rule is forego early expansion only if your alternate course of action will leverage, or should i say slingshot, you to a position of considerable military or technological dominance.

this, essentially is the fundamental problem with the pyramids. it promotes growth but takes too long to build. add to this the fact that expansion is key in the early gamed (so yopu can leverage on these cities for military, money, culture, research, etc.)

on more specific terms, try to find an ideal spot for a settler factory and build a granary there. perhaps it may not be wise to build the pyramids at warlord and even regent. (take this as a suggestion of someone who might know no better than you and please verify with all the great players around. who knows, i might even learn from your further questions ;-) )

hope this has helped.

squidd

 

[BigNHuge]

Thank you for all your help. I have played on Warlord. I figured out all the details, skipped the pyramids until around the early ad period (Still got em w/ most other wonders!) This helped me SOOOO much. Right now im in industrial age, with what i think is everything placed right, and most everyone else is in the Middle Ages, (Except the worst nation, the Zulu, They are still in despotism and are in Ancient times) So you can definatly expect that ill need help w/ the next step up. So thank you to all who helped and i look forward to posting next time!