How to deal with a start without money

[intutama]

Hello all,
I'm trying to play this game in Monarch difficulty using new stuff learned on this forum, but my research is being completely crippled because I have literally 0 luxury resources available... (well, literally 1).

I am wondering what should I do in this situation?
Here's a screenshot of my second try, even my trying to spam cottage I'm completely broke.

Spoiler :

In my first try I conquired babylon (can't show screenshot cause I overwrite the autosave), but I was so broke I didn't even have alphabet by turn 140... And since I have nothing to build I could only build swordmen then disbands them just after. The redline below shows the border of my empire in my first try.

Spoiler :

So how would you deal with this ? Thanks for the help

 

[intutama]

Also I forgot to say, in my first try I settled so I could get that copper+silver, and there's iron hidden in that corhupachi town, but the problem really is that I can't even beeline currency because my research stalled after writing...

 

[Gumbolt]

Well for happiness you either want mids or monarchy. For Incan game you want cottages.

No idea why you teched archery. You really only need 1 defender per city with a small stack if you fear an Ai attack. Building archers at 125bc in all cities suggests something has gone wrong. With alphabet or writing (Libraries you should be teching much faster.

The cow, horse, deer and corn city looks good. No idea why you gave up the crabs.

Are you using specialists???

Starting save would be good.

 

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

Yeah, you're clearly lacking in some fundamentals. This is decent land with an elite leader, you shouldn't be struggling like this.

It's hard to give any meaningful feedback from a couple of screenshots. If you've got the patience, the best option for learning would be to post the 4000BC save and replay it slowly with people shadowing you.

 

[ikotomi]

You needed to shoot for alphabet and currency way earlier. With early rushes, your best form of economy is actually conquering more cities, so you want to be efficient and keep conquering more cities until you stabilize with currency before you go bankrupt. If you stop the machine, you need to stop conquering cities before you grow too large to support yourself, which looks like what happened here.

You took a lot of extra techs out of the way of alphabet, and that's why you are taking so long to stabilize. Since you're Inca, you don't need horses, metal, and archers - quechuas are insane.

As a side note, especially with financial, working coast tiles with 3 Commerce is better early than working non river cottages. Work your best commerce tiles as soon as your city comes out of anarchy so that the you get the best research per turn as possible. You get more science with your initial bankroll before you go bankrupt, and you get more gpt when you're not running the slider at 100 percent.

 

[Gwynnja]

Great lighthouse

 

[intutama]

You needed to shoot for alphabet and currency way earlier. With early rushes, your best form of economy is actually conquering more cities, so you want to be efficient and keep conquering more cities until you stabilize with currency before you go bankrupt. If you stop the machine, you need to stop conquering cities before you grow too large to support yourself, which looks like what happened here.

You took a lot of extra techs out of the way of alphabet, and that's why you are taking so long to stabilize. Since you're Inca, you don't need horses, metal, and archers - quechuas are insane.

As a side note, especially with financial, working coast tiles with 3 Commerce is better early than working non river cottages. Work your best commerce tiles as soon as your city comes out of anarchy so that the you get the best research per turn as possible. You get more science with your initial bankroll before you go bankrupt, and you get more gpt when you're not running the slider at 100 percent.

Maybe I should have beeline Currency and trade for IW then... I've tried taking cities with quechuas but only the small cities would fall down, babylon archers have +150% bonus in city + the capitol's defense, so I needed 10 quechuas to kill a single archer ... With axes the number goes down to 5 axe / bow.

So I've tried giving up the capitol, but then Hamurabi would settle new cities there and there and fragment my empire because his culture is stronger somehow (even though I'm building terasse asap).

Thanks for the hints, I guess I should force my cities to work coastal tiles instead of the hammer resources.

Just for info here's a screenshot of my short try yesterday evening, even my stack of axe cannot take the capitol In this game I'm doing better, but still it is going to take me ages to get a decent number of cities...

Spoiler :

 

[Virupaksha]

Tricky to work out whats going on here.

On monarch I would aim for Alpha by 1000BC. Sometimes on a low commerce start I would be a bit late but seldom later than 800BC. Tech path probably first problem.

Micromanagement. Not sure if I'm reading this correctly but in the first screenshot you have pop 7 in the capital and 4 others cities of pop 5. If you went through the cities and switched them to working the highest gold yield tiles your economy would probably look quite different. Seems you have a good stack of axemen so don't really need production right now. Can't see what buildings you have but libraries +lighthouses would help. Specialize your cities, one or two build troops, the rest focus on gold.

Don't think you've over-expanded, 5/6 cities at 100BC ought to be sustainable.

Cities are placed slightly wrong, agree with Gumbolt about the crab. Land is improved but don't see how you can work so many mines.

 

[ikotomi]

I actually just completely forgot that babylon has bowmen, so quechuas don't help you here. The early rush unit you want is Horse Archers, as you won't be killed by the +100% strength that bowmen have versus any melee units.

As for working the coastal tiles, it's generally not a good idea when you're in a peaceful expansion, which is what you started your game with. It's more of a last ditch way to save your economy when you're doing insane amounts of early conquest which is what you usually expect with Inca.

Looking more carefully since I'm not on my phone, it looks like you really need to just clean up on mechanics. You're building a lot of stuff in general that isn't helping you out at the time you build them. I don't know exactly how the early game played out for you, but you need to play a lot cleaner if you want to rush, as playing sloppy means you attack with less units slower and the window for you to successfully win with low tech units is more likely to be closed.

Edit:thinking about it more, catapults might be better. I haven't rushed Hammurabai before, but it seems like a pain.

 

[lymond]

Yeah, you probably need to totally rethink some things here. Learning process, ofc.

I see in top screen that you are building Archers in about every city. That ain't helping you much. But the real question is why do you have Archery? And why did you tech IW? This indicates issues with your tech path/plan. It's important to learn what to tech and what to trade for. (I rarely even trade for Archery unless I absolutely need it like for HAs).

Anyway, first off, your economy is not that bad in the first shot there. You are earning money and that is what's important. The thing is to have a plan. Problem is that due to a sub-optimal tech path your are teching Alpha very very late. It's either long teched or traded by this point.

Honestly, on Monarch, Alpha is generally a good beeline in most cases. Get your key food tech and a strat tech if you need it. BW is always valuable. Then hit Alpha and trade for any little techs you need. Try to monopolize Alpha as long as you can though but check trade values to see if anyone starts teching it themselves.

Not sure the map type here..looks like Continents, but the layout of your land suggest a possible Great Lighthouse, which is one of the best wonders in the game in the right situations.

A couple of not so great city placements, but you have some decent cities too. You have something to work with here, that is, if you had done things different across the board.

ha..yeah...straight axe rushing Hammy is not such a great idea on Monarch+. You'll need cats for him if going melee.

Quechas are very powerful on Monarch+ but it takes some getting used to. Just slamming them into cities full of archers isn't the best idea. It kind of plays in to other kinds of attacks. You must learn to play with the AIs, luring out units and catching them with their pants down. Or keep an eye on a city and when you see them moving out Archers to escort settlers, attack using the shortest route. Probably want at least 3 to 1 Q to A. One approach though is to just start out spamming Qs from the start and catching an AI very early with a small stack. Qs are also great for choking, even in prep for taking them out.

Best bet here though is shooting for Horse Archers. REally the best way to fight early. And chariots would probably work fine on Monarch for at least taking out Hammy. Bowmen have nothin' on chariots.

I recommend learning about binary science as well. Once you hit deficit research look to run some 100% tax for a bit to earn gold while expanding, especially before libraries are in and you start running scientists (which I suspect your are probably not doing).

Once currency is in, things get much easier, but you should have Currency long before now.

(bit of addendum on the coastal tile advice, usually work your best tiles or run specs, but early on some temporary working of FIN coastal tiles now and then can give a bit of a boost to research. However, in general, non-food coastal tiles are considered pretty weak. Sometimes you do have to work whatever commerce you can for a bit when you've overexpanded or over-conquered - [which can certainly be intentional in both cases])

Anyway, your current empire - despite some obvious flaws like certain placement - is more than manageable. The issue is a bunch of other things you are missing in the learning process such as optimal tech paths.

Post saves and let the folks here work with you.

 

[Izuul]

Regarding the 2nd pic posted, axe rushes get weaker and weaker as you move up the difficulty ladder. In addition to that you are attacking Hammy who's UU is an archer that gets a big bonus against melee units.

As was previously mentioned, much better early rush options are HAs, cats + eles, and certain UUs like war chariots, praets, immortals, and quecha (but not here vs Bowmen).

 

[Ringo Kid]

I did not see anyone mention building wealth in some of your cities once you get currency. And if you lack luxuries after you expand you can tech monarchy which allows hereditary rule under which civic military garrisons increase happiness. Very basic stuff but I thought I would mention, just in case. Also founding a religion or capturing a holy city then spreading the religion for shrine income will help happy & gold a little bit.

 

[Gumbolt]

Bowmen get 50% bonus against melee units. Quelcha and axes are both melee units.

200bc is way too late for an axe rush. Axe/quelcha rushes should be closer to 1500bc or sooner. Throwing axes or quelchas at the AI around 200bc is a recipe for disaster. Add on 60% cultural defences too. Add in Bowmen to the mix and you are pretty much sending a stack to it's death. Any 200bc rush should involve catapults or face heavy losses.

Why were you so late doing the axe rush??? On a map like this I would only use chariots or HA against Hammy. Where is the starting save????

 

[pigswill]

Can you post the starting save?

 

[intutama]

OK I uploaded the save, I hope this works...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=24302&act=down

In the meanwhile I did yet another try... With horse archer I could finally wipe Hamurabi! However I'm still awfully lagging behind in tech, I should have get Writing before the horse archer technology probably!

Spoiler :

But still I'm doing good according to the score. I DOW Montezuma when Justinian begged me so I could get friend with him, then DOW Germany because they are last on score and I had not much else to do. Hopefully the conquest booty along with finiding Currency will finally let me get a decent cash flow.

Some mistakes I'm still making pointed out by other comenters:
- No specialists so far, usually I have a single town for specialists because I don't know when to have specialists instead of working tiles in other towns
- No victory chosen.. I guess domination? This is pangea...

Anyway I'll try winning on this try, looks like HA were really the best choice. Thanks a lot everyone!


PS: how to add pictures without external hosting like in other threads ?

 

[intutama]

Turn 150: the german empire is no more! well, the important part of it anyway.

Currency allowed me to trade a lot of technologies, with conquest gold and peace treaty allowing for other trades, so I'm not that backward anymore, it seems! Also what does "can't trade" means?

Spoiler :

Since I got Pyramids from Germany I could switch to monarchy civic a little bit earlier, so that helps. I also switched to organized religion and hinduism, which is the religion of my concurrent, and I'm busy converting all my towns.

Other objectives are :
- build the great lighthouse ? I don't know if it has been built or not...
- build courhouses and then the second palace in Berlin, this should really improve my economy
- beeline Knights and go for a world conquest... Or maybe the wise men of CivFanatics think that's a ludicrous idea?
- get some scout to explore, I didn't explore because its a retry game, and now I regret it...
- I hope I can get one civ to DOW another civ, but I don't know how one achieves this...
- Get a few prod town to make military units only, I have lost quite a few in the german invasion

Screenshot of my new country for the curoius:

Spoiler :

Looking forward to see your screenshots to see how good players handle this start!

 

[Virupaksha]

You can check if GLH has been built on the world wonders screen or by going into a coastal city screen with a lighthouse and seeing if you have the option to build it. Chances are on monarch it has already been built by 820AD.

Can't trade normally means that you have already gained a prerequisite tech for the tech on that turn so must wait a turn before you can trade for the next tech. Or that the AI has just researched the tech (or traded for it that turn). Not sure if that makes sense in your case - I play on vanilla and the tech trading screen is quite different. Check the screen on the next turn to see if anything changes.

 

[pigswill]

While you're waiting for the good players here's a one city chariot rush:

 

[Gumbolt]

I really don't get it. You have HA and you are spamming axes at 560ad??? When you take peace with Germans you should be demanding most of their techs.

At some point you need to pause and recover your economy. or just spam HA.

Lack of saves is really frustrating here.

 

[Lennier]

If you have kids, you should switch to Representation rather than Monarchy and run some specialists.