King Younk's Questions thread

Huge/Marathon pointer: If you've got copper hooked up, axes are much better barb defenders than archers. Archers may be able to defend your cities proper, but won't be able to prevent barb spearmen and axes from pillaging your land. A few axes will make mincemeat of barb warriors, archers, and spearmen and can get enough experience to reliably kill barb axes as well. (And can get at least 50-50 odds against barbs on flatland moving to pillage. And if you've built a barracks, they'll get a promo out of the box.) They're more expensive than archers, but much more versitile.

 

Really crucial detail, thanks.

I'm starting a new game on Emperor, Marathon, Huge map as Charlemagne. Will meticulously plan out my first 3 cities 1. for food, 2. for hammers (forests/hills) which will build warriors - NOT ARCHERS, lol and 3. commerce.

I will fog bust with the warriors.

I really want to build archers though in the early game and upgrade them, lol. Knowing that barbs won't attack me before 2000 BC is crucial.

Off I go.



Maybe ya's would like to play this map, so I can see what I can do better?

EDIT: Also, scouts can fogbust too, yes?

 

So I'm at the point where I can choose my second city placement. Should I A) settle on the open plains right south of my borders to expand into a finanical city that shares cottage tiles with Aachen, B) go for Crab and Corn to the West, C) settle to the Northeast for the food up there, or D) settle in the far Northwest so I can start producing military units in a specialized military city?

I'm thinking I will do B once I get agriculture and fishing, so that I can have two cities producing settlers and workers rapidly, while throwing in a few warriors to enable my population to expand, fogbusting all the way.

As far as fogbusting goes, I should only need 3-4 warriors to prevent barbs from spawning on my little strip of land (the part southeast of the isthmus), right? How developed should that little primary area of land be before expanding northwest?

 

Is this fogbusting good for my little southeast corner of the island? I will add reinforcements to the northwest frontier of the visible area (the part I can actively see, not the part that has been discovered) once 2000 bc rolls around to stave off an influx of barbs.

 

Ok, so far so good. I have Boudica and Montezuma as my neighbors, so I'm going to start building some axemen pretty quickly here. Should I try to trash Monty?



Also, what should be my next priorities as far as research and development of the land go? Should I got for Montezuma if I can get 10-15 axes, and 3-4 spears together? An early Great General would be great, as an an Imperialistic leader, that would come relatively easily. I could spam 2 promotion military out of Prague - maybe even archers, even though you all hate them, since they're cheap, and would basically be double strength and city defense?

If you think I should attack Montezuma, should I go for Iron Working or Horseback Riding? My gut says no. Should I even go for archery, or just do axes and spears?

I am about to get dinner, then I will proceed with this game.

What do you all think so far? I am trying to communicate my thoughts better, because many people seem to think I wasn't taking their advice - rather I was applying a few principles at a time. The main departure from people's advice that I'm thinking of taking is to research archery if I can get a great general, since I can have very strong defenders in the early game as Charlemagne.

 

Anyway, I axe-rushed Monty and took two of his cities, including his capital.



Where should I go from here - I think either wipe out Montezuma, cripple him so he only has trash-land, or focus on growing my economy.

I think my game has been successful so far, but I am at a major impasse.

One criticism - I should have researched fishing sooner to sustain my economy. I am doing that now, and will go for writing soon after. I was mostly focused on weakening the Aztecs, as they are vicious.

 

I always play random - I feel it is more challenging. If I pick the conditions (outside which Civ/leader I play as, map size, and map time), I am able to win pretty regularly. If I do Ragnar or Shaka on a standard Pangea, I can pretty reliably win on Emperor. Marathon, Huge, and settings as random is a truer test of skill.

Where do you learn these things - that the AI needs 2 different attacking units? Is this in the Python source code? Is Civ4 written in more langauges than just Python? Because I barely understand Python, lol.

There has to be a set formula - the entire game is a series of formulas, just saying.

Many leaders do not plot at pleased, except I think Catherine, right? I'll check that article out, thanks.

I explored my immediate vicinity and fogbusted the area of the core of my empire, and then sent a few warriors to guard the passage into that area. I think that was a pretty good approach.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/king-younks-questions-thread.661080/reply?quote=16145714

Marathon is the way to go. I actually intended to start playing with 18 civs on Huge, but forgot this game. More competitive and all.

Archery is the ****. Someday I will slay you all with it. As Charlemagne.

I've been gaining xp and GG points. I now have my first, as of this posting, in Prague, so I can build +5 XP military units. I am extremely tempted to research archery now and build about 20 of those bad boys, and focusing the rest of my cities on my economy, or possibly conquering the Aztecs. I am trying to find a balance between the two.

What do you think I should do with that - the most recent post I posted in here before this time?

I have Axemen and Spearmen on line and conquering the neighboring Aztecs, though I'm not sure if I should go for the kill, or focus on my economy, since it is not doing so well.



Anyway, thanks for all your help so far, guys. I think I may take a break for the evening - if you would review my most recent game as Charlemagne, I think you'll find that I've followed your advice. So far so OK - not good. I mostly need to balance my economy and conquering the Aztecs.

 

I took a stab at playing this. Pretty sloppy play on my part, since it's been a long time since I've played civ4 and I never played Marathon much. But I still got to a winning position, I think.

Spoiler :

Rocky climate + marathon means a *really* slow tech pace. Especially with the lack of nearby rivers. I never needed archery, barbs were quite easy to deal with by using warriors to prevent them.

I went after Monty because he's right there, blocking you in as your only neighbor. He's an easy target too. I had to stop taking his cities only because I ran out of money. Crashed my economy hard, but it'll recover now that I've finally got gold and some good river land to make cottages on. I had to scrape by relying on coastal tiles to make money for a long time. If you went for archery over fishing that was definitely a mistake. I think I should have gone for sailing before attacking Monty, because the trade route bonus from offshore islands would help a lot here. The great lighthouse would also be amazing, but it's not necessary.

At this point I'm way behind in tech, but I've also got more cities than anyone else, and a lot of land to build more. I don't think it'll be any problem to catch up in tech and win. Every city is focused on commerce as much as I can, this map just doesn't give you much, but my cottages are starting to kick in now. I'll go back for the rest of Monty's cities as soon as I can afford to keep them. Marathon makes it much easier to build units and take AI cities, it's just hard to afford the maintenance on this map. I have 13 cities on turn 324, compared to the 7 you have on turn 264, so that's a pretty solid advantage.

Live stream here of my play if you're interested:

 

Is that really an advantage if you can’t afgord them though?

 

I can afford them. It's not ideal, I should have done some things differently, but I'm stable and making money. I'm not on strike or anything like that. At this point it's just a matter of cottage spam.

 

@ KY I looked at one of your saves and Mutal was taken out just after 3000bc which I assume was due to a barb event. No way barbs enter the borders that early. Took a peak in world builder and there was an area of around 1600+ tiles with absolutely no AI cities. 8-9+ barb cities including the captured city. Which means at some point a strong AI will just take out all those barb cities before you even reach them. You really need 11-13 ai at least on these settings. Otherwise barbs rather than player skill could determine the game. Even if the Mayans had survived an AI would of expanded to 20+ cities just gobbling up vacant land.

Looked at Pi r8 save on same map. 300bc. No writing or sailing? Map lacks happiness and you had to travel 18+ tiles just to reach an AI capital which is not great for an axe rush. Due to no sailing and writing you have no foreign trade routes either. I am all about crashing the economy after a rush but you need the basic techs before you do this. Which means your city upkeeps are 7-8 and your just not recovering well. Cottage spam could take a while here.

On a comical front the Germans attacked shaka travelling about 20+ land tiles to do so. Actually captured a city but now there are no more troops coming beyond the 4-5 in transit near Shaka's borders. You would expect Shaka to take back that city.

This map feels broken. Way too much land for 9 AI. Which leads the AI to make silly decisions. One broken event can completely mess up the game. One long distance DOW wrecks the AI who on these settings should be pumping out more units. I am all for trying to make the game harder but the map settings will ruin normal gameplay.

 

Yeah this map is... weird. It messed with my instincts because there's so much land available, but a lot of it is really poor. In retrospect I think it would have been better to just raze most of Monty's cities rather than keeping them. Taking his cities was easy, the hard part was paying for them.

 

I am doing better than yall minus the not researching fishing early part. Now I’m gonna build 10-20 archers m

 

I'm in pretty good shape right now, about to research ARCHERY. With 2 Great Generals in my cities, coupled with Barracks, I can spit out enough 2 promotion archers (coupled with my Protective characteristic) to defend this whole mf thing pretty easily. I need to infill with tile improvements and cities, but once the economy is up and running, I will start to steamroll, I do believe.

Going for currency next.

 

You can likely beg archery off the Celts for free.
One library by 10bc is hardly great.
You probably should of settled an island city for 2c trade routes.If you had sailing! I can only see one foreign trade route by 10bc? This is the issue with leaving the Atecs alive and no sailing. Plus fact you have not scouted out the AI.
Barb galleys on the way and you lack sailing!
You lack happiness resources too. Aztecs have ivory but would never trade it to you. You needed monarchy or mids. That or calendar.
9 workers for 13 cities is not enough. Those flood plains could of been cottaged a long time ago.

You are very backwards for this date. Just getting alphabet to trade early here would of done wonders.

The start it would of been better to build an economy with 6-8 cities and then breach out once you had an economy. Oracle could of worked here given how slow the AI is.

 

The superior of archers is "on ice".
Where is ice though? The evidence is unclear!

 

The clear counter to ice archers is the amphibious war elephant.

This is self evident.

Spoiler Playthru 565ad :

I pre-empted Gumbolt's advice and turtled while (slowly) researching towards construction, diverted for monarchy because no happiness. Monte declared on me 170ad a couple of turns before I was ready to declare on him. After currency I diverted to MC because I was getting piffed off by barb galleys. Slow but steady progress until he vassalised to Hannibal and got longbows 500ad, I paid Hannibal 90g for peace shortly after because I didn't fancy suiciding cats against longbows which would just increase the cost of a peace treaty.
12 cities, slowly researching CS.
In my game at least Wonders have been going early despite generally slow tech rate. (Oracle 1570bc, Glite 1090bc, Pyramidz 420bc, MoM 430ad)

 

The issue with huge maps is techs take longer to research. The larger the map size the more beakers required for techs. So if KY was researching hunting/archery every game he would soon find he was struggling to get some of the basic techs. So you either have to slow your rex or go for mids so you can use citizens to get 1H 3 science. Mids on huge maps actually helps science greatly if you expanded to 4-5 cities by 1500bc. Albeit building mids without stone is not a great idea. Capturing it has merits.

Silver on this start will be a nice boost. As PW has shown a slower aproach gives a much faster tech and a better position long term albeit Monte is a risk. That beig said 3-4 axes can normally stop any Ai stacks in their tracks.

Huge maps also delays trade routes due to distance. So you really do have to think about that early on.

 

Monte isn't necessarily a huge risk as the mountains provide a chokepoint, a hilltop city with a few axes and spears, maybe a wall, should keep you pretty safe.

 

The key here is the proper use of Venn diagrams.

This is the superior.