Need tips on Axe-Rush [Vanilla]

[Blockinlick]

...it's all nice advice & all, but I know things like the fact that getting Monarchy solves my unhappiness problem. It's why I rush Pyramids in the first place.

The problem is the first 2000 years, 4000-2000 BC. City growth in those eras is so slow for me that: By the time I get two stable cities ready to pump out Pyramids, I see that the Pyramids take 250+ turns to finish. I chop and get them done in like 50, but even then it's just way too late. On Warlord, the same strategy chops Pyramids in like 15 turns and I get the strategy prepared like 1000 years in advance.

whip if necessary

I never figured out how to do this. Every time I get Slavery, I can't figure it out. I open up my City window and I don't see anything that stands out or that implies being able to manipulate citizens outside of assigning tiles and specialists.

build granaries and in bigger cities harbors, grocers.

I always build Granary. It's actually the first building I built in every city.
But Harbors and Grocers are mid game, and I'm having trouble making the early game count, so those don't really help with that.

Health is self-regulating anyway as the city will stop growing once you lose food by unhealthiness

I don't know why, but I always lose working tiles when my cities become too sick. They start starving and there's seemingly nothing I can do about it no matter how many Food/Farm Tiles I work.

 

[Bandobras Took]

With Slavery, there should be a button right beside where you select what you're building in the city screen. It will tell you how much population you can sacrifice to complete a build. If you've got one unhappiness and kill two citizens, you'll come out ahead.

 

[Htadus]

...it's all nice advice & all, but I know things like the fact that getting Monarchy solves my unhappiness problem. It's why I rush Pyramids in the first place. If you do build the Mids, I recommend using Rep and hire a few specialists. That way you won't get too fast of growth and therefore reduce unhappy citizen

The problem is the first 2000 years, 4000-2000 BC. City growth in those eras is so slow for me that: By the time I get two stable cities ready to pump out Pyramids, I see that the Pyramids take 250+ turns to finish. I chop and get them done in like 50, but even then it's just way too late. On Warlord, the same strategy chops Pyramids in like 15 turns and I get the strategy prepared like 1000 years in advance.
Based on what you say, it seem that you are not choosing the right city to build the Mids. I would love to see a save where you are doing this and then may be give you some real insight.

I never figured out how to do this. Every time I get Slavery, I can't figure it out. I open up my City window and I don't see anything that stands out or that implies being able to manipulate citizens outside of assigning tiles and specialists. You need to change your civic to "Slavery" in order to do this. If you are not running slavery this option is not available. See the image below. The red almost a circle is where you find the button.


I always build Granary. It's actually the first building I built in every city.
But Harbors and Grocers are mid game, and I'm having trouble making the early game count, so those don't really help with that. It is always good to do this but you need to work food tiles to let the city grow. Then you need to have enough happy to grow and get the benefits of a large city.


I don't know why, but I always lose working tiles when my cities become too sick. They start starving and there's seemingly nothing I can do about it no matter how many Food/Farm Tiles I work.

This does not make much sense to me. Only way you can loose tiles is if you found a city nearby with overlap and the game allocated some of the shared tiles to the new city. You can go into the original city and click on the tile to claim them back for the use of that city. Other way to lose a tile is via AI culture or if there is an enemy unit on a tile. You really should post a save that talk about a specific issue.

 

[Kallikrates]

You only lose worked tiles by unhappiness, because then a "citizen refuses" to work", so you can work less tiles. With unhealthiness you lose one food for each green face

Even the pyramids should be doable most of the time on Noble without IND or stone, I would not focus on them so much. Even if you have stone the city building them should have about 10-12 production before bonuses (e.g. plains cow or horse + 3 mines) and 3-4 forests to chop.
They are certainly not essential and it hurts when advancing a level if you got used to a strategy that will be doubtful even on prince or monarch. See my comments above. I always tried to get one of the earliest religions when stating on noble and even on prince and I usually succeeded. But it's not worth it, because there are more important techs to research first.

You do not need big cities so early. Keep them at the health/Happiness limit by running scientists, e.g. I don't know the exact caps, but usually you have at least three food resources quite early on in your empire, usually at least one grain. So with a granary you can grow to 7 on Emperor (w/o floodplains, jungles or forest), I think, so probably to 9 on Noble. And often you will have more food resources or be able to trade one in the BCs.

Happiness can be a far bigger problem, because you might not have any pre-calendar happiness resource. But if you get religion, you can build temples, if you get the mids you get 2 happiness in your 5 biggest cities which will be sufficient for quite a while. Otherwise get monarchy and put troops in the cities. By then you will often also be able to trade for happiness resources or have plantations yourself.

 

[Manco Capac]

Keep in mind that citizens that refuses to work are not fed (each one cost 2 normally) while building a settler or a worker. Some says it's a bug, but that was an intended feature of the game. So, if you got some unhappy citizens, build a settler or a worker.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Big cities are overrated. I whip armies all game, so my cities (other than my capital) rarely get past size 6 or 8 anyway.

 

[Kallikrates]

But you still have to deal with the unhappiness from whipping, so one needs some source of happiness. In any case unhappiness is far more often a problem than health, simply because most maps have more quickly accessible food than luxury resources, and there is fresh water and forests, too.

 

[chessplaya]

...it's all nice advice & all, but I know things like the fact that getting Monarchy solves my unhappiness problem. It's why I rush Pyramids in the first place.

The fastest way to solve your unhappiness problem is to build the Oracle wonder and take Monarchy as your free tech. Then switch to the "Hereditary Rule" civic. Now every military unit you build and leave in a city lets an extra person live in the city without becoming unhappy. Of course, Monarchy isn't always the best free tech to take with the Oracle--I usually prefer to take a more expensive tech, like Civil Service, and then learn Monarchy a bit later. Most players that build the Pyramids use it to switch into the "Representation" civic, which creates some happiness but mainly is used to increase the science output for cities that are hiring specialists.

By the time I get two stable cities ready to pump out Pyramids, I see that the Pyramids take 250+ turns to finish.

Are you building mines on hills in the city that is building Pyramids and letting citizens work these mines? If so, I don't think it should take 250+ turns, even on Marathon speed, to finish Pyramids without chops. The difficulty shouldn't make a difference other than for how fast your oppenents will build the Pyramids, since it costs the same number of hammers for you regardless of difficulty.

If you decide to whip things, make sure you put at least a turn into building them normally first, or else you will get fewer hammers per population point. Also, it's usually a good idea to kill at least 2 citizens with each whip, because it causes fewer people to become unhappy per hammer that you get.

With regard to the vanilla vs. BTS debate, I stuck with vanilla until Monarch and sometimes Emperor level started to seem too easy, and then switched to BTS. This worked very well for me. Vanilla is much simpler, which is great when you're new to the game. Also, it's worth noting that you can turn spies off in BTS (Single Player->Custom Game->No Espionage) if you don't like them.