How's My Playing?

[WetPirate]

I have won several regent games and then proceeded to play on the Monarch level. I've played quite a few games, but they all ended up the same way, with me just behind one or two civs who end up winning. Right now I am playing on Monarch as China. My original goal was a diplomatic victory, but then I was constantly harrassed by Japan very early in the game. It turned into a brutal war in which I ended up around his capital with badly damaged units and sued for peace. I am also next to the Indians on my continent. They are the largest civilization (land wise) and have bullied me greatly and had many military alliances with the Japanese against me. I have finally got on the upper hand of the Indians, but it is the dawning of the Middle Ages so there are pikemen. My original goal was to attack India after I got my UU the rider but war came too early. I included a saved game. I NEED tips and advice to improve my game!

 

[Trickey]

I am probably behinde you in skill level, but there is one thing i notice as soon as i look at this game.

You only have 4 workers! get way more workers. You should probably have one worker for every city. You have lots of undevellopped shielded grassland, those should be roaded and mined.


That is all i have to say

 

[Matt_G]

Trickey is right. You have only 4 workers and 5 captured workers. For 17 cities this is a crippling and critical shortage. IMO it's damn near fatal! You need citizens working improved tiles on the higher difficulty levels to succeed. Working unimproved tiles for any length of time is a move. Granted in the early game it's unavoidable for a while, but this late in your game there is no reason for it. Not ripping on you, just making some observations.

 

[Hades]

Every 2 cities to 1 worker. This ratio should be valid throughout the game. Also, attack as early as possible in Monach, you need to be twice as large as your neighbours just to survive.

 

[Sullla]

Yep, your biggest problem is what the others have already said: way too few workers to get the job done. While they may have said 1 for every two cities, I recommend even more than that. It's difficult to have too many workers; there's almost always SOMETHING for them to do. This picture I took in one of your core cities just made me cringe to look at it:

Your city is not growing for lack of food while all those grasslands sit there unirrigated. And, to make matters worse, you have mined hills that are going completely unused. You need to go into your cities and rearrange the tiles yourself to get more production! This city could be getting 20 shields easily instead of its current 7 or 8. Do this in every city, and the results will be highly noticeable; it's rather like trimming the fat from your empire. You're not getting the most out of your cities at the moment, and that's just a shame.

Your cities are also spaced too far apart with a lot of wasted tiles, but there's nothing you can do about that now. See a dotmap I did for Trickey in this forum a couple days ago for info on where to properly place cities early on in the game. You also have military units outpacing your free unit support; not a good thing in Monarchy. Found more cities in the open territory to get more unit support and increase your income. And you are running 30% luxuries, which is rather high. Why not trade some of your excess resources/luxuries to Japan for their dyes so you can lower the luxury rate? They hardly pose a threat to you, and it would help you out in your current war. You might not want to push that too far though; swords are just not going to do much against pikes.

Originally posted by Hades
Also, attack as early as possible in Monach, you need to be twice as large as your neighbours just to survive.

A special note on this: it's utterly untrue. It's not hard at all to stay caught up in tech with your neighbors on Monarch even when smaller, or even surpass them on tech, IF you manage your cities well. I out-researched the AI and held a tech lead the entire game in a Monarch 5 city challenge game once for fun (standard map, not a small or tiny one). It can be done - but you have to get more out of your cities than what you are doing right now.

 

[bobgote]

yeh, i haven't looked at your game yet, i will soon, but lots of workers is my strategy. the huge production coupled with early wars gives you a great start on monarch. I am around your level, i only just won my first game of monarch (led the whole way) and this was after a couple of narrow losses (finishing 2nd, or just losing to a space race). I've now turned off the diplo and space race options, as they're just annoying distractions for me.

At the start, work all the tiles for production (except floodplains and wheat), only irrigate in a monarchy otherwise. I'm surprised you've done so well with a city like that. no offense intended there, but give workers a go and you will see what you're cities can really do.

 

[Daaraa]

bobgote : In case the mods notice, your signature is a little long. We're only allowed 5 lines.

 

[civ_steve]

I wanted to add my two cents worth regarding the use of workers.

In the early parts of a game I try to maintain about a 1:1 ratio of workers to cities. As I get close to Steam Power (and railroad capability) I ramp up towards 2:1 ratio of workers to cities. These extra workers allow me to quickly connect my cities with railroads, which improves movement and production/irrigation considerably. When I'm done with them, I'll Join the excess workers back into whatever cities need the extra population.

It's critical to have roads everywhere, especially any tiles that are being worked. These roads add extra commerce that your civilization needs. Anywhere I move a worker, I build a road if it doesn't already exist, even if I can't use the space right now. Eventually I will, and it saves me a turn later.

In Despotism, irrigate spaces that will give you extra food now (plain grassland doesn't under Despotism). Put a few mines in, especially on grassland that you are working. If nothing better is needed, start clearing Jungle, or cutting down Forest for extra shields. As you approach the ability to change to better governments, consider irrigating grassland if you need to increase food production. In the late game (Factories and later), I usually convert irrigation to mining to increase production; I Join workers to cities that I wish to increase the population, so I've lost the need for food production. (The workers are produced by smaller, inefficient, corrupt cities.) If you're milking the game, you might irrigate everything for the opposite reason, to support the highest population possible.

You can also use workers on your capital city space as trade items in negotiations with other civs.

 

[bobgote]

Originally posted by civ_steve
(The workers are produced by smaller, inefficient, corrupt cities.)

I change to communism .

Originally posted by Daaraa
bobgote : In case the mods notice, your signature is a little long. We're only allowed 5 lines.

It is 5 lines

OK, one other thing apart from workers/production, i think your cities are too far apart. If you want the best production, they need to be closer. You can look up other threads on this by people who've looked at it more than me.

something else: why didn't you kill off the japanese first? It could've given you that extra start in the war. Guess it doesn't matter now, but it looks like you're doing ok.

 

[XOVER]

How often to workers tend to show up in the AI's capitol city so you can trade for them?

 

[KDan]

Capturing AI cities is a great way to get lots of workers early on for very cheap They're not as good as the home-grown version, but they have no maintenance costs and there's a LOT of them after a good few wars

Daniel