Do I need multiple spices? Because my capital is settled on top of one already; I'm trading it with Bismarck right now, but not for much longer...
In which I fail at Civ5
- Thread starter coanda
- Start date
Do I need multiple spices? Because my capital is settled on top of one already; I'm trading it with Bismarck right now, but not for much longer...
Getting as many as luxuries as possible is the key for a gold economy. When I look for settling what few cities I create, it is primiarily based on how many unique and duplicate luxuries they will have in the three rings. Even the decision to puppet or raze a non-capital city is based on whether it will give me another unique luxury.
The reason to have multiples is that every 30 turns, you can sell one (or two or however many above 1 you have) for 209-240g, all game long, without decreasing your happiness! Your trading partners will eventually get tired of buying certain luxuries but until then, think of your trading partners (all of them) as ATMs.
The first priority for a worker is to work a close luxury, to sell or to gain the needed happiness. Then work your food tiles and then work every single luxury resource within three rings.
For puppets (like Berlin), if a luxury or strategic resource have not been worked yet, you can work it yourself. Otherwise, once you get the texh that includes Trading Posts (Currency?), then you would want to convert all of the puppet's non-resource farms into Trading Posts. The reason is so they do not grow that fast and reducing your happiness.
The Pilgrim
Deity
I need to have some sleep. I really do. Yes, go Sailing first then. But, still don't delay BW for two long. You should be prepared in case there are more reachable AI's. Buccaneer, I think he realizes that. I was advocating researching BW first because I forgot he's got spices already. Since there are no buyers for now, no need to rush it.
Well... this turnset didn't go quite as simply as hoped. First thing I discovered was that I forgot to save after last turn, so I had to fall back on my turn-60 autosave; I tried to play everything out the same as before, and also increased autosave frequency to every 5 turns instead of every 10.
Got back to where I was last time, went to invade Bismarck. Realized that the massive forest north and west of Hamburg was a real problem for archers, and I had to swing far to the east to be able to approach over plains. That meant pinching between Hamburg and Munich, which slowed me down further. That, plus his near-endless waves of warriors and archers which served only to force me to waste turns shooting them.
Finally took Hamburg around turn 82, although the "Raze, Puppet, Annex" popup didn't show up until turn 85 (not sure what that was about).
Razed as planned; lousy city anyways.
I'd hoped to be conquering Berlin by around turn 85 (so I could use the gold from that and Hamburg to rushbuy that library in Mumbai), but I'm far behind expectations. I don't know if it was just bad tactics, or that I was overoptimistic from the start about how quickly I could push this war.
Anyhow, current situation:
Bismarck hit the Medieval period one or two turns ago, although since I haven't seen any advanced military units out of him I think he's been wasting his beakers on useless technologies.
As far as I can tell, Berlin currently has an archer, maybe one more unit, and the city itself. So I'll be taking about a two-turn pause to heal a little, bring up my great general (who's been slowly slogging through the forest to catch up), and pre-position bowmen. Then I close, massively bombard the city, and hopefully take it down completely around turn 95. Gold from that rushbuys a library and I finally start on NC in the capital (finishing around turn 110... yuck).
On the plus side, unless something drastic changes Bismarck is doomed now. On the minus side, it's going to be another 30-40 turns to wrap that up, and I'm going to be way behind the rest of the AIs. I also just got a notification that someone lost their capital, so some other AI is growing large presumably.
Oh - that screenshot is from last turn. This turn the spearman got reckless and I killed it.
Got back to where I was last time, went to invade Bismarck. Realized that the massive forest north and west of Hamburg was a real problem for archers, and I had to swing far to the east to be able to approach over plains. That meant pinching between Hamburg and Munich, which slowed me down further. That, plus his near-endless waves of warriors and archers which served only to force me to waste turns shooting them.
Finally took Hamburg around turn 82, although the "Raze, Puppet, Annex" popup didn't show up until turn 85 (not sure what that was about).
Razed as planned; lousy city anyways.
I'd hoped to be conquering Berlin by around turn 85 (so I could use the gold from that and Hamburg to rushbuy that library in Mumbai), but I'm far behind expectations. I don't know if it was just bad tactics, or that I was overoptimistic from the start about how quickly I could push this war.
Anyhow, current situation:
Bismarck hit the Medieval period one or two turns ago, although since I haven't seen any advanced military units out of him I think he's been wasting his beakers on useless technologies.
As far as I can tell, Berlin currently has an archer, maybe one more unit, and the city itself. So I'll be taking about a two-turn pause to heal a little, bring up my great general (who's been slowly slogging through the forest to catch up), and pre-position bowmen. Then I close, massively bombard the city, and hopefully take it down completely around turn 95. Gold from that rushbuys a library and I finally start on NC in the capital (finishing around turn 110... yuck).
On the plus side, unless something drastic changes Bismarck is doomed now. On the minus side, it's going to be another 30-40 turns to wrap that up, and I'm going to be way behind the rest of the AIs. I also just got a notification that someone lost their capital, so some other AI is growing large presumably.
Oh - that screenshot is from last turn. This turn the spearman got reckless and I killed it.
There currently is a bug in the game, which turns off pop-ups from goodie-huts, city conquests, meeting new CS's, finding natural wonders etc.. It is especially annoying when conquering cities, as you don't get the option to raze/puppet right away.
You can work around it by hitting F6 (to see the tech tree) and closing it by hitting "close window" in the bottom right. That will load all the pop-ups you've ben missing. I've learnt to do this before I take any city, allowing me to raze/puppet appropriately
.
You can work around it by hitting F6 (to see the tech tree) and closing it by hitting "close window" in the bottom right. That will load all the pop-ups you've ben missing. I've learnt to do this before I take any city, allowing me to raze/puppet appropriately
.
The Pilgrim
Deity
It's hard to execute a successful early war when you have nobody to trade with. You started a little late and you'll finish a little late. On the positive, you'll have all continent to yourself and with Indian UA will be able to grow huge cities that will eventually catch up. Everything looks good, considering subpar civ and unfriendly terrain. Immortal is more forgiving than deity and perfect conditions aren't needed to do well.
@Mystz0r: Thanks for the heads-up about the bug. Actually came in useful this round too with Berlin - which didn't want to be a puppet, which was going to delay NC, until I got the popup. Apparently despite the "free" Library from Great Library, it doesn't have one now that I conquered it.
@The Pilgrim: Good to know there is hope. Taking advantage of all this land is something I'm going to be looking to think about now; the war is pretty well wrapped up.
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Short turnset just to get to a better point for reflecting on what to do going forward.
Took Berlin - discovered that he'd apparently been building Petra there the whole time I was marching unstoppably towards it. And unless I've miscounted, there is precisely one non-floodplains desert tile workable by Berlin. Well, I guess I'll take it.
Moved quickly northwest, took Cologne and starting to raze it. Meanwhile, I finished a trireme out of Mumbai and have sent it off to scout; I bought a library in Mumbai and am building National College in Berlin; I'm struggling not to lose money on upkeep.
Bismarck will pay all his gold (77) for peace; I wouldn't be ready to attack Munich for another 6-7 turns anyways, so I'm inclined to accept it, heal up and reposition, and kill him 10 turns from now (peace treaties are still 10 turns, right?).
I'm not sure what sort of improvements I should be working on around Mumbai and Delhi. I've pretty much farmed everything in sight; I've almost finished a trade route connection between the two (1-2 turns of work left on that). If I want to improve anything else, I'm going to be needing to chop down jungles, but I'm reluctant to do that - the science boost in Delhi with NC, in particular, should be very useful.
Do I just idle my workers? Do I go ahead and chop the jungles? Do I delete the workers to save on upkeep?
Delhi will be moving on to make a settler after it finishes NC; Mumbai is making a pair of workboats before anything else.
My scouting Trireme has found what looks like a small island to the west, although it will take some time to tell just how extensive it is. I finished Optics, so when I wrap up this war with Bismarck I'm probably going to send my scout and possibly an archer or two off sailing to explore as well.
Army is pretty healthy, although they could use a turn or two of healing. As I said, I think about 6 turns just healing and moving before I'd be ready to hit Delhi, but here's a SS for anyone curious about the start of my army.
Plan moving forwards...
My two big priorities are getting gold for a courthouse in Berlin so I can annex it, and getting a settler off to that city far to the east. Mumbai badly needs workboats, although I may want to pause and kill the barb camp in the far east before I actually risk them making improvements.
Research wise, I'm getting Currency now in case I don't meet any other AIs to trade with. I'm inclined to just head straight for Education after that - start working on making up that tech gap. Should I be pausing to get Iron Working, Engineering, Horseback Riding, Compass, or some other tech before going after universities? I don't see any compelling reason myself, but maybe something jumps out to veterans.
Longer-term, I do need to think about making use of the continent as a whole. I'm starting to get the sense that India's small cities are very weak, and their large cities are exceptionally strong. So after Education I'm thinking about Civil Service for better farms, then ultimately expanding from four cities to six just to take advantage of the particularly valuable spots I can find (one somewhere east of Mount Fuji for generally strong terrain plus plenty of excess resources to trade with other AIs when I start meeting them; one SW of the deer south of my capital for silver plus decent terrain overall).
@The Pilgrim: Good to know there is hope. Taking advantage of all this land is something I'm going to be looking to think about now; the war is pretty well wrapped up.
-------------------------------------------------
Short turnset just to get to a better point for reflecting on what to do going forward.
Took Berlin - discovered that he'd apparently been building Petra there the whole time I was marching unstoppably towards it. And unless I've miscounted, there is precisely one non-floodplains desert tile workable by Berlin. Well, I guess I'll take it.
Moved quickly northwest, took Cologne and starting to raze it. Meanwhile, I finished a trireme out of Mumbai and have sent it off to scout; I bought a library in Mumbai and am building National College in Berlin; I'm struggling not to lose money on upkeep.
Bismarck will pay all his gold (77) for peace; I wouldn't be ready to attack Munich for another 6-7 turns anyways, so I'm inclined to accept it, heal up and reposition, and kill him 10 turns from now (peace treaties are still 10 turns, right?).
I'm not sure what sort of improvements I should be working on around Mumbai and Delhi. I've pretty much farmed everything in sight; I've almost finished a trade route connection between the two (1-2 turns of work left on that). If I want to improve anything else, I'm going to be needing to chop down jungles, but I'm reluctant to do that - the science boost in Delhi with NC, in particular, should be very useful.
Do I just idle my workers? Do I go ahead and chop the jungles? Do I delete the workers to save on upkeep?
Delhi will be moving on to make a settler after it finishes NC; Mumbai is making a pair of workboats before anything else.
My scouting Trireme has found what looks like a small island to the west, although it will take some time to tell just how extensive it is. I finished Optics, so when I wrap up this war with Bismarck I'm probably going to send my scout and possibly an archer or two off sailing to explore as well.
Army is pretty healthy, although they could use a turn or two of healing. As I said, I think about 6 turns just healing and moving before I'd be ready to hit Delhi, but here's a SS for anyone curious about the start of my army.
Plan moving forwards...
My two big priorities are getting gold for a courthouse in Berlin so I can annex it, and getting a settler off to that city far to the east. Mumbai badly needs workboats, although I may want to pause and kill the barb camp in the far east before I actually risk them making improvements.
Research wise, I'm getting Currency now in case I don't meet any other AIs to trade with. I'm inclined to just head straight for Education after that - start working on making up that tech gap. Should I be pausing to get Iron Working, Engineering, Horseback Riding, Compass, or some other tech before going after universities? I don't see any compelling reason myself, but maybe something jumps out to veterans.
Longer-term, I do need to think about making use of the continent as a whole. I'm starting to get the sense that India's small cities are very weak, and their large cities are exceptionally strong. So after Education I'm thinking about Civil Service for better farms, then ultimately expanding from four cities to six just to take advantage of the particularly valuable spots I can find (one somewhere east of Mount Fuji for generally strong terrain plus plenty of excess resources to trade with other AIs when I start meeting them; one SW of the deer south of my capital for silver plus decent terrain overall).
Couple of reactions:
1. Looks like you still have a forest you can lumber mill near Delhi and some spices that you can improve (no one to sell them to right now, but nice to have them improved when you meet new civs), and Berlin has tiles worth improving and will eventually justify a road (depending on where you settle next). Once you research Guilds, it'll be time to start Trade Posting your puppets, so I wouldn't delete your workers.
2. Your injured units will heal twice as quickly (20 HP/turn vs. 10 HP/turn) inside your culture borders (and inside any friendly territory, like a friend or allied CS).
3. Civil Service is on the path to Education, so beelining Education (good plan) will get you Civil Service and a nice growth bump.
1. Looks like you still have a forest you can lumber mill near Delhi and some spices that you can improve (no one to sell them to right now, but nice to have them improved when you meet new civs), and Berlin has tiles worth improving and will eventually justify a road (depending on where you settle next). Once you research Guilds, it'll be time to start Trade Posting your puppets, so I wouldn't delete your workers.
2. Your injured units will heal twice as quickly (20 HP/turn vs. 10 HP/turn) inside your culture borders (and inside any friendly territory, like a friend or allied CS).
3. Civil Service is on the path to Education, so beelining Education (good plan) will get you Civil Service and a nice growth bump.
Optional
Deity
I would definitely not sacrifice the Stone Works here! I see 3 quarry sites, which means a Stone Works will give you 3 + 1 = 4 extra hammers per turn, plus of course a happy face.
You may want to connect this town - once it's there - via harbour, Mumbai could do with a harbour at some stage anyway, I see 2 fish there, that would be the connecting port then. A touch further from the capital is not a point anymore with a harbour. Missing out on an extra spice would be, but you seem to have left this spice to München anyway.
If the spice was still available I would still not have chosen it over the Stone Works, you have a few spices already and you don't know whether you can trade another one.
I know this response is a bit late, maybe not relevant anymore, as the game moves quicker than I do. I've been tired the last couple of days, strange shifts, etc...
A question: what to do about Munich? My initial plan was to raze it, but the more I look at the spot the more I kind of like it. I had previously planned on putting a city either 1W of Mt. Fuji, or 1NE of the middle gems. Munich isn't quite as good a spot as either of those (it gains a fish, but isn't a coastal city; it loses a hilltop city hammer, a spice, a sheep, and a bunch of fairly junky plains tiles; it has more overlap with my planned far east city). It would require a courthouse, and my next ~500 gold (how much is a courthouse, exactly?) goes to a courthouse for Berlin already.
But it's already got decent population and some border spread, plus it wouldn't require an extra settler out of me. And I could keep it as a puppet for a while until I was ready, getting some extra income out of it. So maybe it's worth keeping after all. My tentative inclination at this point is still to raze it; I don't want to deal with the added unhappiness from it yet.
But it's already got decent population and some border spread, plus it wouldn't require an extra settler out of me. And I could keep it as a puppet for a while until I was ready, getting some extra income out of it. So maybe it's worth keeping after all. My tentative inclination at this point is still to raze it; I don't want to deal with the added unhappiness from it yet.
Optional
Deity
Hmm... difficult choices. I don't easily raze and replace, but it's even less attractive as India.
The way the courthouse works, it eliminates the extra unhappiness of a town from being a town on top of the unhappiness from being occupied. This has often been called a bug, because that's more than what it should do according to the description.
But anyway, this has a massive implication for India, because it's both the town's unhappiness plus the Indian doubling of it that's disappearing!!! India's second unique building it's sometimes jokingly called.
You should see a huge jump in happiness once Berlin gets its courthouse, watch out for it.
The way the courthouse works, it eliminates the extra unhappiness of a town from being a town on top of the unhappiness from being occupied. This has often been called a bug, because that's more than what it should do according to the description.
But anyway, this has a massive implication for India, because it's both the town's unhappiness plus the Indian doubling of it that's disappearing!!! India's second unique building it's sometimes jokingly called.
You should see a huge jump in happiness once Berlin gets its courthouse, watch out for it.
The Pilgrim
Deity
Optional, thankfully, courthouse bug was fixed in G&K. Berlin will generate as much unhappiness as native city of the same size after courthouse completion.
coanda, definitely a tough spot here. Make Astronomy you #1 priority. I'm not sure about Munich as well. It's a bit hard for me to see the map as a whole and figure out how many cities you can settle and where. I'm also inclined towards razing it, because unhappiness hit will be severe and I'm afraid the gems, the only valuable part about Munich won't be picked by culture borders anytime soon. And that's the single thing you need the most - unique luxes. Again, due to lack of trades there is no cash for rush buying courthouse to annex it... Tough choice indeed. Because I'm also very reluctant about resettling cities myself. Let's hope for lucky CS quests.
Civil Service is massive for India. I always beeline it. You can't have many cities early, but you can have big cities.
Btw, you wrote you're building NC in Berlin, but I see it's built in Delhi. I assume it was just a typo?
coanda, definitely a tough spot here. Make Astronomy you #1 priority. I'm not sure about Munich as well. It's a bit hard for me to see the map as a whole and figure out how many cities you can settle and where. I'm also inclined towards razing it, because unhappiness hit will be severe and I'm afraid the gems, the only valuable part about Munich won't be picked by culture borders anytime soon. And that's the single thing you need the most - unique luxes. Again, due to lack of trades there is no cash for rush buying courthouse to annex it... Tough choice indeed. Because I'm also very reluctant about resettling cities myself. Let's hope for lucky CS quests.
Civil Service is massive for India. I always beeline it. You can't have many cities early, but you can have big cities.
Btw, you wrote you're building NC in Berlin, but I see it's built in Delhi. I assume it was just a typo?
Yep, sometimes it's that cheap.
Most definitely. SG were big part of my own learning process. I used to like them a lot. I wish they were as popular as in Civ3/4 days and I could plug them. And actually, I'd love to join one as well. Not sure there will be many interested in deity game though. If you think we can gather at least 4-5 players, please let me know.
I had no idea. Explains why I never see it on pangaeas.
Count me in.
The Pilgrim
Deity
You're counted, sir.
Mumbai was a bad call. While going tradition you would generally plan for a 4 city core. The cities would have to be at great locations. When playing India, altho im not fully comfortable with them, then you would settle for 3 unless the spots are amazing. With Berlin and the spot by the stone you would have 3 amazing cities and one good puppet. Besides it delayed you NC. It dosent have any additional luxuries. And no military value.
Delhi needs some production. Its hard to say exactly because I dont see all the terain around the city but i would buy the hill tile north of the gold and mine it. Chopping the forrest would speed up NC as well.
I would say a third priority is to find other civs asap. Get a trireme and go scouting. What kind of improvements ?
Well, Civil Service is on the way to education so you wont need to make that decision I would actually beeline it right way. Compas you can save for after education. The botom half of the tech tree is for military and sens you just wiped out your only neighbour you can delay that for a while. The only key tech there is metal casting for workshops but sens harbours will give you added production i would go there first. Altho this is debatable.
With a normal civ you would need to go liberty to get away with building more then five cities. With India, oh well, maybe a hack? You have more then enough cities, especially with the one planed to the east. Now start improving them. Get the base buildings up and get your science back on track. The only road you need given the current situation, beside the one your building, is between berlin and cologne.
Other then that, great game so far, and yes terrain is super important when planing for battle. Mass archers are useless as you saw when attacking a city in rough terrain. Thats when artillery becomes handy, for a later discussion.
Delhi needs some production. Its hard to say exactly because I dont see all the terain around the city but i would buy the hill tile north of the gold and mine it. Chopping the forrest would speed up NC as well.
I would say a third priority is to find other civs asap. Get a trireme and go scouting. What kind of improvements ?
Well, Civil Service is on the way to education so you wont need to make that decision
I would actually beeline it right way. Compas you can save for after education. The botom half of the tech tree is for military and sens you just wiped out your only neighbour you can delay that for a while. The only key tech there is metal casting for workshops but sens harbours will give you added production i would go there first. Altho this is debatable. With a normal civ you would need to go liberty to get away with building more then five cities. With India, oh well, maybe a hack? You have more then enough cities, especially with the one planed to the east. Now start improving them. Get the base buildings up and get your science back on track. The only road you need given the current situation, beside the one your building, is between berlin and cologne.
Other then that, great game so far, and yes terrain is super important when planing for battle. Mass archers are useless as you saw when attacking a city in rough terrain. Thats when artillery becomes handy, for a later discussion.
Optional
Deity
Whoops! Yeah, I'm the bloke with the tall black hat, monocle and silvery beard, who sounds sensible, but isn't always up to scratch with the latest. As shows.
(I think in my next post I'm going to strongly recommend ring city placement
)
The Pilgrim
Deity
Oh yeah, on improvements... It's recommended to have few mines online by the time you start working on NC and switch to production focus to complete it faster. Since there aren't many hills around, you should make chopping jungles on riverside hills a priority as well. It won't help for now, so I'd buy the bare hill and mine it. Hopefully, it'll speed up NC a little, even at the expense of working poor 2
tile for next 6 turns.
tile for next 6 turns.Raze it, build the city west of the sheep. The city would have nice production, you would still get the 3 queries and also the silk from Munich. The problem is that the new city would struggle with growth until fertiliser, so you need to plan for that and some things you can do to help it out is to befriend maritime CS's, fast lighthouse, prioritise farming and such.
