Late Game problems

[civ4lyfe]

How did you get that text box in the upper right hand corner? Also How did you get all the worker abilities to go the the left hand side of the screen?

 

[vmxa]

The text box is from CaII. The button can be moved. I sometimes move them there by accident. Hit the backspace key they will toggle from bottom to right side.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Doesn't <Backspace> toggle between display buttons and display no buttons? I think yes. <Delete> toggles between buttons on the bottom and buttons on the right.

Or maybe the other way 'round.

 

[creamcheese]

How did you get that text box in the upper right hand corner? Also How did you get all the worker abilities to go the the left hand side of the screen?

The text box is from CaII. The button can be moved. I sometimes move them there by accident. Hit the backspace key they will toggle from bottom to right side.

That is CivAssist II, in case you were wondering. It is a really great utility that makes a lot of the micromanaging in game a whole lot easier. It can be found HERE.

 

[vmxa]

Doesn't <Backspace> toggle between display buttons and display no buttons? I think yes. <Delete> toggles between buttons on the bottom and buttons on the right.

Or maybe the other way 'round.

It is backspace for me. Of course you have to have the buttons in the first place, so you need to have a unit active.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

It is backspace for me. Of course you have to have the buttons in the first place, so you need to have a unit active.

You are right, backspace sends them to the side. Delete toggels them (and those) boxes on/off.

 

[vmxa]

Civ4lyfe I see you have gotten a lot of good feedback, but may still struggle a bit. I thought it may be useful to see more details. It may turn out to not be all that informative though, but here goes.

I took a look at the 700AD Hannibal save and the 1495AD Hannibal save. As you probably have seen, the 4000BC to 700AD is what is slowing you. The first 150 turns are most important, especailly for expansion.

I played the 700AD out to 1315AD as that was peaceful, with one short war with Liz and a pretent war with Cathty as she never came back. By 1315 I had all the land up to the same approximate place you did in the North with England.

I also had all the land in South, where you had some owned by others. The two big difference is you had 21 towns and I had 49 and was 4 turns from MT, 36 turns sooner. First in techs with those known, likey all as F7 implies. Had roads on about 95% of the land. War was just declare at this point, by Liz.
Sorry I did not get this posted a few days ago.

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

700AD (T185)
Lets see what is going on in this save. First I see we are in Monarchy. It is 700AD and we only see 1 other nation, so why Monarchy? Is this played as AW? I think not, so why not go for Republic? It will let you tech faster. This is Warlord, so you could pretty much stay at war, once you invade the presumed other continent, if needed.

To me Monarchy is for AW only or for Religious civs that can switch at little cost. I have to look now to see what traits Hannibal has as I have not played Cathage in some time. Ok I knew it was Seafare, but I was not sure about the other and it is Industrial.

What can I say about Seafare, other than to me it sucks. I prefer Commerce and Industrial. Playing AW, Mil is ok and Science is not bad. Not a great fan of AG, unless at Sid where I will be needing the early faster growth. Dislike Rel, Exp and Sea.

Cathage has a strong early UU for defense. I see no reason for defense in a normal game at Warlord and certainly I do not need a Num Merc. Frances Musketeer is fine as it comes at the right point and lets you bypass rifles, which I do anyway.

So what do we tend to see in low level games? Well slow expansion, leads to slow research and soon to being weaker than you neighbors, when you should be the king.

Biggest reason is workers. If not the lack of them, then to inefficent use of them. Wasting movement, working on the wrong tile or the wrong improvement. Wider spacing than is useful, but that is not critical, except for the worker issues.

The CxxxxC or wider compounds the lack of workers and the misuse of them. Why, because you have to travel farther and take time and or make even more roads that will not be use for some time, if at all. Remember 21 tiles are of no use to a size 12 or less town. You cannot be a metro without a hospital or Shakes.

You do not really want to learn Sanitation or Free Art as they are optional techs.
Better have 20 city using 10-12 tiles, than 12 cities with 10 idle tiles apiece. As a rule the players that are struggling with Warlord are going to be hard pressed to make good use of a metro.

So where are we right now at 700AD? I checked on my Roadmap for Warlord thread to see where I was at about 700AD. This game iirc was a very easy one and I had MT and 4 turns for Physics. The 900AD screen shows most of the continent under culture.

So here we have only Feudalism in the Middle Ages and we do not have Lit, so no libs. 10 towns, one rioting and 1 quite a ways away, Two not contigous to the empire. Not so swell all in all.

What actions are useful right now? First I turn off all the animation, except battles. Turn on color blind for ease of detecting the nations as I have a 31 color palette. Enable Always build previous.

Making 54bpt at 70%, yuck. We have nearly 200 beakers into Eng, so I leave that, but often running to Chiv is a good plan. Here we do not have anyone other than Liz, so we can wait or skip. That does mean no Templar.

We have Horses and Iron, but no lux. I would expect at least 3 on a std map continents of this size, maybe even 4 lux. A glance suggest that we have none on our end of the continent and Liz has silks and furs at least, ouch.

Hum, we pay 20 maint for 10 towns? It is a large chunk of our net (after corruption) income. 6 of 10 towns have a clown?

Carthage, I suspect I am not in the race for Sun Tzu. I would prefer to be using the best city I have for more important things. This is not AW, so I do not need barracks everywhere. I may be able to get GL, but I do not want to risk a GA right now. I switch it to market and eat 45 shields.

We must get this city making things that make the empire stronger, settlers or beakers come to mind. We are starving so how would you expect to build a 600 shield wonder? If you want a wonder like Sun Tzu, get the city ready. It should be size 12 by now. It should have all worked tiles improved. Most of all its citizen must be working and they are not all working and we are starving at size 8.

I checked and see the GA was already occurred. This should have been avoided, by not using Nums. Use swords and avoid the GA. I set lux to 10%. Put the joker on the grass tile.

Hadrum stop the worker making a mine on a mountain. Yes that is nice to have, but it must wait till you have more important tiles improved. Namely we need to get roads down on worked tiles. That flood plain being worked is going to give us gold and we want it irrigated. Start a worker, you seldom can afford to be on wealth with 10 towns.

Oea switch temple to a settler. Why make a temple this is Warlord and we get 3 content citizens. The settler will drop the pop down and the 10% will hold things till we get either a settler or worker out.

Send settler to hill and a num will escort.

Sabratha switch temple to settler and joker to science.

Units, I hate to see regular non warriors. Sometimes you have to and if they are only for MP that is fine. Horsemen must be vets, they just die to easily as regs. Sword and other early attackers may be able to get a promotion, horses tend to die or retreat.

We are nearly at max support, so I will disband some units soon.

Sorting by shieds we have 4 towns that make 8spt or more. One has 3 corrupt, so it is only getting 6. This basically means no reason to make a barracks in places with less than 6 net shields right now.

Theveste switch rax to settler and will sell the temple after it pops.

Leptis Minor switch temple to settler wasting 17 shields, ouch. Joker to taxman for a few turns.

Utica was a hard call. It was making a court, which is nealry useless when next to the capitol. The choice to make a unit or a market. I go with market, even though lux are a long way off now. Still it is only 5 turns. The maint can be earned at the times we run low research. It has a colosseum, which I detest, especially at Warlord.

You paid 120 shields and 2gpt maint. 4 swords could have taken a real toll on the Queen.

Hippo joker to taxman. Stopped the worker mining a desert tile. Dang we have lots of worked tiles with no road, we do not want to mine deserts, ever or nealry never. Certainly that could be done much later. We are losing gold every turn.

Leptis Magna joker to mountain mine.

I am sure this has been mentioned, but it is best to not move workers off a tile and not make a road. That is just lost turns. It is also lost gold, if the tile is worked and why would you have worker improve it if it is not worked?

Rusicade switch temple to worker. Lost 15 more shields. What is that worker doing on the wheat that is not in the borders? More lost turns.

Stopped the worker in Carthage that was chopping. That is not a bad thing, but with 6 workers we need roads more.

710AD (T186)
Carthage start an MDI.
Leptis Minor > worker.
Oea > worker.
Bede reports we are pathetic at 6th place.

720AD (T187)
Found Cadiz
It goes to wealth and lone citizen is scientist as it is desert.
Found Cirta
Starts a worker.

730AD (T188)
Found Nora
Rusicade need a scientist.

740AD (T189)
Disband curragh in Oea.

750AD (T190)
Carthage > MDI.
Theveste > settler.
Hippo > MDI.
Leptis Minor > settler.
Found Rusaddir
starts a worker.

780AD (T193)
Found Sulcis
Start a worker.

790AD (T194)
Carthage > settler.

800AD (T195)
Hippo > settler.
Rusicade > settler.
Drop research to 0%.

810AD (T196)
Start settler in Hadrumetum.

Mono
15 towns, 2 settlers moving into place. Liz is is down Eng, up Republic.

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

820AD (T197)
Cita > wall.
Start nums in Magna and Carthage for adding to expositionary force.

830AD (T198)
Found Saldae
Starts a worker.

840AD (T199)
Hippo > rax.
Sabratha > settler.

Found Carthago Novo
starts a worker.
A horse finds they have settled more towns and I see a spear/settler on the coast by Richmond. Time to do a little pruning. Rivers, no problem my horse kills their regular archer.
eSword kills the spear across a river.

850AD (T200)
Minor > aqua, yeah it is only size 1 right now.
Rusaddir > settler.
Yet another palace expansion? Must be doing something wrong, if they are happy.
Found Malaca
Start a rax. It is next to capitol, so should be strong.

860AD (T201)
Theveste > settler and sell temple.
Found Gades
start worker.
Utica > MDI.

870AD (T202)
Found Calaris > worker.
3/3 sword kills archer near Richmond, why we have regular swords I am not sure.
Horse kills archer and goes elite.

880AD (T203)
Too many builds finish, so only going to mention some builds going forward.
Egg on my face. I just realized the Carthage does not have a barracks. My bad, never considered one would not have a rax in the capitol by 700AD. Actuall I do think I had noticed it, but forgot when I actually got around to playing.

Switch num to rax, at least I was only making nums. One of the problems with being Hannibal and not going for knights, is you have limited upgrades. You make nums, but no offense from there on upgrades. You can make MDI, but again nothing till guerilla and that is not a worthwhile upgrade and offense is less than great at that stage.

890AD (204)
Found Tingis
eSword kills archer and eHorse does one.

900AD (T205)
Found lol

IBT
archer dies on horse on a hill east of Hadrumetum.

910AD (T206)
2 rSwords kill archers and 4/5 horse does one.
Could use elite sword on MDI, if we had at least one Num in this stack. Have to leave it fortified for defense.

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

IBT
Sweet, the eSword kills an MDI and goes to 2/5. Second MDI also dies and we hang on at 1/5. Num is getting close to the scene.

920AD (T207)
Chiv

940AD (T209)
eHorse kills MDI, goes red.
rSword kills archer and goes vet.

950AD (T210)
Horse kills warrior.
Supports starts now as I am not able to get out settlers fast enough and they are taking too long to get on site. I have 1 moving and 7 building. Liz knows Mono and Feud, but not Eng. Pikes to face soon.

970AD (T212)
Magna > FP.
Upgrade 1 sword.
eSword kills rMDI.
MDI kills rMDI.

980AD (T213)
Found Rusguniae
Two cities switch from troops to settlers for one cycle.
Horse retreats from spear.

990AD (T214)
Another horse retreated from that spear. Did zero damage, yuck.

IBT
Two units attack my stack next to Richmond, but die.

1010AD (T216)
I think an MDI killed spear in Richmond. eHorse kills a spear and razed it. 8 slaves from the size 2 town.

Spot Cathy and trade Chiv for Lit and 3 gold. She also knows at least Invention and Republic.

Invention
rMDI killed an MDI next to us. Meeting Russia may pose a problem. I had intended to just smash down a lot of Lizzy towns, but that will make even more open spaces for Cathy to fill and probably I will be seeing others soon. I have been doing mostly back filling and not pushing towards England as I do not want anyone landing behind me.

1020AD (T217)
Upgrade a redlined horse for 120. I have knights going now.
MDI barely kills spear.
Switch the wall in Novo to settler. All towns on settler or troops or workers, except 1 that is a no grow.

1030AD (T218)
Dang, I spot a Russian combo and a horse barely kills it. Did not really want another war, but no interlopers allowed.

Found Thaenae a lone science town.
MDI kills archer.

1040AD (T219)
Russia finished Templar. Babylon made Sun Tzu a couple turns back.
MDI kills archer.

Found Rusuccuru

Found al-Kaf

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

IBT
MDI dies on our Num.

1050AD (T220)
Knight kills spear and goes elite.

1070AD (T222)
Found Zouchis

IBT
MDI dies on our eSword.

1080AD (T223)
MDI kills MDI next to EXeter.
I just check on civ4lyfe's save and at 1495AD it was 21 towns. I have 28 right now.

1090AD (T224)
Liz wants peace, so I take it for 200. This will cost me a town or two getting mad.
Found Gigthis

1120AD (T227)
Found Tacape

Gun

I see a road on a horse next to a volcano, but it is not in any towns border?
I trade Liz Eng + Lit for Theo and 50 gold. I do not mind helping her a bit as she is doomed anyway and it does not help Russia.

1130AD (T228)
Found Zama

1150AD (T230)
Found New Carthage
Found New Utica

1160AD (T231)
FP done.

1170AD (T232)
Making knights in 4 places now as one was put on structures. Had to rush 2 settlers for a total of 60 to keep the places happy. 17 towns making settlers and 3 or 4 making workers. Still no lux or wonders. England down 2 and Russia 1, Gun in 3. 32 towns, 1st in the CAII tracked stats. Jungle cleared out of empire, 2 jungle not in empire and not cleared.

1200AD (T235)
Chemistry

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

1210AD (T236)
Found New Leptis Magna

1220AD (T237)
Found New Theveste

1230AD (T238)
Found New Hippo
Got a lib up finally and another started.

Found New Leptis Minor

Found New Sabratha

1240AD (T239)
Found New Rusicade

1265AD (T243)
Metal
Nearly have the southern finger filled. Closing in on the border of England. I don't think I ever played 240+ turns and still no lux.

1270AD (T244)
Found New Oea
Found New Hadrumetum
Found New Cadiz
41 towns now. Should be more like 60.

1275AD (T245)
Found New Citra
Found New Nora
starts a treb, only have a couple.

Found New Rusaddir
starts a treb as well.
Builds:
Settler 17
Knight 4
Market 1
Worker 5
Aqua 1
Treb 2
Wealth 14

I actually am nearly done filling in and the rest will be for conquered lands. Will probably shutdown some of the settler towns after the current one. Need more libs. Need some muskets, but too expensive to upgrade. Finally have more support than units. 4 settlers enroute. We have three islands that I will need to drop units on to keep them from being filled.

1285AD (T247)
Found New Sulcis
Debate this one, first thought a worker, end up with a wall. Also consider a barracks for healing. May change.

1295AD (T249)
Cathy asked for peace and I said ok for 10 gold. There is no place for her to put down a town now, so I should not be seeing settlers.

Found New Saldae

1300AD (T250)
MT
Hippo > Lib.

Found New Carthago Novo
I looked at the bpt and it is 255. I need 256 to shave a turn off, so go find two more beakerheads and drop to 6 turns. The game shows 7, but that is not correct.

 

[vmxa]

Spoiler :

1310AD (T252)
Found New Malaca
I must say I was surprised when I dialed up Liz to suggest she remove two MDI that had been parked on my land for a few turns. She declared war, saving me to trouble. I have been trying to move troops to the front and New Sucis did chop a wall.

I have three towns on the border and a settler in place to make the final border filling town. The only thorn is I had switched 2 knight towns to libs.

Two knights kill the two offending MDI.

1315AD (T253)
Found New Gades
Settler in place under MDI on the far SE finger to finish off all the open land. We are strong compared to LIz.

5 settlers, 31 workers, 2 warriors, 5 swords, 2 horses, 1 musket, 19 knights, 16 MDI and 2 trebs.

49 towns, 50th next turn.

Civ4lyfe 1495AD has 21 towns with most tiles lacking a road. I do not know the rest of the world right now as I did not want deal with them, till I got the continent under control.

 

[vmxa]

Civ4lyfe I wanted to give you some step by step builds to show how you can quickly increase you empire and basically no wars. One of the things that makes it easier to focus on expanding is knowing how weak the AI and what they are likely to do and when.

At Warlord you can toss out a few offensive units from time to time and as long as land is available they will tend to leave you alone.

What happens to people is they make spears and wide spaced towns. This gives the AI the idea you are weaker and they will send units scouting through your area. If you are strong and have no gaps in your border, they will not come in your land and you will not have to attack them or deal with towns interspersed with yours.

I do not want them to scout land near me and especially behind me. This will get them to send settlers and I will have to attack them. They already know that salt or Iron or whatever resource is back there, but they are not allowed to find the path, without a map.

It is like when you found an embassy with an empire far off. You see the bit of land, but you do not have a path to get there. It may even be an island. You are allowed to stumble in that direction and discover a path. The AI does the same, excpet they knwo the disposition of all tiles.

This includes what units on what tiles as well resources. This is why you see a cav come out of the fog and grab a worker attack a damage unit. They know it was there, though they could not see it.

Anyway, if it useful great, if not it is in spoiler tags, so it can be ignored.

So they will try to map the path and then they will settle. I at least want to force them to use a boat.

 

[Puppeteer]

vmxa, do you have a template or logger helper for your turn logs? I like the format of your turnsets above.

civ4lyfe, have you had better luck with late game situations?

 

[vmxa]

Yes I finally got smart and created a 10 turn basic txt file. It has the color and year for 10 turns. Then I have three more entries below the spoiler tags. One tech, one for leader and one towns.

If something else comes up I just copied one of those and make a change. I should have done that long ago. CBoB does it to the max, but that is more work than I am willing to do.

 

[web25]

i noticed that you guys build a lot of mines instead of irrigation, that a better build for the long haul? i only would mine hills and mountains.

 

[Puppeteer]

i noticed that you guys build a lot of mines instead of irrigation, that a better build for the long haul? i only would mine hills and mountains.

In despotism irrigating a grassland has no effect.

Excess food is only useful for growth, and indirectly settlers and workers. Once a city is at max size you only need enough irrigation to support working the hills and/or mountains.

Typically an AI-style city with lots of irrigated grass and food bonus tiles is producing unusable excess food when a bunch of mined grassland would really up the shield production.

I'm guessing you don't micromanage your cities?

 

[vmxa]

Mines in core cities as you need shields to build things. If the place is not going to build much of anything or is corrupt then irrigate. Late game I may irrigate some mines in places that are no longer going to build things and I have plenty of workers.

 

[Theov]

i noticed that you guys build a lot of mines instead of irrigation, that a better build for the long haul? i only would mine hills and mountains.

I came from Civ1 and 2, so I irrigated everything too.
'Mine green, irrigate brown'.
Considering that one pop needs 2 food, it makes sense to mine a tile that already has 2 food.
Food on itself is not really useful for a civilization if the the food is turned into population that only build more food, in the end it's the shields that builds the civ... savvy?
.
When a city can't grow anymore (if you can't build aquas or hospitals) then you just mine everything.
When a city can't produce much due to corruption, you irrigate all and turn the population into scientists (or whatever you like)