Lost in early industrial age

[Woreczko]

Hi folks,

Being a long time civ IV player, I always had problem with finishing my games. This time emperor level got me hooked in till XVII century. Unfortunately I have little experience with such a late age. What path would you choose from this point onwards?

This game went rather unusual compared to civfanatics ways of civving. I discovered bronze very late, never used a slavery and spent quite a time in serfdom (colonizing vast areas west of my cap).

Should I gear up for an industrial war? Gun for a spaceship? Use heavy espionage to break Persian-Greek alliance and start war between them? What would be the best research path?

 

[Ecori]

I took a look at your save.

I am going to post a lot of criticism about what is wrong, but don't take it to hard. You are doing a lot of things right

I'll divide my post into general advice on your game and where to go from here.

Diplo: you need to be more carefull about it. Everyone hates you except Washington who is a nobody:
- Shaka hates you because you razed a city.
- Why did you declare on Monty?
- You traded with Alex' WE (ok if it was Washington)
Diplo is really ed up with everyone at war with each other. But the problem is that you do not have those lucrative intercontinental traderoutes because you only have open borders with Washington!

This leaves me to the next.
Civics: you are running the wrong civics. What you should be running is Rep, Bureau (you could argue for NH, but def not FS!), Slavery (you need this civic badly!), Free Market (and get open borders with the other continent for 5g TR), Free Rel.

You are in Merc which give +1 free Spec at the costly expense of no foreign TR. To justify this you have to make these free specs matter! All over your cities are running artist! and spies. It is a huge beaker waste. If you do want to run Merc take the time to change them to Scientists or Merchants.

City placement:
You killed 2 fishes in the SW
Dusseldorf is 1 from the coasr.
Hannover is fine, but it is not even working the silver?!
All in all placement is good. Especially your blocking cities in the north.

Workers: you have 8 and had to run Serfdom? Build more workers! 1.5 per city! Don't expand faster than you can build the workers to follow the settlers.
Trees are for chopping! At this point there should not be a single tree standing anywhere in your empire. When you get Math chop away. You need workers for this to - 1.5 per city!

You have build walls and even worse castles in some cities
Never build castles. They are among the worst buildings in the game. Never build walls - except in 1 border city on a hill facing Monty/Ragnar/Shaka/x. Washington is peaceful and won't DoW you. You would never need a single wall or castle on this map.
Your build order in your new cities is wrong, don't build those theatres. Every city needs a Granary and that's it. Some cities might need a forge or CH to, but other than that buildings suck.
Stop building Frigates and Musketmen.

What to do now?
1: Change civics (pref in a GA if possible with the GS coming in 3 turns).
2.: Get out of your wars. Get OB with someone over there. Possible gift Monty techs to get to cautious. Keep Monty and Alex at war with each other or bribe Monty on Darius/Cyrus (whoever the Persian is).
3: Build 1 more worker in each city. Bulldoze all cottages outside Berlin and replace them with farms/WS/WM. It is too late for cottages to mature anyway. Save the forests for LM. Get SP when possible.
4: Tech steel -> start building Cannons
5: Tech Rifling -> draft rifles
6: Take Washingtons 6 cities on YOUR continent.
7: at this point you don’t need to worry about any AI. You can tech to space if you want or tech to Infantry+arty+destoryers+transport and cap the rest of the AIs. You wont need better units than Inf+Arty to finish any game.

 

[Woreczko]

Thanks for pointers

Some explanations of my previous actions:

- Shaka declared on me in medieval times. He founded a city on my continent earlier - I took oppurtunity to raze it. But You`re right - it would be better to be friend with him.

- I declared on Monty in process of befriending Alexander. Didn`t really work, as you saw.

- I`m in the mercantilism because everybody else is in it - except Willem and Monty. I wouldn`t have foreign trade routes anyway.

- Castles were for boosting espionage, which I used a bit and for additional TR - they were dirt cheap with stone and I didn`t feel safe from Washington when being in a war with Shaka.

- Why bureau? My BPT jumped from 300 to 500 on a recent switch from bureau to FS...

- Why Slavery? I don`t have immediate building needs before possibly reaching cannons/factories... Or am I wrong?

- Frigates are to fight off Willem frigates and Cyrus Galleons. He already made one amphibious landing.

Thanks for advise altogether. I will consider wiping out Washington. And you are right, that I must be much more active on the diplo scene.

 

[Ghpstage]

- Why Slavery? I don`t have immediate building needs before possibly reaching cannons/factories... Or am I wrong?

Partially true, but nly because your not in a position to be able to launch a credible attack on anyone yet
You could do with more workers to redo a lot of your improvements, you have numerous unimproved tiles being worked even at this late time, and did you even realise you could spread irrigation post Civil Service?
The Cannons you could use to attack aren't far away either, you don't want to wait till Factories as at this rate you'll be even further behind by then.

 

[Woreczko]

- I`m not in a position to attack anyone, because I was gunning for space. However it seems I can`t outtech AI, so I`m reconsidering military solution.

- Bach! I do realize, that civil service enables chain irrigation, there are QUITE a few irrigations chains, especially around production cities.

- East of Essen most of the cottages are towns already - do you really think I should bulldoze them?

For those without time to look at the save:

Spoiler :

Eastern hemisphere

Spoiler :

Western hemisphere

Spoiler :

Relations

Spoiler :

Tech situation

 

[Ecori]

Thanks for pointers

Some explanations of my previous actions:

- Shaka declared on me in medieval times. He founded a city on my continent earlier - I took oppurtunity to raze it. But You`re right - it would be better to be friend with him.

- I declared on Monty in process of befriending Alexander. Didn`t really work, as you saw.

- I`m in the mercantilism because everybody else is in it - except Willem and Monty. I wouldn`t have foreign trade routes anyway.

- Castles were for boosting espionage, which I used a bit and for additional TR - they were dirt cheap with stone and I didn`t feel safe from Washington when being in a war with Shaka.

- Why bureau? My BPT jumped from 300 to 500 on a recent switch from bureau to FS...

- Why Slavery? I don`t have immediate building needs before possibly reaching cannons/factories... Or am I wrong?

- Frigates are to fight off Willem frigates and Cyrus Galleons. He already made one amphibious landing.

Thanks for advise altogether. I will consider wiping out Washington. And you are right, that I must be much more active on the diplo scene.

About Shaka, I would propably have razed it to.

If Willem and Monty are not running Merc then you could have had foreign TR. And you can in a few turns.

The thing about castles is that even with stone they are not dirt cheap and the obsolete really fast. The additional TR is a very poor beakers per hammer investment. I fail to see how the espionage is needed on a map like this. Building wealth instead of castles would have been superior. Washington won't declare on you even when in a war with Shaka.

You BPT did not jump 200 when you recently switched from Bureau to FS. Actually it fell. If you got more beakers it was because you also adopted Rep+Merc+Free Rel. I looked at your save again and counted 13 towns total in your empire. Thats 26 commerce you get when running FS (+ FS is cheap in upkeep), nowhere it adds up. Your empire needs to be vast (yours is a medium sized empire) and cottaged for FS to be better BPT wise.
Just to make sure I space bared 5 turns and changed into Bureau again. Beakers rose from 626 per turn to 635 per turn.

You need slavery for your underdeveloped west. Whip everything over there. Cannons can also be whipped...

Cyrus is ready to take peace if you gift him 120g - a fair deal! Willem won't be able to launch any kind of amphibious attack anymore.

 

[Ecori]

Forgot to mention:

Don't bulldoze your nicely deveploed towns east of Essen/north of Berlin, they are a great asset.

I would, however, bulldose all the cottages/hamlets in the west.

 

[Woreczko]

Thanks a lot Ecori. It must have been represenation scientist, who made such a difference in BPT. I did not expect that (much)!