Keeping ahead in tech

[Jonnus]

Sorry if there was already a thread on this, but I'm new here. Now I only play on Warlord difficulty, so I know it should be easy, but I find it really hard to keep my technology significantly ahead of the AI. One game I was playing in Europe, I was first to get Astronomy, then started to head for gunpowder. By the time I got it, both Huayna Capac and Catherine had got Astronomy and a few other techs ahead of me down other branches. How do I keep ahead of them, because in terms of size we were equal, and militarily I was weaker, so tech was my main upper hand. Is it better to focus all cities on it, or should I stop building and build 'research', maybe research all around rather than focus on one thing?

 

[Jastrow]

If you are falling behind (or not racing ahead) in tech on warlords, then your problem is likely not so much your research strategy, but rather your economic strategy. Unfortuntaly, it is not really possible to help much with the information provided. Why dont you upload a save from about the time you got to Astronomy, and people can have a look at your empire at that stage and see what is "wrong" with it, which caused it to be out-researched by the AI's.

 

[svv]

Make sure you are trading techs. Start with the lowest guy who has something you don't, and trade to get it. Then go up the line.

Early on concentrate on getting Alphabet so you can trade, and then try to avoid trading Alphabet, so that if anyone is trading, they're trading with you.

 

[Jonnus]

Thanks for the replies, but I haven't got a save from that time. I think it was just the AI had loads of towns, whereas I'd focused on mines, workshops and farms, with a view to creating settlers, ships and troops to defend them. Would anyone give me some advice: should you have a balance of food, gold, hammers in each town, or should you specialise, some cities mass producing gold, some hammers?

 

[Beamup]

No question there. Specialization is far more effective.

 

[Sparta]

Ask and ye shall receive! While you were typing your response, I was typing up this almost-definitely-more-verbose-than-necessary elaboration on city specialization. How coincidentally fitting ...

It can be tough; in this version, economy and military strength are definitely two separate categories that require their own attentions (as it appears you are already aware) - in previous versions, you could just focus on production [of military units] and your economy generally came along for the ride.

With that in mind, it pays to have some cities focus entirely on economic endeavors. You will wind up hearing a lot here about city specialization, and it is indeed a very good idea in this version. The idea is that of the three primary 'resources' (food, production, commerce), a given city can focus primarily only on one individual one, and therefore be much more efficient at bringing in that one individual resource type. Typically, the most efficient strategy regarding great people is to only have one single GPP (great person points) farm, and as such you will try to have one solitary city in your empire that has an obscene amount of food (2-4+ food bonus tiles and/or multiple flood plains, and primarily farm-type improvements), to support as many specialists as possible to generate your great people faster.

The remainder of your empire should be comprised of a mix of production-focus cities (for military production and the rare wonder), and probably even more economic-focus cities, to maintain your research rate and gold income. Over time you will get a feel for good balances between the two. Production cities should have a lot of high-hammer tile types (strategic resources, grassland hills), and (this is important) enough food to comfortably work all those high-hammer tiles. As such, it is often very nice to have a food bonus or two for the very best production centers, and barring that, the less impressive sites will need the occasional farms to feed all those mines. Economic centers should just be cottage-spammed essentially, with perhaps a farm or two (or food bonus or two) to augment growth, but [almost] the entire remainder of the workable tiles should likely be cottages (as such, large swaths of grassland make great commerce cities, especially when rivers are present. Look to previously jungled areas to provide the king commerce cities in most games). Pure production centers can ignore almost all of the economic buildings and just build granaries, courthouses, barracks, and stables, and crank out troops, whereas economic cities should rarely have to bother with building a barracks or stable or the like. This will add to your efficiency as well, since attempting to build all buildings in all cities will cost you many turns of inefficiency. Oh and btw, note that your really focused economic centers will have very little production, so using the Slavery civic and whipping citizens is the typical way that they will produce most of their buildings.

A decent balance between the two primary city types (production and commerce) should yield a fairly robust empire that won't fall terribly behind in either department (military/economy). If you find yourself consistently falling far behind in one category or the other, you may need to focus more on the respective city type (e.g. if your economy is constantly lagging, try upping the economic cities/production cities ratio). Of course, some cities won't make perfect one-or-the-other type locations, but even the hybrids can focus in one direction or the other.

Finally, note that neither category has an absolute utopic level of achievement - you will never have 'enough' military or economic power, you are simply striving to achieve the most that is reasonably possible as quickly as possible. You'll always want more troops and wish your economy was slightly more powerful. In this regard, don't worry too terribly much about just barely 'keeping up' techwise - on the upper levels, it's the best you can do, and given reasonable troop numbers, you should be fine so long as they are not terribly outdated. Researching techs as the leader costs the most anyway - the more foreign civs know it already, the more bonus you get towards researching it, so being selective about when and where you try for miniscule tech leads can pay off.

Here is a link to an article that goes more in-depth about city specialization, in case it could help. I suppose at warlord you don't need to get too into this kind of thing, but it can be a good thing to be aware of so you can tailor your habits towards it in anticipation of eventually moving up in difficulties.

Hope that may have helped out a bit. Good luck, and welcome to CFC!

 

[Honkoid]

Definitely specialize your cities. Are there many hills around the city? Focus on mines and irrigate the surrounding lands to be capable of working those mined hills. Is your city surrounded by many grasslands or even floodplains and only few to none hills? Go cottage crazy, build (or whip) monasteries, a library, perhaps the Oxford University. Does your city have a shrine? Don't forget market, grocery and the likes.

If you don't try some advanced strategies as a specialist economy you should always try to have a cottage heavy city or at least distribute some cottages among your cities, since it is not always possible to find a good location for a pure cottage city.

edit: Looks like my work was somewhat in vain

 

[Jonnus]

Thanks for all the help guys, it looks like I was worse at this game than I thought. I always used to balance every city by getting them reasonable food/size, building mines wherever and whenever, and only building towns when nothing else is useful. Much to learn anyway thanks again! I'll try to post some screenies soon to show my situation, if anyone cares

 

[Pantastic]

There's no real debate about it, you have to specialize your cities to make it as you go up in levels. Your capital is usually an exception (it tends to have more resources and you can run beurocracy), and somewhere with a lot of resources (including other capitals) might be able to do more than one thing, but most of your cities should pick one thing and be good at it once you hit medieval times or so. You need to have one military city (usually a high production city with Heroic Epic and West Point, can also try high food and HE + globe theater), possibly one GP farm (National Epic runs lots of specialists and/or builds lots of wonders to generate GPs), and then more commerce (lots of cottages) cities than anything else, though depending on size another production city or two can be nice. Once you get most of your cities working on making money and building improvements and your one military city cranking out troops, you'll find yourself in a much better position with the same land area. If you have cities with lots of food that you think have too low of production to build needed buildings, you need to learn to love the whip (slavery civic, whip population to build things).

 

[Nestorius]

Its not even that complex. You are not building enough cottages.

 

[LoopyLewis]

Its not even that complex. You are not building enough cottages.

I totally agree At warlord you don't need to specialize, just build plenty of cottages. Oh, and make sure you trade for techs even if you pay out 2 for 1, it's better than wasting time researching techs that might not be necessary overall.

 

[Jonnus]

No I don't think it's that simple at all. I have got quite a lot of cottages. I'm running 90% research and making 43 gold a turn in late medieval, so it's not that I've just got no cottages. I think the AI might be spamming them though, as I got a map of Asoka's land, and he had built cottages literally everywhere, covering loads of hills that could have made an excellent production city.

 

[Pantastic]

Over time you will get a feel for good balances between the two. Production cities should have a lot of high-hammer tile types (strategic resources, grassland hills), and (this is important) enough food to comfortably work all those high-hammer tiles

Although hills are the best, don't forget that you can put watermills on a river. They're so-so early on, but once you get replaceable parts you're looking at 1F 3H, 2F 2H, or 3F 2H tiles (with a bonus commerce thrown in) and they really help get the high numbers.

 

[Pantastic]

I totally agree At warlord you don't need to specialize, just build plenty of cottages.

At levels much higher than warlords, people have won without building a single cottage, and there's a writeup of a game where someone won without building a single military unit. Thus you don't NEED to even build cottages or specialize, but if you're learning how to play the game then you're better off learning how to play well than learning how to play poorly.

 

[Wlauzon]

At levels much higher than warlords, people have won without building a single cottage, and there's a writeup of a game where someone won without building a single military unit. Thus you don't NEED to even build cottages or specialize, but if you're learning how to play the game then you're better off learning how to play well than learning how to play poorly.

Many people assume that war is the only way to win.

I have been mostly going for cultural victories, as that is a real challenge at prince (won 1 out of 50 or so - I lucked out and got a Great Artist in 2048 and used a culture bomb).

But quite often I never go to war at all.

 

[CharleyS]

Jonnus--

Welcome to CFC. This is my first Civ. title so it has been quite a struggle for me to figure things out. I've been at it about 6 months and I have just moved up to Noble, so I think I can relate to where you are as I've had the same problems at Warlord.
1st thing I'll recommend is spend alot of time reading on here, especially the ALC's that have been done. Some of the debates can get longwinded, but these guys have lots of knowledge and different points of view, so you can learn quite a bit by watching what they do in their games and why they do it.

Secondly, and you may know this already, don't automate your workers. Take the time to instruct them on everything. Everybody on here preached it and it took me a while to get it because it seemed so tedious at first, but it really makes a huge difference.

Also, don't be afraid to go to war early. If you can knock out a rival civ or two in the early game, all the better.

Those are some of the things I've figured out. GL.

 

[manwiththehands]

Fellow warlord here. And I've been playing this game since June. But I have a life, too.

I finally kept up/went ahead in tech consistently when I learned how to keep up my commerce. Also, libraries and universities and other research buildings help out a lot. And if you want even more you can add a scientist in one or more of your cities. I usually add an extra scientist or two in my strongest science city.

Now if I can only get one or two cultural victories with scores above "Dan Quayle" I might move up to noble.

 

[Jonnus]

Lol I got a Dan Quayle once. Well, I've only finished a few games. Anyway, thanks guys, but most of the last two post I knew! I always command workers myself, I'm like that, and I always try to have specialists for great people, as the first ones are quickest. I often try to knock out 1 close civ, and as for reading up, I guess that's my failure, I'm lazy! Thanks again guys for advice, at least I'm not the only low level person, I see so many on prince, monarch, emperor....

 

[Rathelm]

What do you do with your GPs? Are you getting the Oracle constructed? Are you first to Liberalism? Any time something can give you a free tech you should make it a priority to do it first. Also at the point where a GP will give you a tech worth over 1K beakers for free I usually just lightbulb it. When you get toward end game and lightbulbing only gives a turn or 2 worth of tech than I save them for golden ages. Only notable exceptions are Great Scientists which are great for academies and Great Engineers which are amazing to crank out wonders in the mid-game.

 

[DaveMcW]

Cottages for the win.