My Republics always suck

[SuperDuck]

Hey everyone -

Just started playing CivIII last month when I bought Complete. Been lurking in the forums for a while, and I think I'm starting to get some of the larger concepts, but I've been having trouble with gov. management.

In every game I've played, changing to a Republic sucks. I always end up losing massive gpt, and the civil disorder usually doesn't go away the same way it does the turn after I start a monarchy. What am I doing wrong?

I attached a game I'm playing on Warlord as the Scandinavians. I'm ahead or at least at the top of the tech tree, and I have a big area advantage over the other civs. I built the Great Lighthouse, and that with my seafaring have my galleys moving at leaps and bounds. I made a beeline for Republic, and traded with the other civs to get the other techs that I have. I thought I was doing pretty good.

Here's an attached game - why does my Republic suck? I'm losing a lot of money. I guess I'm managing something or other wrong, but I don't know what.

 

[TheEnforcer]

I always seem to have the same problem in the middle ages under a Republic as well. I get my nuts in a grinder financially and sometimes I can come out of it late in the age or early the next and retake a lead and other times I get left in the dust and play catch up the whole game.

 

[budweiser]

Well, I just took a quick look. I think you have too many spearmen (15) and most of your cities are under size 7. So, your population is not big enough to suport all your troops. I suggest waiting until most of your cities are size 7 and have markets built before going over to republic. In this current game, you will proably be OK by just disbanding most of your spearmen until you are within the allotted amount of free support troops. Oh yeah, one more thing, most of your developed towns all have, granary, harbors, temples, etc. That is a lot of per turn gold being spent on improvements that you may not need. I would also sell a few buildings to save on money. Also try go get a few luxuries hooked up to help on happiness. I notice the Iroquios are right next door and they have wines in their capitol.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Ok, I looked at your save, and I got some comments:

*I wouldn't say you have a big area advantage over the AIs; you only have 4 cities on your starting continent. I suggest trying to take over the Iroquois' core cities (you'll get 2 luxuries and Iron in the process) with an Archer rush. It shouldn't be too hard, on Warlord. More cities will give you more units supported.

*Relating to my first point, you don't have many cities over size 6 (cities). In fact, you only have towns. Because of that, for your 11 cities, you only get 11 supported units!! You have 25 other units besides those 11, so you pay 50 gpt in excess unit costs. That's a lot! With that gold, you could turn your science up to 90%!!

*You could fit another city in by the Furs and forests NE of Trondheim. It'll give you another luxury for happiness, and you'll get more unit support and fill a culture gap. Stavanger also needs a harbor -> if you can get one, you'll have 3 luxuries if you grab the Furs!! Then you don't need the Iroquois' two luxuries, but taking them over = more cities = more unit support and land.

*Why are your cities producing wealth? If you use our extra units and build some (in cities with barracks - they really help), you can take over the Iroquois to alleviate some of your financial burden.

*Copenhagen has a taxman when it doesn't need one (it can work another tile). Bergen's entertainer can be turned to a taxman or scientist and the city still won't riot.

Overall, it's a combination of factors. Corruption, for one thing, takes away 35 gpt, which could've let you raise science to 60%. But it's really your unit costs, and the fact that you don't have many cities close to your capital. I would've done a denser build and maybe switched to Monarchy, but Republic will be fine: you just need to do some things to get rid of your high unit support costs and low city sizes. Concentrate on your continent, rather than your cities all over the place (Hareid is halfway up the world), and this game is far from over.

I've also uploaded a couple of screenshots for people who don't have C3C or people who don't want to download the save.

 

[SuperDuck]

Thanks for the help so far!

Budweiser: I built a lot of spearmen just because I didn't want to have to deal with an early AI invasion. Perhaps that's faulty logic, but I've been invaded plenty of times when I have little or no defenses up. The 2 gpt unit cost is killing me, though, which is something I guess I didn't realize before. Also, I think I'm in what might be a bad habit - I always end up building temples when I have "nothing else to do", especially early, as it kind of pads my culture rating, giving me a fallback plan of the culture win. Don't know if it works that way, though, as I have yet to win on Warlord.

Ginger_Ale: The cities making wealth are doing so because that's what I usually make them do when I can't think of anything else to make with them. Probably not the best use of my resources. Didn't know about the taxman - not sure how he got there. The rest of your post makes a lot of sense.

I was putting off an offensive war until I got my UU (as I'm on an archipelago an all), but that seems kind of foolish when I think about it. Taking over part of my continent makes good sense.

Also, thanks for posting the pics.

 

[TheEnforcer]

Dang.. my file is too large to upload.. playing on a 325x325 map with 31 civs

 

[rysingsun]

i wouldnt sell any of the city improvements. do not sell the harbors. harbors are good!. do not sell the temples. do not sell the granaries. some of these improvements are not on my priority list to build but they certainly arent working against you.

i wouldnt disband any of the military.

you need to make one of two choices for this game. you need to either plan to conquer or plan to build. if you plan to conquer you need to build lots of offensive units. and use them. if you plan to build you need to get aqueducts and marketplaces in your low corruption cities.

other than that your financial position doesnt look bad to me. you do need to up the luxury rate at least to 20 percent. increase it enough to get rid of most of the entertainers you now have. the financial impacts of the luxury increase and the increased land utilization will largely cancel out but it will leave you with a better shield position and a much better food position. but the increased food will have mixed results if you dont get aqueducts in your cities. you badly need more workers.

now you probably have two questions. one is "how can you be telling me rys that my finances dont look that bad?" and "wont the support costs of the marketplaces and the aqueducts make my cash position even worse?".

in answer to the first question. when you switch from despotism to republic the percentage share of your income that can be alloted to research normally will go down because of unit support costs, at least if your cities are small like yours. yes you might get 80 percent science under despotism but the total number of beakers per turn will be significantly fewer. so you are ahead where you are. the "republic recession" is something of an illusion. under despotism your city growth rate will be considerably slower and that will impact your long term gold position far worse.

in answer to the second question. marketplaces will increase your raw gold coin count far more than what it takes to support them. the same is true of aqueducts. this is true for workers too although the immediate result of building a worker is always the loss of a couple gold. it makes up for itself in short time though because of the increased city growth rate and improved gold per tile effect of roading up the tiles.

so. build marketplaces and aqueducts. build workers. lots of them. get your greedy hands on the furs and the wines too if you can. do NOT produce wealth in your cities. always spend enough on luxuries so that you have need for no more than a couple entertainers. using wealth and entertainers as a fix to up the research a notch may look good in the very short term but the long term affect will be devestating to your growth rate.

im not going to be dogmatic on choosing whether to go the development route or the offensive military route because i dont have access to the .sav at this time. but you should study the situation and decide which you believe will give you the most power growth for the cost and then do it and do it aggressively, not half-heartedly. it is clear however that your nothern neighbors are pretty easy to conquer and that you shouldnt wait too long to do it. you can make it even easier with an alliance.

i want to congratulate you on a "well done" for this game. youve done an outstanding job of expanding with your ships. its clear the settlement of your starting island was constrained by the poor luck of starting cramped up against a couple other ai powers. but you made the best of a poor starting location by aggressively settling the surrounding islands. that is a very fine expansion phase for a new player

 

[SuperDuck]

Thanks for the kind words, rysingsun. What you said about the marketplaces and aquaducts is spot on. The first thing I did when I went back to this map was start research construction and then put aquaducts in all of my 6 pop cities. Once they got to 7, a lot of my financial woes went away. Next up are marketplaces. I kept my harbors, as you said, mostly because I want to be able to make trade routes, and since I'm on an arch. map, it won't be happening through roads.

I started building some catapults and archers to invade Niagra Falls, but just as I was about to move in, it culture flipped! This came a few turns after I built a city right next to the furs and filled the culture gap you were talking about, GA. Now I have the iron I was sorely missing, and can start making some swordsman and invade the northern part of my continent.

I trimmed some fat in the form of useless warriors, and along with my increased city sizes, I'm at 15 gpt in the black!

Thanks, everyone.

EDIT: Ginger_Ale, how did you get those little smiley faces next to your workers? Those look handy.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

EDIT: Ginger_Ale, how did you get those little smiley faces next to your workers? Those look handy.

They are found here. MUCH easier to spot rioting cities via F1 or through the individual cities.

Wealth is usually only good when you have nothing else to build; in this case, you do have lots to build!!

Dang.. my file is too large to upload.. playing on a 325x325 map with 31 civs

Use the File Upload System.. Once you upload your file, and go to the "uploads8" folder, right click on your uploaded item, select "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link Location" (depends on your browser), and give us the link. It accepts files up to 3 megabytes!

 

[TheEnforcer]

Cool.. here's my file... http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Alexander_of_the_Greeks,_1525_BC.SAV

 

[Rout]

Consider staying Monarchy until you are ready to go Democracy. If you build a lot of units early then republic may not be for you.

 

[budweiser]

You can still have your units under a Republic, but the hook is you need to have roads on your tiles and the tiles need to be in worked in the city screen by your citizens, and the more citizens you have the better.

 

[SuperDuck]

For those interested, I took over my continent and most of the one to the east for a points win after 540 turns. My first warlord win. Thanks, guys.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Wow, you played a lot of turns in 2 days. Congradulations.

 

[SuperDuck]

Yeah, it's been really slow at work.