Help with Authority, can't make it work

[mrpilhas]

HI guys!
Like the title says, I've been trying lately to make Authority work but unfortunately I've not been able to do it. I do well with Tradition and Progress. I've read here multiple times that Authority is a great tree, and it works really great with Fealty and Imperialism because it snowballs very well. Truth is that I snowball, but in the opposite direction. So I need just some enlightening from the Deities of this forum so I can enjoy this fabulous "patch" in a way I never enjoyed before.

I will just describe my last try so you can have something. This was played on prince. I picked Askia. Had a great start with 2 wheat, wine as monopoly and 6 horses in my third ring. A "small continent" that I was sharing with China. The plan was to build 6 Mandekalu Cavalry really fast and go for China. So i started beelining my UU, then my UB, went for Calendar next, Trade and Library. I started building Monument - Shrine - warrior and bought a worker - Council - 1 Mandekalu so I could start killing some barbs - barracks (bought it) - an the rest of my army. I found a second city with the free settler, and made a 3rd one, so I could have the wine monopoly online so it would help me get my religion. Forgot to say, choose God of the Sun since all my cities had at least 2 wheat, and granary would be really easy to build. The gold was good to since after my 4th Mandekalu I was already on the red (normal tho).
Conquering China was easy, MandeKalu Cavalry are so good. I conquered 3 cities that I puppeted. The 4th one I didn't took and just stood there farming the units they would built. I went with war with some city states with the same objective. So far so good, but here is when things start to get really bad for me. So, I just conquered China, I have this huge land, that I want to settle but I can't because my happiness doesn't let me and I'm already a little bit behind in science. My economy is really bad too. So after the conquest I just worked on getting my head above water. I allied an happiness city-state, and once I got Discipline things started to look better: I was at 12 happiness (around +20 gold per turn) and I thought "maybe this is the time to grab that promised land". So i did 3 more cities, to get Chinese monopoly (silk) and grab some coastal cities already thinking in future wars. Medieval Ear was close, and I wanted to vassal China so I needed to settle those spots. If I didn't China would be all over them. And the "snowball" starts. I went into -9 happiness really fast , my economy was really bad being the poorest nation in the world, (my vassal was in better shape then me) and still had plenty of land to settle...and I'm there thinking: when will this start being good? Am I supposed to not settle, since it was with that decision that things went from bad to nightmare? It seems really unintuitive , you fight for land that you cannot use? You fight for land for richness and I'm drowned in debt? When I'm supposed to settle? I'm really confused to be honest. I know I'm doing something wrong. Would love to ear your opinions, some guidance and what you usually do when you play with this tree. Thank you very much for reading, sorry for the wall of text, and would love to post my save file but I usually delete them when I rage quit xD
Cheers

 

[CrazyG]

Authority can be weak if you don't have a ton of land. You need to hunt and kill barbarians, find city states and get tribute from them, and fight wars with other civs where you kill units. If your only war is against China, and its over in just one war, you may have been better of choosing progress.

I would try playing on Pangea or increasing the number of civs, this may help you find a game where Authority can shine.

 

[Minh Le]

HI guys!
Like the title says, I've been trying lately to make Authority work but unfortunately I've not been able to do it. I do well with Tradition and Progress. I've read here multiple times that Authority is a great tree, and it works really great with Fealty and Imperialism because it snowballs very well. Truth is that I snowball, but in the opposite direction. So I need just some enlightening from the Deities of this forum so I can enjoy this fabulous "patch" in a way I never enjoyed before.

I will just describe my last try so you can have something. This was played on prince. I picked Askia. Had a great start with 2 wheat, wine as monopoly and 6 horses in my third ring. A "small continent" that I was sharing with China. The plan was to build 6 Mandekalu Cavalry really fast and go for China. So i started beelining my UU, then my UB, went for Calendar next, Trade and Library. I started building Monument - Shrine - warrior and bought a worker - Council - 1 Mandekalu so I could start killing some barbs - barracks (bought it) - an the rest of my army. I found a second city with the free settler, and made a 3rd one, so I could have the wine monopoly online so it would help me get my religion. Forgot to say, choose God of the Sun since all my cities had at least 2 wheat, and granary would be really easy to build. The gold was good to since after my 4th Mandekalu I was already on the red (normal tho).
Conquering China was easy, MandeKalu Cavalry are so good. I conquered 3 cities that I puppeted. The 4th one I didn't took and just stood there farming the units they would built. I went with war with some city states with the same objective. So far so good, but here is when things start to get really bad for me. So, I just conquered China, I have this huge land, that I want to settle but I can't because my happiness doesn't let me and I'm already a little bit behind in science. My economy is really bad too. So after the conquest I just worked on getting my head above water. I allied an happiness city-state, and once I got Discipline things started to look better: I was at 12 happiness (around +20 gold per turn) and I thought "maybe this is the time to grab that promised land". So i did 3 more cities, to get Chinese monopoly (silk) and grab some coastal cities already thinking in future wars. Medieval Ear was close, and I wanted to vassal China so I needed to settle those spots. If I didn't China would be all over them. And the "snowball" starts. I went into -9 happiness really fast , my economy was really bad being the poorest nation in the world, (my vassal was in better shape then me) and still had plenty of land to settle...and I'm there thinking: when will this start being good? Am I supposed to not settle, since it was with that decision that things went from bad to nightmare? It seems really unintuitive , you fight for land that you cannot use? You fight for land for richness and I'm drowned in debt? When I'm supposed to settle? I'm really confused to be honest. I know I'm doing something wrong. Would love to ear your opinions, some guidance and what you usually do when you play with this tree. Thank you very much for reading, sorry for the wall of text, and would love to post my save file but I usually delete them when I rage quit xD
Cheers

If you cant handle happiness, stop growing your cities or focus on production is a good move. Cool thing about authority is your newly settled cities come with a lot of production and get basic buildings really fast, so happiness should be high enough.

 

[mrpilhas]

I did try a new game after writing this and it went far better. And the difference was, having more than 1 target: England and Poland. I did not rush their cities, just 2 because they both forward settled me, and just grinded their units. This allowed me to get to discipline pretty fast. Once I saw they started to produce more advanced units, I gave the final push and made them my vassals. I only needed to settle 1 more city since they already had covered most part of the map. Seems that biggest problem was: I was not fighting enough, or I rushed them too fast, letting me without targets to grind. My gpt was still bad, but hey, you cannot have it all. Will continue to try Thank you both for your advice

 

[crdvis16]

Your GPT issues might not be as big of a deal as you think- Askia gets a lot of gold from conquering so even if your per turn gold is negative those big bursts of money can keep you positive.

 

[soupwithsauce]

One thing I have learned about authority is it comes down to timing of procs more often than tradition/progress. You should be rotating your troops to demand tribute from city states whenever you can (30 turns usually if u demand gold, I guess 60 turns for heavy tribute because you get the full -60 angry modifier), usually doing some ancient era/classical sparring against weaker opponents but don’t finish them! Wait till medieval era so you can make them your vassal, just take the capital but save them a decent city so they can raise a small military of their own to help defend their master.

It is harder to squeeze authority because it requires you to be killing units and hopefully taking cities which isn’t the easiest. You gotta know when to stop and build infrastructure, and when to turn on the war machine.

 

[tu_79]

So i did 3 more cities,

Probably the worst move.

You are playing at Prince, so you really don't need to maximize Authority yields. There's something else going on. One good thing about Authority is that your ancient buildings are quite easy to build. You get up to +5 hammers per city in the scaler, that's enough to make your new cities productive.
Once you build a killer army, you use it and try not to lose units, so you can put your cities into development. Your army will grant you culture, science, gold (through tributes) and territory, saving you the bother of building settlers. If you time your attacks, you can enslave a few workers, they work at half speed, but they cost only maintenance. Tip: Pyramids boost workers speed. And you'll need workers, since you don't have time for building buildings, so you need your citizens to be working on improved tiles, mostly.

Are you using garrisons for the +2 culture per city?
Do you 'farm' barbarian camps? I mean, leaving them spawn, and trying not to capture the camp, but kill as many barbarians as posible.
Do you train your units against city states when there's no other target?
Do you enslave workers?
Do you focus on Pyramids or Statue of Zeus? Terracotta Army?
Unless stars align, like the tobacco case, you should try not to found a religion, but capture a holy city instead.

By Medieval, your civ should be so big that you won't need to rely on Authority bonuses anymore (though keep fighting is still good, if you manage). Don't settle any more cities unless you need to control one especific location for tactical purposes, it's much better to wait for pioneers (renaissance) or just keep conquering cities. Some of your puppets will become very populated, which causes unhappiness, and you'll have to consider whether to annex them, because there's a long time until you can pick Imperialism policies. If the location for a puppet is crappy with little resources, avoid building farms, so it does not grow excesively, build villages instead. Puppets cost gold and grant some unhappiness in return for a few yields, not giving supply or great people and not increasing research costs.