Most game changing concept/tip

In my current solo-game (using Player1's Patch Suggestion mod; Emp, Large, all-Random [70% Continents, I think]), resource-denial has been a lifesaver.

Spoiler Because I don't know when to shut the hell up :

I rolled the Celts as my Civ, but although it turned out to be on the largest Continent, my spawn-point was dry (Grass/Plains, Hills) and near-coastal. I moved my starting Settler inland by 1 tile to make space for a 1st-ringer on the east coast (I could see a Cow!), but still could not see any freshwater. After founding Entremont, I discovered that it was about halfway between 2 long rivers (running NE and SE, but initially out of sight). My first Settler founded Alesia (3 Wines!) on the River, CxxC SE from Entremont, and the second founded Lindum (also dry and coastal, but had 2 Cows which I watered to become my Settler-pump). I then planted towns at Cx(x)(C)xC, with the intention of playing a long game and disbanding filler '(C)' towns (including, eventually, Entremont) after Sanitation.

But by the time I could see the nearest Iron (on the banks of the NE river), the Americans had already forward-Settled it (they strung out 4 towns from Washington, just to get to it!) -- and I was already getting dog-piled by the entire continent. The Incans started hostilities (I discovered much later that they'd captured London before Lizzie had even managed to found her 2nd town), then brought in the Aztecs and Americans. (I must have accidentally left 'Culture-linked starts' switched on, because the Mayans and Iros were on the other big Continent as well). During these early wars, I also missed the Republic-slingshot, and had to research it the hard way.

Although I did have Horses, in the early stages they were mostly used for routing invading Archers and Swords/Maces, rather than leading my own invasions. So all-in-all, my start and initial expansion was seriously nerfed. Having finally fought my 3 (Meso)American neighbours to a standstill, signing peace-treaties that cost only GPT, I marshalled my troops to the borders to take Philadelphia (Abe's Iron-town) and Buffalo immediately after Abe's next expected DoW (he had Swords/Maces, I didn't: it was only a matter of time). This worked perfectly, and I could finally start building my Gallic Swords (45 shields per head in this mod) -- but by the time I'd finished knocking Abe out, Monty and Pacha had long-since found and begun tech-trading with the Babs, Persians (one island each), Greeks, and Russians (on the other Continent, but fighting each other) and may even already have been researching their first Industrial techs.

Having made it into the Medieval myself, I (bumble)bee-lined to Gunpowder (luckily I had Salt) and MilTrad, intending Monty as my next target. When he duly DoW'd over some imagined slight (or I told him to take his tribute-demand and shove it!), I got Pacha in on a (very expensive) Alliance, to draw some of Monty's units away from me, and expanded my borders northwards, taking Tenochtitlan (and ToA, not that it did me much good by that point) out from under Pacha's nose. But during the Aztec war I majorly screwed up, by jumping my Palace to San Francisco too early. The Americans -- and Aztecs -- had Great Tracts 'o' (Grass)Land, but a lot of it was closer to Cuzco than Entremont, so I'd always planned to jump it eventually. But I couldn't remember if an MGL could rush the Palace, so when I got one, I set the build -- then accidentally clicked the 'Finish improvement' button This of course rendered my original (highly-developed) core nearly useless in one fell swoop. I could simply have disbanded SanFran, but then my Palace would likely have jumped back to Richborough (which already had my FP) or Alesia (which would have been too far from my new borders).

After I'd finished off Monty, Pacha was well into the Industrial, and our next war started by him pitting his Infs (A=8 in this mod) and Marines against my Cavs, Infs and Arty, and finished with me fighting Tanks and Bombers with Cav- and GS-Armies; sending out Explorers (and later using Arty-bombardment) to pillage Pacha's Oil/Coal-tiles -- and capturing the towns where his airforce was based -- proved absolutely vital.

Spoiler More sorta-bragging :

Similarly, after going Commie (partly to salvage the botched Palace-jump), our most recent war started during an interturn, with him signing an MA with Cathy (who was only 'fighting' me due to a pointless MA she'd signed with Hammi, who'd been signed up by Smoke, who'd been recruited by Hiawatha...), and immediately using his few Modern Armour (plus a back-flipped ex-Aztec town that I'd taken from him) to bypass my heavily garrisoned border-towns and gut my nearly unguarded Aztec conquests. But having immediately cut off his Oil again, I've slowly pushed him back.

It's now 1954, but of all the AI-Civs, only Pacha has started building his Ship (it's possible that most/all the Alu is on our Continent). Having also finally entered the Moderns (ahead of only the Jerk), my Tanks, Bombers, and (Mech)Infs have now (re-)taken all my/his Aztec conquests, all 5 of his offshore towns, and all his cities north and east of Cuzco (razing several for better placement, and to kill his Cultural-influence): as of the latest save he is down to only 3 Metros (including Cuzco, which is building his Spaceship), and one waste-of-space town which will be mine later this turn (although Bombers do not have Lethal Land-bombardment in this mod, Cruise-missiles cost only 40 shields...).

Update:
Wrote most of the above yesterday, played last night. Cuzco has fallen, and the Jerk (and his Incense) is now in my crosshairs: so I've just started exporting the misery to Persia, and once it's under my control, that will give me easier access to Babylon, because Hammi's just started Ship-building as well...

 

How does this disbanding/abandoning towns work? I've never done it, but the more towns I build in the beginning and early-middle game, the more I can see its usefulness (if not outright necessity). I know where the command is; but what happens to the people, the buildings, &c.?

 

They are just gone. If you are going to abandon a town, sell its improvements first.
If you settler-disband a town, you reduce its population to 1 or 2 and build a settler while you have too little food to grow. In this case, your population turns into a settler, but the buildings are still gone (so sell them first).

 

@WeirdoJoker: Yeah, as @CKS said, this is what I did: I should have written 'Settler-disbanding' rather than simply 'disbanding'. I don't usually ever use the right-click 'Abandon' command to get rid of towns, because doing so saves only time/turns, and I have an aversion to wastage (of population-points as well as gold).

You can also Worker-disband towns, which is usually also cheaper/quicker than Settler-disbanding. That said, because the town-tile always produces (at least) 2 FPT, and there is no way to prevent this food from being harvested, only non-Agricultural Civs can routinely Worker-/ Settler-disband any Pop1-town. If the lone citizen eats that 2 FPT without harvesting more (e.g. by working a Mountain, or Specialisation), the net food-harvest for the town goes to zero.

However, for Agricultural Civs (like the Celts), Worker-/Settler-disbanding at Pop1 is only possible in non-freshwater towns under Despotism. Under all other circumstances, an Agricultural Pop1 town-tile will always 'harvest' a net +1 FPT, whatever that lone citizen does. The town's net food harvest can therefore only go to zero/negative once the population requires 4 FPT (i.e. Pop2) — which in turn means that under non-Despotic gov-types, Agri-Civs can only disband towns by using Settlers, not Workers (this is possibly the only downside to the Agri-trait!).

Spoiler Still talking too much... :

What I was mostly doing, after I had (a rail-net and) Sanitation, but while I was still running a Republic, was to build Hospitals in the Pop12 core-towns first, while also hand-building Settlers or Workers in the intervening filler towns. Which unit I built depended on SPT: I aimed for a build-time of ideally 1-2T, but never >4T; if a hand-build would take longer than that, I might put some shields in the box (naturally harvested, forest-chopped, or unit-disbanded) and then cash-rush the rest (this was usually only necessary in the more outlying regions, and/or for the final town-disbanding Settler). Once the Settler/Worker was built, it would immediately join a neighbouring core-town that already had a Hospital — or speed the population regrowth in my Aztec conquests. I sold off buildings as they ceased to give any benefit: Barracks and Granaries immediately (since mil-units and growth were no longer wanted), Unis and Libs if my SCI%-slider was likely to stay low during the town's likely remaining existence, Markets after I no longer needed the extra happiness, etc. Courthouses might be kept until the last turn of the final Settler-build, but would be sold off at that point. This process was complicated by the botched Palace-jump, which turned my 'core' into my 'fringe', but generally worked well.

After I defeated the Aztecs, I went Communist, so cash-rushing was no longer possible — but communal corruption/waste made it also unnecessary. Once the last Incan war started, I built 'Workers/Settlers(Foreign)' out of captured towns (which also I left pretty much ungarrisoned, just re-taking them whenever they flipped back) while the inhabitants were still resisting my righteous rule. Once the resistance ended in any town, I have been mercilessly whipping the remaining population to (re)build infrastructure destroyed (or disbanded) during the fighting: Courthouses and/or Police Stations (and possibly also Harbours) for commerce*, Temples and/or Marketplaces (or Cathedrals or Colosseums) for happiness, and Libs (or Unis) for research. The more expensive whips tend to happen only if a town's population is large enough to start with.

*(Banks and StockExes are verboten in my Communist utopia; I sold off all those I 'inherited', and sent their owners to the gulags!)

 

I must be getting slightly better. I may not remember all this when I decide to use it, but at least I understood it.

I assume this was to reduce maintenance costs?

Is there any way to choose whether the workers/settlers you make out of captured towns are from foreign citizens or new ones?

Is there any downside to these? I like at least building Wall Street, especially if I have a relatively commerce-poor civ going. My last game I played the Koreans (Tiny map, Regent), and while I won the Space Race I was constantly behind India in score & growth, and until late in the game I had real trouble keeping up with the science due to research costs and somehow low income - usually not a problem for me with commerical civs, though granted the AI civs were also commercial (England, France, India). I didn't do the calcs, so maybe the maintenance costs killed me - it was a rare game in which I did not get Smith's...

 

Also the gold from selling can be useful. The described scenario implies that the town will be abandoned anyway.

Unless there is no national citizen left the new unit will be of your own nationality.

Only if you donnot have Adam Smith. The maintenance of 1 gtp for Banks and 3 gtp for stock exchange is wasted if research is kept at 100% all the time. 5 stock exchanges are needed for Wall Street, but once you have it you may as well sell the no longer needed Stock exchanges.

If however you have Adam Smith or expect to take the wonders by force soon, than keeping those improvements seems like the smart thing to do.

 

Justanick beat me to the punch as usual...

Yes. But also for the sale-gold, as Justanick notes.

As far as I can tell, newly-built Workers will have the nationality of the last-born citizen, and newly-built Settlers will have the nationality of the second-last born (i.e. when a pop-point-requiring unit is built, the game 'deletes' citizens from that town in the reverse order of appearance).

In any foreign town which has not yet birthed one of your own citizens, therefore, all Settlers/Workers built will have foreign nationality. So while I'm still at war with a captured town's previous owner, and building Workers/Settlers out of it, I simply don't allow that town to grow.

Spoiler Blah blah blah... :

On the turn of capture, most citizens wil be Resistors, who don't harvest any food (but also don't consume any). So I garrison all my adjacent/available spare units in the town, to squash as much of the Resistance as possible, and switch on the town's Governor to 'Manage moods' (to ensure that any quelled Resistors are assigned to work, so the town doesn't immediately riot). Sometimes the Resistance is quelled the next turn, but usually my available stack isn't large enough for that (current game is an exception).

On the next turn, I move out all but 1 (preferably obsolete) unit, but whether I leave the governator switched on depends on (1) whether the town is already harvesting food, or is still/now starving and (2) whether the Resistance is gone: if it's harvesting and/or the Resistance is gone, I switch off the Governor and either set the pacified populace to work low-/no-food tiles to cancel out any food excess (this also allows faster Worker/Settler-builds in remote towns under Communism; as I've been doing in the current game, in addition to all the building-whips), and/or I convert them to Specialists (Geeks, Cops or CivEngs as appropriate; this is my usual tactic under Republic, in fringe/ remote towns).

If Resistance is ongoing, I will just leave the Governor on, and allow the town to starve if/when the lone-unit garrison manages to quell another hungry citizen.

The main downside of Banks and StockExes is that they only provide a single, slider-dependent benefit: they multiply the TAX%-portion of a town's commerce (coins on the city-screen).

In comparison, most of the other Acient and Medieval buildings either give singular-but-fundamental benefits (e.g. Harbours and Courthouses boost a town's base/total tile-outputs), or offer one or more additional benefits to any slider-boost (e.g. Harbours also give vet-status naval units, Libs/Unis give both SCI%-boost and Culture), so are usually worth building for at least one of those benefits, even if not more than one.

Conversely, since TAX%-income = 100% – SCI%-slider – LUX%-slider, if you're converting 100% of your commerce into Science and/or Luxuries, Banks/StockExes will provide zero benefit, because there is no TAX%-portion to multiply — but you still have to pay maintenance on them.

So you really only benefit from building Banks/StockExes if you're prepared to keep TAX% >= 50% for the whole game. But if you do that, you'd better be prepared to buy/ trade/ steal most of your tech (so you'd better also play nice with the AI-Civs — if they'll let you! Oh, wait...)

But Wall St only provides a significant supplement to your per-turn income if you have a decent Treasury to start with?!?

And even then, the 5% interest-payments on Treasury top out at 50 GPT, once you have >1000 gold in savings. So if you're already commerce-poor, WS isn't likely to change that for the better (I would argue that the reverse is rather more likely to be true)!

Spoiler It's twue, it's twue, it's oh-so-twue! :

Unlike MIL-, AG-, SCI-, SEA-, and REL-flagged buildings, COMM-flagged buildings are not discounted for COMM-Civs, which means that everyone has to pay full-price on their Banks/StockExes. So to build WS, you'll have laid out (160+200)*5 + 300 = 2100 shields (plus goodness knows how much GPT in maintenance, between the mid-Medieval and the mid-Industrial)! Just for comparison, 2100 shields would buy you more than 26 Cavalries...

 

This statement would be in partial contradiction to what i wrote and i am note sure which statement is closer to thruth.

The difference will exist once assimilation occurs and as democratic or communist government that happens at chance of 4% per turn per citizen. So for 10 cititzens for 3 turns that is more than 70% probability of getting at least one citizens assimilated.

 

- using the luxury slider to prevent disorder, along with pophead indicators...
- building along rivers as much as possible
- only build what you need (don't build barracks in cities that don't build units)
- building workers in corrupt cities
- get other AIs involved in my wars
- if possible, start a war at the doorsteps of a capital and burn it to the ground if necessary. Taking away the most important city cripples a civ more than taking some cities on edge and usually takes only a few more units to conquer.

 

There have been a number of things that have obviously changed my game strategies. The one that stands out the most is lowering the science slider on the turn before a new discovery is made, in order to cash in on the accumulated funds.

 

Using the lux slider instead of clowns also made things very different for me (and was necessary once I started playing at Regent level).

 

17: don't care about your reputation when you're the scientific and militaristic leader.

 

I would say my eureka moment (and it very much was one) was just simply that I realized a large gap between myself and the ai can be overcome. Its a given that the ai is going to start out ahead of you on deity, sid, or harder. Don't give up. The ai's capacity for micromanagement can't keep up with a good player's.

edit: if I had a second eureka, its when I realized that there are hard caps to the number of units and number of cities, and that these can be exploited mercilessly.

 

MapFinder.

 

My gamplay one was artillery for reasons previously stated. My overall one was learning the editor - allowed me to fix
the broken corruption system, make the optimal # of cities large enough that all cities can be productive, and strongly mitigate the broken pollution system.

 

My Eureka moment was being "rational" about everything I do, as in "rational economic agent". Evalutaing everything as investement with Return On Investement.

It emcompasses gamechangers I had already learnt like REXing, booming, trading, worker micro, building built order ... as well as things I had not, but could discover on my own, like the importance on food, when, how and why go to war, when to stop REXing, when to pause booming, the importance of not building everything everywhere...

Some other things I had to search here, like hidden mechanisms such as corruption and optimal size.

It brought me from holding decently at regent to being comfortable at emperor (though I find the early game, especially diplo micro, tedious)

 

This is cool. Very high level concept rather than particular detailed game mechanics eureka moment.
By the way, what is REXing?

 

REX = Rapid Early eXpansion.

Means building primarily Settlers, Workers and Warriors in the early game to grab as much land as possible, before you start building more advanced units -- and waiting until you have a more profitable government available (you should be prioritising research towards Republic -- or Monarchy, if you're planning a lot of war) before starting to put up most of your towns' buildings.

This is a relatively safe tactic, since the AI is pretty much doing the same thing, and it doesn't start building attack-units in large numbers until most/all of the available (CxxxxC) town-sites have been filled -- including the Tundra-trash (which you can ignore for now). And if you can make the Republic-slingshot, then by eliminating your despot-penalty (and gaining the commerce bonus) your nascent empire will be able to start building/ growing/ researching multiple turns ahead of the AI's.

No clue what 'booming' is, though...

 

Booming is less specific to civ and generally applies to strategy game; "booming" as in economic boom and as opposed to rushing and turtling. It means focusing on economical growth, that is eco tech, eco buildings, hoards of workers, prefering republic and democraty... The logical peaceful continuation of REXing (beelining Republic is already booming/preparing it), and REXing can be seen as an instance of booming (horizontally). In the most extreme examples when you don't stop booming, you still have a single warrior per city for most cities deep in the midle age and seldom build any military until after the industrial revolution (power plants are up).

 

The two ones for me were already mentioned - the power of artillery, and the lux slider. After a few games on my own I'd gravitated towards REX, become better than the AI with workers, and learned that aiming for 100% science slider was not effective. But artillery and the lux slider made a significant difference in being able to advance past Regent comfortably.

Another one might be the power of speed, particularly Horsemen. For my early Civ3 years I always went towards Swordsmen, unless I was playing the Iroquois or Egypt. Only after joining CFC did I realize Horsemen weren't a poorer attacker for the same cost, but with their speed and retreating ability, could both stay alive and advance more quickly in many situations.