Midgame Audit - Returning Civ Player

[dexters]

I'm rusty, it's been a long time of MMOs and killing dragons, but I missed Civ so I'm back.

This is my first game back. On Monarch, trying some new strats, including a tighter city spacing. Posted Save is below. I'm looking for feedback and some direciton as to where to take this game.

Some issues on my mine:
-Goal is for spaceship victory.

-Corruption: I've never been used to packing so many cities. The c2c/c3c start I had lead to a very productive early game. I was able to easily overwhelm the Incas, but now, most of my northern island continent is unproductive and FP barely helped.
-Government: considering communism on one extreme or democracy on another
- Happiness: Only 1 luxury on my entire island continent. Lux slider at 20%. The tight spacing helped as I won't have to worry about cities close to size 12.
-I'm currently invading the Indian island to secure a 2nd source of luxury to increase happiness and to trade.
-India also has a source of coal which I can use to trade for gpt or techs.
-Korea, the teach leader does not have coal!

Some general and specific feedback would be welcome. Post questions if you have them for me.

Thanks.

 

[dexters]

Further note: Between India, the Inca (now absorbed into Japan) and myself (Japan) there are no Great Wonder to capture. There is only Newton's Uni, which I built myself after a failed shot at Adam Smith's Trading.

Would it be worth it to invade the main continent where all the rest of the AI are just for these GW? I'm militarily not very strong, corruption has decimated productivity of most of my cities just outside of the core and my core still has to build defenders + factories.

I played a few turns after the save I posted. Had to end war with India as my forces are stretched, do not want flips and the logn supply lines has cut off my offensive. I have also achieved my initial objective of securing spices.

 

[Aabraxan]

C3C 1.22, Japan 1270 AD, Republic

VCs enabled: Dom, Conq, SS, diplo, culture

Trade: 1215 gold, +62 gpt
To sell: Ironclads, Physics, Metallurgy
To buy: Communism, Sanitation, Fascism
Gold: Way ahead of anyone else.

Military:
Allowed: 65
Total: 84
Cost: 38 gpt

What VC are you shooting for? You've conquered your own landmass, so you're relatively safe from the AI now. You've got temples in a number of cities, but it doesn't look like enough to take a culture win. Sumeria's killing you in culture. If that's the route you're going, you'll need to stop Sumeria's culture production pretty quickly. They've already got ~22K to your ~8K

If you want to take them down by conquest, best get busy. From the looks of your military advisor, you're pretty much in the middle of the pack in terms of military strength. Having your own landmass leaves you relatively safe from invasion, but you'll need more boats with which to invade.

You could just sit back, research and shoot for the stars, but at 401 bpt, I don't know if you'll make it before Sumeria triggers a cultural win. In any event, I'd suggest starting some lazy man's wars ("let's you and him fight") on the other continent. That way, they'll burn out some units and, hopefully, hire some clowns to stop the WW. Oh, and by the way, you could put most if not all of your own clowns back to work.

 

[dexters]

Thanks for the feedback. I need to load up CivAssist to check as well. Was having trouble with it crashing ( when I click on it it wont load and button stuck on a blue shade) to work through some of these stats.

I am aiming for spaceship. Was unwaware of the scale Sumeria's culture lead. I'll need to look into that.

I'll post an updated save later tonight with better management of specialists. This is my first time really playing with specialist farms (used to just go communism).

 

[TheOverseer714]

I have loaded the save. I see a few tweaks needed, but overall, you are doing well. Your workers aren't organized properly for railing, you need to distinguish between workers and slaves. You need your workers in groups that are multiples of 3. 6 workers can rail a tile in a single turn, so your workers need to be in gangs to get the strategic railnet done. Every city needs connected by rail, and then you can the defend your entire island with 10 cavalry. Defensive units, way too many, you have Pikemen sitting around when you can build cavalry. Those pikes should be busy guarding your bombardment stack. Whoops, you don't have one. You need about 20 cannons to pound enemy defenders and take out India quickly, before WW kicks in. Build cannons in towns without barracks. Build cavalry in towns with barracks, don't build regular units. Speaking of India, you need to grab Lahore, it is ideal as a place to get troops over to India. You need to move fast there before they build many war elephants. Domestically, your sliders could be 90% tech, 10% entertainment at +13 gold per turn and get electricity in 7 turns. You should also fire most of the clowns, your people aren"t that unhappy. Before you get discouraged, remember that you are actually doing pretty well. Good luck, keep playing!

 

[dexters]

I played a few turns after that save prior to the feedback. I've rejigged most of my cities with clowns to either make them specialists for the high corrupt cities or I put them back to work for the less corrupt ones.

I've also taken 3 more Indian cities but had to call off the war as my supply lines was running thin. The Indians also kicked in with their war elephans which really hurt my offensive. Lost a few cavs to those. Lahore is mine, as well as New Delhi.

I got electricity and is now on ToE (or should I gun for Replacable parts instead?) with electricity, I was able to trade for industrialization, a few other techs and a boatload of gpt. So i'm facing a bit of a crisis as to what to build. If i put a city on a factory, it'll be out of commission for a while. And I still need to restock my cavalry units to mop up india.

India also declared war on Sumeria and the southwestern island on my flank is now all of India's. In the peace negotiations, India would not give up one of the cities, no matter what I tried, so I'm pretty sure there's a resource there I can't see yet so it's not a priority to capture that island as well

Will post an update later.

 

[Aabraxan]

dexters, if you're having trouble with CA2, you might also consider downloading MapStat. I don't use that one very much, but lots of players swear by it.

I didn't look at the corruption levels in your cities, but I doubt that you have enough territory on that little island to really see the power of specialist farms. Where SFs come into their own is on a large continent, far from the capital, where everything is 90% corrupt.

Looking forward to the update.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I have played some turns, in my game, India falls next turn. I think India can be the site of some farms, the corruption there is very high. Just have some jungle clearing to do and some towns to settle.

 

[dexters]

You took all of india with the units I have landed on the Indian continent? I must have been too conservative

 

[TheOverseer714]

I shipped the empty army and 3 new cavalry over. You had an empty army just sitting around, so I figured put him to use. Took 3 cities with it. Armies are not even debatably the biggest advantage the human player has. I now have Replaceable Parts which allows the second biggest advantage humans have: artillery. What is your intended victory condition in this game? Where I'm at is a decision point, whether to go military or peaceful. This looks like a fine set-up for any VC.

 

[dexters]

Damn in my game I ended the war with India with the northern and extreme west of the continent untouched. I feel dumb now.

As for the Army I was intenting to wait for tanks to put him to use. And you also answered my question (in the game I played last night after I posted here, i finished electricity and went for ToE) I may have to switch back to rep parts, but I may have sunk too many beakers ToE. Will have to see.

Intended victory condition was/is space race. But it was pointed out sumeria might spoil that for me with a culture win and it does appear the AI civs, though much smaller have way more productivity than me, so I'm not even sure how well i'll fare.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Nothing wrong with saving an army for later, when you have plenty. However, you only had one. Until an army wins, you can't build the Military Academy or the Heroic Epic, the first lets you build your own, the second improves your odds of getting a leader from an elite victory. As far as tech goes, I am building the ToE, it's 8 turns out, I will use it for Atomic Theory and Electronics. I will research Steel in the mean time. I bought Industrialization and Corporation and traded them around for cash and luxuries. Don't feel dumb, just think of it as stuff you didn't know about

 

[Aabraxan]

As Overseer pointed out, nothing wrong with saving an army when you have plenty. But the first army opens up doors to getting more. And don't underestimate the power of a cav army. For the serious warmongers, cav armies are usually the beginning of the end for the AI.

 

[timerover51]

Personally, if I have a set up where I have only one luxury, I dump the game and move to another one. I do not find beating my head against a wall a lot of fun. Even if the wall eventually breaks, I still have the headache.

 

[dexters]

Update:

Some of this was played last night prior to received feedback.

-Got ToE before Replacable Parts.
-India which I did not kill off signed an MPP with Korea, which is my major trading partner. >.<
-Waiting for MPP to expire so I can finish them off.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Just for comparison purposes, I will upload my 1400 save, you might notice some subtle differences. I'm interested in what you see.

 

[Spoonwood]

dexters,

I uploaded your second save. Going for the SS victory... you have quite a bit of cash around. I'd recommend cash-rushing police stations and courthouses in almost all cities on your home island except for that far-off northwest corner (I tried it in the northwest Incan town and it worked out better science-wise as a specialist farm). You can do this efficiently either by setting it to build say a police station first... wait a turn and then cash-rush the rest of it. Or you can buy a worker and on the same turn change production to a police station and then buy it. Cash-rush some libraries and universities too when you can. See the lump sum Korea has? Go ahead and trade them resources for it and use that gold at your discretion. Also, TRADE for luxuries. Do research steel first... then trade for refining... then combustion and beeline for motorized transportation and trade for flight. If they don't have flight by the time you get motorized transportation, research it and check in every turn to see if they beat you to it and trade for it. Keep selling tech for gpt. Make sure you get the U.N. and do NOT hold elections (many of them seem "furious"). I'd change one of your cities to a palace pre-build on Hoover's... not really necessary... but a good idea so you'll play better at higher levels. Irrigate EVERYTHING and railroad everything you can. You might want to switch one city or two cities with a granary to produce workers for a while, and finish all irrigations/mountain minings/rail. Then after you finish those irrigations and railroads add all those workers into your cities and use as many science specialists as you can get. Some of the cities on the flood plains might benefit from cash-rushing a hospital. Pre-build and then build the Apollo Program and spaceship parts and if you don't have aluminum and/or uranium I'd consider gifting the AIs that have an extra resource (use the clear map option) for it. You could probably go out and conquer for those resources also if you prefer to do so I'd suppose. And good luck.

 

[dexters]

Won it with UN diplo win. Would have won with Spacerace (no one was even close on SS parts) or domination also but I was getting bored.

Lost first UN vote. I invaded the Hittites and wiped them out in between votes. The Hittites had been at war with the Koreans for many turns prior and thus was basically defenseless. All I had to do was move in my Modern Armor, bomb the cities with air support and take them. Some credit goes to my strategic rival Korea for taking out their cities on the Islands.

What happened since my last save:
I conquered all of India and hunkered down to build infrastructure for a builder VC. Lucked out the other continent got entangled in a war . I began to pull ahead in science. The save you guys have up above was basically the turning point in terms of wonder builds. Starting from Newton's University I would grab all the wonders from there (save for the Manhattan Project small wonder).

The war crippled the AI tech research as both Sumeria and Korea switched to Fascism and stayed there for the remainder of the game. Combined with ToE I began milking them for gold. By the time I won, Korea was doing 70% treasury 30% research and they were still broke. Sumeria 60%/40% split. That said I didn't make all my gold through techs. I controlled large sums of coal, oil and rubber. Korea had no coal, oil or rubber. In addition to my dye/spices monopoly, I made a mint out of the AI on resource trades. The portugese has no coal. The sumerians had no coal/rubber at one point but they eventually got them. The Hittites had no iron and coal.


In the end I was very pleased with this game. This was also a textbook case of a Machiavellian game. I was able to peacefully contain my closest rival (Korea), never warring with them but doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff to outright stop them cold.

the dilema I faced:
I faced a problem after India. Korea initiated wars with the Hittites, Sumeria and the Portugese (not in orde). Without my intervention *especially on behalf of the latter 2 civs* they may have conquered most of the northern half of the 2nd continent and really gave my a massive headache for my peaceful victory either by starting a war with me or racing me for Spacerace, though I probably still could have won.

The Alliance:
Sumeria was at war with Korea as many years while I was still busy finishing up India. Their infrastructure was crumbling and I was facing unhappiness issue at home. Infact my trade with them was cut and I lost gems.

When I realized Korea might very likely take a big bite out of the Sumerian core (Ur was right on the border ) I signed ROP, shipped over Cavalry to scout their territory and workers to reconnect wines and gems the Koreans had pillaged and began to ship aid to Sumeria. At one point, I traded them rubber, then 1000 gold so they could upgrade to Infantry. The Sumerians they used it to pay the Koreans for peace. When I went in to trade with Korea, they gave me my gold back as part of our trade deal.

Next the Koreans picked on the portugese. The portuges were much much weaker. Though they had rubber and oil (which the Koreans didn't have) they have no coal. I opened a dialogue with them, signed an ROP, shipped over coal for a nice gpt send in the workers I had in sumerian lands nextdoor into Portugar to RR their lands and the Portugese was able to reconquer a city they lost in a previous war with the Koreans.

Through trading and use of ROPs I stopped the Koreans from gaining cities and getting their hands on oil and rubber. The Koreans would be entirely dependent on me for both resources for the rest of the game. I traded them rubber to keep balance of power, but denied them oil and thus the Koreans never did manage to build any tanks That was a good think as they had amassed a massive army of 190 units by the time I won, this was to the Portugal's 80 units and Sumeria's 90 units-- though both had access to rubber/oil and had Mech Inf in their cities.

 

[Aabraxan]

Congratulations!

 

[TheOverseer714]

Well-done! Nice win date. I hope some of the advice helped. What is your next adventure going to be?