Learning From My Mistakes

[chadhogg]

I used to be able to win consistently, if not always convincingly, on Noble (vanilla). Since upgrading to include the two expansions, however, my games have been fraught with failure. It seems to me that the AI is much more aggressive than in the past. I just quit a game in disgust because I thought I had the perfect setup and still got steamrolled. I did not think to make save games or screenshots while playing, but am going to describe what happened in the game and hope you can suggest what I should have done differently.

I played as Darius I, Noble difficulty, on a random map type. The location of my starting settler was probably the very best city location I have ever seen: a river, 5 flood plains tiles, 2 corn on grassland tiles, a stone tile, and three hills for some production. I started building a Warrior to let my city grow to size 2 and researching Mysticism while exploring.

I found that I was near a chokepoint between two large landmasses with plenty of space to grow. Far to my south was Saladin and far to my east across the landbridge was Isabella. Much of the land to the south was covered in jungle, but was very rich in resources. Those I remember include 2 fish, iron, 2 cow, 2 banana, 2 rice, gold, and spices.

When my Warrior was finished I garrisoned it and built a Worker, a second Warrior, and a Settler. My population were working the flood plains, so the city was growing fast. The Worker started with the stone and then the two corns, then began cottaging the flood plains. When I had the second Warrior and Settler I sent them to the landbridge. In the meantime I tried and failed at both Hinduism and Buddhism, then got Judaism while picking up the techs needed for my tile improvements.

I had happened to get a lot of gold from exploration, so I used my ultra-food rich capital to pump out some more Warriors and Settlers, fairly quickly building a total of 6 cities covering all of the resources mentioned above. The second city was in a good production area, so I dedicated it to building nothing but military units and buildings that assist in building military units or keeping the populace happy and healthy. The third city was on almost all grassland with a few hills, so I built lots of farms to support a sizable number of specialists. The capital built any necessary infrastructure and lots of cheap wonders, while the other three were still getting the basics setup.

By now I had a significant tech lead over the two civs I had met, having founded all but the first two religions. Thanks to a few Great Prophets and Courthouses everywhere, I was able to turn a small profit even with my science rate at 90%, and was about to be the first to discover Liberalism. It looked like there would be relatively smooth sailing to Alpha Centauri around 1900.

I had gotten a very lucky event earlier causing all of my new archery units to get Combat I free, and with my second city dedicated to military, every one of my cities had the following defenders: 1 Longbowman with Combat I and City Garrison I, 1 Longbowman with Combat I and Medic 1, 1 Axeman with Combat I, 1 Catapult with Barrage I, and 1 Immortal with Combat I. I had just researched Machinery, but did not have the funds to immediately upgrade my Axemen to Macemen.

In another lucky event, I had earlier been able to give up the food storage in my capital city to gain a +4 diplomatic bonus with the Arabians, so I was quite surprised when they suddenly attacked with large stacks of Horse Archers, Pikemen, and Catapults. I had no chance of going out and attacking their units without similarly sized stacks, since their Pikemen would tear apart my Immortals and their Horse Archers could defend against an Axeman quite easily. Within two turns they had taken one of my cities and put 8 or so units in it. Given my better technology I probably could have driven them out eventually, but it was going to set back my research and development at least 50 turns and I was too angry to continue.

This is roughly similar to how most of my other BTS games have turned out (although I do not usually have nearly so good of a start). One I won a cultural victory when all but my three essential cities had been taken and the rest probably would have fallen in another 20 turns or so. Another I was saved from actual defeat by a United Nations resolution, but reached the end of the game with my cities in ruin and no where close to a victory condition.

Although I am not a warrior, it seems that I need to build many more units than in the original game. Would two cities doing nothing but building units be sufficient? Three? Should I have let my economy tank to expand even farther to increase overall production? Perhaps going with a Protective leader would help, but against overwhelming numbers those promotions make little difference. What do other non-aggressive players do to keep a military force strong enough to deter would-be attackers?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Civman123]

Most of the good "builders" use mostly good diplomacy. For instance knowing which leaders declare on pleased and checking for WHEOOHRN would make it easier to anticipate a sneak attack. Also you need to guard primarily your border cities! Having 3 longbows in each of your six cities probably wouldn't help guard against a large stack. Having 15 longbows in one city generally will (given how inept the AI is at siege).

PS: Make sure to keep extra gold in the treasury for emergency upgrades.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Welcome to CivFanatics.

It seems to me that the AI is much more aggressive than in the past.

The AI did get tightened up - I'm not sure it's "more aggressive" than "less dumb".

The location of my starting settler was probably the very best city location I have ever seen: a river, 5 flood plains tiles, 2 corn on grassland tiles, a stone tile, and three hills for some production.

Great! Darius starts with Agriculture and Hunting, so you researched Mining to unlock your hills while immediately training a Worker to get the corn improved..

I started building a Warrior to let my city grow to size 2 and researching Mysticism while exploring.

Oh.

Well a second warrior to help explore while you are developing your initial city isn't an awful choice.

When my Warrior was finished I garrisoned it

Oh.

Well, next came the settler to get the corn improved.

The Worker started with the stone

Oh.

In the meantime I tried and failed at both Hinduism and Buddhism, then got Judaism while picking up the techs needed for my tile improvements.

How to put this... this wasn't a research plan designed to lead to a winning position.

The general program of chasing early religions is soft, AND you were located near Isabella. If you were knowledgeable about the AI, you might have played to let her collect the religions, and then take them from her later in the game.

Put another way, you've researched Masonry, Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism, and maybe also Meditation instead of the techs you need to start developing your civ (Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, Pottery, Writing)

The second city was in a good production area, so I dedicated it to building nothing but military units and buildings that assist in building military units or keeping the populace happy and healthy.

Good - better if you had worried less about the happy and healthy buildings, but good.

The third city was on almost all grassland with a few hills, so I built lots of farms to support a sizable number of specialists.

That's a bit soft - grassland farms are a weak improvement - they have their place supplementing other improvements, but as the key feature of a city, they aren't so good.


And then you got whomped on military. For whatever reason, you don't have nearly as many garrison units as I would expect for a city that was constantly pumping out units, so something else was going wrong somewhere - either that city didn't have enough production, or you invested too much time in infrastructure there, or the other cities didn't contribute their share of the work... something broke down somewhere.


OK, Civman123 raised the point about diplo already, I'm going to focus on more general things.

At Noble, the position you are trying to establish and maintain is to be at or near the lead in tech, while being first in military and first in land. From that platform, you can do pretty much anything you want in the midgame to convert the winning position to a win.

Acquiring the land means either learning how to expand well - I don't for a moment believe that your 6 cities went up "fairly quickly" - or learning to war. Six cities is a reasonable starting point, but only that - you should have many more unless you are deliberately constraining yourself.


From what you describe, a more usual approach would be to train a worker first, and research Mining, then Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working. Horses get hooked up early so that you can start training Immortals.

Isabella is a psycho, but nonetheless she is manageable in isolation; that means the end of Saladin for most players - Immortals snack on Archers, so he gets buried at your earliest convenience, and Isabella's time comes after she constructs the shrines that you want. From that point, you own a continent with three capitals and whatever other useful locations you find, and you cruise to a finish.

If you want to build instead - well, it's doable there of course, but you need to set in your mind that's the game you are playing for, and expand appropriately.


Also to note that while there's nothing wrong with winning the Liberalism race, doing so with the slider at 90% suggests that your empire is too small AND that you've been prioritizing research over safety. Remember, research percentage is not important - the KPI here is research/turn.

But at this point, that's really only worth passing mention - the breakdown in your game was prior to 1AD - it just took a while for the rot to be exposed.

 

[RIcs]

all about military notes,

- quickly get to riflemen should solve the situation, and infantry..... then u are invincible.

- spreading units isn't the best way to defend (nor attack).. mobilize them. make sure they can get to the front ASAP.

- defending stack still need some catapults.

- oh.. "everycity having the same formation of units" is just paintings on the wall, not military art.

- having military tech lead, try "may be i could take one or two cities... or capsulate one neighbour", then build the empire (with religions, corps ...etc.)

 

[chadhogg]

Thanks very much for your detailed comments; I have quite a bit to think about now.

Most of the good "builders" use mostly good diplomacy.

I have been aware that I need to do a better job of this. I generally try to please everyone rather than making specific friends and enemies, and these forums have convinced me this is a bad idea.

Great! Darius starts with Agriculture and Hunting, so you researched Mining to unlock your hills while immediately training a Worker to get the corn improved..
...
Well a second warrior to help explore while you are developing your initial city isn't an awful choice.
...
Well, next came the settler to get the corn improved.

Ok, so first of all you advocate building a Worker immediately. Is this the well-known and agreed-upon strategy? I never build a Worker until my city is at least size 2, and since I already had the good 3F1C tiles in this case, I let it grow to size 3. Certainly building a Warrior followed by a Worker will finish before a Worker followed by a Warrior, but I guess having those tile improvements earlier provides more benefit in the long run.

You discourage building a unit with which to defend the initial city. I have always done so because it does not take long at all before the Barbarians are starting to invade with non-animal units. I suppose, however, that it is worth taking this gamble because if you end up losing your capital at turn 20 you can just restart and not lose much time.

It appears that you also think I should have improved the corn before the stone. In some areas I would do so, but with the flood plains already providing plenty of food, I thought getting a good production tile would be more valuable. Why would you have done the corn instead?

How to put this... this wasn't a research plan designed to lead to a winning position.
...
Put another way, you've researched Masonry, Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism, and maybe also Meditation instead of the techs you need to start developing your civ (Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, Pottery, Writing)

It is true that focusing on the religion techs caused me to put off other ones, but I still had Masonry (needed to improve the stone) before my Worker was built, Pottery (to improve the flood plains) before I had the stone and corn improved, Animal Husbandry before I was ready to improve the cow near my second city, and Writing before my capital was done building expansion units and ready to work on a Library.

If you could not tell, I love religions. They provide four of the benefits I care most about: money from Shrines, research from Monasterys, happiness from Temples and eventually Free Religion, and culture from a variety of sources. Furthermore, by taking most of the religions and not taking any efforts to spread them beyond my borders I deny all of those benefits to my opponents. If I ignore religions, how will I replace all of those benefits.

That's a bit soft - grassland farms are a weak improvement - they have their place supplementing other improvements, but as the key feature of a city, they aren't so good.

I agree, and would have cottaged most of it in the past, but for this game I was attempting for the first time to build a Great Person farm. I've always had enough of the Prophets and Scientists to meet my needs without particularly trying for them, but now in BtS I can see wanting to have a way to force yourself a merchant when you have the opportunity to found Sid's Sushi, etc.

And then you got whomped on military. For whatever reason, you don't have nearly as many garrison units as I would expect for a city that was constantly pumping out units, so something else was going wrong somewhere - either that city didn't have enough production, or you invested too much time in infrastructure there, or the other cities didn't contribute their share of the work... something broke down somewhere.

Well, that city did also build Forge, Courthouse, Granary, Aqueduct, and several Temples to allow it to grow to use as many of its good tiles as possible. Perhaps I need to slow down on that growth for the sake of getting some things out now instead of preparing to be even more productive in the future.

At Noble, the position you are trying to establish and maintain is to be at or near the lead in tech, while being first in military and first in land. From that platform, you can do pretty much anything you want in the midgame to convert the winning position to a win.

Acquiring the land means either learning how to expand well - I don't for a moment believe that your 6 cities went up "fairly quickly" - or learning to war. Six cities is a reasonable starting point, but only that - you should have many more unless you are deliberately constraining yourself.

Yeah, the position I try to establish (and used to succeed at) was to be far ahead in tech with a relatively small empire of very built-up cities and cultural borders pushing right up against my opponents cities until I flip them. I try to have just enough military to discourage attackers, but obviously I have not been doing that very well recently.

My cities went up more quickly than they usually do when I am playing, but it may well have been slow compared to an expert. How do you handle many more cities than that, or even that many before Courthouses are available, without killing your economy. Just those six and with my religious Shrines collecting money my upkeep is starting to get serious. How it is possible to maintain an empire of 50 cities is unfathomable to me.

If you want to build instead - well, it's doable there of course, but you need to set in your mind that's the game you are playing for, and expand appropriately.

I do want to, and I have that set in my mind before the game even starts. I find the kind of wars that will knock off several opponents take forever and are simply not fun for me, so I am not going to become aggressive, even if it would make me a better player. I am looking for a way to make my playstyle possible.

 

[City Raider]

About the barbs, don't worry early. I forget the exact mechanics, there is a thread that outlines them, but I believe they won't enter your city limits until you have ~3 cities (I think it is an avg of 3 cities per civ on land mass). So you are free to send out warriors to explore after your first worker. Exception: Barb Random event.


Edit:

My cities went up more quickly than they usually do when I am playing, but it may well have been slow compared to an expert. How do you handle many more cities than that, or even that many before Courthouses are available, without killing your economy. Just those six and with my religious Shrines collecting money my upkeep is starting to get serious. How it is possible to maintain an empire of 50 cities is unfathomable to me.

50 cities is a lot.

Make your 2nd or 3rd city a cottage city. After working the resources you only work cottages.
Tech Writing within the first 5-7 techs. Heavy food city (Capital) can whip a Library and then work 2 scientists to help further along science if you have to lower the slider during expansion.

After your first 3 cities: Capital, Cottage, Production
continue to expand and mix in a secondary Cottage and Production city or a Secondary city that can run scientists from a Library. Once you have 2-3 solid Production cities, you can pretty much dedicate the rest to science or commerce however you see fit. Assuming roughly a 10 city Empire.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I find the best way to set up for success is by forcing myself to settle my second (or at absolute latest, third) city as a pure production city (ie, lots of hills, some farmable flats, and a maybe one food resource). This city gets tuned to pump archers, chariots, axes and swords early (get about three units for every city before worrying about a barracks; animals and barbs will provide early promos), until I see what AI are in my neighborhood and what the lay of the land is going to look like. Swords eat barb archers for breakfast and the axes and chariots are good pinch defense. The GWall may be a good alternative if there is a lot of open space around you. If you and the the AI will settle it in quickly, forget the GWall and go for more useful improvements.

Forget early religions. For one, religion does you little good until you have the civics to use them, and two, its best to pick your religion based on what your neighbors pick. If Justinian or Monty are nearby and grab buddhism, you'd better hope it spreads to you. Adopt it, become their friends, and bide your time until you tech way ahead and can crush their outdated stacks at your will.

Now, if you find yourself alone on the continent and buddhism, hindu, and judaism have all been founded on another continent, BY ALL MEANS go for beeline confucianism, taoism, or christianity. Spread it to your heathen neighbors, found the shrine, and laugh as you rake in while making them smile at the same time.

I usually switch into theocracy or vassallage for some two-promo units in the middle ages to boost my power rating while the economy is recovering from REX. Vassallage+Pacifism is good for PHI civs or culture games, otherwise for me its usually theology+beureacracy. Border cities get pikes, LBs, and a couple of cats as basic defense, with some mounted units in striking distance. Some maces and xbows are good to have around too.

I must also say, it sounds you are afraid of slavery. With proper use, you can turn citizens into and still deal with the . Especially once HR comes about, whether with the Pyramids or by teching monarchy. Calander is good for other :happy: resources if those lack. Anyways though, learn to love the

Noble isn't usually hard if you do it right. Getting a solid foundation built early is key though. A proper REX and some cottages will usually do you well. Use specialists to get yourself out of REX-debt. Don't get caught wonder-spamming and religion-hording! I do the "get to size 2 before starting a worker" thing usually too, but I make sure I stop building that second warrior the exact second the city grows. Usually by then I have enough worker techs to make the worker worthwhile. Don't try to set your city up as a specialist city until you can run lots of specialists; you can always change the cottages to farms later when you have caste system and lots of specialist buildings.

 

[yanner39]

Ok, so first of all you advocate building a Worker immediately. Is this the well-known and agreed-upon strategy? I never build a Worker until my city is at least size 2, and since I already had the good 3F1C tiles in this case, I let it grow to size 3. Certainly building a Warrior followed by a Worker will finish before a Worker followed by a Warrior, but I guess having those tile improvements earlier provides more benefit in the long run.

I think you and I are at the same level. I've been playing BTS for a while now and dominated at the Warlord level. Last week, I played my 1st Noble game and won (by a pretty large margin).

Anyways, what I usually build out of the gate depends on what techs I have to begin with and if I have the appropriate resources in my BFC. If I can improve the land, I build a worker, if not a warrior. I always improve my food resources only because I try and whip buildings and units. The more food you have the quicker the city will regrow. Whipping 3 pop points gives you a nice amount of . If you don't improve your food resources, the city grows back slower.

Also, I've been getting alot of good advice in another thread regarding food. I never really use to paid attention to how much food I had. I would farm my food resources, cottage my greenlands and floodplains, mine my hills without having a plan for the future. I would then, down the road, have problems with a production city that would grow (I think production cities are the hardest to develop).

Now I try and get a nice food surplus of +6 or more food in each city. They I could build workshops and if I decide to switch to caste syst before emancip, it's a nice production boost.

Getting a worker out quickly or workboat allows be to get a nice food surplus going to whip.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Ok, so first of all you advocate building a Worker immediately. Is this the well-known and agreed-upon strategy?

It's not universally agreed upon, but close - my usual summary is that it won't always be best, but it's almost always a strong play when combined with prioritizing worker techs.

My usual suggestion is "worker first unless you have a good reason to do something else".

You discourage building a unit with which to defend the initial city. I have always done so because it does not take long at all before the Barbarians are starting to invade with non-animal units. I suppose, however, that it is worth taking this gamble because if you end up losing your capital at turn 20 you can just restart and not lose much time.

There's that too, but the real answer is that even non-animal barbs won't cross into civilized lands until much later in the game. Likewise, the AI player is much nicer than it's human counterpart - the other civs also won't declare war that early.

In addition to that, with a bit of reading on how barbarian generation actually works, you can get this problem under control.

I'll usually garrison a warrior about the time I grow to size 4 - citizens start getting grumpy when the city size becomes significant.

It appears that you also think I should have improved the corn before the stone. In some areas I would do so, but with the flood plains already providing plenty of food, I thought getting a good production tile would be more valuable. Why would you have done the corn instead?

Because, especially in the early game, food is more important that production, and the general rule is that you should be working your best tiles at all times. That's not an absolute, of course: there are some very good demonstrations out there that show that early production can be leveraged into a very strong opening. But you either (a) need to be warlike or (b) really need to know what you are doing.

Food is almost as good as hammers when you are training workers or settlers, much better than hammers if you know how to use the population to rush production, and those units which can only be trained using hammers are generally lower leverage in the early game (unless you are playing a strategy specifically catering to them: ie warrior/quecha rush).

If I ignore religions, how will I replace all of those benefits.

By being a lot more advanced? Those advantages you lay out are positives, but they also come with an opportunity cost - to get the shrine income, you need Great Prophets, which means that you aren't getting Great Scientists, which offer you a huge research boost; you also need to invest a bunch of hammers in missionaries, which are hammers not invested in defense. You only get to run one state religion, so the others are superfluous on that score. And almost all of the advantages are still available to you if you capture the holy city.

Again, it's not a fundamentally broken style - you can turn "lots of early religions" into a winning position at Noble, if you know what you are doing (see RB1: Cuban Isolationists), but since you haven't demonstrated that you have the basics down, I'm going to recommend you shore up that part of your game before turning the dials to an extreme.

Well, that city did also build Forge, Courthouse, Granary, Aqueduct, and several Temples to allow it to grow to use as many of its good tiles as possible. Perhaps I need to slow down on that growth for the sake of getting some things out now instead of preparing to be even more productive in the future.

And several Temples ?!?!?!? well, that certainly explains where all the hammers went. General notion: the destiny of some cities is not to be great themselves, but to support cities which are great. Military cities build military - in their ideal form, barracks->unit->unit->unit.... Granary eventually, then Forge, but for the most part they live on the happy and health of acquired resources.

My cities went up more quickly than they usually do when I am playing, but it may well have been slow compared to an expert. How do you handle many more cities than that, or even that many before Courthouses are available, without killing your economy. Just those six and with my religious Shrines collecting money my upkeep is starting to get serious. How it is possible to maintain an empire of 50 cities is unfathomable to me.

(1) From your point of view - it probably does kill the economy. The bottom is actually much further away than you think. Context: for players that aggressively expand their territory, a research slider at 10% is not scary; they know they have a number of tools available to help them recover (the foremost of which is time - those extra cities are destined to be profitable, but they need to be developered). Currency is a big piece of this (the ability to build wealth instead of infrastructure, and trade routes are a big help). Pottery, for cottage generated commerce to keep things a float. Great Lighthouse for more trade routes. Later the Forbidden Palace and Versailles.

I do want to, and I have that set in my mind before the game even starts. I find the kind of wars that will knock off several opponents take forever and are simply not fun for me, so I am not going to become aggressive, even if it would make me a better player. I am looking for a way to make my playstyle possible.

Like everything else in this game, doing it well is considerably different from doing it poorly - if you learned to war well, you would probably find that it doesn't take forever.

But peaceful strategies can be successful - but they need to be played well, with an understanding of where your priorities really are.

 

[beestar]

General notion: the destiny of some cities is not to be great themselves, but to support cities which are great.

This is a great quote, VoU.

I only really appreciated it at Monarch level, when I learned a specific example: often the best thing for a mediocre city to do is simply to build Wealth, and produce gold, so that the great science cottage cities can benefit from a higher science slider. In my early days I would build markets and grocers and libraries in all of my cities, but now some of my cities get only Granary, Forge, and Courthouse!

chadhogg: worker first is almost gospel. For me I always build worker first unless there's an opportunity to build a workboat first. The simple general rules are: get tiles improved ASAP, and build enough workers to improve tiles at the same rate as your growing population.

 

[Murky]

Here's your main problem:

In the meantime I tried and failed at both Hinduism and Buddhism, then got Judaism while picking up the techs needed for my tile improvements.

Improving your resources should be a much higher priority than founding a religion. Even when I start with Mysticism I'll research things like Hunting, Agriculture, Mining and Animal Husbandry long before even considering going after a religion. Except for a specific religious strategy, there is no need whatsoever to found a religion. The AIs do this for you and it will spread to you.

 

[chadhogg]

Last night I played as the Khmer and won with a score of around 14500 following some of this advice. Specifically, I built a Worker first (probably would have done this anyway, due to the +25% production bonus), expanded much faster than usual even though it temporarily pulled my economy down, made heavy use of the whip, and ignored early religions. Of course, while those things helped, what actually made me win was that the world builder catered to my play style, putting me on a landmass of my own large enough for 8 cities. By the time any of my rivals had the capability to put significant numbers of troops on my shores, I was already so far ahead of them in military tech that no one bothered, and I ended up steamrolling my closest neighbor with Infantry against their Musketmen before finishing my space ship. Perhaps tomorrow we will see if my updated strategy will work when I actually face military threats early in the game.

 

[Grashopa]

Founding the religions is a ridiculously large benefit, but you have to plan properly and since you have to choose to do it from the first turn before you know anything about the map it is a gamble. Heres my current deity game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8485170&postcount=6

Everything worked out perfectly for me except I settled 3 jungle cities to block territory and didn't have the beakers to grab all of the religions. Which isn't so bad because you know which AIs will go for religion so I knew it would be England here. But again I got unlucky because confuscianism in 12 turns spread as much as my Hinduism spread in 60. However I can fix that with missionaries and I have 3 religions and two shrines are giving me >40 gold per turn in my capital.

You'll notice I grabbed hinduism, started the oracle, grabbed judaism and then tech'd the prerequisites for theology so I could oracle it all before teching agriculture or AH or BW.. I built a worker who could only mine hills until after 1AD.

 

[Powerslave]

There's some really great, helpful advice in this thread. Here are some other general points of interest that I've picked up through civfanatics and/or the hard way:

• If you want to play a peaceful game, you'll need to work on your diplomacy. This means learning how the diplomacy system works.
• With the random events in BtS, you're never 100% safe from war. Barring a random event, no AI will begin gearing up for war against you at Friendly, though Catherine can be bribed to declare war on you, even at Friendly. Once an AI begins war preparations, there's no calling it off, even if you sign a Defensive Pact or get it up to Friendly. At this point ("We have enough on our hands"), you should bribe someone else to declare war on them. That will usually cause the AI to redirect its energies on the unexpected war.
• Don't sign a Defensive Pact with Mansa Musa. All the AIs hate him (because he traded with their worst enemy). You'll just be dragged into endless wars.
• Don't forget to fogbust. Barbarians can appear on any tile that's under the fog of war. This means that large continents with slowly expanding empires will be hit very hard by barbarian activity. Isabella, in particular, expands very slowly. The Great Wall is a lifesaver in these situations.
• Don't let AIs get too buddy-buddy with each other. When Hannibal and Cyrus are both in Free Market/Vassalage, they rack up lots of bonus diplomatic modifiers for each other. Bribe Hannibal out of Vassalage and Cyrus out of Free Market, unless you specifically want them to be allied with each other (a united bloc against Montezuma, for example). AI lovefests like this lead to intense tech sharing (I swear they gift each other every tech they learn), Defensive Pacts (annoying if you want to conquer one of them), potentially polarizing diplomatic modifiers ("you declared war on our friend", "you nuked our friend", etc), and lots of resource trades (which diminish your chances of getting those hard to find resources, like silver, in trade). On the other hand, don't let AIs become too aggrieved with each other, if you want to do trades with both of them. You'll get constant diplomatic penalties for trading with their worst enemy and refusing to stop trading.
• Get Optics, Chemistry, Astronomy, and Combustion first. These are arguably more important than scoring Music first or founding religions. Without these techs, your navy will be essentially useless. You can get multiple Great Generals from use of Privateers alone. In fact, if you're Cyrus (Imp/Cha), you can get half a dozen Great Generals from chasing down Caravels, Galleons, and Frigates, then add all those Generals to your West Point city. Let me just say that Privateers born at level 6 are incredibly awesome. In my previous game, Sitting Bull lost dozens of Caravels and hundreds of gold pieces to my Privateers. In a Continents game, Privateers are my #1 favorite unit, better than any unique unit.
• Learn to leverage your UU and UB. While some may seem to be useless at first, you can come up with ingenious strategies involving them. For example, the Malinese Skirmisher, while an excellent defensive unit, can also be used offensively. Same with the Cho Ko Nu and Bowman. Think outside the box.
• You can't go wrong with Capac. He does everything well. The guy is way overpowered.
• Asoka has excellent warmonger traits, and his Mausoleum greatly limits war weariness. His UU never obsoletes or becomes less useful.
• Gift your Tactical Nukes to an AI who's at war. He'll nuke his enemy mercilessly, and you won't get any diplomatic penalty. This is an excellent way to take down a too-strong AI that you don't want to personally face. Once you complete your SDI, you can join the war.
• Don't try to be Montezuma's friend. As soon as you see him, rush his capital. This also goes for Shaka and Alexander. While it is possible to co-exist peacefully with these AIs, you're much better off killing them in 3000BC than giving them time to amass units and plot your demise. If they're on a different continent, then you can decide how you want to proceed, but remember that they all have a (comparatively) very high chance to declare war on you, even when Pleased.
• Designate one civilization to be the "rogue state". Bribe everyone into war against this civilization. This works very well when the rogue state is Protective (Sitting Bull, for example) or a tech whore (Mansa Musa). You probably won't even need to bribe anyone to go to war against Mansa Musa. Sitting Bull, on the other hand, is a freaking fortress, and the other civs will get bogged down in wars that last hundreds, if not thousands, of years against him.
• Cottages.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Don't try to be Montezuma's friend. As soon as you see him, rush his capital. This also goes for Shaka and Alexander. While it is possible to co-exist peacefully with these AIs, you're much better off killing them in 3000BC than giving them time to amass units and plot your demise. If they're on a different continent, then you can decide how you want to proceed, but remember that they all have a (comparatively) very high chance to declare war on you, even when Pleased.

I loved my last game where Alex DoW'd me at pleased. He had the extreme misfortune of showing up with only five catapults, a couple of xbows, and a couple of horse archers and chariots right next to a city I had gathered a half dozen 'pults, about 15 Praetorians, and a handful of other units that I was planning to invade Portugal with. Needless to say there were no Greek to be found on the next turn. Alex paid me 300-some gold for peace. Lesson learned Sometimes luck like that can make the game, too.

Also, Brennus and Peter can be giant jerks. NEVER trust them.

 

[Powerslave]

Too true! Never trust a Russian. The Celts are only slightly better, but only because they give such high diplomatic bonuses for sharing a religion.

If you declare war on Ragnar's worst enemy, he'll be your bff. Still, nobody takes care of you like Isabella. She'll declare war or donate techs just for the asking, once she's Friendly. Mansa Musa can be very agreeable, too.

 

[chadhogg]

Is there an article somewhere giving this information quantitatively? (i. e. the Celts care a lot about your religion, Ragnar cares a lot about who you war with, etc)

 

[vicawoo]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=3359

i've hosted it on google docs at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rL7h4PTsm0gYhA7f9mRUSXQ&output=html

With the assistance of the staff, might be able to make it searchable.

 

[chadhogg]

That's interesting, thanks. If you will permit me, I have another, unrelated question. In a previous game my missionaries / executives would automatically airlift themselves from continent to continent as needed when automated. In my current game, this is not happening. They just sit in the city where they were created until I manually airlift them out. Could there be a reason for this?

Ooh, one more while I am at it. It is possible for Bombers to gain experience? Neither successful defenses bombing or unit attacking seems to do so.

 

[RIcs]

- there's a box in OPTIONS you can choose to auto them.. (but most of guys will suggest u not to, prioritise which city have what Corp creates huge advantages. )

- bombers... don't think so ... use a general on them ? XD