You could also keep the GA for building factories later
Noble Shadow game - Washington
- Thread starter dudey1234
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Can't windmills only be built on hill tiles? Should I build windmills where I can and watermills everywhere else?
Also can I build workshops on plains tiles and work them? Seems sucky with one food per tile
Workshop on plains are fine once you run out of grass tiles to improve. Eventually the city will grow to work them if you have some watermills or some other food-positive tiles. Note that any piece of river can only have a watermill on one of its two sides.
Could you show the diplo and tech screens? Justinian at 18 cities is a bit concerning. Who is he at war with? Where is he at in tech? Is Alex at war with anyone?
You're much stronger than Alex so you should attack. But he is plotting. You should scout him to see where his stack is (going). And you should also scout Justinian's wars. At 18 cities he is the equivalent of an AI a few difficulty levels up.
Right after Alex capitulates Liz, he should have a wounded stack of troops in a conquered city (city would be revolting and thus not have defense %). If Alex's stack is in a city under revolt (and thus with no defensive %) and your stack is healthy, this is the perfect time to eliminate the bulk of his troops.
If you take enough of Alex's cities, Liz should break off as a vassal and you can vassal both of them. Take all the good cities first though. Both Coventry and York seem good for workshops. You can keep your developed towns while focusing the production infrastructures / workshops in the conquered cities. You need at least 6 good production cities and the best ones have plenty of grasslands and ideally are on a river (for the levee).
By the time you're done you should have close to Justinian's city count, and he is not ahead in tech, so the situation doesn't seem too worrying. It's funny that Mansa is the tech leader with 5 cities... You should put all your espionage on Mansa to keep track of his research (he's a particular AI who will trade techs as even if he has a monopoly on them). If for example he researches Steel for you, it would be great. Did you already get Chemistry with trade?
Also for tech trading, you should sell Education to Justinian and Liberalism to the others. These are old and harmless techs and it's worth it for the few hundred gold.
You should probably be in Free Religion for the faster science rate. You could also try to get some source of stone and build Moai Statues in Washington. That will allow you to get more natural production there without slavery. You want the capital to get a forge, university, and factory eventually to take advantage of the bureaucracy production bonuses.
Talking about wonders, you have a monopoly on Nationalism and have a source of marble, so you can build the Taj Mahal whenever for a free golden age. That golden age can be used to do a brief switch to slavery to whip universities in the commerce-rich, production-poor cities, and then return to caste. As we discussed, you can wait until most of your cities are fully built up for maximal value, but if another AI gets Nationalism you might want to get on it faster. Just use your best production city.
If you take enough of Alex's cities, Liz should break off as a vassal and you can vassal both of them. Take all the good cities first though. Both Coventry and York seem good for workshops. You can keep your developed towns while focusing the production infrastructures / workshops in the conquered cities. You need at least 6 good production cities and the best ones have plenty of grasslands and ideally are on a river (for the levee).
By the time you're done you should have close to Justinian's city count, and he is not ahead in tech, so the situation doesn't seem too worrying. It's funny that Mansa is the tech leader with 5 cities... You should put all your espionage on Mansa to keep track of his research (he's a particular AI who will trade techs as even if he has a monopoly on them). If for example he researches Steel for you, it would be great. Did you already get Chemistry with trade?
Also for tech trading, you should sell Education to Justinian and Liberalism to the others. These are old and harmless techs and it's worth it for the few hundred gold.
You should probably be in Free Religion for the faster science rate. You could also try to get some source of stone and build Moai Statues in Washington. That will allow you to get more natural production there without slavery. You want the capital to get a forge, university, and factory eventually to take advantage of the bureaucracy production bonuses.
Talking about wonders, you have a monopoly on Nationalism and have a source of marble, so you can build the Taj Mahal whenever for a free golden age. That golden age can be used to do a brief switch to slavery to whip universities in the commerce-rich, production-poor cities, and then return to caste. As we discussed, you can wait until most of your cities are fully built up for maximal value, but if another AI gets Nationalism you might want to get on it faster. Just use your best production city.
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Btw, I noticed that many of your cereals aren't irritated. For the corns it's a bit late now, as it would require sacrificing towns, but the wheat near Philadelphia can be irrigated by building a chain of plains farms to it, starting from Hastings. Also don't forget to build levees in your river cities.
Btw I'm not sure about free religion, why not stay in Theocracy, and quickly go Organized Religion during the GA to get the factories out?
Also, when another civ is at war with your target and is conquering cities, you should always try to bribe them out of it, so that they don't cap your target. I'm sure Alex would have accepted a tech in return for making peace.
Btw I'm not sure about free religion, why not stay in Theocracy, and quickly go Organized Religion during the GA to get the factories out?
Also, when another civ is at war with your target and is conquering cities, you should always try to bribe them out of it, so that they don't cap your target. I'm sure Alex would have accepted a tech in return for making peace.
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floydmcw
Prince
Thanks for posting the save, just finished T285 space win. Hadn't played cIV in awhile, was fun.
Expanded peacefully to 9 cities on the mainland and 5 on the island. Killed Alex with cuirs (he was being obnoxious), then upgraded to cav and took out Lizzy.
Expanded peacefully to 9 cities on the mainland and 5 on the island. Killed Alex with cuirs (he was being obnoxious), then upgraded to cav and took out Lizzy.
i didn't have enough defenders and I should paid attention, 2 riflemen were not enough for alex's main stack
a pen-dragon
Prince
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The thing with incomplete wars, and this case in particular, is that you have gained a few cities, but these cities are swamped in foreign culture that will take a lot of effort to push back.
Say you take coventry and nottingham, this would remove cultural pressure on london and hastings. This would also free up a part of your garrisons to join your main army. A city in the backlines only needs one unit.
To decide whether to continue the war, what units and how many of them do you have? what do they have? did you kill alex's army?
This still seems to be longbows against rifles (soon infantry!). If that is the case, and you are lacking units, then you did not build enough. General advice on this: do not stop building units too early. Granted that is very vague, and difficult to judge. For starters you might have difficulties to say if you have enough troops to finish your wars. That is perfectly normal - but your reaction should then be to continue building units until you are reasonably certain you have enough.
Trying to do many things at once (e.g. war, building infrastructure, teching ...) usually means you divert attention from one of them. Especially for wars this is dangerous, as that will draw your war out, increasing the negative effects of a war (unit cost, danger from enemy units, war weariness) without getting you what you want: more land.
regarding your economy, it is doing too well. You are in a war, possibly have too few units, and can sustain 50% research? You have the econ tech you need (communism), so recovery will just be to let your cities grow. Your new cities could arguably be building units, instead of infrastructure. Your core cities should be whipping, especially those that are unhappy.
One other thing: some city (preferably one with good production) should build a workboat for portland.
One thing that you must do is to look for resource trades from the other continents, especially for happiness resources. You need them badly.
Say you take coventry and nottingham, this would remove cultural pressure on london and hastings. This would also free up a part of your garrisons to join your main army. A city in the backlines only needs one unit.
To decide whether to continue the war, what units and how many of them do you have? what do they have? did you kill alex's army?
This still seems to be longbows against rifles (soon infantry!). If that is the case, and you are lacking units, then you did not build enough. General advice on this: do not stop building units too early. Granted that is very vague, and difficult to judge. For starters you might have difficulties to say if you have enough troops to finish your wars. That is perfectly normal - but your reaction should then be to continue building units until you are reasonably certain you have enough.
Trying to do many things at once (e.g. war, building infrastructure, teching ...) usually means you divert attention from one of them. Especially for wars this is dangerous, as that will draw your war out, increasing the negative effects of a war (unit cost, danger from enemy units, war weariness) without getting you what you want: more land.
regarding your economy, it is doing too well. You are in a war, possibly have too few units, and can sustain 50% research? You have the econ tech you need (communism), so recovery will just be to let your cities grow. Your new cities could arguably be building units, instead of infrastructure. Your core cities should be whipping, especially those that are unhappy.
One other thing: some city (preferably one with good production) should build a workboat for portland.
One thing that you must do is to look for resource trades from the other continents, especially for happiness resources. You need them badly.
Optimally you take out the enemy army first, to reduce the chance for counter attacks. Only here that will be of mediocre usefulness as alex is a mad unit spammer who will even attack at relatively low odds, thus posing a greater threat. Also it is better to take cities quickly. With the kind of advantage you have, attacking with only cavs would probably have been better (in this case they are maybe slightly better than cuirs, but cuirs would have worked really well too.), as they are much faster. Granted, you can not bombard, but a cav (or cuir) attacking a city with maybe 60% cultural defence only defended by longbows and pikes gets good odds already
I'm mostly really curious about your scouting. You were 1.6 his strength which normally should be ample. You could have taken out his main stack in 1 go, often it can make sense to wait for it to come into your territory. After taking out the main stack, you can clean up the rest with relative ease. Where was his stack before declaring war?
Edit: I also feel like you don't need to post every single city screen anymore. Now we've reached a stage of the game where you need to start looking outward more, at what the others are doing. So maybe some bigger screenshots of parts of your empire, with a visible score board, tech and diplo screens, demographics etc. Did you manage to figure out what's going on with Justinian's wars?
Edit #2: when it comes to siege wars, you don't want to take any city at the first opportunity if you don't have enough units with moves that you can put in there. It can make sense to just wait for a turn, let him reinforce, and attacking again. This way you're essentially farming your opponent, slowly grinding him down. Once it's safe, you can take the city.
Edit: I also feel like you don't need to post every single city screen anymore. Now we've reached a stage of the game where you need to start looking outward more, at what the others are doing. So maybe some bigger screenshots of parts of your empire, with a visible score board, tech and diplo screens, demographics etc. Did you manage to figure out what's going on with Justinian's wars?
Edit #2: when it comes to siege wars, you don't want to take any city at the first opportunity if you don't have enough units with moves that you can put in there. It can make sense to just wait for a turn, let him reinforce, and attacking again. This way you're essentially farming your opponent, slowly grinding him down. Once it's safe, you can take the city.
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I didn't check haha I probably should have before declaring war (I think he had some catapults, horse archers, and a maceman?) I wanted to take advantage of the fact that his troops were injured
I also did not do this, I was kinda tunnel visioned on the war, but I think Asoka and Mehmed made peace during the round
Thrasybulos
King
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- 704
Now, that's a novel approach to me.
Is that to help with defense? Invaders would be cornered, then wheatled down?
My advice? Do a GA now, build factories and coal plants, tech to flight, build about 10 carriers with 30 fighters on them and enough transports, infantry, destroyers and battleships (about 100 units total including all ships) and take out the other continent, starting with Asoka. Also switch to Rep and Org Rel during the GA and go Police State and Theocracy (you need Theology) on the last turn. Start building infantry whenever, and/or upgrade your strong units.
