Knowing When to Change Focus

[Yahya]

I've been working on improving my abilities in BTS lately (not that they're particularly good to begin with ), so I decided to start yesterday on the Nobles Club series. So I started with NC I - Elizabeth, founded my city, and started exploring. I never saved the game because I became upset with myself over it, so unfortunately there's nothing to show anyone for critique.

However, I noticed a recurring problem in my games, and this used to happen to me in CivIII as well. I start exploring to find the resources, and start expanding to gather the ones I need (or want to prevent someone else from getting), but I soon find myself in a position where I feel I should have accomplished more. This is of course because I don't understand all the different game mechanics well enough to have a strong strategy in mind, and as a result I never get to a second phase of the game until it's too late (in my mind). In last night's game I was still a disjointed empire at turn 100 and I thought I should have had a stronger plan by that time. Plus it was late, so I just packed it in.

I was considering playing a series of games at each difficulty level with each type of victory as my goal, forsaking all other paths, so I can better learn the complementary units, buildings, techs, wonders, city specialists, and so on for each strategy. This would enable me to learn the aspects of the game in manageable chunks.

Of course, I could do that with the Nobles Club games, playing to the strengths of the leaders in each game, so that is maybe best.

I am looking for suggestions along these lines, or criticism of my idea. I am sure I will find no shortage of help.

 

[MesSer]

Well, considering that this game is a lot about shifting focus and knowing when to do stuff and when to not do stuff, I would say that you really can't learn anything without trying stuff out.

Also when it comes to game difficulties, you are kinda forced to change your tactics/how to play depending on what difficulty level you play on. Something that works on Noble will most likely not work on Immortal/deity etc.

As you progress through the difficulty levels, you are kind of forced to be more focused on both short term goals and long term goals and utilize small advantages to push your way to a winning position (or more often, force other AI to NOT WIN).

To be more focused you have to, avoid building crappy buildings (stable/religion/colloseum/libraries/universities/market/grocery) and focus on the stuff you do need (granary, forge, barracks, theatre, wealth, research and UNITS).

In most of my games, I usually end up building stuff in capitol (library, market, grocer, bank) and then keep all other cities (except for 1 other good commercial city) contained to granary, forge, barrack and then help keeping slider high (90-100%) by building wealth during tech phases.

 

[shulgi]

There is no perfect Civ game played by any person. This is really an important lesson, that the perfect placement of your capital is not necessary and that RNG bad luck happens and has to be learned to live with. This has been a great lesson from watching AbsoluteZero's videos (especially the recent Genghis Khan which was almost but instead ) as well as from screenshots and discussion in the this forum.

One note on REX which is always my starting strategy is to take the time to build a couple libraries and not just build roads and one defender. Lymond has some good advice n a recent post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11933534&postcount=2

And this city specialization guide has good advice too http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158482 though I also use an espionage city.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

However, I noticed a recurring problem in my games, and this used to happen to me in CivIII as well. I start exploring to find the resources, and start expanding to gather the ones I need (or want to prevent someone else from getting), but I soon find myself in a position where I feel I should have accomplished more. This is of course because I don't understand all the different game mechanics well enough to have a strong strategy in mind, and as a result I never get to a second phase of the game until it's too late (in my mind). In last night's game I was still a disjointed empire at turn 100 and I thought I should have had a stronger plan by that time. Plus it was late, so I just packed it in.

Hmm, that sounds familiar.

When I hit that point, I went through a phase when I did nothing but play openings. Bang out 50-100 turns on a map, evaluate what I should have done differently, reset to turn zero, bang out the first 50-100 turns again using the new ideas, lather rinse repeat.

On Noble, I recommend the target of "generic winning position" by 1AD (turn 115 at normal speed). At this point, you should be #1 in the world at all of the important demographics - population, production, food, GNP, military, land area. From there, you can explore a lot of different middle game ideas, and choose whichever victory condition is appropriate.

 

[Yahya]

Thanks for the quick replies, folks. I'm sure more will come, but I'll keep the dialogue going here.

To be more focused you have to, avoid building crappy buildings (stable/religion/colloseum/libraries/universities/market/grocery) and focus on the stuff you do need (granary, forge, barracks, theatre, wealth, research and UNITS).

Yes, that's an excellent point, and I seriously need to do some learning as to which buildings are valuable and which are not. I'll have to learn why they're valuable, of course, as just learning a list won't help me much. You opened my eyes seriously to some suggested areas of learning.

One note on REX which is always my starting strategy is to take the time to build a couple libraries and not just build roads and one defender.

Interesting. Another building I'll have to learn about. I feel like I should literally go through articles and the Pedia and take notes. Seriously.

I did just read through lymond's comments in that thread, and he made some interesting points.

When I hit that point, I went through a phase when I did nothing but play openings. Bang out 50-100 turns on a map, evaluate what I should have done differently, reset to turn zero, bang out the first 50-100 turns again using the new ideas, lather rinse repeat.

That's a good idea. I was even thinking about doing 10-20 at first and posting them in the forums for discussion, just to make sure I'm not doing some incredibly foolish things, which I'm sure I am. Perhaps I'll do that.