How to play as Elizabeth? (the English are unhappy)

[Falk]

I thought, Financial and Philosophical was a great combo - I went for a GP-producing city and several commercial cities and it worked quite well. Or so I thought. Then I started losing ground to the AI civs.

The problem was happiness - my cities were all very small due to a lack of happiness (my capital for instance was size 11 while Ghandi had 19 and all the others around 15). As we all know there are several ways of getting happiness:

- ressources
There werent enough. There are never enough of them.

- religion
With the English's starting techs you're not going to get many religions. I started Hinduism, but that didnt help much.

- Pyramids
Hard to get when you're not industrious and others are. Let's assume you cant build them.

Now how to get happiness?
The only way I can think of is to tech to theaters asap and pump commerce into culture (Elizabeth can afford that easily). Unfortunately it takes very long to get there and in the meantime everyone else's cities will be much larger than mine.

Did I miss something? What's a good strategy with Elizabeth?

In the meantime I'm going to play Mehmed - Hammams make the game so much easier.

 

[Agent Cooper]

Research Monarchy and shift civic to Hereditary Rule, if you don't have the Pyramids - 1 happy citizen per military unit garrisoned in the city. Very useful - just build units when in trouble with unhappy citizens. At some time it will be better to shift civic again, but HR lasts for quite a while. Goldmines and similar resources also contribute happy faces.

Your cities will not grow as fast as your rivals (they never will no matter what you do or which leader you choose - especially at Prince level and beyond), since Elizabeth is most effective with a Cottage Economy, which really first takes off in the mid-/late game with the right civics (+ food and hammers to towns and villages etc.). Her philo trait though also contributes to found one or two serious GP farms with farmland everywhere instead of cottages.

Lizzie is actually on of my favorites to play - just get your priorities straight when playing a finacial+philo leader and adjust your research pattern accordingly - and get to those redcoats as fast as possible.

Edit: it's really not necessary to divert commerce into happiness with the culture slider - avoid this if possible unless it has a direct purpouse - say cultural victory. Use the commerce to tech ahead instead and build a small/medium sized fighting force midgame, but a very effective force (redcoats, cavalry, cannons comes to mind..)

 

[mice]

Have a read of Ways into happiness

It all about happiness. what level are you playing? Try to grab the Oracle to get monarchy as the free tech, then switch to Hereditary Rule ,as Agent cooper said.

Other than that Liz is strange because Philosophical is good for specialists, so a GP farm, but is also Financial , so cottage spam.

If you can understand how to maximize the philo trait with specialists, and how to maximize the financial trait with cottages, then you need to blend the two somehow.

It's not too hard if you've had plenty of practise at each, but if not, it's a bit complicated,because you want to match your civics to one or the other generally.

Forget about as religion unless you take a shrine city in your wars.

Forget about the 'mids unless you have stone very handy.

Go for H rule to solve your happiness problems the easy way.

 

[Agent Cooper]

Yeah as Mice says, Lizzie tends to point in opposite directions with her traits, but - with the finacial trait you will pretty much waste it's benifits if you don't go the CE route (as you will with all finacial leaders).

BTW - do you know of the Pyramids gambit? In essence, you build the Oracle in city A and pursue Metal Casting as free tech. Then in city B you build a forge asap within 6 rounds (with massive chopping) and set a citizen to work as an engineer specialist - result: you'll get a Great Engineer in B before you get a Great Prophet from A and use him to build the Pyramids in one turn. Aalf or Sisutil (I think it's the latter) wrote a specific guide if you wanna try it out - it takes some practice but works like a charm when your chosen leader isn't industrious or stone is nowhere to be found. From monarch level and up it get's tougher to use it succesfully though and it might slow your overall progress down too much.

You might wanna give the Incas a try too - financial+industrious traits are a pretty killer-combo if you are a builder first, warmongerer second. As an example, you can build a wonder which gives some of the benefits of the philo trait, but you can't build a wonder which gives the advantages of the finacial or industrious traits.

 

[Irish82]

BTW - do you know of the Pyramids gambit? In essence, you build the Oracle in city A and pursue Metal Casting as free tech. Then in city B you build a forge asap within 6 rounds (with massive chopping) and set a citizen to work as an engineer specialist - result: you'll get a Great Engineer in B before you get a Great Prophet from A and use him to build the Pyramids in one turn. Aalf or Sisutil (I think it's the latter) wrote a specific guide if you wanna try it out - it takes some practice but works like a charm when your chosen leader isn't industrious or stone is nowhere to be found. From monarch level and up it get's tougher to use it succesfully though and it might slow your overall progress down too much.

I second this. Check out Sisutil's Intermediate Gambits in the War Academy. I'm playing a Monarch Lizzy game right now where I worked this like a charm. My first GP was an Engineer (Pyramids), my second was a Prophet (from the Oracle, popped Civil Service), and my third was another Engineer (GL). Make sure to build the Pyramids in your forge city so that you get another GP pretty quick.

I love this gambit with Philo leaders. Right now I'm on a cramped island with 2 other civs that have roughly double the cities as me, but I'm also about 3 techs ahead thanks to using my scientists to pop education and about to get Nationalism as the free tech from Liberalism. Cavalry here I come!!!

 

[futurehermit]

Definitely hereditary rule, but also you need to be expanding your empire and building the appropriate buildings. Each city should have a forge, theatre, market, etc. to enhance resources. And you should be conquering territory to acquire those resources. If you have sufficient health for your cities, don't be afraid to trade away your only clams to acquire a resource you don't have. And don't hesitate to trade for every resource you can.

Don't delay calendar if the AI isn't researching it fast enough. Calendar allows you access to a number of resources. And even if that fur-silver city will kinda suck, claim it when you are able because that's an extra +2 for the rest of your good cities! And the fur and silver are both commerce tiles that will allow the city to pay for itself.

Don't delay astronomy once you start meeting civs from overseas (if you play some kind of continents map) because that will allow you to trade for resources overseas.

But, yeah, the AI has large cities because they stay long in her rule and have massive garrisons (esp in capitals). That is what allows them to go to high populations.

The earlier you get your own her rule operation going, especially if running a CE or hybrid, the better off you will be. Check out some of Pete2006's games. He uses early monarchy to great effectiveness with financial leaders.

 

[Murky]

I thought, Financial and Philosophical was a great combo - I went for a GP-producing city and several commercial cities and it worked quite well. Or so I thought. Then I started losing ground to the AI civs.

The problem was happiness - my cities were all very small due to a lack of happiness (my capital for instance was size 11 while Ghandi had 19 and all the others around 15). As we all know there are several ways of getting happiness:

- ressources
There werent enough. There are never enough of them.

You can either capture a city with happiness resources or trade for them.

- religion
With the English's starting techs you're not going to get many religions. I started Hinduism, but that didnt help much.

Buddhism or Hinduism might be out of the question. Confucianism, Judaism and Christianity are relatively easy to get when playing a financial leader.

- Pyramids
Hard to get when you're not industrious and others are. Let's assume you cant build them.

You can research Monarchy for Hereditary Rule. Then each unit adds +1

Elizabeth is also good at the Metal Casting slingshot because of her Philosophical trait. You just build the Oracle take MC as the free tech, build a forge in another city. Use an engineer specialist until the GE pops.

The only way I can think of is to tech to theaters asap and pump commerce into culture (Elizabeth can afford that easily). Unfortunately it takes very long to get there and in the meantime everyone else's cities will be much larger than mine.

Drama helps later in the game. Size isn't everything. The AI often has to keep a lot of its troops in its backwater cities to keep them happy. That means that your stack of doom should be able to take city after city because don't have to fight a huge stack at once.