Honestly, try to get out of despotism ASAP
1) Despotism has huge penalty on food, any tile producing 3 or more food gets cut down by 1 food, if you got tile producing 4 food, in despotism you get 3 food, thats BAD tradeoff
2) Despotism has HUGE corruption eg further away your city is from your capital(city w/ palace improvement) more shields & commerce(that is converented into science and money) you lose in each town.
3) Despotism only allowes small amount of units, you need many units, other governments have better unit support (check civilopedia by pressing ctrl+c and choose governments
Workers are all doing better.
good, remember you need atleast 1 worker per city you got, recommended is 2 workers per city if non industrious(depends of your civilization), and 1.5 when industrious.
Manage by hand, connect your cities with each other first (primary thing).
Then follow mine green, water brown strategy. - That is most simple to follow.
If a green tile showed food 3 and gold 1, I would always try to irrigate.
mining one green (grass tile) has effect of boosting shield production from that tile by one. Shields are used to produce units or city builds.
Irrigating boosts grassland(green tiles) from 2 food per turn to 3 food per turn. Each citizen eats 2 food per turn, if there is any extra food it goes into storehouse. One storehouse is full, it is emptied and one more citizen is added to town.
Irrigating grass tiles is usually done to boost city's growth speed (more extra food per turn) or to allow more citizens(more shields/commerce per turn) or to allow work some tiles that do not give you food (like hills or mountains). Irrigating needs some planning.
Also Irrigating is done around "Farms" - Farms are towns so far away from capital that they suffer huge corruption (above 50% of everything but food is wasted). So people just max food production and grow farms to size where they can remove some citizens from working fields and turn them into specialists - that gives more, much more gold or science that those corrupt towns could ever support.
Trying to get towns to size 6, then build aquaduct or, if city has fresh water (river/lake) touching it, allows city to grow up to size 12.
I am also staying in despotism since going straight to republic has not seemed to work for me ( the sling shot ? ).
Republic Slingshot is Alphabet->Writing-Code of Laws ->Philosophy->republic
In this order. It is usually done from the begging of the game.
Philos. allows you to pick one free tech, if you are the FIRST one discovering philosophy. Republic needs most time to be researched so using cheaper tech. to get much, much more expensiver tech is good.
Republic boosts commerce per turn, on tile by 2, commerce is changed in each city to science points and gold, so getting republic allows you to get more money and research.
Rep. has it cons, it can be quite long 'transfer' period as its unit support is high (check F3 for military advisor). Each unit over the limit will cost you much. But getting towns above size 6 will quickly bring huge cash in (and increases unit support limits). It is complicated, and My english is not so good enough to explain, also I might insolt someone by accident, so I'll let better players than me lto answer that question.
I think I will have to start a war with someone since city flipping has always been a problem - really irritating ( I am average / low on culture ).
City flipping- It happens if you have lower culture than enemy and his towns are near your town. Building culture buildings, like library (boost research too), temple(makes 1 people from 'angry' to 'content'), great wonders, small wonders and similar buildings.
Other way to deal with these 'traitors' is more violent, just smash their cities.
There are players here who prefer to keep peacful empire, those are called builders. They manage their cities and keep people happy, build culture etc.
There are players here who prefer to keep err get larger empire, those build mostly military only.
There are people in between those two extremes, who do bolth.
I can't say what is correct way to deal with flips, but I prefer having research boosting buildings in core, for culture.
Core is capital and cities surrounding it in a "circle", those cities can't be too far from capital, and they have low corruption.
On power the histograph shows me to have about 40% on our continent so hopefully it will work.
So your strong! Good for you, bad for them!
How can you get at least one great wonder ? The AIs seem to have a monopoly on these
Well wonders are issue: Some players say: Those have to be built in my empire, I can't play without Art of War (gives free barracks in every city), Pyramids (gives free granary) and [enter wonder name here]
Others say that: 1-2 wonders, like hoover dam (boosts production of cities that have factory by 50%) and similar wonders is enough.
Some say: No wonders.
I prefer 2-3 wonders myself, but I am against telling people to build them, Instead I tell the opposite, if you don't know game very well/are new/are having problems skip wonders. Wonder costs differ but for an example 300 shields for 1 wonder you would get 10 swordsman instead.
But now onto issue, you said you want(ed) wonders, so here are few tips:
Choose town with highest production(shields), (you can sort towns in F1 screen), w/highest production usually is capital.
Prebuild for wonder - This requires thinking ahead, plan for wonder. Open civilopedia by pressing ctrl+c and look at civilization advancements. or press f6 and right click on tech pic. choose one wonder you like, lets take Sun tzus Art of War, comes w/ tech (medieval tech, eg once you have learned most ancient age techs you enter medieval age) - "Feudalism".
Now we start prebuilding some building that needs lots of shields (right click to see what needs most shields to be built, if you chose town other than capital use 'palace' as prebuild. If in capital choose whatever needs most shields.
Let say we chose courthouse for prebuild.
Timing should be: You still got few ancient age techs to learn, lets say you still need currency and polysynte-thingy.
You start building this building, before getting thec you need for wonder. Once you have entered ancient age, you try to get "feudalism" tech, once you get it you switch build from courthouse to wonder.
Things to note about this strategy are:
Prebuild(courthouse in this case) should not be completed before switching to wonder. If it is, all shields are lost and prebuild gets built.
If AI is in tech lead he might start building wonder much, much earlyer and Ai might get wonder faster.
You MAY NOT RUSH prebuild, rushing is:
Chopping woods around town - wood gets added to production and you can't switch to wonder.
Using either population or gold to rush prebuild.
Disbanding units on town square.
If you rush, you can't change production to wonder.
3) You need your wonder city to produce many, many shields, minimally 12 shields per turn, even that is less, good timed prebuilding might get that wonder tho.
So plan ahead which wonder you want.
I'm not best one to explain.
I will try to update to the patches so that next game I can post.
great, then post save here and we can give more advice, Pictures can help also, so people at work (who are supposed to work, not read forums) could give advice too.
Sorry for long text, and sorry if I insulted anyone, also sorry for bad English.
Also note on regent, AI is equal to you, that means same research cost, same build cost everything is same(expt. intelligence), on warlord AI gets longer build and research times and suffer corruption(I think), in monarch (level above regent) ai gets building bonuses (less shields to build unit) and you suffer higher corruption.
I seem to win regularly at Warlord level so started playing at Regent but I keep losing.
