Noble => Prince

[StefanCelMare]

Hi!
Am i ready to play on prince?
That is my last win save.The last 30 turns i click randomly because I was sure that i'll win.
Thank you!



P.S:I'm sorry for my broke English.It's not my natal language.
Sorry for my other thread.It was a mistake.

 

[lymond]

hello, welcome to CFC (you can send a message to the mods to remove a dupe using the red triangle button below your name)

It's very hard to analyze a game so late for advice, but I will give you a few pointers that may help:

1) First, not a huge difference between Prince and Noble for you not to take the leap regardless

2) With that said, I recommend looking to finishing your games quicker on whatever level. For example, if you..say..plan to go for another space win on Noble, look to finish in the 1800s or early 1900s, i.e., many turns sooner

3) I recommend playing on normal settings (normal map size, normal speed). Ideally, no huts and events. Get used to this for a while as you learn and then do as you wish as far as settings. (quick speed gets harder as you move up levels)

4) The most important part of the game is the first 100 turns. In other words, the better you play and the more gains you make in the early game, the better your overall game will be. Learn to make the most of your early game as you can. Focused worker management, expansion, conquest, economy, etc. I'm speaking in a vacuum right now as I have nothing to base on your current gameplay, but just recommend you focus on learning what I mean and applying it.

5) Learn the advantages of certain National Wonders. Most of them are not that important for most games. The most used/important are Oxford, National Epic and Heroic Epic. The rest are situational and even the 3 I just mentioned are really situational. However, for a Space win Oxford is a must and most often is best in a Bureaucracy Capital, which you actually have but did not put Oxford there. Instead you put the National Epic there, which is best served in a high food so that you can run lots of specialists for great people (and the Representation science bonus once you can run that civic)

6) Most important unit in the game --> Worker

7) Most important building in the game --> Granary

8) Understand #6 and #7

9) Understand and learn your civics. What are the best for a situation. What civics complement each other? Why are Slavery and Bureaucracy so powerful? Why you should be running Representation if you build the Pyramids, instead of running no Government civic the entire game? (

10) As mentioned Granary is most important building. FOOD is king in this game. Other than that, buildings are situational, but I do highly value the Forge. Libraries in science cities and to get 6 Unis for Oxford, or whatever many you need based on map size. If you grow large, Courthouse become more valuable. Coastal cities with seafood - Lighthouse, ofc. After that, you have to ask yourself if a building is really needed when you could be building wealth or research to boost tech pace, or whipping out an army to grab more land.

11) Great People - learn why they are important. how do they play into a particular strategy? how to get more of them? how to use them? Bulbing strategies - usually with Great Scientists to get to Education and Lib very fast. Importance of Great Merchants later for trade missions - mo money? Lastly, the value of Golden Ages? (also, why there should be no great people just sitting around in 2030AD )

So basically, I've thrown more questions at you than direct advice, but the questions are meant to make you think and ask questions yourself, or do the research here.

Best way to learn and get better at the game is to post a game here and play along with folks

(edit: one thing about your game that seemed pretty clear is that you could have probably easily finish the game much sooner via conquest or domination..although you may very well have intended to win by space from the beginning)

 

[pigswill]

Workers ftw

 

[guspasho]

I didn't analyze your game so I don't know if you've done this already but these are some basic default strategies I've picked and learned should almost always be followed at the beginning of the game.

Move your starting warrior or scout to see if you can uncover a better settling location within one turn of your settler's starting position. Settle in the best location. Consider settling on plains hills or ivory or stone or marble, even if it costs you a turn because the extra hammers makes up for it. Most start locations, the first worker will take 15 turns to produce. But if you settle on a plains hill, that's 12 turns, so if you spent a turn moving there, you still come out 2 turns ahead.

Once you settle, move your starting warrior or scout in a circle around your capital. That unit's priority should be to find the best location for your second city, possibly also the third city, both of which should be close to the capital, possibly even sharing tiles.

Sharing tiles is very powerful. You can build a city with its food resource already improved, which means that city starts being productive faster, or you can grow cottages twice as fast. And your maintenance cost will be less. If you have several food resources in your capital, or lots of river grassland or floodplains, consider overlapping your 2nd and 3rd cities with your capital.

Unless you are creative, build your cities with a food resource in the first ring whenever possible. Otherwise you delay your cities' growth.

When you build a city, don't neglect trade routes. They provide passive commerce that you'll need Building along a river is ideal for the automatic trade route if the river between your cities remains within your cultural borders. Otherwise, build roads between them.

Your initial build queue should typically look like this: Worker > Warrior (repeat until your city grows to 3 pop) > Settler > Worker. After that it can get more situational. You might want to go Work Boat first if you have Fishing and your only food is seafood, but that should be rare. If you do have to go Work Boat first, be sure your capital is working the tile with the highest hammer yield, ideally a plains/hill/forest, and be sure to turn the governor back on when you've completed your Work Boat.

Your initial tech order should be determined by these priorities, in order: hook up a food resource (not necessarily all of them) > barb defense > Currency. How you fulfill those requirements are very situational, but a typical tech queue might be Agriculture > Mining > Bronze Working > Wheel > Pottery > Writing > Math > Currency. This is why Agriculture and Mining are the best starting techs, because you're almost certain to need them right away. If you get to Bronze Working and you don't find copper nearby you'll need to research Animal Husbandry if you didn't already research that to hook up livestock. If you have no livestock and you're wondering how to you decide between Animal Husbandry to reveal horses or Mining > Bronze Working to reveal copper, keep in mind that Bronze Working also gives you slavery and lets you chop forests, so it's always the superior choice.

Stop building cities at 3-4 until you get Currency. Before you have Currency is a critical time where you can overexpand and strangle your empire because you only have one trade route per city and you cannot build wealth. Research can grind to a halt and you'll be stuck. So limit your growth to ensure you reach Currency, then expand. You should have around 10 cities by 1AD.

And build more workers! 1 to 1.5 per city. Beginners always build too few workers. Your cities should always have enough improved tiles to work. If your cities are working unimproved tiles, you don't have enough workers. But don't improve everything all at once. Just improve enough that your cities will use. Brown lands usually won't need to be improved until you get Metal Casting.

 

[lymond]

^^^good advice above

I'd caveat one thing about settling your initial cap (and guspacho did mention this later), food is king, so while settling on tiles to get a bonus to the city center tile (plains hill, some resources), you do want good food for your cities. Ideally at least 5F specials or more (wet corn, grass pigs, fish, etc). While eventually you may learn to play with less the stellar starts, I would pretty much re-roll the map if I don't get a good food special or two. (what's not good: plains cow or plains hill sheep..ha..although not bad tiles themselves when combined with better food)

Regarding, intial cities, I agree wholeheartedly that Currency is an extremely important tech in the game (in fact, IMO it is THE most important tech, but that is debatable, ofc). While 3-4 cities may be a reasonable guideline early on for expansion prior to Currency, I would not limit yourself to that number always. It is often a good play on the higher levels as maintenance costs are so high, but if you are settling smartly and compactly you can certainly settle more cities than 4. But the point is, that Currency indeed does wonders for the economy in more than one way - more trade route commerce, resource trades for gpt, trading old techs for gold, and building wealth. Once you have currency, the skies the limit.

I'd also add that one should think about whether an early rush is feasible or even necessary really in certain games, i.e., axe rush, chariot rush, early UU rush, or the best...Horse Archer rush. That decision can set another guideline for initial expansion as usually 2 to 4 cities is probably the most you want or need in those situations. Heck, I rush sometimes with 1 cities.

Lastly, workers are often a big issue for newer or less experience players. As guspacho mentions, they often don't build enough. But even more important is they don't use them wisely. This is what I mean by worker management. This concept is especially important early on as the sooner you have cities working specials and improved tiles the sooner you get those bonuses and simply produce more stuff more fasterer. So get that food improved, build a mine or two, simply have enough bonus tiles for the city's happy cap. Don't forget chopping forests to get stuff built faster and consider Leader traits to certain building and unit bonuses from hammers when doing so. Build roads for trade routes and but don't build them everywhere. Improvements and chopping are always more important early. Don't waste worker turns on silly stuff. Simply focus them on getting the most out of your land as possible as fast as possible early on. It is one of the keys at being successful at this game and moving up levels.

 

[StefanCelMare]

With that said, I recommend looking to finishing your games quicker on whatever level. For example, if you..say..plan to go for another space win on Noble, look to finish in the 1800s or early 1900s, i.e., many turns sooner

Yes...I haven't focused on a specific victory...When I saw that I can build the spaceship I did it..

FOOD is king in this game.

I usually don't want to have more than 2 food resources in a city because of the unhappiness.I get rid of it temporarely by the Represenation.

Learn the advantages of certain National Wonders.

I think this was the hugest mistake in my game..I didn't put the Oxford in my capital,where i had the most research rate...I had already built 2 wonders.

Best way to learn and get better at the game is to post a game here and play along with folks

I will try to do this with Ramses II.

Thanks for your tips.I will try to apply them in my games and I will be more focussed on workers.

 

[Lexicus]

I usually don't want to have more than 2 food resources in a city because of the unhappiness.I get rid of it temporarely by the Represenation.

1 - one of the things that's been impressed on me since the days of Civ III is, if you want to move up in difficulty, you should stop building so many wonders. While wonders are obviously good, they are not reliable on higher levels as the AI gets them faster, and the human player on a lower level can get complacent, becoming used to having many wonders. Many wonders are not going to be needed at all for a particular victory type so they can also create problems with focus (e.g. if you are going to win by space victory, then building Sistine Chapel is a complete waste of hammers/turns).
This is relevant because when you move up to Prince you may not get the Pyramids and therefore may not have access to Representation until Constitution.
In any case, this brings us to...
2- much the better way to manage happiness so early in the game is to whip away unhappy citizens. The Slavery civic allows the conversion of population to hammers at a rate of 30 per population on normal speed.

This means that whipping away unhappy population essentially gives free hammers because those unhappy guys aren't working tiles anyway. Exploiting the fact that cracking the whip only gives 1 unhappy face, you can whip away more than 1 population to equalize happiness.

Consider a size 4 city, with 4 "city is too crowded" unhappy faces and three happy faces. Whipping a build for 2 pop will give +1 "we cannot forget your cruel oppression" unhappy face, but subtract 2 "city is too crowded" unhappy faces.
You end up at 3 happy vs 3 unhappy faces, for neutral happiness. Now you can control the growth by working less food (or building a worker/settler) until the whip counter is reset, and you can repeat. And on normal speed every 2 pop whip gives 60 hammers--90 with a Forge!

I think this was the hugest mistake in my game..I didn't put the Oxford in my capital,where i had the most research rate...I had already built 2 wonders.

This is where planning from the beginning comes in. As you play more games this will become easier to do, but from the very beginning of the game, when you have your immediate area explored, you should be asking yourself where you want to put your important cities. I try to always ask myself in concrete terms, when founding a city, what is this going to do for my empire? and how soon will this city become profitable?

A lack of focus in the early game will lead to cities which cannot effectively specialize and your research, production and gold will suffer for it. The way the mechanics of Civ 4 work it's better to maximize particular outputs than to "balance" multiple different outputs.

BTW, someone up there mentioned that you always want to put at least one food resource in a new city's inner ring, unless you are Creative (Creative civs get the faster border pops since they get 2 free culture per turn).

This is probably the single most important bit of advice for a new player; just build close to food and most everything else will take care of itself.

 

[StefanCelMare]

I tried to play a Prince game and is not that hard how i tought.
I got Hannibal,after I ticked random leader.

Am I ok until now??
Should I try to destroy(with my UU)the French?(I like Lyons and Paris) or to get some cities from Khmers?
How does the AI deal so easy with the maintanance?
The Khmer Empire has a lot of cities and seems that they don't have problems with this..

Thanks.
Here is a save .

 

[lymond]

AIs get bonuses especially as you move up levels. Concerning yourself with their ability to maintain more cities is not important. The important thing is your own empire and how you manage it, and how you go about making their empire smaller.

First off, when playing what I call "shadow games" like this, it is best to play slow and get advice from the very start. For one, this let's us understand your thought process and how you stand with the game currently, but also allows you to get pointed advice in the most important part of the game. Simply put, you've played too far to really be of use in learning.

With that said, your game is not bad. Your economy is more than fine. Great Lighthouse helps a lot with that. It is one of the most powerful wonders in the game on the right maps, i.e., ability to take advantage of it with coastal cities.

Your UU is pretty much outdated now, so I would not considered it as a primary factor in battle at this point....maybe only a few in support. Sury has Feudalism and the Frenchies are not for from it I would think. (AIs love certain techs)

In fact, it is important to note that in most games, especially on higher levels, that Feudalism is an important tech in terms of changing the landscape of warfare. (I don't mean this as a tech for you to focus on..it is always an AI "prioirity" tech - something to learn about - so you can always trade for it. What I mean is that Longbows are a very powerful unit for the AIs for quite some time, rendering most earlier unit types obsolete. In other words, once AIs start getting Feud you have to rethink your combat objectives and tactics.

Before getting into a few listed thoughts on your game, I need to mention something important that I think you should start thinking about and considering with each game you play. I recommend that you start thinking about strategy and how you intend to win. Several factors go into this decision - map types, land, etc.. But what I'm getting at is that I detect rather unfocused gameplay. I don't mean that as criticism, it is just what it is and fully understandable of one just trying to learn the game. Still, it is something to consider so that you can start focusing your actions, decisions and strategies toward actual goals to win the game.

To put this in perspective for you, and as example, on prince level with this start - regardless of which victory type I chose - I would fully expect to have taken over the entire continent by this point. That is, all AIs you now know would be dead and their cities yours, at least the ones worth keeping. I'm not saying you have to do that, or that you must do that, but that it can be done. Heck, you might just want to go for a culture victory in which all you need is around 9 cities and then just focus all your effort on getting 3 cities to legendary the rest of the game. How you handle the AIs in that type of game is really up to what best suits getting a culture victory, or simply handling any unsavory neighbors. (your neighbors in your Hanny game are for the most part handled fairly easily diplomatically)

In most games, I'm fairly aggressive myself, so I'm always looking to make gains in warfare one way or another as soon as reasonably possible.

So to a few observations and pointers:

1) Small thing, but it appears that you built a scout since Hannibal does not start with one. Really a waste, but if you do have a scout there is no reason not to have him explore the unexplored. With most land settled now, you can safely set him to auto-explore. Still, I would not bother building a scout in most cases. Just build warriors early on to protect from barbs and "spawnbust". These warriors will become cheap MP (city unit) eventually.

2) Are you automating workers? If so, don't. Right now they seem to be doing fairly useless things while I see better uses for them. For one, you have a flood plain in one city with no cottage. As mentioned earlier, managing your workers early is hugely important, and managing them well. You probably should have at least 6 or 7 workers, maybe 8. I think I count only 4.

3) Note that units cost maintenance. Units outside your borders cost even more. So if units are outside your borders they should have a purpose - warfare obviously or scouting. Not sure what that horse archer is doing in France.

4) Not sure the purpose of running Caste System at the moment. Slavery is still highly useful for whipping an army or getting key buildings in like Forges fast. I usually use Caste System early during a Golden Age, using the no anarchy from the golden age to switch civics at the beginning and end. Golden Ages boosts great person points, so Caste System is effective to run many scientists early for bulbing. (also, consider timing other civic switches with this GA such as getting Monarchy from someone for hereditary rule, or Monotheism for Organized Religion if you are running a religion)

5) Speaking of which, I see you settled a Great Merchant. He could have been used for a Golden Age. (another common approach is to be first to Music and use the free Great Artist for a GA) The other best use for the Great Merchant is to run a trade mission in a large AI city for gold to run your science slider at 100% for a good while, or other strategies. Note that cities with Temple of Artemis boost trade mission gold.

6) I see two nearby cities to Carthage that would have been good settles, not that they have to be the first ones, but both are coastal which pays for itself with Great lighthouse. The horse/crab to the NW would have given you early access to horses for some early stompage, so I might have actually settled it first. The fur city to the SW is fairly useless from a production standpoint, but it is still coastal and at least has some food, so I'd would have long settled it by now, although your other cities are fine for the most part as well. Blocking of land is always important.

7) Gold and Gold per turn. You should always look for ways to maximize gains once you have currency. First trade for resources you don't have in your empire that boost health and happiness. You actually have rice, but have not hooked it up (+2 health with granary), but Dyes would be a very nice acquisition for happiness. I think there may have been some other resources to acquire as well. Once you have those, you should always trade extra resources for gold per turn (GPT). You can renegotiate these trades every 10 turns, so always look for opportunities to do so if more GPT is available from the AIs.

Also, look to trade techs for gold and techs you don't have. Currency for Monarchy and 75 gold from Louie is a very good trade at this point, and it gives you a needed valuable civic to switch into for more happiness. If you have old little techs, look to trade them for bits of gold. You will eventually get a feel for the value of tech, but also the timing of when techs become outdated so that you should trade them for gold anyway. Bottom line though, always keep track of this stuff and look for these opportunities pretty much every turn. (It also gives you a basic feel of the tech pace for the game and different difficulties)

More gold obviously means faster teching for you.

Lastly, on this point, once you acquire more happiness from resources and/or civics, obviously adjust your cities accordingly so they grow again.

8) Speak of which, another way to slow growth in cities if you do not have the happiness, besides whipping, ofc, is to running specialists - usually scientists early.

9) One thing you should consider doing is popping the first Great Scientists for a Academy in your capital for a nice research boost. Your cap usually has food and, ofc, will focus on getting out at least your first 2 or 3 settlers. However, it is usually where you get up your first Library which you do as soon as you can. Once you do, try to run 2 scientists there or grow into them. The first GS does not take too long to pop after that. That Academy will boost your science rate for the entire game, especially if your initial cap was a good science city and, ofc, Bureau cap. Carthage is not an ideal Bureau cap, but not really bad either as you have the Great Lighthouse. Trade Routes are commerce and that is what Bureau boosts. Sometimes your initial cap is not a great science city or potential Bureau cap. However, a better location may present itself elsewhere via expansion or conquest. You can always move your Palace to a new city and put your Academy there in expectation of that other city being your main science city.

10) Important concept: I've mentioned that FOOD is King. Let us expand on that concept. One reason that Food is King is that Food IS Production. You may ask "how in the world is that bread a hammer?" Well, food is converted into production via Slavery, which is by far the most powerful civic in the game. This starts to hit on advanced concepts, but I recommend you start to really think about Slavery and "whipping" and why it is so important. Probably the thing that initially bothers newer players about whipping citizens is the unhappiness that it creates. However, that unhappiness can be managed if Slavery is used correctly and with discerned patience.

On normal speed, each citizen is worth 30 hammers(H) when whipped. You can whip anything, but one of the best ways to convert food to hammers is to whip "food-based" units. Food-based units are settlers and workers, as they are built using both food and hammers from what your cities' citizens work. Ideally you 3 pop whip a settler or two pop whip a worker after putting some production into them. Whipping at ideal points in the production of either units produces "hammer overflow" as well which can be used to speed up production of other items. I know..this is getting advanced..but you can see this at work if you start to try it out and look closely at your city screens when you perform these actions. Civ Iv is fun game and can be played however you wish. It CAN be an advanced game with plenty of math and micro if you so choose. If you do choose, then you will play the game at a more advanced level and win on higher difficulties.

11) I encourage you to analyze your cities more closely each turn or so and make sure they are doing the right things. I think if you open your save and look around your cities you will find some flaws, such as citizens that could be working better tiles. I think this will be clear to you. Do this more often and make sure you are getting all the bonuses you should be getting.

12) Learn about AI priority techs. Certain techs AIs always tech themselves like Iron Working, Maths, Monarchy, Feudalism, Machinery and Guilds, among other things. In most cases, these are techs you will not tech yourself, but rather trade for later. There are occasional exceptions, especially Maths which is an important tech for many reasons, and on lower levels the AIs can simply just be too slow. But the point is to take advantage of tech trading and become more focused on tech choices and your tech path. Simply put, you do not have to tech everything yourself. And I will say that this becomes highly important as you move up difficulty levels.

Hmm..where to go with this game if you continue. It's very much winnable however way you choose. It's Fractal, which is a map I play often myself by the way, so you likely have 2 or 3 AIs on another continents or smaller landmasses that won't be met until at least Optics is teched or trade for. But as mentioned, you could certainly try to conquer your continent, but not with the military level you have now. You could go Medieval route with mainly Maceman and cats/trebs with certain units for stack defense from different combat types. Or Knights, which I'm not a big fan of as they lose efficacy on the difficulties I play, but are pretty powerful still on Prince level if you start soon enough. Best combat unit in the game is the Curaisser. You could Lib Military Tradition and build tons of them and run the continent.

Lastly, on a side note, I recommend getting BUG+BULL mod or BAT mod (which is BUG+BULL plus aesthetics). These mods are used by most here. They provide unaltered gameplay enhancements to the UI and info screens mainly, plus some other useful tools like dotmapping for cities. They help tremendously in reading the information in the game.

 

[StefanCelMare]

I think i have no chance to win this game.
First,I had captured Lyons,Paris and another french city with my knights.
After that I decided to attack again (after the cease fire) the french,but I saw that the Khmers had only 2-3 defensive units in the cities..
I tried to attack them too(with rifleman).
I captured 3 cities here..
The problem is that Suryavarman II and Louis are Creative and my captured cities have few working tiles..
Anyway...What should I do now?To attack Louis or Suryavarman?(with my Cavalry).
I'm ahead in war technology...I have rifleman,cannons and cavalry but i don't have so many units..
Here is a save..
Thanks.

 

[rah]

The problem is that Suryavarman II and Louis are Creative and my captured cities have few working tiles..

I've always found the easiest way to alleviate culture pressure is to eliminate/capture the cities applying the pressure. Especially if you're ahead in war technology.

 

[lymond]

Stefan - The reason you don't have many units - and you indeed don't have many units - is that you are not producing them fast enough. You are still using Caste System. You should be whipping out an army. Don't attack until you have a good size army to plow through the enemy.

Much of the advice I wrote before, which, granted, was purposely vague in some cases, appears to have not been taken to heart.

Your game is still very winnable, but not if you don't make changes now. Get out of bad civics and start getting an army out. Stop building things like useless banks.

Really though, as per my original advice. you should really start over with a either this game or a new game and get advice from the start. You should have made far more gains by now in this game. Some AIs already have Emancipation which is hurting your happiness, although there is still things you can do about that as well.

You didn't even take Liberalism which you easily should win out on at Prince level. For perspective, at this point in the game you should be taking the fight across the sea, not still fighting the continent.

combat advice:

Rifles/Cannons are a good combo
Curs/Cavs are great units

I usually focus on one or the other, i.e., gunpowder/melee/siege or mounted. Mounted warfare uses different tactics than the other and is highly effective. As mentioned earlier, Curs would have been ideal for you way back in the last save to focus on. You could have bulb through Education, Pacificism and Liberalism while teching Gunpowder and probably had Curs around 900Ad or so. Whip a huge Cur army and just stomp the AIs on your continent. This is maybe something we can focus on in our new game, or even earlier warfare.

 

[Jivilov]

Thanks Lymond, your advice is wide-ranging, terse yet also deep enough to help anyone who hasn't mastered the higher levels. As a Warlords player who has difficulty on Emperor it's refreshing to have the game's basics explained in such a clear and succinct manner.

Now let's see if yours truly can end a bitter string of defeats with your pointers in mind. Wish me luck!

 

[lymond]

Best o' luck, Jivilov!

 

[Htadus]

I tried to play a Prince game and is not that hard how i tought.
I got Hannibal,after I ticked random leader.

Am I ok until now??
Should I try to destroy(with my UU)the French?(I like Lyons and Paris) or to get some cities from Khmers?
How does the AI deal so easy with the maintanance? I am not sure AI deal as easily as you think. I think you are not comfortable to let the science slider drop low.
The Khmer Empire has a lot of cities and seems that they don't have problems with this..

Thanks.
Here is a save .

I played from your 600 AD save and expanded the empire by settling 4 more useful cities and had the workers start converting several of the plains cottages to farms and letting the cities grow. traded for Monarchy and adopted HR and slavery to complete the settlers and 3 more workers. Then started to build an army. I had to stop at 1120 AD and am ready to go to war against Khmer and its peaceful Vassal India. France is supplying me with Ivory so I will not mess up the supply lines by going after Luis.
My army is slow built since at this level it really does not need the whip to get an army going. Whip helps.

 

[StefanCelMare]

I played from your 600 AD save and expanded the empire by settling 4 more useful cities and had the workers start converting several of the plains cottages to farms and letting the cities grow.

Ok...I looked at the save..
I have never settled a city without 2 resources nearby,I usually don't build farms if i don't have a farm resource and i never drop the research bar below 70%.
So..Thanks for help,I learned some new things that I can do.

you should really start over with a either this game or a new game and get advice from the start.

I read again your tips..I decided to start a new game.What leader should i choose and how often should i post the "progress"?

 

[StefanCelMare]

I got Ragnar at the random leader option.
Now I am decided to go for a Conquest victory with my Bersekers
Should I settle a city in the Ivory zone or should I wait for Currency?
There are some screenshots from the spawn and the capital + the save.

 

[sampsa]

You probably should just restart the map. The same map.

Mistakes so far:

- tech path. You have pigs, a superb tile so you should start with a tech that allows you to improve it. Then maybe wheel, mining, bronze working, etc. Teching iron working so early is bad, as there are many more useful techs.

- city placement. Way too far from capital and no food on the first ring. Food is king, like they told you. 2nd city should claim corn and 3rd city cows.

- city management/worker management. Too many buildings, too few cities. Too many cottages built, too many non-chopped forest.

- not working all the good tiles in capital due to too much whipping.

I do not know if you find the early game boring, but it's the part of the game that is most important for your success. If you have the starting save (should be in the autosave folder) post it and people will show you how to play the first 75 turns.

 

[sinimusta]

I'd move 1W in the Viking map. 4 food resources are more than you can efficiently use for whipping with early game happy limits and 1W enables settling 1S of eastern clams which shares 2 cap food resources. This brings a more general point: sharing tiles between cities can be a good idea. Another reason other than sharing food would be growing cottages for a science city.

 

[lymond]

Sampsa is spot on..as usual

I should have clarified on playing a "shadow game". Post the start save - screenshot is nice too - and get advice from the start..opening moves, etc. Play short turnsets ..say..no more than 10 to 20 turns at first. As many have mentioned, the opening turns are most important. Others may play along with you so you can compare results..great way to learn

I recommend playing without huts/events for now as IMO they are not helpful to the learning process.

a couple of observations regardless:

1) you have a scout..use it, but keep initial warriors nearby to "spawnbust". "Spawnbusting" is a term used to describe using units to prevent/discourage the spawning of barbs. A single unit will spawnbust a 5X5 tile area from the tile they stand on. It's a good practice to learn to do this as barbs become more of an issue on higher levels. Eventually these warriors can become MP for your cities as you expand and pop borders making barbs less of a concern. So, in other words, your first warrior should not be miles away from your borders. You can even use a starting scout to spawnbust as well. Scouting later is important, but the most important thing is getting a view of nearby land and keeping your empire safe. Depending on map you can always have some unit go exploring further later on or in some cases send out a scout work boat, which also has the benefit on maps like this one of opening up coastal trade routes (fog blocks trade routes)

2) Scouting is important, but the most important thing is scouting your nearby areas for spots to settle. That should be the first goal. At least a 10 tile radius around your capital at first. Try to hug coast as well to remove fog so that you not only reveal seafood, but also open up possible trade routes with AIs

3) Use Slavery. Slavery allows you to whip citizen to produce things faster. As mentioned, it is the most powerful thing in the game. Whipping Settlers and workers early is a great way to turn food into hammers. You can only whip half your population at a time. So to whip 1 citizen you need 2 citizens. To whip 2 citizens you need 4. 3>6 and so on.

Early, on it is common to whip from 4>2 or 6>3 to produce settlers. Probably 4>2 for the first settler or two until you get a Granary in simply for speed. Whipping produces overflow(OF) hammers that you can put into the next item. Very early I usually whip 4>2 settler into a new worker, which produces that worker much faster. The more production you put into the Settler the more OF you get based on the number of citizen whipped, but within the range that allows you to whip 2 or 3 citizens. (advanced concept here).

Setter = 90H worth or production

2 whipped citizens = 60H instant production

So, if you 2 pop whip a citizen at 69H you will get 29H worth of OF, plus an extra from the existing production that turn

90
-69
-----
31
-60
---
29H

You've sacrificed 2 citizen, but you produced your settler much quicker and produced at least 29H of OF to use into the next item. That is almost half the production of a worker, so the worker will be produced twice as fast, but if you have good tile already like say pigs and seafood the new worker should be finished in 2 or 3 turns.

This is how you become a better player and advance levels.

Analyze your city screens, including the production bar in the top middle, the info just left of there, and the whip button. You will start to see the math I'm talking about.

(Note: you don't always have to time a whip so perfectly to max OF or hit exactly the ideal whip points like 69 or 39 for a settler, you will still get some OF if less than that. Sometimes it is just important to get that settler out as fast as possible)

Other things can be whipped too, ofc, like units and buildings. Whipping units is a great way to get out a fast army, and OF can be used into the next unit. OF can also be used to put into wonders and buildings in which you have trait or resource bonuses. Those bonuses apply to the OF hammers boosting the resulting production from them.

4) I'm hoping you did not tech Iron Working yourself. You may have popped it from a hut, but can't tell for sure. Again, this is an AI priority tech that you can usually trade for. Alpha is a better choice than IW. Rare occasions where you would tech IW yourself

5) As mentioned, always think about your best food option at the start. This should be your focus techwise if you don't already have the tech. General opening is something like Food tech>Mining>Bronze Working>Writing..then maybe Alpha. OFc, there are exceptions to this based on factors like starting techs, land, AI, maybe potential early wonders, but that is a general guideline that usually workers

6) So yeah...AH to start here with a worker first..then likely mining>BW...The wheel is often something you need early but depends on need to hook up resource asap or if you got Pottery (which is obviously a pretty important tech). Sailing is often something you can trade for as well after Alpha unless it is just key to your strategy or the map, such as Great Lighthouse.

7) Nidaros is far to coastal to bother with cottages here. Instead you so consider chopping the forest, or pre-chopping the forest. (BUG, which I see that you are using, has a "pre-chop" setting - I forget if it is on by default but should be on first BUG options screen - that will stop worker on last turn of chop) Try to time your chops or use the wisely. You can straight up chop to get the item out faster or calculate how it would correspond with the whipping I mentioned above. Chopping is another reason, along with Slavery, that BW is so good.

8) As Sampsa mentioned, you are settling too far away. Obviously, sometimes you have to move to a particular strategic resources like horse or copper if you plan to rush, but otherwise it is good to settle as compactly as possible to reduce maintenance costs. In fact, overlapping cities is actually a good thing if you can share food and resources. Sometimes your starting capital has a lot of food that can be shared. It takes a very long time for cities to be able to nearly begin to use all its BFC tiles - and often never does as game is over - so overlapping cities is not an issue.

Not really the case here do to Nidaros setup, but you have a corn/ivory city nearby that has both food and a happy resource that due to starting with hunting, you can have online quickly for more happiness...heck, depending on the location of the ivory to the food you may just settle on one of them for insta happy, although you still need road or coastal connection to cap.

9) If you are not rushing an AI early, then expansion is the focal point. Everything should be directed toward getting your first, at least, 4 cities up an running. That means workers, settlers, warriors for barbs and MP, granaries and work boats. If you settle optimal with good food in first ring, Mysticism and monuments are not even needed that early.

Again, keep tech paths focused. tech what you need to expand, improve and build economy..or kill an AI early. Same with buildings.

(oh..and for screenshots please turn on resource bubbles)

yeah, sinimusta, 1W may have been better considering there is a fish resource to the NE that is wasted by SIP (settle in place)...always something to think about when analyzing a starting position

Oh..another note on slavery. As mentioned, newer players are often put off by the unhappiness it creates. However, keep in mind that one whip produces only one unhappiness regardless of the number of citizens whipped. This is why it is often best to whip multiple citizens at a time. You create one happiness but removed citizens as well - new citizens obviously create more unhappiness - so whipping more citizens give you more time to recover. Granaries increase the speed of city growth, which hopefully you have started to figure out by now (we can go into more details on granary mechanics later). This allows you to make more effective use of slavery and whip more often. So obviously, you want to look at ways to increase happiness as soon as you can via resource, resource trades, religion, buidlings and civics. Regardless, if you find early on that you are growing too fast and generating unhappiness, there are simple things you can do. Adjust tiles to work more hammers than food to slow growth. Simply build a settler or worker as cities do not grow. Or run specialists like scientists early, which is something you want to do in your cap as soon as you can to get out that Academy. You don't want your cities unhappy..you are basically paying for a citizen that is doing nothing...so try to avoid it. However, also not that an unhappy citizen is still as citizen and can be whipped too

Lastly, there are better leaders then others, better traits than others, but for the purpose of learning it really does not matter. It's ultimately how you play the game that matters. Still, if you want to know what traits are the better ones think Financial, Philosophical, Expansive and Charismatic. Bad traits = Aggressive and Protective. I probably value starting techs of the civilization just as much as leader traits with combos of Agriculture, Mining and/or The Wheel being preferred.