new to the game, getting heavily outscored by king AI

[Guardianofnatur]

Hello everyone, been lurking here for a few days and finally decided to make an account.
Just picked the golden edition up from steam a little more than a week ago (got 53 hours into it now )

Last night I was playing a Carthage game where i decided to shoot for a culture victory and a large navy (my only connection to the japanese, huns, arabs and babylon was a very narrow strip of land with lots of hills, so i figured build tall, go for a big navy and do a culture game).

Japan was busy murdering Arabia while Atilla was washing out any presence of Babylon on the map, nothing new there but I'm not worried since my location is so easily defendable.
Then I get to scouting the seas with mainly frigates and some privateers, when I see that Hiawatha wiped unmet player off the map (I assume it was the ottomans cause there was a city named Istanbul).

I built a large navy to protect my 4 cities while building my culture buildingsand staffing them, since I lost my last game because some DoWed me 6 turns before i started my utopia project.

But suddenly I'm looking at the scoreboard and I see Attilla and Hiawatha having grown from around my score(600) to 1500+ while I stayed the same for most of the game. Am I missing something that I should be doing in the mid/lategame?

Now Hiawatha has built 4 spaceship parts while I still need 3 social policies before I
can start the utopia project, while holding off attilla on all fronts.

so long story short, I got heavily outscored by everyone that wasn't nearly dead during the mid and lategame and I have no clue what I am doing wrong. Could anyone help?

 

[Streams]

In a cultural game it is not that rare to be outscored by the city-spammers and world conquerors.

What you need to do is speed up the game:

- plant great artists (not near a river, if there is one); have your capital in the middle of open space; you will need that space for planting
- use cultural specialists as soon as available
- take oracle and louvre
- piety and freedom are useful policies
- if Hiawatha then take your army and mop the floor with him; if left unchecked he'll spam too many cities
- have fewer cities? Or if not, make sure you get all cultural buildings in all of them.
- culture does not mean that peace is a must; if you do have an army, go and get a puppet empire
- get religion; cathedrals or monasteries (if wine and incense are present), the hermitage booster are neat things to have.

edit:
In my culture game, I usually have only 2 core cities (if the 2nd spot is great for Petra or some other reason). I'll usually go to Writing, and have Calendar researched before the Great Library is done (meaning there is some time to get something else), which I'll then use to open Philosophy and start National Collage. It will help with Science. Beeline Mathematics after this and get the 2nd city if needed. Build wonders, buy buildings and army if you have the cash.

Get Construction, make a sufficient army and take out neighbours. Ally militaristic city states (they give nice updated presents). Puppet reasonable cities. They'll raise your income.

Beeline Renaissance through the upper part of the tree and start spying to get the lower part of it.

Open with Tradition, but get the monument built, instead of gifted. What you will get is a free amphitheater. At some point I will lag in science, so Rationalism instead of Piety may be useful, but I'll take my chances most of the time.

 

[King_Course]

You can't always just turtle up. On the higher levels, actively engaging in war against a Domination minded Civ may be necessary.

The game always turns on the weak one, so very often the strong nations will ask you to engage in war against the weak party. If you just click these things away you may be aiding the strong sides to a goal you don't want them to reach. You might want to actively chose to make bonds with the more peacefull nations and avoid the warmongers, and declare war on them to halt their advance if they are getting out of hand.

It's the usual saying, of ignoring threats untill you are the last target to remain.

Maybe your good Navy could have been put to use preventing Japan and Attila doing what they did.

In many of my Immortal cultural games, I have been actively seeking out the runaway to war on him. Keeping him in check like that. If you go high culture, full Honor can be fun as you make gold from the war and it can be a rather strong addition to your economy.

 

[King_Course]

Asides from that, a cultural game is also a game of science, as you need to reach the later wonders fast enough to build them. Science is growth and of course science buildings, which also means placement. Observatories are good for example.

 

[slowcar]

I think this is not unusual, being rather new to the game. You can learn to out-tech and out-grow the AI on king level, but getting enough culture is quite another game, especially as you have to go for artist specialists a lot while still competing in the science race.
there are some guides spezialized on culture i think (in the war academy and in this forum), they should prove helpful.

 

[Guardianofnatur]

Thanks for your advice everyone

Yeah I had some problems with getting a decent beaker count after getting radio and I'll try to wage a little more war in my games, usually i either to full on world war 3 or try to not wage any wars at all, need to find some balance.

It's probably best to focus on science and domination victories since in about a week culture and diplo victories will be completely different.

Is is reasonably possible to get a diplo victory with some(read: a lot) of warfare?

 

[Unresolved]

Diplo is easier with lots of war. I find that if I don't war on higher difficulties, the AI buy up too many city-states. If I take out 1 or 2 AI, the other civs barely get any allies while I have control over the CS for the entire game.

 

[slowcar]

Is is reasonably possible to get a diplo victory with some(read: a lot) of warfare?

yes, as only city states are important. and they only care about your money...

 

[JothHago]

Offense is a great defense, also a great tool to set your civilization up. Remember that all the puppetted civilizations will be gold focused and with TPs, you would have a fair bit of GPT to buy CS off

 

[joncnunn]

Score: In a Single Player game there is no correlation at all between the stated score in the game and the likelihood of the human winning. (Unless you turn off all forms of peaceful victory other than time)

The AI is that bad about not getting libraries / universities etc. built with the exception of a few with high science flavors.
In addition, almost none of the AIs fill the science slots; and when they actually get a Great Scientist they use incorrectly.

Instead head on over to the Demographics screen and watch the Literacy score at the bottom. You want to be #1 in that no matter what form of victory your seeking.

Edit: As to your own game: Build NC early. (Shoot for turn 70; not really needed at King but good practice for Immortal).
Shooting for science is easier than cutural, in which case:
Build science buildings early. Fill all science slots.
Found academies at least until you reach Scientific Theory. Fill Rationalism tree. That particular AI likes to spam cities but doesn't get around to building more than the cheapest science buildings in them; you'll easily out-science them.

If shooting for cultural: Instead fill artist slots. And build a lot of cultural wonders. And don't hand build settlers. Start as a OCC. But to keep up with science building a lot of wonders you need to cash rush the science buildings.

Also if you're planning on getting the BNW expansion, note that new cultural is completely different.