Need help with early start (falling behind on techs)

[vmxa]

Save4:
I would like to have seen someone exploring South as the fog is quite close and it would be good to know what is there. I do not see any Inca existance, but you have contact? Did they sail by, not likely as the AI seldom is seen in a curragh. Was it a scout you met, in which direction?

Likely in the SW, needs to be seen. You have 3 Enk in the cap, send one out. Also no more troops, till you get a barracks up in Sumer.

I see two tiles irrigated that are not worked, but no water in the plains, nor to Oasis nor to the new town?

A second forest with a road? No road to the next site, nor any water. I would have planted by the little lake to gain the Ivory sooner. That is if you must have CxxxxC spacing. It not too bad for what would have been my second town as it is near the capitol.

What happened to the settler, was this a restart?

I would want to get a town down north of the cap to bring the deer in.

Consider bringing workers to chop one forest with the road and one without to speed a temple. Let the cap grow and then make settlers. With 2 FP and a forest you can keep making settler much faster.

 

[vmxa]

Save5:
Still no Ivory, still no movement to the south or the north. I guess we can presume Montie is out in the north, so had you met him sooner, you may have saved some research. Why no barracks, no archers? Stop making Enk and make a few archers. Enk are not going to attack and kill much, especially as they are all regulars.

 

[vmxa]

Save6:
You had 4 workers way back at 2 towns and now you have just 5 with soon to be 7? Montie is sending settlers through as you let him wander through in the past and now he knows there is land to fill.

Had you made some attackers and been strong, he would not have tried to wander in your lands. Why on earth would you make 14 Enk, they are near worthless now. If you had 10 archers, vets, you could whack hiim good or at least prevented trespassing.

 

[Jesusfreak]

If I had attacked him, he would have attacked back at some point, initiating the golden age that I'm trying to avoid. I notice that my land has a lot of chokepoints, so instead of building archers to attack him, I build enkidu warriors to block him. I also need to keep cranking out enkidus to escort my settlers.

 

[vmxa]

I never said you needed to attack anyone. The purpose of the archers is to make them see you as stronger and respect your borders. The AI discounts defenders in the calculations for comparitive strength.

With all those defenders, you look weaker than you would appear, if most of them were archers. If a war did break out, I would much rather have my 14 troops be 10 archers vets and 4 regular enk, than 14 regular enk.

Why do you need all those Enk to escort settlers, archer would do just fine as no one was at war with you anyway.

The AI is not a canidate to try to grab your settler/archer team as long as there is plenty of land to settle. They may take a shot at an unescorted one, but an archer is just fine.

In any event, regulars are not a good idea for Enk or archers or anything. The first 2, 3 maybe even 4 warriors, ok. After that I would not want to see troops coming out as non vets.

 

[Jesusfreak]

Oh, I didn't know that about the AI... explains why the Incas attacked me >_<.
Kinda late now, I'll start over with a new map the next time I'm playing Civ. (By the way, if the AI calculates strength based on attack units, why is it so obsessed with spearmen?)

Enks are cheaper than archers and have higher defense values (in case barbs attack), which is why I used them.

The main enk-producer had a barracks, but the rest of the cities haven't built one yet. They're busy with workers and stuff mostly. The one city can crank out an enk every two turns, and I get a settler roughly every six turns or so, so it works.

 

[vmxa]

Barbs are not a concern until maybe DG or better. You have a bonus vs barbs of 100 on Monarch. Regular Enk are going to only fair on barbs on offense and very well on defense. Archers will tend to kill barbs and not need to worry about defense.

If you were playing deity or sid, then I would be worried about barbs. On Sid I do not want to attack barbs with archers or horses, it is too iffy. Fact is most game at deity and sid will not have barbs, because the huts are not friendly and the AI will swarm all over the place hunting barbs.

At Monarch, the best way to deal with barbs is to bust the fog near you and then they cannot spawn. You will have cleared the huts, so no uprisings should occur.

My point was not to not make Enk at all, but to not make regular troops of any kind, after the first few. Let one town get a rax and make all the troops, till one town is not able to keep up. Then add another rax someplace.

Your capitol is poor for troop building as it has few shields, especially once you chop most of the trees.

Understand that you could win with most any style of play, but there are some tried and true concept that work very well. I would say Monarch is about the last level that one could play similar to the AI and hope to win.

Their bonus is just too much to over come above that without some play that is superior to the AI. You could do it with just war tactics on Emperor, but it could get rough.

Fast expansion is good, as long as you also can hold it. Missing Iron in the early game, puts more pressure on you as you have to use archers or horse and not swords. That is ok for those with a UU that can compensate, such as MW.

Anyway I do not want to crank out dozens of Enk, unless I am going to be a Monarchy and can use all the cheap MP's I can get. I want primarily attackers.

 

[Jesusfreak]

Ok, I think I understand. The main thing I was doing wrong was not building attackers, which caused the AI to perceive me as weak and attack me. (Even though I could easily fend off the attack, it triggers a golden age I wasn't ready for.)

What do you mean by "bust the fog"? Do you mean get a bunch of units to have the terrain constantly revealed? Barbs will spawn in fog as well as black, if I recall.

 

[vmxa]

Yes, take an Enk put out a few tiles from the borders to prevent camps being built, unless you want them built. You may want them to spawn so you can get the 25 gold, maybe gets some promotions.

The thing about camps is that they will draw the AI and that could lead to them stomping around your borders. The other things is when two nations get to the next age, barb uprisings can occur.

This is not something you want to deal with as lots of barbs will show up. Even if you can handle them, I prefer to not have to do it. So fog busters at least force the uprisings far from my towns.