How to get better at warring?

[Evil Beejeebers]

(EB - note that most around here play with huts and events off)

I thought bronze working was always a solid first tech? I think the wheel was in the hut, I don't tend to pick it up early. I will play with huts off from now on. Where do I want to be tech wise on say about turn 80?

Lots wrong here.
One biggie. You have unit cost per turn of 37! You don't need 5-6 units in each city. 1 is normally ample. With a stack if your going to war. Or an AI is plotting against you.

OK sure I had too many, are units and HR the best way to manage happiness?

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I can win this difficulty I know I can.

 

[Jellybug]

Happy cap is a huge obstacle early game. Using HR to grow all your cities past their normal breaking point costs you in three seperate ways.

1) You spend hammers making the units that will garrison. Warriors are cheap (15 hammers) but axes are more than double that (35). Every hammer a unit costs could have been a gold piece from building wealth (assuming you have currency, which you should be getting sooner than later to fund that delicious outward expansion.

2) Unit upkeep--- cost per unit past the free threshhold. The free threshhold depends on your total population, but you will start paying for units pretty soon.

3) Population- city maintenance. Edit: I'm not sure if this cost is reflected in city maintenance or civic upkeep.

So if you're growing onto a bureaucracy or riverside cottage (or what will soon become a bureau cottage through tile swapping) by using the the extra happy cap, then great, those will pay off pretty soon. Otherwise you're better off trading resources with an AI or, if you have a bunch of calendar resources, tech calendar and take advantage of all those luxuries.

I think HR is best used as a stopgap, in anticipation of a happy cap increase (such as imminent calendar access or expansion to new luxury resources like gems unlocked by clearing jungle, or tundra fur coming into your borders from a second border pop, that kind of stuff). Another alternative is simply killing off your unhappy citizens by whipping settlers, workers, or happiness buildings.

 

[lymond]

I thought bronze working was always a solid first tech? I think the wheel was in the hut, I don't tend to pick it up early. I will play with huts off from now on. Where do I want to be tech wise on say about turn 80?.

Civ iv is about food. Unless you start with the appropriate food tech(s) you will tech for the food-at least your best food special in cap. BW then likely next priority.

Honestly, answering questions like where one should be at Turn X or units and HR business isn’t helping you. You will get a feel for this when you actually start to learn and practice new concepts.

You are basically just making random decisions and stagnating on low difficulty...which is as to be expected until you take the time to really learn.

Most of these questions and answers are in a “vacuum”. You need direct guidance or watch some lps.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

This is about the point I normally get stuck. I want to take complete control of the floodplains to the south and cottage the hell outta them, I want to secure the rest of the brozne near to my cities and hopefully have a monopoly on the resource. I feel I should also be thinking about looking to taking boudica or the bull out of the game. I feel that is my goal.

1. Get the flood plain,
2. Get the bronze
3. Elim someone nearby.

 

[sampsa]

There is a lot of room for improvement and you are mostly focusing on things that are of secondary importance. The early game should be about expanding as fast as possible to work as good tiles as possible. You aren't really doing that.

Spoiler :

What are good tiles? They are tiles that are -positive (i.e. generating more than 2). Your Djenne has none of those until you farm a grassland, and 3 isn't great either, since working it is netting you only 1. The first thing your worker does for this city should have been to farm the silk (marked with the blue !), as 33 is a decent tile. Mines are not very good tiles as they prevent your city from growing. In the screenshot you are not even working the mine, which underlines this point. Also, neither monument nor barracks are not worth much. Early game you should be building mostly workers and settlers, not buildings! I understand that the monument allows you to claim copper, but that is not very important.

Because there is no food in the north, you shouldn't be placing a city there at all, at least early. A much better spot is in the south, grabbing two floodplains marked with the green X. I'd go on the gold for +1+2 city center, but also 1N is fine. Then you can farm the floodplains and start working gold when you are size 3.

There are many floodplains by that river, so expanding south to claim them makes sense. You've gone way too far with your 3rd city though. It might be different if there was a strong food resource like corn, but there is just another copper. I would've just gone on the stone.

Area to the NE should be scouted a bit, that horse spot could be 4th if there is food.

 

[Fippy]

From my view the best city spot was/is here:

Spoiler :

Maybe you can tell me why i think that

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

My next settlement was on the Gold, I took the city in the far south to cut off the Celts from taking it. I was building towards it at the start. I was tempted to settle on the stone, but deiced to go further south.

The idea behind the northern city was that it had a strategic resource and it was a plains hill on river, I knew it was food poor I was only going to build farms and mines on it and use it for units.

 

[sampsa]

You are making too big sacrifices to prevent the AI from doing something that you don't need to prevent it from doing. I suppose that is kind of overthinking things a bit. Strongest sites first, food first, it really is that simple.

 

[Windsor]

Very happy to see that you went Agriculture-Animal Husbandry first giving you two strong tiles very early. Unfortunately, those two tiles are still the only improved tiles you're working.

Djenne is as others have mentioned not good as a 2nd city. Not only is it food-poor, but you needed a monument to grab the tile you wanted. Not realizing the full cost of having to build monument first in your 2nd city is a very common mistake. Notice how it's 1880BC and the city have yet to contribute anything meaningful despite you settling Djenne at a very respectable 2520BC.

A fairly blunt, but IMO decent rule of thumb is that 2nd and 3rd city should never have to build monument first even if it seriously harms their long-term potential. If 2nd city can't share capital-food, then settle with food resource in inner ring.

Let me also just point out that by settling Djenne in the north and Kumbi Saleh far down in the south your two workers can't keep up. With a new settler in production things are just going to get worse. You need 3 additional workers.

 

[Anysense]

From my view the best city spot was/is here:

Spoiler :

Maybe you can tell me why i think that

May be pigs+copper with gold in second ring first and then settle where you suggest? I think this way both golds will be online sooner and no stunted growth too; and early copper as a bonus.

On second thought, copper was not visible at the time. Still, I'd probably go for pigs first - the only good food in sight plus gold once third city is in place.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

I'm at about 1000AD now, I have a score lead, I have defeated the bull and I feel I can get the Celts and the French pretty quickly. I suspect the Turks Persia will have castles by now, so I should now focus on my economy to get cannons and riffles?

 

[dankok8]

I'm at about 1000AD now, I have a score lead, I have defeated the bull and I feel I can get the Celts and the French pretty quickly. I suspect the Turks Persia will have castles by now, so I should now focus on my economy to get cannons and riffles?

To be fair, a score lead isn't necessarily an indicator that you're in the best position to win.

Factors such as technological level, land area, and the power graph are more important.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

To be fair, a score lead isn't necessarily an indicator that you're in the best position to win.

Factors such as technological level, land area, and the power graph are more important.

\i

I am top in power too, I think it will be very hard for me to get my army to the Turks land. a good 20 titles from where my stack currently is. The power is much more controlled than it was in the German save. Each of my cities has about 2 defenders and I have been trying to keep on top of the happiness cap.

I think I can get a tech lead quickly when I change focus.

I am really enjoying the spiritual trait. I thought it was a bad one, but it's actually pretty useful. I am not sure if the unique building of the Mali is any good though.

 

[Fippy]

\i

I am top in power too *snip* Each of my cities has about 2 defenders

Those are bad habits, ideally most cities have exactly 1 warrior
You should focus on controlling the game via diplo, not power.
Also recommended, if you have much land available peacefully focus on improving your empire building skills before turning to war aspects.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Learn all the mistakes the AI makes when warring. ... Learn how to kill all the siege in a stack to one so their stacks will be even more stupid. .

Thanks for the suggestions on what to watch. Baiting the AI (in the portion of your answer I left out) is also something I need to work on, but this one aspect is new to me. Which of my units are best for killing all their siege?

 

[rah]

Mounted for flanking damage. Much better than doing things like losing axes to cats in stacks. Better to attack with horse archers or better when avail. Good for killing units and damaging accompanying siege which, if applied enough, will die in droves. I do like to leave one. It's hilarious to watch a huge stack sit outside a city weakly defended trying to take down the defense with a single siege unit. Gives you plenty of time to reinforce and pick off units while still healing.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

The

Mounted for flanking damage. Much better than doing things like losing axes to cats in stacks. Better to attack with horse archers or better when avail. Good for killing units and damaging accompanying siege which, if applied enough, will die in droves. I do like to leave one. It's hilarious to watch a huge stack sit outside a city weakly defended trying to take down the defense with a single siege unit. Gives you plenty of time to reinforce and pick off units while still healing.

The 12 strength horse unit with military tradition is very nice. It eats seige and pretty much everything else for breakfast.

 

[Zavior]

Indeed, cuirassiers are quite a common way to close out games. You can often turn down research to 0% after you get cuirassiers on lower difficulties.

 

[rah]

All depends on the size of the map. If large enough, the last ai might get to rifles before you finish them off. But when that happens it usually means I made a mistake.