King Younk's Questions thread

[Gumbolt]

Surrounded by jungle. There are some good resources there but ultimately you need calendar. You should be focusing on the resources you can improve. You can only farm the banana.

Cottaging plains tiles again? You built 5-6 cottages on these tiles and are using none! Focus on your biggest food resources which currently are the 2 pigs tiles covered in jungle. Then think about grassland river tiles for cottages. Building cottages before improving the pigs was a mistake.

Fish/clams site looks good. Long term you want the dye secured but right now it's a dead end city as you can't improve the dye or bananas to max use. Definitely capture barb city and settle next to it for dye at some point later.

I would of rushed the Greeks here. Way too much work to clear all this Junge and he has some nice land. If Greeks have no metal spam swords and take them down. CR1/2 swords should be good. HA will take too long now. Plus you need the capture gold for science.

Great spys are only good if you have something to steal. Right now these AI are not teching quickly. I sometimes might use them to scout or for golden ages. Not like +100% EP will do much right now and knowing your games you might have quit before jails arrive.

I would only build 1 more settler and maybe get some roads to Greek before you declare.

You really got to stop and think what you are actually doing at times. I see no real plan here hence why you struggle on games.

 

[King Younk]

Well, I left that game because I was too weak and got stomped by the Portuguese. What do you think of specializing cities?

Spoiler :

This is my new game. I think I'm in a good position - I have GW and mids, and have some room to expand into resources, though it is largely jungled. Should I build commerce cities and focus on one or two specialist cities, or something else? I really want to get my money up too, and I'm wondering if cities like Angkor Wat are ideal - just cottages that continuously grow and eventually spit out wads of dough.

 

[sampsa]

What do you think of specializing cities?

nonsensical

 

[Gumbolt]

Wow you do love your stone wonders. Would of been quicker to settle on the stone. Albeit I think you need culture on the sea tiles. Would of saved you hundreds of hammers.

Not a fan of this map due to all that dense jungle with limited food resources. Albeit there are 3-4 decent spots if you have the workers.

Think you struggled with jungle start last game. 4 cities by 1000bc when Portugal had 8 or so with very little jungle. If you have poor land change strategy and attack a neighbour. That or reroll map. Early HA rush would of been great.

 

[Gumbolt]

So more huge map thoughts.
So techs cost more at start so you have to be more select or slow expansion if you want a deep tech strategy.
Consider earlier cottages to tackle this or using specialists with mids for 3 science and 1 hammer.
Consider 2-3 more warrors for fog busting before 3rd-4th city. No need for archery.
If you have low sea level and huge map once you get above 30-40 cities you can pretty much be at war with map. Once you have 30-40+ next level units you can pretty much stack wipe the AI's. Mace, pikes, phants and HA do little vs cuirs in the field.
Expansion early on. I find even if you rex to 6-7 cities the AI will just keep expanding. They seem to like just grabbing land however poor the actual land is. E.g. sites with no actual food resources. Or sites covered in jungle. If you don't take the land they will. Ths against the risk of crashing your economy.
You could settle cities closer at start to avoid costs which slow early teching. Albeit you eventually need to secure land.

Diplomacy is a major issue on huge maps as you can't get everyone to pleased. Bigger risk of AI bribing others into war. Especially if a tech leader. Asking AI for 10G to stop them backstabbing should still work? More demands from Ai to decare or stop trading as more worst enemies.
You need to have some war skill for these maps as AI will likely attack you even with the best of diplomacy. Many will cross map to attack you or another AI. A major downside to huge maps as it can mess up an AI badly. Indians did this on my last game. Suicided a stack of 15-18 units with no chance to send back up units.
You will need to make choices on religion and benefits of rushing certain military techs. Religion will keep 3-4 at pleased but mak rest unhappy. You won't have enough resources to gift every AI free stuff. If you have a tech lead you could use techs to bribe other AI?

Consider capturing cities with holy shrines. On a map with 100+ cities these shrines can be worth 40-60gpt. There are usually 2-3 religions spread widely.
Trading for resources. You now have 10-12 Ai who will all pay you 9-10+ gpt. So this is very important.
Bulb strategies. As techs cost more you should be consider how best to use there. Edu will be 3375 beakers. Philosophy 1500 beakers. So you get better value on these early bulbs now. Machinery 1312 beakers.
Winning wise I think cheese is the likely quickest option. vassal 2-3 Ai who mainly have AP religion then just spread to the others.

Time is the last major issue. You are fighting more Ai with more cities so the bigger Ai will take more time to vassal or destroy. I think once you have the land of 3-4 Ai the game is really won but you still have to take down the other 6 or so AI to reach land / pop percentages required.

Events - This seems absolutely pointless. Barb events can kill your game. The slavery revolt event can wipe 2 pop off your capital at a critical moment. Some of the peace events are okay. If you can get the capture holy hill or other events I guess interesting. You would have to know what the triggers for these are. Over 500+ turns I barely got any. Most were buildings destroyed. On higher levels I think most would rather avoid these random events.

More thoughts. Unit cost is a big issue early on. With the need to fog bust and expand you find your paying 6-7 gold a turn to pay for the fogbusters. I can 100% see why KY was struggling for techs before 1ad. Archery/hunting kill the tech tech if you over expand and have too many units. It's actually quite a vicious circle. Oe solution is actually warfare as capture gold from cities can help if the AI offer techs for peace too.

Playing a game with Toku and I have literally had to declare on neghbours as my science ran 100% dry with 11 cities just before 1ad. Writing was just not happening. Even with 3-4 gold resources captured from the AI.Crazy!

 

[King Younk]

So more huge map thoughts.
So techs cost more at start so you have to be more select or slow expansion if you want a deep tech strategy.
Consider earlier cottages to tackle this or using specialists with mids for 3 science and 1 hammer.
Consider 2-3 more warrors for fog busting before 3rd-4th city. No need for archery.
If you have low sea level and huge map once you get above 30-40 cities you can pretty much be at war with map. Once you have 30-40+ next level units you can pretty much stack wipe the AI's. Mace, pikes, phants and HA do little vs cuirs in the field.
Expansion early on. I find even if you rex to 6-7 cities the AI will just keep expanding. They seem to like just grabbing land however poor the actual land is. E.g. sites with no actual food resources. Or sites covered in jungle. If you don't take the land they will. Ths against the risk of crashing your economy.
You could settle cities closer at start to avoid costs which slow early teching. Albeit you eventually need to secure land.

Diplomacy is a major issue on huge maps as you can't get everyone to pleased. Bigger risk of AI bribing others into war. Especially if a tech leader. Asking AI for 10G to stop them backstabbing should still work? More demands from Ai to decare or stop trading as more worst enemies.
You need to have some war skill for these maps as AI will likely attack you even with the best of diplomacy. Many will cross map to attack you or another AI. A major downside to huge maps as it can mess up an AI badly. Indians did this on my last game. Suicided a stack of 15-18 units with no chance to send back up units.
You will need to make choices on religion and benefits of rushing certain military techs. Religion will keep 3-4 at pleased but mak rest unhappy. You won't have enough resources to gift every AI free stuff. If you have a tech lead you could use techs to bribe other AI?

Consider capturing cities with holy shrines. On a map with 100+ cities these shrines can be worth 40-60gpt. There are usually 2-3 religions spread widely.
Trading for resources. You now have 10-12 Ai who will all pay you 9-10+ gpt. So this is very important.
Bulb strategies. As techs cost more you should be consider how best to use there. Edu will be 3375 beakers. Philosophy 1500 beakers. So you get better value on these early bulbs now. Machinery 1312 beakers.
Winning wise I think cheese is the likely quickest option. vassal 2-3 Ai who mainly have AP religion then just spread to the others.

Time is the last major issue. You are fighting more Ai with more cities so the bigger Ai will take more time to vassal or destroy. I think once you have the land of 3-4 Ai the game is really won but you still have to take down the other 6 or so AI to reach land / pop percentages required.

Events - This seems absolutely pointless. Barb events can kill your game. The slavery revolt event can wipe 2 pop off your capital at a critical moment. Some of the peace events are okay. If you can get the capture holy hill or other events I guess interesting. You would have to know what the triggers for these are. Over 500+ turns I barely got any. Most were buildings destroyed. On higher levels I think most would rather avoid these random events.

More thoughts. Unit cost is a big issue early on. With the need to fog bust and expand you find your paying 6-7 gold a turn to pay for the fogbusters. I can 100% see why KY was struggling for techs before 1ad. Archery/hunting kill the tech tech if you over expand and have too many units. It's actually quite a vicious circle. Oe solution is actually warfare as capture gold from cities can help if the AI offer techs for peace too.

Playing a game with Toku and I have literally had to declare on neghbours as my science ran 100% dry with 11 cities just before 1ad. Writing was just not happening. Even with 3-4 gold resources captured from the AI.Crazy!

A Huge Map probably adds a difficulty level's worth of difficulty. I'm playing a Huge as Willem van Oranje, but am doing ok - I have a small, hill border city and the rest is my land/conquered Zulu land. My concern is 1) what to do with my left over military, and 2) how to devlop workers/settlers/buildings in proper ratio. I think it's time for me to grow in on the land I conquered.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

Yesterday I played one of the few huge games I have ever played. And I do feel that it is abit more difficult since there is more potential for behemoth AIs running away.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes large AI can be an issue. Still think early tech is super important. Tech one wrong tech and the route to writing dies a death.

Biggest issue here is no focus or economy. 28 workers is overkill. Still building more workers and settlers for what? Cities not running best tiles. At 0% science llttle or no gold generation. Need OB with Toku so gift 2x techs. Too many 1c trade routes is killing your economy. 49 unit cost as you have too many workers. Huge maps are a killer on unit costs. Nice job taking down Zulu. Betting AI has a lot of gold to trade for resources.

Chances are you have already played on so pointless comments really.

 

[King Younk]

Krikav - I agree. Huge maps are difficult, but if you conquer one to three neighbors to take an entire continent, keeping them as vassals or conquering them outright, you can stave off an invasion much of the time (assuming it's not a Pangaea).

Yes large AI can be an issue. Still think early tech is super important. Tech one wrong tech and the route to writing dies a death.

Biggest issue here is no focus or economy. 28 workers is overkill. Still building more workers and settlers for what? Cities not running best tiles. At 0% science llttle or no gold generation. Need OB with Toku so gift 2x techs. Too many 1c trade routes is killing your economy. 49 unit cost as you have too many workers. Huge maps are a killer on unit costs. Nice job taking down Zulu. Betting AI has a lot of gold to trade for resources.

Chances are you have already played on so pointless comments really.

What is OB?

Also I'm pwning - I was prioritizing conquest, but now have my goal of the entire island. I think I will upgrade my entire military and then focus on tech.

Spoiler :

Anyway, I'm winning this game - is it so bad to languish economically for a bit, if I use the land to improve upon and develop an even stronger economy later?

What's your preferred worker to city ratio?

 

[pi-r8]

I don't know that it adds difficulty, but it's definitely a different challenge. I appreciate this thread just for being different and showing a different type of game, even though one huge/marathon game was enough for me. Agreed with Gumbolt that early tech is super important. I think it's better to only settle high commerce cities early on, and leave everything else until you've researched writing/currency and have some developed cottages.

Also, financial is amazing on these settings.

@King Younk
I still think it's a big mistake for you to take vassals. The main benefit of winning a war is you gain all their cities! If you take a vassal, you don't get them. Meanwhile your cities keep their unhappiness, and there are weird diplomatic consequences too. It looks like you're winning that game anyway, but you'd be winning a lot harder if all those Khmer and Japanese cities were giving you their research directly.

 

[AcaMetis]

What is OB?

Short for Open Borders

 

[sampsa]

Huge maps are difficult

I think huge maps add perhaps one difficulty level. Marathon removes roughly two, so your emperor/huge/mara are about as difficult as normal monarch games.

 

[jmas]

I hear you with regard to GGenerals @lymond ! I appreciate them more and more and find settling GGenerals, (a practice I did alot previously) increasingly rare in my games.

NC284 spoiler warning!

Spoiler GGeneral lovelyness :

How about lifting 9 Trebs at 6/8 up to CR3?! I like that!
View attachment 608345

@krikav, Hard to read some of the yellow text but it looks like one treb was at 18/20? Wow! And what promo(s) did it have besides CR1-3?

 

[krikav]

@jmas It was 10 trebs, each at 6/8 xp, so they all got up to 8/8 and enabled CR3.
The super strong treb was indeed at 18/20, this is the one I attached the general at.
These super trebs usually gets morale so they can move faster (together with mounts), or move+bombard if moving with 1-movers.
Having them survive is important, so sometimes I go for that GGeneral promotion with +30% withdraw chance.
Or after CR1->CR3, bombard and then likely just drill, just to increase survival odds just abit more.

 

[Lennier]

I still think it's a big mistake for you to take vassals. The main benefit of winning a war is you gain all their cities! If you take a vassal, you don't get them. Meanwhile your cities keep their unhappiness, and there are weird diplomatic consequences too. It looks like you're winning that game anyway, but you'd be winning a lot harder if all those Khmer and Japanese cities were giving you their research directly.

Your cities don't keep the WW unhappiness once you take the vassal. In fact, your cities get a +1 for each vassal you control. There are advantages to taking a vassal, biggest is speed--you don't have to conquer all their cities and are that much quicker on moving on to your next target. And have less maintenance due to having less cities.

 

[pi-r8]

Your cities don't keep the WW unhappiness once you take the vassal. In fact, your cities get a +1 for each vassal you control. There are advantages to taking a vassal, biggest is speed--you don't have to conquer all their cities and are that much quicker on moving on to your next target. And have less maintenance due to having less cities.

Ah I didn't realize the WW went away. Still, +1 happiness is a less good than having a bunch of extra cities. And now he has to go invade the other continent because there's nothing left on his own continent. I know it can be good if you're racing to reach domination, but this is more about him building his power.

 

[Gumbolt]

Sometimes I prefer to take the land and wipe the AI out. It means you can usually skip the last 1-2 ai pending on map size. Weak vassals sometimes make it harder as the enemy Ai might think they are doing better than they actually are. Do they look at lowest military or average military on map when considering to vassal. I think it's the average. Or does winning 40 combat points with no losses mean auto vassal. RNG does not always allow this. I have lost combats at 98%. Only 99% and above is safe. You also avoid we want to join motherland unhappiness. Albeit once you have 20-30 cities you tend to control most happiness resources on the map.

Of course chain vassals can work. Pends on map. Huge maps can have Ai with 20+ cities. Sometimes you want to leave these and pick off the fastest teching AI. Or wipe out easiest 52% of land might be easier. Of course with 80-100 units you can send in 2-3 stacks. They can't defend on 3 fronts.

I wonder what is the most fun script for huge maps? Pangea is interesting but harder to control diplo. Continents could mean you arrive to find one AI taking over. Of course by that stage hopefully you would control your continent. If you want a large Ai you would need a lot of land so one AI can expand and become big.

I think financial will do a lot better at start. Especially with cottages. Strategies for wonders seem pretty weak on civ 4. Unless you target GLH or Mids. On huge maps it's harder as diverting from key techs kills your early game research when you reach 3-4 cities by 2000bc.I am not finding the AI steaming ahead but you do find AI reach 10-15 cities more often. Guess huge maps can spice things up. If you are playing deity I think standard map size will be a good enough test.

 

[pigswill]

@sampsa. Completely disagree with your analysis, huge marathon emperor is at least as difficult as normal standard emperor. Marathon is certainly better for warfare which makes expansion a lot easier, on the other hand after you've conquered a couple of neighbours you get crippled by city maintenance..On a standard map twenty cities is a big empire, on huge its average..

 

[King Younk]

In the late game as Willem van Oranje, unsure what to do. The three blocks are Boudica (and her vassals), Alexander and his vassal, and me and my two vassals. I have a continent secured, but am concerned that if Boudica were to conquer Alexander and his vassal, as she is capable of doing, that I would lose. I have kept Boudica on pleased, which is the only real issue to deal with diplomatically, as I go for a space race.

I played a good game, but cannot upload images now for some technical reason.

What would you suggest at this stage?

 

[King Younk]

Anyway, I finished that one. If you check it out, disregard the war/anger/lack of nukes, because I unloaded them all on the SDI-less vassals of Boudica in the last turn. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, to retain a higher score? In any case, I don't understand why the percentage of global population for Boudica didn't go down after wiping out maybe 10% of her vassals' population.

Someone give me a challenge for next game? I insist on Marathon/Huge, and will probably play only on emperor. But what could I do better? Maybe I should have attacked Boudica before she got so large - she could have run away with this thing in the later game.