JC w/'mids, GW, 3 closest neighbors conquered

[King Younk]

Not sure where to go from here. I have room to expand now, but this is the part of the game where I tend to ruin myself.

I followed the advice I found here - food first, then wipe out a neighbor or two. I also had stone so I built GW and 'mids. Also built the Oracle and got Philosophy out of it, so I can go for Liberalism/Astronomy too (founded Taoism, so I must have gotten it first).

Let me know what to do now please.

 

[Qactus]

Did not look at the save. This is just some feedback based on the screenshot:

- 50% slider does not make sense. Either 100% and race towards Currency or 0% until you finish those libraries (and then 100% with bonus).
- City placement: With so much food Rome could have used an early helper city for example 3S or 3S1W depending on what else is down there (share food, mines, help grow cottages)
- Again city placement: Cumae should have been 2 cities instead, for example 1N of plains cow and between stone and grass cow
- Your pig is unimproved. It's one of your strongest tiles.
- Rome should be happy. Did you adopt Representation? That's usually the reason one builds the Pyramids for. That and some ressource trades should increase happy cap. Or temples, if necessary. In the capital investing in happy cap is usually worth it.
- Many unnecessary roads. That's wasted worker turns. Just in case, do not automate them. Chop forests instead.
- Prioritize good tiles! Rome has a plains cottage that has been worked for some time, and a riverless cottage while riverside grassland is not even improved. At least one improvement can not even be worked by your cities' BFCs. Ok, maybe these issues stem from automating workers as well, so don't do that.

 

[Qactus]

Opened the save out of curiosity. There appears to be much more room for improvement than what was visible in the screenshot.
Three pointers:
- Huge/Marathon/Low sea is suboptimal while you're learning. Standard map size and normal speed lets you play more games instead and gives more chances to try out different approaches, adopt things you've learned, etc.
- Don't wage war when you don't want to keep the land. In your game you razed 8 cities (some very far from your homeland) and lost most of your army doing so. Only to produce empty swathes of land to be claimed by barbarians and other AI.
- Interact with (at least most of the) AI peacefully: Open borders, establish trade routes, trade resources, trade techs. You might ignore the odd AI everybody hates just to avoid negative diplo hits, but the default should be to trade with everyone.

 

[Gumbolt]

Wow you waged war and then razed all the cities from 2 AI? Problem is you have gifted Sury a lot of land with improved resources. Meanwhile you are still stuck with this huge swathe of jungle. Actually this jungle is filled with a lot of good resources. Sometimes when there is a lot of jungle it is useful to keep AI alive to chop it for you. You built 21 praets and as far as I can see 15 are dead. That is a lot of hammers. Hopefully the capture gold paid some of these back. Sometimes doing a second war a bit later really helps as the Ai have more buildings and maybe wonders too.

Marathan setting with such a strong UU is a touch overkill.

You have a lot of forest left. No point keeping it?

Hopefully your building those 2 wonders are for fail gold. Not a big fan of either. 1500 beakers even with double production is a big investment.

Side effect to the wars is you have no foreign trade routes. SB will never open borders at with so many diplo hits. Your best bet is sailing and a workboat. Albeit you will need to take out the barb cities for it to work.

No idea why you are running caste.

With Terra you have a whole land mass filled with huts. Not sure how many free techs you get on emperor.

Whilst you adopted representation failing to get calendar. This map screams earlier calendar for happiness. You have monarchy but you are not improving the wine. These little things really help.

So calendar and resettle the city you razed or auto razed with the 4 resources.

Not sure about the religion you have adopted. You only have 1 city with it. It's also stopping Cumae grab the sugar as the holy city is not producing culture. Some Ai like you for it others hate you even more, Plus fact you have declared on many of their friends.

Did the pigs near Rome get pillaged?

Why is beijing stagnated? Please switch tiles to food and cottages and let it reach it's happiness cap. Ditch the wonder

 

[King Younk]

Well I just got invaded. Got dang. Best game of my life too, though partially by luck (having stone nearby Rome, and getting BW/IW BOTH from goodie huts). Plus I was on the way to liberalism. Here is my update.

I have been focusing on my economy of late, since I conquered enough land.

 

[King Younk]

Did not look at the save. This is just some feedback based on the screenshot:

- 50% slider does not make sense. Either 100% and race towards Currency or 0% until you finish those libraries (and then 100% with bonus).
- City placement: With so much food Rome could have used an early helper city for example 3S or 3S1W depending on what else is down there (share food, mines, help grow cottages)
- Again city placement: Cumae should have been 2 cities instead, for example 1N of plains cow and between stone and grass cow
- Your pig is unimproved. It's one of your strongest tiles.
- Rome should be happy. Did you adopt Representation? That's usually the reason one builds the Pyramids for. That and some ressource trades should increase happy cap. Or temples, if necessary. In the capital investing in happy cap is usually worth it.
- Many unnecessary roads. That's wasted worker turns. Just in case, do not automate them. Chop forests instead.
- Prioritize good tiles! Rome has a plains cottage that has been worked for some time, and a riverless cottage while riverside grassland is not even improved. At least one improvement can not even be worked by your cities' BFCs. Ok, maybe these issues stem from automating workers as well, so don't do that.

Helper city. I see what you're saying. That makes a lot of sense, thanks!

I was thinking of making Cumae 2 cities, but I was more focused on accessing the stone to build 'mids.

Why do people suggest doing the 0%/100% tech slider? What benefits does that offer?

Prioritize happiness resources and don't waste time with roads, got it.

What's a BFC? I built a cottage on the plains because I didn't want to grow Rome too large and thought I had enough food.

Wow you waged war and then razed all the cities from 2 AI? Problem is you have gifted Sury a lot of land with improved resources. Meanwhile you are still stuck with this huge swathe of jungle. Actually this jungle is filled with a lot of good resources. Sometimes when there is a lot of jungle it is useful to keep AI alive to chop it for you. You built 21 praets and as far as I can see 15 are dead. That is a lot of hammers. Hopefully the capture gold paid some of these back. Sometimes doing a second war a bit later really helps as the Ai have more buildings and maybe wonders too.

Marathan setting with such a strong UU is a touch overkill.

You have a lot of forest left. No point keeping it?

Hopefully your building those 2 wonders are for fail gold. Not a big fan of either. 1500 beakers even with double production is a big investment.

Side effect to the wars is you have no foreign trade routes. SB will never open borders at with so many diplo hits. Your best bet is sailing and a workboat. Albeit you will need to take out the barb cities for it to work.

No idea why you are running caste.

With Terra you have a whole land mass filled with huts. Not sure how many free techs you get on emperor.

Whilst you adopted representation failing to get calendar. This map screams earlier calendar for happiness. You have monarchy but you are not improving the wine. These little things really help.

So calendar and resettle the city you razed or auto razed with the 4 resources.

Not sure about the religion you have adopted. You only have 1 city with it. It's also stopping Cumae grab the sugar as the holy city is not producing culture. Some Ai like you for it others hate you even more, Plus fact you have declared on many of their friends.

Did the pigs near Rome get pillaged?

Why is beijing stagnated? Please switch tiles to food and cottages and let it reach it's happiness cap. Ditch the wonder

What is SB?

I actually got Bronze working, Iron working, and I think Mysticism from huts.

I'm probably cooked at this point, since I'll need to whip a lot of citizens to raise a large enough army to counter 2 invaders. We'll see.

 

[AcaMetis]

Why do people suggest doing the 0%/100% tech slider? What benefits does that offer?

For one, the game truncates decimals. So if you've got a city producing, say, 12 per turn, and set your research slider to 60%, you'll get 12×0.6=7.2=7/turn, and 12×0.4=4.8=4/turn. 7+4=11, not 12, so you're losing something due to rounding. Beyond that binary has a few other advantages - banking gold allows you to pay off certain bad random events should they suddenly pop up (if you're playing with those enabled, most people don't), it gives you time to delay committing to a tech to research, and in this particular case, it allows you to effectively "store" research until you've got beaker multipliers online. In the above case, say you spend 1 turn with 0% slider, you'll get 12×1.0=12, and the next turn, after finishing a Library, you run 100% slider, you'll get 12×1.25=15. 27 instead of 24 is a solid profit.

What's a BFC? I built a cottage on the plains because I didn't want to grow Rome too large and thought I had enough food.

BFC is short for Big Fat Cross, the plus-shaped collection of 24 tiles (not including the city tile) that every city can work, culture permitting.

What is SB?

SB is short for Sitting Bull.

That all said, if you're interested in learning how to play the game I'd highly recommend rolling a new map with normal settings - standard size, speed, no extra options checked except to turn huts and events off - and getting advice from the forum from T0.

 

[King Younk]

Fine, here's a new game. I did random but kept the goody huts and marathon setting, and got Wang Kon. I will found my first city 1 square to the left of where I started, so that I can access a plethora of food and then research agriculture, while building a warrior or scout. Once I have 2 population, I will build 2 workers.

So far so good?

 

[King Younk]

Anyway, it's turn 14 and I see marble. My impulse is to do the Oracle-Code of Laws-Liberalism route, though that will take a lot of energy, I think.

And should my workers be farming or cottage-ing the tiles surrounding my capital?

 

[King Younk]

Got the Oracle and CoL. Focusing on food above all else. Currently researching pottery - will build grans, then libs.

Should I run a specialist economy or a cottage?

 

[King Younk]

Another update: I'm humming along, incorporating much of the aforementioned advice. Religious leader too, of Confucianism. What do?

 

[AcaMetis]

When I said "get advice from T0" I meant something along the lines of "start a new game with standard settings, show off the situation you're in, and don't make a move until the forum explains/debates what move to make. From there play until the next major decision point (which, for reference, is something like every 3-5 (standard speed) turns in the early game), and repeat". Not "start a new huge/mara huts game and rush ahead 393 turns", because there's a lot to say about points that have just been completely skipped over.

For starters, moving your capitol 1SW in that situation is very not good. Not only did you move away from your only food resource, but you moved away from flood plains, a plains hill tile (to get an extra defensive 221 city tile) and you ruined a forest/hut in the process. I say "ruined" a hut because (IIRC, it's been a long time since I last played with huts) huts cannot give out free technologies if you haven't settled your first city yet. Not that you should be playing with huts anyway if you intent to learn how to play the game, as they are horribly unbalanced, but that's neither here nor there.

Growing to size two on Warriors before starting a worker is not good either. Since every citizen eats 2 and since you've got no better tiles in your capitol's BFC than two base floodplains (which, to wit, is the second best unimproved tile in the game, behind an Oasis), you're spending numerous turns growing to get a net +1 and +1 when building a size two worker over a size one worker. It's not worth growing before getting out a worker, since that second citizen working an unimproved tile isn't worth anything. Especially on Marathon, where you're always chronically short on worker turns since everything takes so long to improve.

I could go into everything that's improvable from that point on (for reference, those two blocks covered part of T0 and T1. Your last screenshot is close to T400), but it's more important to focus on the early game and get that down to a science before worrying overly much about the later game. A badly positioned capitol and size two worker sets you back a lot more than a misplaced sixth city settled however many thousand years later.

 

[Harv]

I don’t think he ruined the hut on Turn 0. Whether he moved on top of it or popped it by settling in place, there is no chance of free technology.

However, if he settled 1E on the hill, then the hut would pop on a later turn and there is a chance.

From what I saw of the initial screen shot, there was no reason to move there. It is also marathon, so he could have gone back to that hill and be one or two turns behind.

 

[Gumbolt]

Going back to the original game. That Ai stack is quite weak. It is only spears and pults. The catapults can't take cities. Albeit they would be the defenders in the stack. The AI will always bombard before attacking.

Staying in Caste is not a great idea. You ideally should be using slavery early on with caste for golden ages. You can't whip units in caste. 3 turns for changing civic is painful!

The switching of the religion would of really annoyed the AI here. That with your previous war efforts. Not sure how many turns you lost swapping civics here.

17-18 cities is not bad.

You really wanted more defenders here given how annoyed most of the AI were to you. Especially if you can't open borders.

I think getting all those techs from huts you maybe should of got further with praets. 1600bc for IW when you have not lifted a finger for the techs is pretty early. AI would of been much slower and much later to IW. Huts are pretty broken on huge maps if you can abuse them properly.

Your biggest issue here is you quickly went to kill off 3 Ai and just gifted AI like Sury huge swathes of land. Otherwise you would be face much smaller AI here. Albeit I could not see a Sury stack.

Looks like you have thrown in the towel.

As for new game. The plains hill seemed best for start. Looks like you have posted no save either. No idea why you are farming so many flood plains. A capital with no food resource is really bad news.

Agree with above if you want help wait for advice instead of playing 393 turns. Playing Marathan speed really does give you a huge advantage.

 

[Fish Man]

Post the t0 save, please. We can help you better if you do that.

 

[King Younk]

Sigh. Ok. I really prefer marathon, but who should I play as for a new game?

 

[King Younk]

Alright, here's a new game as Portugal. I moved one tile so I didn't waste a forest, and am now going to do Agriculture>BW>Masonry, since I have stone nearby. Should I go for mids or GW?

 

[sampsa]

Is this real

 

[King Younk]

Is this real

Is what real?

 

[Harv]

You should post the 4000 BC save and a screen shot of the starting position. Then everybody can debate the best move for the starting warrior and best spot to settle Lisbon.

Not wasting the forest cost one turn and gets you 20 or 30 hammers later, like turn 50. Now we can look at the city site you chose.

Granted, I just posted a game and did exactly what you did, play out turn 0 and posted the results.

Added: 1N would have captured stone and cow, but that was visible only after settling.