Monarch, Viking, Rex, Need advice post-econ crash

[ABHPage]

A while ago I tried stepping from prince to monarch on this map but failed. ( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=361857 )

With the advice I got on the previous thread, today I decided to try again at monarch on the same map. This time, instead of slowly building until I got the Berserkers, I tried a full-blown early rex and economy crash, powered up by two very early rush, one on mongols and one on russian Catherine (both my closest neighbors, which often turn out to be annoying in later stages of the game). I totally abused whip on this game it was unreal but I got to destroy both mongols and russian in the BCs, and keep a few cities that I would've built anyway.

So I'll post my save, its now 250 AD, I have 12 or 13 cities, 7 turns before Statue of Zeus and just started Great Lib in my cap. By 1 AD my slider was at 10%, between 1AD and 250 I got it back to 30-40 by re-groing my cities and spamming more cottages. Tech wise I went for monarchy/aesthetics and made a few trades so I'm kind of on par with everybody.

Diplomacy feels hard, I mean lots of civ come to ask me to cancel deals with this one and that one etc, if I accept then I lose poitn with one, refuse, I lose point with the other, then when I cancel deals the ones that got cancelled come and ask for new deals, I refuse, they hate me more, etc. AI keeps pulling crap at me like that, every few turns everyone asks me to backstab one or the other.

So what I'd like advice on is :
- What more can I do to bring up my science beaker per turn ? Specifically.
- Who should I prepare to war against ? On my mind right now I have either Brennus, who is a pain in the ass, close to me, I already have been at war with him in the BC, and Hatsepsut hates him. Or there's Hauyna Caupac who is close as well, not same religion, and has spammed a few wonders that could be useful to me.
- I'll probably get contrustion as next tech, then get everything I need to build Berserkers.
- Any other advice ?

I'll include the save from 250 AD and 4000 BC for those who would like to try the map.

 

[Ghpstage]

- What more can I do to bring up my science beaker per turn ? Specifically.

Improve those gold resources at Golden River ASAP, there are 2 Workers nearby wasting time building roads that would be better off helping with the mining.
You have some cities with problems too, and enough surplus troops to solve them if you shuffled them around a bit. For example, there are 5 swords near your capital for, which could either be used to make OR to get gold by taking the northern barb city.
Building Research is a great help, in your game I would swap pretty much any city thats building units or wonders to Research and raise the slider to 100%, getting Currency much sooner will go a long way to restoring your economy.

- Who should I prepare to war against ? On my mind right now I have either Brennus, who is a pain in the ass, close to me, I already have been at war with him in the BC, and Hatsepsut hates him. Or there's Hauyna Caupac who is close as well, not same religion, and has spammed a few wonders that could be useful to me.

In all honesty you are in no real position to attack anyone for quite some time, you do however have to be a bit wary of Charlie and Brennus who dislike you enough to be allowed to attack.
I also have a feeling that when you and Brennus both get Monotheism the diplo situation should ease as Or is both Hattie and Brennus favourite civic. This is something you want to encourage so if you can get Mono as part of a trade soon do so, then make sure Brennus gets it too.

- I'll probably get contrustion as next tech, then get everything I need to build Berserkers.

Calender next, you have several resources you need it to improve and if you decide to expand more to the south there are more still. Try not to lose sight of your immediate needs, Beserkers aren't really worth de;aying economic techs, especially as you'd need a stronger economy to make use of them!

- Any other advice ?

Not enough workers, and some of those you do have seem to be roading pointlessly. Cottages don't need roads!
Whats with all the barracks? Illinois in particular is unlikely to ever get much use out of its barracks
What made you build the Statue of Zeus(SoZ)? Those could have been put into Workers instead, its not as though SoZ is going to offer much itself.

 

[ABHPage]

Thanks this is solid advice. I will use my sword to get the barb city and rake some gold this way. I'll pay more attention to my workers pointlessly building roads, boost my science slider to get currency asap and then proceed to get mono and gift it to brennus and see how that goes. Plus giving him a gift might make him hate me a little less. Then as you said calendar could help me with dye and incense. I guess construction will have to wait !

As for the statue of Zeus, I didn't see the need to build more swords without access to cats yet, and I didn't think I needed more workers than that, and I thought maybe SoZ would make the enemy less likely to attack me, or at least shorten the duration of an eventual war if someone DOWs me ? That and it only took 17 turns to build, I have Ivory, and a swordsman was taking 12 turns so I figured what the hell. Isnt SoZ any use at all ?

 

[budweiser]

Isnt SoZ any use at all ?

Very high culture modifier.

Makes artists.

Slight war weariness in your favor.

Good buff on your power rating.

 

[budweiser]

EDIT - I was going to look at this tonight. If you have 12 cities and can keep them, you probably have it won. It sounds like Agg did its job here and now you need to work Fin before you go broke, play nice and win.

 

[Ghpstage]

SoZ has only only 2 real benefits imo, its good for its high culture output (culture wins or border control), and it prevents an AI getting it. Power is not very useful (and SoZ power value is actually pretty tiny for its cost!) and AIs neither care about SoZ when deciding to attack nor do they suffer much War Wearriness (WW) due to having large bonuses.

In this case I don't think your chasing a culture win and it isn't a border city, and on Monarch an AI having it shouldn't give you much trouble from WW later on, even if it does there are ways around it (Police State, Rushmore, Jails). At the time of your save there are more pressing matters than chasing after a wonder that won't help for quite some time, namely rebuilding your economy for which Workers or Research would have been much better builds imho.

 

[budweiser]

I just got a new computer and I had to patch before I could open your save. The first thing I notice is that you have swordsman guarding your cities and you are building several wonders but are running scientists at the same time. You have tons of cottages built. So many infact that it makes the growth very slow.

Were you whipping out of cottages? I dont think thats a good idea.

I am gonna play a few turns and get a feel for it. There looks like there are some tech trades available.

A lot of your Jewish brothers are very mad with you.

 

[ABHPage]

Yes I was whipping all the time, even taking away citizens from cottages, most of my cities were between size 2 and 4 for a loong time. I needed lots of swordsman for my 3 fronts BC war of conquering barbs/kublai khan/catherine all at the same time, and production itself wasn't cutting it, and at some point I needed about 10 more so I whipped the crap out of everyone. Rivals had lots of archers in cities built on hills and I wanted to conquer them before AD.

Also, what is wrong with building a wonder and running 2 scientists ? This is in my capital, I want to get the great lib, and I put 2 scientists in there because it's one of only 2 or 3 cities with a library and I want to get currency asap so I figured scientists would help, also I haven't had any great scientist yet for my academy.

Diplo is going to be a problem here... Most everybody hates me even though I haven't wronged any of them, except Brennus who I dowed on Hatsepsut's request and destroyed a size 1 city - not razing it myself at least.

 

[stopstopp]

Yes I was whipping all the time, even taking away citizens from cottages, most of my cities were between size 2 and 4 for a loong time. I needed lots of swordsman for my 3 fronts BC war of conquering barbs/kublai khan/catherine all at the same time, and production itself wasn't cutting it, and at some point I needed about 10 more so I whipped the crap out of everyone. Rivals had lots of archers in cities built on hills and I wanted to conquer them before AD.

Also, what is wrong with building a wonder and running 2 scientists ? This is in my capital, I want to get the great lib, and I put 2 scientists in there because it's one of only 2 or 3 cities with a library and I want to get currency asap so I figured scientists would help, also I haven't had any great scientist yet for my academy.

Diplo is going to be a problem here... Most everybody hates me even though I haven't wronged any of them, except Brennus who I dowed on Hatsepsut's request and destroyed a size 1 city - not razing it myself at least.

If you move to heavy production tiles, you can lower the amount of time the Glib will be made. I don't have the time to see if it's optimal, but it doesn't look like a bad decision right now.

Also, you don't have any EPs on Brennus. He doesn't like you, so I think you should get some on him to see his power just in case. And when did you stop tradding with Pacal? He won't talk

 

[budweiser]

Spoiler :

I played to 550AD.

I spent all your money and got currency in 3 turns.
COL in 6
Building archers to free up the swords.
Currency to BK for calendar and 45g.
Sell Lit to Zara for 400, crank slider to 100
MC after COL in 5 at 90%

Gift Alpha to Brennus, its nice to have some friends
HC declares on Zara
Oops, you didn’t allocate spy points
T 199 - I take out the barb city with Combat II swords.
Brennus DoW on HC
Building scouts to finish exploring.
Brennus opens his borders
Monotheism in 2
Machinery in 11
Pacal asks me to stop trading with BK, I say yes and he will now open his borders.

There, I have made friends with all the jews (except Hattie) and set the buddists as my targets.
T208 Zeus came in, I set that city to pump workers.
Revolt to caste, should have done it before.
T210 – take out a barb city up north that has horses.

Basically teching towards Civil Service here, building libs, workers and archers to free up all those awesome swordsmen. Filling in any gaps up north before brennus gets it all. Looks like he has lots of room to expand and may become strong later.

Will attach a save.

 

[Wreck]

You are building the Great Library in the wrong place. Now, often it is the case that one cannot build TGL effectively in the GP farm-to-be, and that is OK. One should build it where ever one can, because it is a great Wonder. But in your game, you've got the perfect site for it in Karakorum. You're building the crappy SoZ there. Don't even finish SoZ there; it will pollute your GP pool unnecessarily. Just start on GL immediately, cancelling it in that other city where it will take longer to build and not be in your GP farm. You can even run your two scientists while building it! (Though I would not immediately do that -- instead, build pop until your whip-anger is done, then whip a lighthouse, and re-max the pop after that.) Then build the National Epic and watch the Great Scientists pour in. (You can build the SoZ in some other city if you want, and still get the failgeld if you do it reasonably fast.)

I'll ditto what others are saying. Consolidate what you have first then more wars. You can peacefully expand north, into the barb city and there is also a good site (deer/horse/wheat) just west of it. You need to explore the arctic and find out if there are good resources up there -- a city to get fur, silver, and/or and crabs could be quite useful. You need happiness.

You also need to explore out your neighbors more, at least those you have open borders with.

In future: the DoW on Brennus was probably a bad idea. He's in your bloc, and the -3 with him will be more of a problem than the -1 with Hatty. She can be kept pleased easily enough, and in any case doesn't even border you.

 

[ABHPage]

Yeah I figured that dowing bren was a bad move.. At the time though, I think he was in hinduism, and THEN switched to judaism. Karakorum didn't struck me as a GP farm, I would've thought Golden River would be more appropriate ?

 

[SillyGoat]

Most of what was said above is good advice.

A couple of other points:

1)Consider gifting those two junk cities on Zara's borders to him. They aren't doing much to help your economy.
2) If you are going to build the GL in your capital, fire the scientists and work max hammers. Get 3-4 workers over to the city and chop every grass forest in the city radius.

Your early expansion and tech path also needs some work. I played the map out from 4000 BC, and the game was dead easy. Triple gold + flood plains as the obvious second city city powers a lot of research. On this map, you are better off REXing instead of rushing as the two possible copper sources are a bit inconveniently placed.

Spoiler :

I settled on the plains hill. Build order: worker, warrior, settler at size 2 (got the gold site settled ~turn 48), warrior, worker, warrior then settlers/workers. 3 pop whipped settlers at size 6 and regrew while building barracks/gran/lib. (order should have been gran/barracks/lib). Once Nidaros's Lib was in place, I stopped whipping and ran 2 scientists to get an earlyish academy in the gold city. Settled a total of 8 cities by 800 BC: Gold city, copper city to the NW (badly placed, the mongols had a city in the area that blocked the site I wanted to settle), Sheep/Deer site to the NW (on a plains hill, blocked Brennus), Floodplain/spice city to the west, horse/double deer site to the north, a resource colony in the far north and a backfill city just north of the capital to grab the grass cows. Cottaged the gold city and the floodplain/spice city. Farmed, mined and whipped the others.

Huts: scout, exp, warrior. Stole 2 huts from under the AI's noses which got me another warrior and Masonry.

Techpath: Agriculture, mining, bronze, mysticism, AH, wheel, pottery, writing, sailing, iron working, math, calender, currency (Pacal finally researched Alphabet shortly before I finished currency circa 800 bc). Traded for alphabet, then abused the heck out of tech brokering. I traded for all of the bottom techs except for mysticism, then resold cheap techs for cash to finance deficit research. After currency: Construction, Col (founded the religion), Aesthetics, Literature, Music (for the Great Artist). Used the GA for a Golden age to swap civics to HR/Caste/OR. Teched to Civil service and swapped to Buerocracy/slavery. all anarchy free.

Then Metal Casting and machinery, paper (to open up the University bulb), Engineering, University (partly bulbed), Printing Press, Gunpowder, Chemistry (partly bulbed), Liberalism (to one turn of completion), Scientific Method (partial bulb), then finished liberalism in 1000 AD and took biology.


Chopped the GL out in the capital while timing the completion of a new palace in Gold city to happen 1 turn later and used Nidaros as a pretty good scientist farm (2 Acadamies plus 3 more scientists for bulbs by 1000 AD)


The Mongols DOWed the same turn I got Music, and marched a stack of ~4 swords, ~4 axes towards my copper city. Where I had been whipping swords/axes/cats. Captured 4 cities (burnt one) and took one more city for peace. Charlie DOWed the same turn as the Mongols, he must have been bribed as I never saw any of his units. I bribed Brennus into war with Charlie which meant I didn't need to worry about my western borders for the duration of their war, which lasted until about 900 AD.

After teching Machinery I dialed down the slider and upgraded my swords to Bezerkers and took out Catherine. Berzerkers/cats vs archers is like taking candy from a baby (there's a lot of screaming, but it's not difficult )

I doubt I'll finish this one, my computer *really* doesn't like huge maps, but from here it should be an easy (but tedious) win via domination or a space race.

(bah. The upload function doesn't seem to be working)

 

[SillyGoat]

Yeah I figured that dowing bren was a bad move.. At the time though, I think he was in hinduism, and THEN switched to judaism. Karakorum didn't struck me as a GP farm, I would've thought Golden River would be more appropriate ?

Golden River has a lot of good tiles to work. Cottage up and move your palace here. It will make an awesome B-cracy commerce capital.
Cities with a few high food tiles and not so good tiles make better GP farms. Your current capital has 3 high food tiles, 1 grass hill and iron. At size 11 work farmed rice, corn, flood plains, one farmed grass, the iron and the grass hill (mined) plus 5 scientists. (You could also grow it to size 12 and work the wine). 5 scientists plus GL and National Epic will give you a GPP rate of 44/turn, good enough for an Acadamy or two plus a few bulbs.

Karakorum could be used as a secondary GP farm, it's high in food. It would also make a solid production city, possibly with the Heroic Epic.

Diplo wise, don't declare just because you can, have a purpose for your wars and invest some time in the F4 screen to find out who your victim's friends are

 

[Wreck]

Yeah I figured that dowing bren was a bad move.. At the time though, I think he was in hinduism, and THEN switched to judaism.

Oh well, not such a bad idea then.

Karakorum didn't struck me as a GP farm, I would've thought Golden River would be more appropriate ?

Golden River has all sorts of fine cottageable land and should be your super science city. (Hence the advice above to move your palace.) Karakorum has several things that scream GP farm: substantial coast (coast tiles w/ lighthouse are OK for sustaining pop, but weak in production), 3+ food resources, and the hills necessary to get the mines to build stuff that you need.

Once you get up the Great Library and the Nat Epic, then you might think about converting to Caste System so you run all the scientists there that your food will support, which is a quite a many. If you don't do that, then the excess food will support the mines, and just keep spamming the better wonders there. Me, I don't like prophet and artist GPPs in my GP farm beyond the unavoidable ones from Nat Epic, so I don't build such wonders there. But pretty much any other wonder is worth building.

 

[ABHPage]

How about not building the national epic in Golden river, but still, moving the palace there, and building oxford university + wall street + all commerce and science buildings ? That way it could act as a good g scientist producer, great science city and great commerce city all at the same time ?

 

[mrdoe]

Generic suggestion for diplomacy: Make friends with closest neighbors until you have to conquer them. Disregard bad diplomatic situations with far away civilizations because they would rather attack your allies than someone on the other side of the world. Switch religions to aid in this. Always take the side of the nearby civ in a lose - lose situation.

 

[Wreck]

How about not building the national epic in Golden river, but still, moving the palace there, and building oxford university + wall street + all commerce and science buildings ? That way it could act as a good g scientist producer, great science city and great commerce city all at the same time ?

Yes, at least for the commerce and science. That is what a super science city is: as many cottages as possible, Academy, Oxford, settled Great Scientists, capital and bureaucracy.

The gold stuff, maybe or maybe not. Probably you will capture a shrine eventually and that is a better place for Wall Street.

 

[SillyGoat]

Note that without Representation, settling Great Scientists is much weaker than using them to bulb key techs. A GS will bulb ~2800 beakers (the amount goes up as your civ's total population goes up) towards key techs such as University, Printing Press, Chemistry and Astronomy.
A settled GS will produce 6 beakers per turn x science multipliers. Pre-Uni/Oxford that means 0.75 x 6= 7.5 beakers per turn. It will take over 250 turns for the settled GS to catch up, and that doesn't factor in the benefits of having a key tech many turns earlier.

In the best case situation, Oxford + Uni + Lib + Observatory, the settled GS will produce 6 x 2.25 13.5 beakers/turn. The payback vs bulbing is still over 200 turns.

Once you get into the industrial era, and your empire is producing 1500+ beakers/turn, bulbing becomes less attractive as it will often only shave 2-3 turns from a tech. At this point, consider using them towards a Golden Age.


As far as Golden River goes, I'd say "yes" to Academy and Oxford, and "maybe, but probably not" to Wall street. With a high commerce city as your "super science city" you will want to run the slider as high as possible which will reduce the effect of Wall Street. Wall St. should go in a city with a shrine (if the religion is well spread) or a city with a corporate HQ. If you lack those, consider putting it in a high food city and running merchant specialists to help keep the slider high, although in that case you may be better off spending those hammers building wealth instead. Wall St isn't cheap, make sure that your investment will pay off in a reasonable time frame.

 

[SillyGoat]

Heh. Finally got the upload thingy to stop timing out.

Saves from my shadow (warning: contain map spoilers)