How does the AI keep trumping me in tech?

[Hammurbabble]

The first thing I noticed from the first save you posted is that your cities are MUCH too far apart! You're wasting a lot of tiles.

Here's how you position two cities for zero overlap (start with this as a template and diverge).

From the first city's location:

1) Go 5 squares directly north, south, east or west; or

2) Go one square diagonally, then one square straight left or right, then another two squares diagonally in the same direction you did before.

Either of these will EXACTLY match up the BFCs so that there is neither overlap nor unused tiles. Diversions are of course often warranted, to take advantage of resources, fresh water, river commerce and trade, coastal positions (as opposed to one square removed from the coast, almost always a bad idea), and so on. Some overlap may often be a good idea in order to do that. Conversely, if the "unused" tiles between cities that are more distant consists of desert, peaks, ice, or other useless (or sometimes even marginal) land, that's fine; you can't use that anyway.

However, your cities leave perfectly good tiles unused, including an iron mine and a pig farm! You still get the iron and the pork, but you don't get all those lovely hammers or food unless it's in a city's BFC.

For example, starting from Paris, if you had gone one square northeast, then one square due east, then two more squares northeast, and placed Rheims there instead of where you did, which was two squares further -- that is, if you had put Rheims one square due west of the horses -- you'd have included both the horses and the pig in the cross, the horses would have been just as convenient, but the city location would have been much better, with more food and hence faster growth. Plus there were some good grassland and hill tiles that could have been used that you weren't using. Orleans could usefully have been two squares further west, too. Not only less wasted tiles, but also less peaks in its cross.

All in all, I think you could have gotten maybe 3-4 more cities profitably in the same space.

Second thought: it sounds to me like you went wonder-crazy. OK, you're Industrious in this game, and obviously you COULD build all those wonders (since you did), but every one you built was something else you didn't, like more settlers, military units, or ordinary buildings. It's much better to be a little selective about what wonders you want to build, based on what kind of game you intend to play and what kind of victory you're shooting for.

But on the subject of being selective about wonders, we're talking about falling behind in technology, right? So where's the Great Library? Why wasn't that one a priority?

And a final thought: Research with your eye on tech-trading. Particularly when everyone likes you, which seems to be the case here, your best bet is often to research something everyone else is going to want (e.g. that Code of Laws you got from the Oracle to found Confucianism) and trade it to each and every one of them. Even though each trade will give you less than it gives the AI, in the aggregate you will have gained three, four, or even six or seven technologies for the price of having researched the one.

Sometimes it's even a good idea to gift a tech so as to facilitate a trade on the next turn. For example, going back to CoL again, I frequently find that when I'm ready to trade this to someone for something juicy, I can't because he doesn't have Priesthood yet -- sometimes he doesn't even have either Meditation or Polytheism. Now if he's got Mathematics, there's no way he's going to trade it to me for Priesthood. So if he's got something that's low enough to trade for Priesthood I'll make that trade, but if not I'll just give it to him. Makes him happy, and then I'll come back the next turn and trade CoL for Mathematics, or Alphabet, or whatever. Also, it's often a good idea to put the thing you want to trade up and ask what they'll give you for it. Sometimes they'll offer more than you would have thought to ask!

That's all that comes to mind right at the moment.

 

[PieceOfMind]

eI took at a look at your first save and the first thing that jumped out at me was that you went wonder crazy, as Hammurbabble just noted.

Many people often make this suggestion to players who are still developing core techniques, so I will too. Try playing through an entire game without building a single world wonder. They are never necessary and too often they are extremely expensive. You'll find that if you don't build wonders you'll be able to focus more on expansion (that is, building more cities) and military.

Whether you decide to go for a cottage economy (CE) or specialist economy (SE) is up to you, but I would highly recommend CE since it takes less micro management in my opinion. If you are unsure what those mean, cottage economy basically means your primary source of income (both gold and science) is through cottaged tiles. Using CE, you try to make at least several cities commerce cities, whose sole purpose is to net your empire more science, gold or both (usually both). With a SE you instead make most of your beakers and gold through specialists. With the SE it's not uncommon to never build a single cottage at all - just build millions of farms. In this sense the SE can be a bit easier on the decision making regarding cottages/farms.

Somewhere in the strategy forum there is a great article on city specialisation. Unlike some of the earlier versions of Civ, city specialisation makes a lot of sense and allows you to maximise certain bonuses.

One particular and important example of a specialised city is the military pump. This city (often most people's second city) will simply build units and buildings like forges, barracks and factories for the entire game. Never a marketplace or library etc. (maybe a couple of cheap culture buildings if under cultural pressure but this is unlikely if it is your second city). I never go a single game (even in multiplayer) without a specialised military city. In fact once you get your number of cities up you'll find you'll need more than one of these military cities. Also, maybe it's obvious but a military city should be one located near sources of hammers and food. 4 or 5 hills I'd usually recommend, and enough food (potentially through some farms but preferably a food resource or two) to ensure you can work all those hills.

 

[dante alighieri]

Well, that's a little bit better; you 2nd and 3rd city are better placed, and you built some improvements. But:
- you did not solve your hapiness problems, so your cities are still stuck to small sizes
- being small, your cities don't work too many tiles, so improving everything around them is useless
- you don't have enough cities. 5 cities including a new one at 1040AD with a huge chunk of lnd like the one you have is just unacceptable.

How to make things better in the future:
- adopt the 60% rule: expand if you are at 70% science, stop at 60%
- build near ressources: each city should have at least one food ressource in its fat cross. Get as many *different* ressources as possible. get the others through trade. Solve your health and hapiness problems. Hereditary rule is a blessing. Ressources in your cultural borders are good, but ressources in your cities fat cross is better.
- give your cities enough food: count the food for every tile, and check how much farms you need to attain
- specialize your cities: your second city should be a production city. It will receive nothing but growth and production improvements
- build new production cities later. Something like 1 prod city for 4 commerce cities.
- all the other cities should be commerce cities. Build the necessary food improvements, and then cottages. Cottages. Cottages. And work them !

These are VERY basic rules, but by following them you should be able at least to developp your cities and your empire. Later, you will learn how to relax them.

hmmm...i try to place cities so that the BFC's won't overlap, maybe "touch" but not overlap. Of course it depends on the lay of the land, but apparently I could do better.

As another poster mentioned, I guess i do go Wonder crazy early on. I'd like to have as many wonders as possible, but you're right, I don't need them and it would be best to make do without 'em. Actually, the GW is highly useful to me and the AP. But I could survive without either of them. The oracle and the internet i usually build just to keep the AI from getting any freebies.

But just to give me a rough idea, how many cities should i have had by 1040 AD?

 

[JujuLautre]

I think I forgot a simple rule that could also helop you

- don't build a single wonder

By 1040 AD, you could easily have 10 cities, if not more. 4 or 5 cities is where people *usually* stop expanding in the early game to get a better economy running before expanding again.

 

[Ammar]

So, I started a new game again, and as the Native Americans I don't think I'm doing that badly so far. I share a continent with Pacal, Frederick and Isabella. Izzy, of course will DOW on me sooner or later. I'm trying to expand and keep a good tech rate, but I'm probably doing the same things i always do that leads to my demise....

i've posted my last save. Its late here, so I have to go to bed. I'd appreciate any suggestions anyone might have.

So, I took a look at it. First of you have massive happiness problems, you have monarchy so why are you not in hereditary rule? In addition you can trade for calendar so you can get silk hooked up.

I'm also a little confused as why you founded Mesa Verde and Snaketown where they are now. Both aren't very good spots. Mesa Verde just misses out on the fish and Snaketown doesn't look that good either. Also notes that it will grow very slowly until you can get some culture there.

There are better spots available like for example two south of the pigs south of Mount City. Or near the northern pigs.

You should also manage your workers better. You improved considerably more tiles as needed in Cahokia and Mound City, while the other cities could actually use some improvements.

Cahokia looks like it is supposed to be a productive city (i.e. hammers) so you don't need cottages there at all.

Regarding the placement of your bigger cities. I'll just mention things I regard as real mistakes and not add all my preferences.

-Chaco Canyon has too many desert tiles. This could have been avoided without missing the good tiles.

-Mound City. Why do you work a cottaged plain when you still have a free flood plain? Even at the happy limit excess food is always good for slavery.

 

[Mortac]

Didn't read through everything so I'm probably going to repeat what others have said, but I checked your save and I'll give you a few reasons that I personally find to why you have issues keeping up with techs.

- You have too few cottages and too many farms. A few tips:

• Cottages grow quickly in the early game. This means if you get cottages going early on they'll quickly become substantial commerce (commerce=gold or research). Cottages around the time period you're in will take a lot of time to grow. Yes, turn-wise it's still the same, but you have already lost out on a lot of income already due to not having all those nice fully-grown cottages earlier.

• You don't really need more food/farms than what your city can support through happiness. Also, a city that only grows with food without getting any commerce or production is mainly good for specialists, which you don't really use anyway. Without commerce or production, the city won't be much good.

• Cottages on flood plains early on not only provide you with enough food for the city to grow, but they also allow those cottages to grow quickly at the same time. I do know you have some cottages there, so it's just a general advice.

• If you ever play a Financial civ, place cottages next to rivers whenever possible in commerce cities. This will give them 3 gold right off the bat.

• A granary can often far outweight the importance of additional farms for city growth.

• 
  Paris has a lot of unhealthiness. If you don't have the resources or can build buildings that improve your health, you can try to trade for them. I.e. Paris could, with some more health, substitue two farms for cottages.

- You also compete with Financial civs. They have a much easier time with research. So do Organised civs. Industrial can be beneficial to research as well, if you get the right wonders, but it still can't compete with Financial.

- You have too few cities compared to your competition.

- You have workers around performing tasks that shouldn't be a priority. Workers should always go where they are needed the most, and if at some point jungle-cutting and building of roads and improvements can't keep up with city growth, it means you need more workers. Your quantity of workers seems fine right now, but make sure that all cities can take advantage of their resources asap. The longer cities have to wait for improved tiles, the less use you will have of those cities. I.e. if a city has 6 improved tiles around it, but only works 3 of them, that means the workers around it might be more needed elsewhere until the city has grown enough for it to work all those 6 tiles. Also, workers don't necessarily have to work at different locations all the time. Combining workers in pairs, or sometimes even more, to cut jungles or build improvements that are needed quickly can be very efficient.

- Production cities can be excellent for a lot of things. One of them is temporary boosts through building research or wealth. This is often overlooked. Hence, don't underestimate Workshops (although I know you do build them!). They can be great once techs improve them.

- Cities should often be specialized. With this I mean either on commerce or production (or food for the specialists). You should only need enough food to grow to your happiness-cap at a decent but not exaggerated speed (sometimes excluding the early game where fast growth might be important to either get workers and settlers out or simply to be able to work more tiles). Build markets, grocers, banks, libraries, universities etc. in commerce cities since they'll have great use for them. Production cities might skip building them and instead spend all that time you saved on build either units (if needed) or wealth/research instead.

- In your game, Orleans is terribly placed. Not only did you miss out on the pigs to the north AND the 2 flood plains to the west, but you also managed to get 5 peaks and 2 deserts, which are useless. It is important to understand which tiles will be workable for cities and then place them in optimal locations, preferably without wasting too many tiles in between cities (unless there's a good reason to do so!).


Ok this got a bit long and there might be things here that are more than you asked for. Hope you can use some of this advice at least. Good luck!

 

[Arksa]

I started playing on emperor and I thought I was doing great when I was teching Feudalism on 200 AD and was even on techs and points with 2 other civs.


Then...A DISTANT CIVILIZATION IS THE FIRST TO DISCOVER LIBERALISM.

 

[ranger101]

1. Build more cottages, especially in capital (unless it is strictly a production city, but capital benefits from +50% commerce with bureaucracy) and holy city (later your wall street city). Grassland river and flood plain tiles should be cottaged, unless you need the food, are building a specialty city (military production, national epic/specialist) or need to irrigate another tile (e.g. corn/rice/wheat tile nearby has no access to water.) If you want to irrigate, cottage the grassland and farm the plains tile.

2. Food is the most important resource, so found your cities near food resources. You left a pig tile outside city radius in game 1, founded Mesa Verde near no resources when you could have gone 1 tile north in game 2. This however, does not mean more farms. Farms are better for production cities with mines/workshops on other tiles or for your national epic city (more farms = more people to work as specialists)

3. In both games, you were also playing against some financial civs. They tech fast. You don't cottage much, so you are teching slow, and therefore have less to trade. They might not want the plans for the black and white TV sets that you are peddling.

Try playing a financial civ yourself (Dutch, Hannibal or Darius are best imo), but others ok as well. It is agreed by many to be the best trait. You can also enable no tech brokering as AI trades like a madman, and more civs means more trading. A smaller map might be easier as well, at least at the beginning. I would stay away from philosophical civs. If you don't want to go financial, go with organized. Charismatic is a decent trait as well for beginners since with a monument it pretty much eliminates the happiness problem.

4. You love building wonders. Best to curtail your building unless you are an industrial civ. If you have the special resource that halves the construction cost, maybe focus more on that one. By building so many wonders, you deprive yourself of either a military, or a lesser developed cit(ies).

You need to ask yourself: Do I really need this wonder? Oracle is a great one if you can get it as are some others, but none are essential.

5. If you expand, if you need to build courthouses and they should be built in most cities at some point, as they reduce maintenance and give you espionage points as well. Big cities and those further away from the capital benefit most. At monarch and a large map, it can be tough to expand further than 6 cities unless you have either currency (+1 extra trade route) or courthouses. Otherwise, you will have to change your name to Mike "My empire is riddled with corruption" Wilson. (Not sure about huge maps on noble though)

edit: But since you are playing huge maps this might not be as big an issue an issue. At 1050, you should have more cities with a huge map. The real problem is primarily due to few cottages ==> low commerce and secondarily no courthouses/currency. This leads to both low tech and little commerce to support more cities.

6. Once you play some more, you will see which techs AI likes to research. Best to go for the opposite ones (though they tend not to trade or offer poor deals on offensive military techs such as horseback riding, construction, etc.).

7. Switch to Hereditary Rule to solve your happiness problems in game 2.

 

[bhavv]

From prince difficulty and above, the AI gets a 10% reduction to research and building times. At prince they build and research at a 90% rate, at monarch 80% and so on to 50% at diety.

If you want to keep up you need great city locations with at least one food resource, plenty of cottages, build up cities as fast as possible with whipping as required, and produce plenty of research. I use 1 in every 4 cities for military output, the others are fully devoted to and