No luxuries and no religion - what to do?

[Ray Patterson]

In my newest game I've run into a problem. I've scouted the environment, and there are no luxuries pre-calendar, and only one after. And nobody on my continent so far has had the initiative to found a religion (Asoka and Montezuma somehow missed out, Charlemagne didn't bother I guess). The first three religions are on another continent.

So... I figured I'd go for Oracle - Code of Law/Confucianism. But guess what... someone has already built the Oracle. (And not popped CoL btw). So now what? I'm playing Prince, so that means my cities are limited at 4! Should I prioritize Monarchy now? That's hardly a great improvement. Unless I actually build huge garrissons.

Help. I've played a few Prince games before... but there was always some source of happiness. Now I'm getting as grumpy as my citizens.

 

[Alki]

Time to war your neighbours for their luxuries?

 

[Ray Patterson]

Time to war your neighbours for their luxuries?

It seems so huh. As it happens I'm Elizabeth, and hadn't really planned on early war seeing her traits and UU. But I guess you're right.

 

[UWHabs]

Never not plan an early war based on traits/UU. If the time is right, strike.

Otherwise, yes, you need to go HR, or capture someone else with luxuries. The other option is if your neighbours have multiple, trade for them. So if they start with 2 gems, trade anything of yours for 1 and that helps a lot. Remember - you don't need your only pig resources if you're swimming in health in your cities.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well.... you are probably the best techer in the game. Get writing, whip a lib, run two scientists.

Research CoL yourself. If you miss on confucianism, take the scientist you get from the lib and bulb philosophy. Maybe do that anyway 2 religions = 3 more happy (1 for state religion, 2 for each temple) Plus, of course, pacifism doubles your GP rate.

Other thing is - unhappiness isn't killer. Let your guys get unhappy, but whip it away.

And you don't need HUGE stacks to make HR useful - just adopting it gives you 1 for the MP - combine that with eitehr confucianism or philo, and you have a happy cap of 7. Add in a couple more because you are building units to invade your neighbors and you can get to size 8 or 9.

 

[michmbk]

To partially quote DaveMcW - Monarchy and COTTAGES!

HR with cottages, Liz and a GP farm is devastating, even without happiness.

 

[Ray Patterson]

Thanks all, different and interesting ideas. I still have to get used to the idea of long-term strategy involving bulbing.

 

[Axios]

War!!!!

 

[CHEESE!]

Ummm....

Monarchy?

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Kill a neighbor or two, and tech Monarchy. Awesome picture by the way.

 

[z0wb13]

REX. you can't grow vertically, so you need to expand horizontally. pack in cities with lots of overlap. slow research CoL and bulb taoism. monarchy for HR. don't bother invading a neighbor until they have developed the land some for you.

you don't mention what kind of resources that you do have. if you have a lot of food stuff, wait until gunpowder and draft a bunch of muskets, IF the ai land is good enough to take. otherwise, wait for rifles.

what kind of map are you playing? is it weird? because most normal-ish maps will have at least 1 of each resource. so you can infer that the other continent(s?) have lots of happy resources that you will want to trade for. so liberalism and free religion are going to help if you decide to go that route.

 

[Gwynnja]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=189559

 

[PreLynMax]

No lux AND off-religion on Noble: .024% chance of winning, best action: restart.
That's what I'd do.

 

[pi-r8]

definitely go for monarchy. In the mean time try and trade for whatever you can get from the AIs, even if you have to pay gold for it. Another possible option is to go for drama and use the slider to raise happiness. But you can't go for long with size 4 cities, that's just not enough.

 

[vicawoo]

Common play is building huge garrisons of warriors in your bureaucracy capital with hereditary rule. Second cheapest is archers, then chariots, although you can trade off your copper/iron or skip hunting to keep building warriors. Garrison happiness for cottages at lower levels, or riverside cottages at higher level.

Less common is relying on culture/specialists/building wealth/research.

 

[UncleJJ]

In this situation if the neighbours have happiness resources then you need a plan to take them. Monarchy and Slavery is the combination I would use. Then research Construction so you can build catapults (and coliseums)

Switching to HR and Slavery will immediately give you +1 happy for the basic garrison, probably a warrior. Grow the city to size 6 and then try to do a 2 pop whip for a swordsman allowing the overflow to build an archer (say). I would limit the number of junk garrison troops I build, instead I would build try to build useful troops that can be used to attack. Keeping building the cities up, working extra cottages as the garrisons grow.

Once you have several cities at size 9 and you can build catapults it is time to go to war with the army you've built up. You need to cash-in the pop and the garrisons you've built up. Start a catapult and do a 2 pop whip next turn. Do this again over the next few turns in all your cities. So you have a 5 pop city with a garrison of 8 units that only needs 3 for happiness. The 2 catapults and 3 other units (swords perhaps) are free to move out and join the rest of the SoD.

Send your army to conquer a few cities with happiness resources that will let your cities regrow with lower garrisons. As your old cities regrow they'll be working cottages that are partly worked up.

That's how I use HR, Slavery and war to solve a happiness problem

 

[Monsterzuma]

Axerush and conquer some!!

I noticed Montezuma is mentioned in your post. If that isn't a good excuse for an early rush, I'm completely lost.

 

[thecowwarrior]

Monarchy + Archers = Happy

 

[Kadazzle]

Build Wealth, and run Specialists. Whip infra, and get your 4 cities up as being "good cities". On Prince you can easily out-tech them when running mass specs.

 

[6K Man]

Monarchy, Hereditary Rule, cottages.

I used to delay Monarchy but now, I aim to get that right around Currency, if not sooner. Definitely before CoL.