Joao II Noble in 990 BC on Huge Pangaea, Marathon speed - out of ideas

[rfcfanatic]

Hi everyone,

I'm making my first steps on Huge Pangaea on Marathon speed on Noble difficulty. In my current game, I managed to warrior-rush nearby civs of France led by Napoleon and America led by Lincoln. After the end of ancient wars against the AI I continued to expand by building my own cities and training military units in order to defend against barb attacks. By 990 BC I managed to build 3 additional cities and capture one from barbs. So, now I have 7 cities in total.

But now I have a problem - my economy is crippled. A recent barb city capture helped a little bit, but in a few turns I'll be forced to reduce my research slider down to 10%. I'm really out of ideas. I have vast unsettled lands to the south, but my economy does not let me to settle them. To the west there is Charlemagne who is Buddhist like myself, and Hammurabi who's Hinduist.

I don't want to attack Charlie just yet. I guess it would be best to let them to build the Buddhist shrine before I attack. Besides, they are pleased with me.

If you care to check my save I attacked, what do you guys think? Should I attack Hammurabi in order to fund my research towards Mathematics, Currency and then Code of Laws? Or should I just wait and take a more peaceful approach by letting my cottages grow?

PS! Civ4 deities are welcome to bash me for building libraries in every city . But that was my only way to get border pops. I just couldn't waste time by going after Mysticism in order to build monuments.

 

[CreeDakota]

if you have libraries in every city then your allready have your solution. Run scientists until your get your econ techs in like C.O.L and Currency. A big difference between 10% slider and 0% slider/striking.

 

[lymond]

Absolutely nothing wrong with running 0% research, which is what you should be doing right now. As well as running some scientists.

Experienced players are going to bash you far more for building useless walls than building libraries in your early cities. However, if you settle cities correctly sometimes you simply don't need to worry about border pops. Guimaries is a very very poorly settled city...don't do that unless creative. This city is pure 100% crap for a very long time

And why the heck are you not in slavery?

The fact that you have all these libraries yet have failed to run any scientists is concerning. You should have a GS on the way for an academy in Lisbon.

Run 0% research until you build enough gold to finish the tech. Meantime scientists keep some beakers churning while running binary. Common tactic of experienced players during early expansion on throughout the game as needed.

On Noble, I would go for Alpha first. Allows to backfill a few techs then pump your way to Maths>Currency. Then blow away the AIs in tech.

P.S. You are in fine shape here and your economy is more than OK. Everything, ofc, would be much better if you were in Slavery and ran scientists, tech Alpha. Noble is very easy which you will soon learn.

 

[lymond]

Also, you have a crapton of useless units. I would disband some of them or use them. The warriors might be okay later if the plan is to run HR. However, if you build Mids then you will run Representation, so all those warriors will do you no good.

 

[Smilingrogue]

A few observations based on the save:

You have far too many warriors. Disband them all. Triple garrisoning cities is neither necessary nor useful without Hereditary rule. Send those lazy axes, spears and archers to the North to help spawn-bust.

Plains farm for Oporto was a waste. It has more than enough food for now. Build cottages along the riverside grasslands there and work those instead.

No need to build so many roads. You should be building farms and cottages at this stage of the game.

Since you have libraries everywhere, remove citizens from hills and assign scientists. (By the power of Civ and suspension of disbelief, any old miner can become a scholar capable of unlocking the secrets of Nuclear Power. Use it! ) Your cities will lose production, but research is the bigger concern in your situation.

Think your tech choices out carefully. I can attest that up until Monarch, it is better to self-tech Alphabet and should be done so before Mathematics is researched. I usually teched Alpha, Math and then Currency up until Monarch as it covers both pre-reqs doing it this way, unlocks the option to trade for techs (you might want to get priesthood for something else for temple happiness) and allows us to build research in a pinch. Building research would have helped here. Now that you are so close to Math, just push on towards currency and build wealth to sustain research.

Lymond covered the other concerns. Good luck!

 

[lymond]

^^^Oh yeah...meant to mention all the useless roads. that a lot of wasted worker turns which are very important on Mara speed.

oh...and if you are going to build a road, hook up foreign trade routes.

 

[rfcfanatic]

About all these warriors in my cities... they are leftovers from my early rushes against Paris and Washington plus the shell-shock I experienced after being overrun by barbarians in my earlier few attempts with the same settings and in this game as well. This also explains why I have a lot of other military units in my cities. Simply because I'm not used to barbarian axemen attacks in 1500 BC

About all these workers building useless roads... yes, it's pretty pointless. That's because I didn't find better jobs for the workers. Thanks for reminding me the international trade routes, I totally forgot those!

Slavery? Simply because I didn't need it for my early rushes. I basically chop-rushed my warriors. My capital was surrounded by forest. Now the only place where I could possibly use slavery is Washington. But is it necesary? Some experienced players say that Slavery is only useful if you are planning an invasion.

But neglecting the Great Scientists in all my cities is a shame... I'll correct it, but I'm not sure about Lisbon because I'm building 'Mids there. Don't want to lose my 'Mids production there....

 

[rfcfanatic]

Indeed, the location of Guimaraes is poor. It doesn't hook up any resources soon. Besides, Paris already has pigs and a couple of other cities have hooked up corn. I should have hooked up the horse SW from Coimbra instead, I guess.

The only reason I built Guimaraes in that location was that I simply needed to have some fog-buster between Lisbon and Washington...

 

[ohjames]

Don't fogbust with cities, fogbust with units.

 

[lymond]

The only reason I built Guimaraes in that location was that I simply needed to have some fog-buster between Lisbon and Washington...

THat makes no sense. You don't need a city to "spawn bust".

The fact is that there is a very good city or two to be had here, you just settled poorly. I'm guessing that you have an issue with overlapping cities. Overlapping is actually a good thing.

Chopping all your forests for warriors is painful for me.

If you want Mids, slavery is going to get it much faster for you than slow building it until the year 1999AD. Otherwise, build it in a city that you haven't chopped all your forests for a bunch of useless warriors.

Regardless, 2 scientists should have been running in Lisbon a long time ago, as well as in some other cities.

 

[Smilingrogue]

I used to play a lot of Huge/Marathon and I understand how annoying the barbarians on that setting can be. They are, perhaps counter-intuitively, harder to deal with on the lower difficulties as the AIs don't have archery or extra free units and settle cities far too slowly, leaving way too much land for barbs to spawn in.

But it is still better to post spawn-busters outside of your civ's borders or right on your border to respond to any barb incursions. It is better to just kill those barbs before they get in and pillage your improvements.

Guimaraes is bad as it doesn't have a food resource to grow quickly on. If it was settled 1 NE, it could have had fresh water, corn in first ring and with cheap granaries from expansive, could have whipped infra quicker.

Slavery isn't just for getting units out quicker. It also allows for faster infrastructure in cities and with hammer overflow manipulation, you can get wonders built quicker or get fail-gold without actually having to put too many turns into a wonder.

Speaking of wonders, I would abandon the pyramids. You are already well ahead of the AIs with 9 cities. You don't have stone and in the time it takes you to get them, you could get to currency sooner by running scientists instead.

 

[rfcfanatic]

THat makes no sense. You don't need a city to "spawn bust".

I'm guessing that you have an issue with overlapping cities. Overlapping is actually a good thing.

Have to admit that I'm still kind of confused about overlapping. Some people say it's good, others say that "full fat cross" is good. A lot of discussions I've read, only mention the "fat cross", but not overlap. In a game not long ago, I even tried the overlap strategy (I even discussed the game in this forum - huge Pangaea, quick speed etc.) and initially it seemed to work well, but eventually I lost the game. Not due to overlap, but a victorious game would still be more convincing

Chopping all your forests for warriors is painful for me.

Lisbon didn't have much food & Animal Husbandry is too deep in tech tree for Portugal & Napoleon offered a nice chance by leaving his worker unescorted at border. Then, blinded by successful rush against France, I decided to invade America.

If you want Mids, slavery is going to get it much faster for you than slow building it until the year 1999AD.

What is the best strategy to slave-rush wonders? Always when I want to do it, I need to sacrifice 10-20 population or so. Of course, it's impossible. In this case, if I had slavery and wanted to get 'Mids done now I would have to whip 18 pop.

 

[ohjames]

There is a 50% hammer penalty to whipping wonders so it's actually more useful to whip something else (units/buildings), then allocate the overflow to the wonder in question.

Regarding full BFCs: this is generally a poor idea because you will have huge tracts of unworked land. Overlapping allows you to make more immediate use of the land in your borders. Incidentally, you can also use overlapping to grow cottages around your commerce cities faster by having the outlying cities work some of the cottages in the early years.

I'm generally more in favor of cramming as many cities into a space as possible, as long as each city has 1-2 good food tiles to work.

 

[lymond]

others say that "full fat cross" is good

and those are people you should not listen too

Yeah, sorry, I did not mean whipping the wonder itself - sometimes I mention a point tersely assuming the target has some understanding of what I'm talking about, which is not always the case. As OH says, you whip crap into the wonder. It's a matter of learning how to use whip overflow (OF) to complete stuff. Understand what each whipped citizen is worth hammer wise and calculating the optimal whip points. BUG helps with that.

Ofc, to make your life overall easier, you can play standard settings

(piece of advice: although there some great players not as active currently, start to keep track of the experienced players around here. You should be able to identify them fairly quickly by following games here and in gotm/hof. Listen to them. There are a lot of inexperienced players giving advice around here....not saying there is anything wrong about that, but you will get less optimal advice.)

the bottom line, whether you overlap a city or not, is to settle cities such that they are productive immediately. Usually that means food, but could mean a strat resource or even settling right next to a Gold early and working it.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Slavery is quite complicated topic. Especially without Hereditary Rule. In fact, I have an issue with whipping units and I tend to avoid using it without Hereditary Rule. That's because the +1 caused by whipping gets only balanced by +1 per military unit in the city.

Whipping buildings - even more complicated. Especially when they don't provide a bonus to compensate caused by whipping.

 

[lymond]

^^^Yeah, all you said above is pretty much nonsense. It's just something you manage early. It's one of the strongest features of the game and will boosts your game immensely once you figure it out.

 

[cseanny]

Whipping and slavery is probably one if not the most powerful tool in the game so learn to use it. A bit later in the game Slavery > OR > and forges make for some powerful production...via population whips and or chops.

 

[iggymnrr]

I looked at the save ... Thought it was a highlands at first. My style at noble might be a no slavery game running caste. An overlapping city might be 10 tiles away. But then I'm wont to play loose and capture the great wall city early ... Makes me want to play a highlands game at marathon. I just got done with a couple of warlords games without ever using slavery at both standard and epic speeds. But people have given some good advice. I do like that you hit the AI early.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Thanks for the advice about scientists. Assigning some scientists helped to significantly increase my research.

It's 990 AD now and I guess I'm in a pretty good position...

 

[iggymnrr]

Another person discovers that education doesn't require knowing one's ABCs. Yes, Oxford can get done without alphabet.