Help!!!!!!!!

[man_downunder]

I am having some serious trouble on games where the AIs are on Prince or above. I find that i get whipped on techs from about the time knights becomes available.

I seem to do alright up 'till then. I hold my own in techs and are the most powerful nation. I have research usually at bout 90%. However, soon the AIs suddenly have a "tech boom" and quickly get 3-5 techs ahead. There i am chuckling to mysely that im gonna obliterate the AIs with my knights, when an AI declares war on me and sends heaps of CAVALRY in!!! they then just prance around pillaging me back to the dark ages.

Does anyone know why the AIs suddenly have this boom??? How can i keep up??? I always seem to have a flourishing economy and my cities are always kept at the largest size I can get them to (ie. without unhappiness and rampant sickness). I need some serious help here!!!

 

[frob2900]

Hi, welcome to Civ Fanatics!

Are you building enough cottages and/or running specialists? Large cities wont help your research if you have only farms/mines. When you build cottages, remember to work them. They only become really useful as towns, and that takes a lot of turns to achieve.

Don't be afraid to go into you cities and micromanage the tile assigments a bit to achieve this.

Also, if you are top dog at power early on you should use that power to damage the AIs economically. All those units cost you money and you should use them to your advantage if you have built them.

Post some example savegames and we can work it out in more detail.

 

[man_downunder]

yeah thanks

here's a game i started. this save was taken after i got behind and lost my lead. my capital is a specialist city. any tips would b much appreciated.



Cheers

 

[frob2900]

Well, you certainly are just about to get thrashed in that game I managed to hold shakas army off, but with only pikes and muskets cavalry stacks are tough to beat!


Some comments:

You have lots of forest left at this late date. These could have chopped earlier for production boosts. One of your core cities (Hamburg) lacks a granary and you have no forges. Forges really help out and could easily have been chopped with all those forests.

Also, alexander could and should have been dealt with much earlier. You could have made Athens a great GP farm early on if you wanted to, freeing your capital up for production.

You also seem largely to have ignored civics. These are powerful and should be utilized! You could run hereditary rule instead of despotism to get rid some of that unhappiness and bureaucracy/vassalage/nationhood each offer important advantages over barbarism.

And run slavery! Whipping/drafting was the only way I could stop Shaka in your savegame. The production boost of slavery is enormous and really helps in the opening game.

You have grown some cottages into towns, which is good, but all those forests should have been cottaged/farmed over earlier. Your lack of cottages at this point means that the haul to democracy will be long and tough, so you wont get a CE (cottage economy) up and running before the AI is in the industrial age. Consitution is researchable and could give you a research boost.

You could try beelining rifling (I see you have left printing press at 3 turns left to research and then switched to liberalism, this is a mistake since printing press will give your towns and villages a boost once research) and then drafting an army, but since the AI is so much more advanced than you there is a very real risk youll be facing infantry by the time that army is up and running.

There is also a lot of unused terrain between you and shaka. This could have been filled with one or two "buffer" cities, with mostly farms and mines who could pump out defensive units and take most of the heat in case of a war.

Also, Shaka is a tough opponent who spams quite a few units and is rather aggressive. He is attacking you because your outdated military is causing a low power graph.

For such a small empire, 1350 AD is very late to discover civil service. This is a key tech due to the civic it allows you to run and since it allows macemen to be built. (Not to mention being the gateway to the paper/education route, which can be lightbulbed with great scientists, of which a philosophical leader like frederick can have plenty).

Its probably the lack of macemen and production that has kept you from taking out alexander earlier. Try to get civil service earlier or even try axerushing your close opponents early on by switching to slavery and whipping out your early offensive forces. You should have noticed warning bells that you were too small/undeveloped already at around 1200 AD.. thats when the AI really took off, judgning from the GNP/Mfg.Goods graphs (I think its Mao who's trading tech with Shaka since he likes him).

 

[Rancid Sushi]

You need to runs some civics. Right now I recommend Hereditary Rule, Nationhood, Mercantilism?, and Theocracy. I have no idea why you have no religion. You could have converted to Hinduism and been friends with everyone. You also should have gone to war with some one long ago, preferably before 1 AD. There is a lot of undeveloped land, so you probably should have built more workers, also more cities. Look at how many cities your rivals have compared to you.

 

[frob2900]

I also noticed youve founded 3 religions(!), but not taken advantage of them by switching to one or by missionizing the AI civs. They now all have hindiusm (which Mao has founded) as their state religion, making them a natural "trading block" who are working against you. This is very dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

Founding 3 religions is a rather extensive investment of early beakers, and if you do it, it should be part of some greater plan.

You have build all three shrines, which is giving you some money (I suppose you popped a large number of great prophets with both oracle and stonehenge in your capital ) But since you have only missionized 4 cities for judaism and 6 for christianity, those shrines are less use to you than just having settled the prophets as super specialists (you would be getting 4 hammers in addition to the +10 gold).

All those prophets might actually have lost you the game (in a sense), the general agreement is that Great Scientists are much stronger great people since they can pop very valuable techs such as education. You could have run scientists in berlin to even out the great people points, or run a specialist farm in another city (where you could have built the national epic).

Still, implementing a few corrections, prince will start going well for you in time. You are essentially only one or two important techs behind the AI in that game. Believe me, if you had started beelining rifling a while back and had draftable riflemen, that Shaka invasion would be no problem to deal with

Would you mind posting the 4000 BC save?

 

[man_downunder]

i spose i kept some forests for the purpose of future production (lumbermills). do u prefer just to chop everything???

yeah i see wat u mean with the civics. however dont u find caste system more beneficial than slavery in terms of creating specialist cities???

I did try and take out alexander early but had to make peace after only taking one city. This was because another, larger enemy declared war and troops were needed on that line.

i built heaps of missionaries and spread my religion as far as i could before production had to be used for the war with alexander.

thanks for all the tips....... i'l start another game and see how i go. cheers

i'l post my new game when i get to about the same stage.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

i spose i kept some forests for the purpose of future production (lumbermills). do u prefer just to chop everything???

yeah i see wat u mean with the civics. however dont u find caste system more beneficial than slavery in terms of creating specialist cities???

I did try and take out alexander early but had to make peace after only taking one city. This was because another, larger enemy declared war and troops were needed on that line.

i built heaps of missionaries and spread my religion as far as i could before production had to be used for the war with alexander.

thanks for all the tips....... i'l start another game and see how i go. cheers

i'l post my new game when i get to about the same stage.

If you found religions, select one and spread it to others. If they don't convert on their own, bribe them. You need allies and in that game you had none that were willing to join you in the war.

 

[futurehermit]

build many cottages (specialize commerce cities at a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 to production cities).

adopt appropriate civics (bureaucracy, hereditary rule, etc.)

watch diplomacy (religion, demands/requests, etc.)

trade techs (research techs the AI doesn't have and trade to keep up)

expand your empire (too small and even if you do the above and you can fall behind. try and take out one close opponent before 1 AD and for sure before 500AD. try to take out a 2nd empire during the renaissance era, before 1500AD. then slap down cottages and adopt all CE civics--US, FS, Em, FM, FR--and go ftw.)

 

[cabert]

I didn't open the save, but I'm pretty sure FutureHermit's advice is good so I don't need to .

A few things seem wrong to me though :
- you say you run 90% science. For me that's not a good sign. It means you're expanding too slow (or it means you're stingy, 100% is what you run if you extort money/pillage/sell techs).
Running 50% science with 6 cottaged cities is a lot better than running 90% science with the capital + 2 hybrid cities.
- you say you have the biggest power. That's good, but I somehow read between the lines that you don't actually use your power. Units are good if you use them.
- you say you keep your cities just under happines and health cap. That's good IF YOUR HAPPINESS AND HEALTH CAP ARE HIGH. It's pretty common for the AIs to have larger cities than me, but I don't want to have size 6 cities when the AI has size 23 cities.

 

[man_downunder]

Thanks to everyone who gave tips, especially frob2900!!! I just played a gave on Prince on which i think i will finally win.

I took tips onboard like sticking to one primary religion, using civics better and playing more aggressively. I took out a neighbour in the medieval era and therefore was able to build the largest empire on the map. I was able to keep up techs till about the industrial era but it didnt really matter because by then i was by far the largest and most powerful nation on the map!!!! there was no way those AIs were going to attack me. gave me some time to catch up techs.

im now in the modern era and am well positioned to win.

Thanks for all your help!!!

 

[futurehermit]

Sweet, nice job Next game try taking out an AI even earlier. The earlier you take out an AI and develop their land, the better off you'll be