I'm still not "getting It'

[Critt3r]

Hey fellas.

I am playing on Warlord and am still unable to win a space race.

I am leading the tech race up to the point where Industrialism and Electricity come into play.

Then I seem to fall behind like a stone. I am running science at 90-100 the entire game.

How am I falling behind so badly? I just don't get it.

I've read many other articles about having cottages early so you economy can handle the research. Apparently I haven't figured out the magic formula yet.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Shillen]

If you're brave enough you could post a save and let the masses give you criticism/advice on how to do better. Other than that it's hard to know why the game is breaking down for you halfway through.

 

[jeannie]

I've found that I need to put granaries in most of my cities so that the population will grow more quickly, otherwise I fall behind in the tech race.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

well the thing to remember is that the Science is 90-100 % OF commerce

90-100% of a small number is still a small number, so you need to increase your Commerce options
1-get more tile based commerce (cottages->towns, +water tiles)
2-get more treade route based commerce (seaside cities with harbors, trade agreements with other rich friendly nations, Free Market)

Other options include Scientist specialists and Representative government with Any type of specialist.

finally trading some techs with AIs, so that you don't have to research every tech yourself (the AIs don't because they trade some techs to each other)

 

[anton_z1]

If you have 90-100% commerce, one thing YOU ARE TOO SMALL. Grab land. nO WAY you will win a tech race without at least 10 cities on standart.

 

[jafink]

i would have to agree with anton_z1.

A big empire with 60% science will research faster than a small empire with 90%.

Also consider nuking your closest competitors cities. That will start a war, but you could still slow them down enough to finish first.

 

[Batvanio]

also at the point when Electricity comes you need to play with your cities a bit - dont let the computer decide the city tile usage.

I have noticed that in late game if you put automanagement without any options the computer will chose the setting with maximum production while having slow growth. Even if he uses specialists or so.
This is not always helpful as if you switch completely to growth - within a few turns you will have your cities twice bigger with the same production but with more tiles usage - just you need to control that by hand for a while.

Second thing is that by the time you get electricity you should alerady have an overview of what victory you need to achieve. Obviously best suited at this game stage is UN, Space race or time. Sometimes time is not possible as
somebody will built spaceship first eventually. UN is hard to achive, you should have planned an UN victory early on with good relations that take time to form. So you are left with Space ship which means strictly research and built only to achive that goal - libraries, space elevator, first to built appolo and nothing more or side - just focus.

 

[Astax]

Space victory? Try space elevator and Labs in all your cities

Tech? If you suck at economy (Which shouldnt happen :/ ) adopt my warmonger strategy. I usually run at 50% or less science and keep up with tech... How? Scientists! and a science maxed city, city where you stic all your great scientists and maybe you can put a great library in there and an academy. Dont try to use all your great scientists to put academies in all cities, its better to get it in one city and add all scientists there.

Also if you win the wonder race by getting pyramids, you are set from ancient, jsut use representation! the extra +3 science is awsome. That's like +50% to your scientists.

 

[rabottens]

Size is the secret to winning a tech race. I find my empire growing in spurts as money allows my expansion. Later game conquest expansion comes into play. Education buildings and an goodly number of cities will always keep you in a tech advantage. Beware of the warmongers trying to keep you small or penned in so you can not expand. On a standard map I try to have 15-20 cities under my control and if the opportunity rises and the treasury allows I continue my expansion. The more cities the more science output. Don't be afraid to use Scientific Specialists to help boost science in your larger cities.

 

[Dragonlor]

Kill your opponents. It's easy to out-tech nobody.

 

[jrice77]

If you have 90-100% commerce, one thing YOU ARE TOO SMALL. Grab land. nO WAY you will win a tech race without at least 10 cities on standart.

I'm no expert, but this is definitely not true. Just finished a game Noble/Normal/(Large Sea in the Middle map)/FDR (Org/Ind). I only built 3 cities, absorbed/conquered 2 more midgame, absorbed/conquered 2 more late game (too late to make a big difference). Could have won with 5 cities.

Kept my research at 100% the whole game. Dominated all civs except Victoria (who seemed to be slightly behind, finished two parts behind me) in tech. Researched all techs and won the space race.

Keys to this game:
- Made sure to build build libraries, observatories, etc. in all cities.
- Blew off Budism and Hindusim, founded Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and used Temple of Solomon, etc. w/as many temples, etc. as I could build to keep the cash flowing.
- Had 2 high quality GP machines and after building Academies and the 3 Religious wonders, used them to either research Tech or as Super Specialists. Never used them for Golden Age or Culture Bomb.
- Was a peace monger. On the big sea map you only have 2-3 neighbors. I was good buddies with all (which I maintained mostly by either trading or giving techs). Only got in one war with the strictly Tech/Troop inferior Issabella. Eventually helped Vicky exterminate Issabella just to keep relations good (she was the most powerful Civ).
- A side note to the above bullet, when trying to achieve Diplomatic/Space Race/Culture victory be willing to kiss ash. If your friends/neighbors (hopefully these are one and the same) want something, give it to them! Don't be proud, or worry you're getting ripped off. This will keep all but the most warmongerist at bay and Tech trading the whole game. In this game my closest neighbor and best buddy (Mansa Musa) could have swatted me like a fly late game (his military was an awsome thing to behold), but I kept him happy at all costs, which was easy, cause I was always ahead of him in Tech!

Hope this helps.

 

[MikeH]

I'm no expert, but this is definitely not true. Just finished a game Noble/Normal/(Large Sea in the Middle map)/FDR (Org/Ind). I only built 3 cities, absorbed/conquered 2 more midgame, absorbed/conquered 2 more late game (too late to make a big difference). Could have won with 5 cities.

Yes, you can win with less cities, but I find with more it becomes easier. In the two games where I've won the space race with 15+ cities, it has been a one man race. However you should be able to run a 15+ city civ at 90-100% at the end of the game. As someone said the key to the space race is commerce, get those markets, grocers and banks working in your commerce cities and sell your spare resources to the AIs for gpt and you're half way there, at least up to Noble level. The reason the AI can sometimes get away from you at the end is that they are cottage happy, which pays off in the end game, make sure your economy can outdo them.

 

[automator]

Maybe I'm better than I think I am, or Warlord is a lot harder than Cheiftan, but ... I'm in the Modern Age of my first game. Started on Chieftan because I wanted to get a feel for the new stuff in the game (am a competent Regent Civ3 player who needs to step up a level).

I'm totally blown away by how much I'm kicking ass. I'm a full age ahead of everyone, and I'm french. I like the civic that gives a few beakers just for having a city. Libraries, Unis, get some great scientists to build academies. Get the money rolling in with COTTAGES.

 

[Kavatar]

In my opinion there are three ways to win the tech race: Have a large empire, make a lot of money, or produce a lot of great leaders (or any combination of the three). Just go with whatever your leader's traits make easiest. If you're financial, build a lot of cottages, and cities on the coast and by rivers. If you're aggressive, just expand your empire (be sure to build courthouses to cut down on those maintenance costs). If you're philosophical, pump out those great leaders to either become specialists or research techs for you. In my last game as Gandhi, I only had 5 cities but I was dominating the tech race because they made so much money that I could afford to go 80% tech and 20% culture and STILL make a great gold profit.

 

[jrice77]

Maybe I'm better than I think I am, or Warlord is a lot harder than Cheiftan, but ... I'm in the Modern Age of my first game. Started on Chieftan because I wanted to get a feel for the new stuff in the game (am a competent Regent Civ3 player who needs to step up a level).

I'm totally blown away by how much I'm kicking ass. I'm a full age ahead of everyone, and I'm french. I like the civic that gives a few beakers just for having a city. Libraries, Unis, get some great scientists to build academies. Get the money rolling in with COTTAGES.

No offence. But the game is just that easy on that level. I had never played a full game of any Civ (started a game and quite Civ II a couple of times) before, started on Warlord and won 3 different ways (never lost) before moving on to noble. Although I did do the tutorial, and read over the fantastic walkthrough at

http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4_walk_1.html

so I wasn't completely on my own. Not saying I'm anything great, just that that Chieftan must be mucho easy.

 

[Ray Patterson]

In my last game as Gandhi, I only had 5 cities but I was dominating the tech race because they made so much money that I could afford to go 80% tech and 20% culture and STILL make a great gold profit.

Which was only because of shrines. Which is a good way to employ Gandhi indeed, but has nothing to do with the rest of your economy.

 

[StanNP]

I am playing on Warlord and am still unable to win a space race.

I am leading the tech race up to the point where Industrialism and Electricity come into play.

Then I seem to fall behind like a stone. I am running science at 90-100 the entire game.

How am I falling behind so badly? I just don't get it.

Are you trading tech with other civilizations? You can bet that the AI is trading techs back and forth. Every tech you get in trade is free research for you. Even if you are not getting the best deal, at least you don't have to research it.

Find a research buddy you have good relations with and trade every new tech to them for one of their techs. Try and research techs that you have a monopoly on and trade it around for 2-3+ other techs.

StanNP

 

[Kavatar]

Which was only because of shrines. Which is a good way to employ Gandhi indeed, but has nothing to do with the rest of your economy.

That is true, but I was still producing loads of beakers from my cities. Didn't really have to do with Gandhi's traits, but sometimes you just have to get lucky with the land you're given.

 

[civ-wrecked]

Hey fellas.

I am playing on Warlord and am still unable to win a space race.

I've read many other articles about having cottages early so you economy can handle the research. Apparently I haven't figured out the magic formula yet.

Any advice is appreciated.

I recently played at Prince level, got 15,000+ score on a Space race victory and ranked as Caesar. Even in that game, my tech percentage is only around 80-90% for most of the game so I don't understand why you suddenly fell behind in Industrial age. Usually, by the time I get Liberalism (as the first player), I leave the AIs so far behind there's little point in doing tech-trading with them any more. I won that game with Elizabeth but I also won a space race at Monarch level with Mao-Tse-Tung.

A few useful things to do:
- build cottages early and USE those squares to make them grow into towns. For a normal square, that's the best source of gold.
- build all research buildings: libraries, universities, observatories, and labs. Any cities which have decent number of beakers (say 80+) should also have an Academy (unless it is already too late in the game for it to matter)
- concentrate on a super-science city. The first Great Scientist should go to this city to build an Academy, nothing else is more important. All subsequent Great Scientists should also go to this city as super-specialists unless you have a BIG tech that you absolutely have to get and the GS helps. And build the national wonder that doubles the tech output of this city. If you use all your GS to discover techs earlier then that might explain why you have an earlier lead and slow down later. I think my SS city produces about 400 beakers per turn.
- If you do have a good number of specialists then you should also pick the Representative civic. It's the best for a relatively small civ with a few main cities.
- make sure you don't have happiness problem and your citizens refuse to work later in the game . If you leave everything to the city managers then you might not realize that .
- if you see the AIs start building parts for the space ship first, don't panic. In my first game which I did play to the finish and didn't know the rules on how to build the spaceship, the AIs started building parts more than 30 turns before I did but I still beat them by a long shot in the end since I had most other techs except Rocketry and the Apolo program while that was all the AIs got. They always take the shortest route to Rocketry to build the parts.

Other than those points, I'm lost as to why that happen to you . In my own experience, the tech lead always snowballs into a bigger lead later, never reverses course.

 

[R3dKnight]

....maybe ur just not a good builder. go start a roman civ. research bronze working -> iron working. worker chop a settler. then tell the to chop trees for praetorians. it'll cheer u up a bit