Me needs help

[brennan]

And don't go to Republic till you have size 7+ cities, and don't build walls, and don't build wealth, and...

Try this: when you found a city, build warrior if it will grow in 5, build 2 if it will grow in 10, then build worker in either case. Then try to get a settler. Try to guard settler with a warrior you already have, rather than building one to accompany it, you need less military at the start than you think.

If the city grows in 20 you need a warrior, then to get a worker out there to irrigate, try building a temple or library to reduce culture pressure in the meantime, as this will probably be a border city. When you are able, build a worker anyway!

Your biggest mistake was wasting time with the phalanxes at the start, go for 3 warriors and get the first 2 out exploring. When you contact a civ, trade ruthlessly for tech, this gets them friendly and benefits your civ. Build embassies when you can, this improves their mood too.

The best techs to go for at the start are the Alphabet>Writing>Map-making>Literature>Philo/Code of Laws>Republic tree. If you can get any of these first you will be able to trade for all the other low cost techs with the AI. You do not have to research everything yourself! Research your first tech at 40 turn rate, ie; 10% science, to build up your treasury while your pop is low, then put up the sci rate for the next tech.

Build a granary in your first city, the use it as a settler pump. Mine green irrigate brown, as we say, while in despotism. Make sure your cities get linked by roads. Make sure your citizens are working the improved tiles, don't automate your workers!

When all available land is about to be used up, make a couple of core cities go for barracks then military. Build Spears for border cities, horses and swords for offence, upgrade warriors as you can. Get other cities going for aqueducts libraries and markets.

The point of this strategy is to:
1) Grab lots of land early
2) Get at least 1 worker per city
3) rely on high numbers rather than high quality to scare the AI with military (warriors instead of spears/phalanxes, the AI will be more scared of 2 warriors than a single spear)
4) Once available land is filled, then you select 2 cities to upgrade your military to better units, other cities go for selected improvements first. At this point, make sure you do some trading; trading makes the AI happier with you. With the AI happy you can relax and develop your military before choosing your own war.

Edit: GOOD LUCK!

I for one would like to see your next game develop on the forum, please feel free to post it as with this one...

 

[Lord Parkin]

Good advice, brennan.

And yes, PLEASE post your next game Artillery, we'd love to see how you manage...

 

[Artillery]

Ok,New game,comin' out.

 

[Artillery]

Size large,babrs roaming,conts 70%,CTA normal.
Next update in 20 turns,

 

[Artillery]

4000BC-Worker&Settler NE
3950BC-Founded Thebes growmth in 7 so warrior,warrior,worker,settler
Science to 90% going for IW
3900BC-Worker starts irrigating cattle
3850BC-Tired of describing every ****ing turn

 

[eldar]

Wow! Look at all those cows! Potentially three (maybe more) four-turn settler factories - imagine the fun you could have with that

If you have to 4000BC save, could you post it please?

 

[namliaM]

Did you Irrigate Grass?? And the 2 cows????

Settler factory???!!!

A cow = +2food. on grass which gives allready 2 food. Then Irrigate that + another food. While in Depo -1 for anything over 2.
An Irrigated cow on grass: 2+2+1-1 = 4 food (2 surplus).
You have 2 surplus food "by default" so your now on + 4 Food per turn

The second cow on grass, mine that.
Giving 2 food for the Cow+2 for the grass - 1 for depo = 3 food.
Now you are on +5 food

Mine every other (bonus) grass you can find.
Never Irrigate Grass while in Depo. Grass = 2 food, Irrigation +1 food. Depo -1 = 2 again. Irrigating gains you nothing. MINE!

The do (from the start) Warrior-Warrior-Granary-Settler-Settler-Allways Settlers.
You should be able if you start the first settler on size 3, get the settler out in 4 turns and start the circel again. A settler every 4 !!!! turns... Thats power! Size 3 working the Cow (Ir) +Cow (Mine) + BG(Mine) + Center = 6 shields minimum. Then if you mine another BG, get 2 bonus on growth so in turn 2 (growing to 4) you get 8 shields (14 in total now)
then Add 8 for the next turn, to a total of 22
finaly Add 8 to get to 30, grow to pop 5 and finish the Settler => Back to size 3.... and repeat....

Try to read this article in the war academy. It took me a few reads and a few tries to get the hang of it. But it is SO SO powerfull, you dont really want to know...

X-Post with Eldar

What difficulty level is this? I might want to try this start as well ...geez never ever have I had such a good start.... and the games in addition to them Cows ....
Food food everywhere

Also why research at 90% and not 100%?
Why research Iron Working? And not Alpha/Writing?

Last edit: (then back to work) If you settle another city 3SW-1S (On the closest Hill on the other side of the river) you can have 2 of them Settler factories before you reach 2000bc.
And if you settle on the hill N and Irrigate both them cows there, that is another factory right there (or worker, which ever you choose)
Thats 2 settler factories and a worker factory before 2000bc.... It should then be easy going from then on in....

 

[brennan]

BUILD A GRANARY!

You are in good Settler Factory site.

Granary -> settlers = expansion = good.

I note that you have irrigated grassland again, mine it! Keep irrigation on the Cattle. You want Thebes to be growing in 2 turns (needs granary and 5 excess foord per turn), and building settler in 4 turns (needs 7/8 shields per turn)...

To build factory: Your city tile gives +2 food, Irrigate 1 cattle for another +2, mine the other for the last +1= +5 total. Then you can get 1 shield each from city tile and irrigated cattle. 2 from mined cattle, 4 more by mining 2 bonus grassland = 8 per turn (city will be size 4, growing to 6 in 4 turns, shrinking to 4). Eldar is correct, you can get 3 factories going with the cattle onscreen, possibly a fourth...

New cities; 3 south of Thebes; 2N,1NE of Thebes; 3rd city head west and use that cattle. The 2nd and 3rd sites you could go for settler factories as well...

Query: how many opponents? the fewer opponents the greater the room, since you have a large map if you have 10 or less opponents, a second or third settler factory would be a good idea, so long as you don't find yourself using all the available space. With more opponents, a worker factory would be good for the infrastructure, but settler factories will probably be redundant by the time they are operational; bearing in mind that it takes a long time to set a factory up and your capital should be pumping a settler every 4 turns. In which case it would be better to produce a settler from the new cities as described in my last post.

You are researching the wrong tech again, you need to go for techs that you can use to develop/expand... granaries, Govts, Libraries, the opening part of the game is all about expansion, after this is finished then you can go for military.

You should have build a third warrior to stay in Thebes.

Aside to other posters: I realise that the guide for a factory is simplistic but a full analysis of how to micromanage it properly would probably be of no help!

 

[brennan]

Also why research at 90% and not 100%?
Why research Iron Working? And not Alpha/Writing?

You don't get any bonus from high research rates for the first tech, commerce is just too low. A good trick is to research 1st tech at 10%, 40 turns, build up a treasury excess doing this and letting your population grow a bit, then raise the science rate for the subsequent techs. I believe this is actually faster since you can make a loss (on gold) later and research faster on top.

 

[namliaM]

You don't get any bonus from high research rates for the first tech, commerce is just too low. A good trick is to research 1st tech at 10%, 40 turns, build up a treasury excess doing this and letting your population grow a bit, then raise the science rate for the subsequent techs. I believe this is actually faster since you can make a loss (on gold) later and research faster on top.

Sorry but that is total BS!
You are saving gold now which could be beakers, to turn them into beakers again later.
1 gold = 1 beaker, now or later. Only if you save and keep saving untill you have libs then maybe you have some little advantage. But my guess is your not doing 10% till then cause you will be so far behind then....

Just do 100% and change down in the last few turns of research.

 

[brennan]

Try it. Say your capital produces 5 commerce at start of game. Go on, set it to 90% science and see if your research rate changes from 40 turns...

 

[budweiser]

Try it. Say your capital produces 5 commerce at start of game. Go on, set it to 90% science and see if your research rate changes from 40 turns...

This is true if your pop is 1. But what happens when you grow to size 2, and then 3? You will be adding more commerce and your research rate will increse. There are many situations inwhich you end up coming out ahead by several turns.

 

[brennan]

But why doesn't the commerce get turned to beakers properly at first? Is it an inbuilt game mechanic for maximum research time? And until you can get the benefit of an increased research rate, you are better off saving the cash...

 

[namliaM]

It does ... however...

Tech costs a 100 beakers, you have 2 commerce
100% 2 beakers 50 turns
50% 1 beaker 50 turns (caped)

So doing 50 or a 100% does not seem to make a difference

10 turns later @ 50% you have 10 beakers
@100% you will have 20 beakers

Now you change to having 3 commerce and going at 100% you get 3 beakers
if you were on 50% then you have 90 beakers left @ 3 per turn = 30 turns
if you went with 100% you have 80 beakers left @ 3 per turn = 27 turns

3 turn gain...

I can see lowering sci a bit just before you get some libs up. Stack a little gold and use that to keep the sci up when you have libs.

What is IMPORTANT is to MM the sci slider.
Suppose you have 1 turn left and are making 10 commerce a turn at 100%.
In the total beaker count you have 98 beakers.
You can now savely lower sci to 20 percent (making 2 beakers and 8 gold) and get the Tech in the same turn. (Beaker overruns are lost!) Then use the 8 gold for some upkeep during the next tech research.

In the long run it doesnt matter tho (much). Suppose you start with 10g
Run at 50% till you get a granary up (+1GPT or something), now your pop rises and you change to 100% (-1GPT or something). By the time you finish your research your back at 10g. Effectively you put "everything" into research that you could...

Had you gone at 100% till the granary you then end up putting sci down to 90% to cover for the gpt upkeep.

However if you run an intire tech at 10% you will lose (a lot of) turns and you will lose trading opportunities. For what? Having a few Gold in the bank....
Which would you rather do? Trade Alpha for Masonry (wild example, both costing 100+beaker techs, again example) or get Alpha and have 50g in the bank. Not beeing able to trade for Masonry, leaving you to research it yourself! Falling behind in tech and all....

But maybe.... this is all a bit and we should take this discussion elsewhere and get back to helping Arti?!

 

[brennan]

However if you run an intire tech at 10% you will lose (a lot of) turns and you will lose trading opportunities. For what? Having a few Gold in the bank....

Just a final point, your research will keep dropping back early on, because you are building workers & settlers...I hope

And over to Arty...

 

[Tomoyo]

If you go an entire tech at 10% (or 20% of your capital doesn't produce 6 gold at size one, which is likely), and it's an expensive tech like Writing, you'll end up with enormous trading opportunities and a lot of gold in the bank. I've done it consistantly on Sid level and I can't say that it doesn't work on lower levels.

BTW, not considering corruption, you can get four four-turn settler factories out of that start.

 

[killercane]

Civ assist 2 is a wonderful utility for figuring out if you should min research or max research a particular tech. Under its technology icon, it will list the beaker cost of researching a tech and how many beakers per turn your make. By comparing your start to the tech cost, you can get a good idea of if you can research a tech more quickly or you will lose gold by trying. On a large map, and an expensive tech like writing, it may be better to min research it. On a smaller map, max is probably the way to go. Just take the time and count your commerce.

On the excellent start, I would have irrigated both cows as well, placing a city closer than normal to use one for its settler factory. With those industrious workers you should have a crazy number of cities by 1000 BC.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Whoa, nice start Artillery! That's an insane amount of cattle!

 

[SJ Frank]

A few minor things:

- Why move the settler on turn 1? It's already at a great spot, with access to 3 cows. By moving 1 tile, you're delaying everything you do in this game by 1 turn. If you miss a wonder by 1 turn, or miss capturing a city by 1 unit, then you have your opening move to blame.

By settling the hill, you're also losing a lot of mid-to-late game production. If your city has a lot of other hill tiles in range, then founding on hill is okay, but your city has too much food and no high shield tiles. Wasting the only high shield tile this way is especially painful.

- as namliaM already pointed out, you irrigated a grassland (and I think you're irrigating another). That is a HUGE mistake, so I'm not going to say anything about it. I'm only talking about minor mistakes here

A minor mistake: why is that worker standing on a regular grassland when there is an un-improved bonus grassland in range? With that BG around, the regular grassland will never be used. Even if you're going to improve a regular grassland, start with the one next to river first, those produces 1 extra gold.

- This one is even more minor: why did you sent your first warrior southward, and your second warrior northward? From the minimap, you could tell that you started in the southern part of the world. All the AI's are to your north, there is likely nothing to your south, therefore you could afford to scout it later, and settle it later. I would have sent both warriors north. One north-west, one north-east.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I think he moved because he thought he'd need the defence bonus. But yes, I agree, it probably was a bit of a blunder - the production from that hill would have been really useful later on. Never mind though, he's still in a fairly good situation at the moment. (Though that's probably enough irrigation for now - you can start mining some squares, Artillery. )