Noob needs help: hit plateau at Prince difficulty

[Gumbolt]

I did a run through from your 1ad save. Really didn't do much.
Took Sumerian capital with your mini stack.
Whiped 6-7 catapults and took his other city. Settled the island city.
Attack SB with catapults and phants.
Teched to edu/rifles/Mil tradition. Got cavalry and rifles by 1300ad.
Spammed cottages. Built the key wonders.
3x golden age. 1 with TM wonder.

Attacked toku who was Ragnar vassal. Ai not yet at muskets and 30 cav / 15 rifles is too much for them. I can draft 3 rifle a turn.

I don't know how you got to 1700ad+ without rifles or cavalry. That is over 400 years difference. I had Edu by 1150ad.

I had all AI at friendly till i attacked Ragnar. He has 8 cities left and i am on 57% land. So almost over.

Viking capitulated 1390ad and I won domination.

 

[pattison1100]

Why have you not got rifles or infantry by now? You had such a great empire. Your game play still needs work here as the basics are failing you.. This is winnable but how you got here is not good.
Those island cities are suffering colonial costs. One of them has upkeep of 36 gold a turn. Another 32 gold. You can whip courthouses.

You probably should be whipping grenadiers everywhere and heading for cannons. Till you have a stack that can beat Mao's stack. In 4-5 turns you could have 30+ grenadiers. Then 10-15 cannons could follow. He only has one stack which will beat you hands down but it can only move 1 tile a turn. Your current army is not going to take any cities here. Might as well send it home.

If you are at war pretty much every city should be whipping/producing units here. Longbow will not help you here. You are missing quite a few techs too. No literature for Heroic Epic either.

At present if he offers peace I would take it till you actually have an army that can take cities. You have over 40% of land.Just no army. You can ignore the other Ai stack as 2-3 units will not take down grenadier defences.

Religion/ diplomacy is something to work on but too late here.

I've tried to continue to see what happens. I lost Tokyo almost immediately (to Mao), then I saw that huge stack coming towards Uruk so I rather left the city empty and withrew.
I held out in Birka quite well, but then those "ignorable" stacks from 3 nations added up and I also lost that one to Sitting Bull.
Then there was a chance for peace ("mercyful soldiers" story), and I took it. So -3 cities, not so horrible, and I managed to smuggle my Trebs out of Birka before they also fell so now they are Cannons.

I whipped 30 Grenadiers, but my issue is that this could still not beat Mao's stack in Uruk, as he kept adding to it in the meantime.
If attacked Toku instead, I could take some towns, but at the same time Mao would go north from Uruk, while SB and Ragnar are attacking me from north and east. Too much.
They are all vassals of Mao still. I don't see the point in attacking as of yet.
My idea is that I put plenty of machine guns in my border towns, and then in the meantime I push research to develop nukes... Then I'd nuke the south, and try to take it, which would probably be enough gain to be in a winning position.
Ideally I'd rather move one of the vassals out of their bond and then either team up or conquer them, but it doesn't seem doable.

 

[pattison1100]

I did a run through from your 1ad save. Really didn't do much.
Took Sumerian capital with your mini stack.
Whiped 6-7 catapults and took his other city. Settled the island city.
Attack SB with catapults and phants.
Teched to edu/rifles/Mil tradition. Got cavalry and rifles by 1300ad.
Spammed cottages. Built the key wonders.
3x golden age. 1 with TM wonder.

Attacked toku who was Ragnar vassal. Ai not yet at muskets and 30 cav / 15 rifles is too much for them. I can draft 3 rifle a turn.

I don't know how you got to 1700ad+ without rifles or cavalry. That is over 400 years difference. I had Edu by 1150ad.

I had all AI at friendly till i attacked Ragnar. He has 8 cities left and i am on 57% land. So almost over.

Viking capitulated 1390ad and I won domination.

You are again in "See I am good and you suck" mode, which doesn't help. Just letting you know. The fact that it's easy for you that have done it 1000 times doesn't make it easy for me that is doing it maybe the 10th time. Listing your achievements is no advice.

"Your big issue here is lack of direction and ambition." (no, it's a lack of experience)
"I really didn't do much and won."
"I don't know how you got to 1700AD without rifles."

Honestly, I think I know why you come to these forums...
So here you go: You're an amazing player!! Bravo!

But please abstain from "helping me" going forward. I'd rather keep sucking at it. Thanks.

 

[Lexicus]

You are again in "See I am good and you suck" mode, which doesn't help. Just letting you know. The fact that it's easy for you that have done it 1000 times doesn't make it easy for me that is doing it maybe the 10th time. Listing your achievements is no advice.

"Your big issue here is lack of direction and ambition." (no, it's a lack of experience)
"I really didn't do much and won."
"I don't know how you got to 1700AD without rifles."

Honestly, I think I know why you come to these forums...
So here you go: You're an amazing player!! Bravo!

But please abstain from "helping me" going forward. I'd rather keep sucking at it. Thanks.

You should want to know how he did it! What I'll say regarding warfare is that the key units are siege units. Siege units causing collateral damage to the enemy stacks are how you win wars. I haven't loaded your saves as I'm typically posting on mobile but from what you've described it sounds like what you essentially want to do is defend until you have teched Steel for cannons, then you can mass-whip cannons and that should pretty much take care of all your problems. Cannons are extremely strong against all pre-gunpowder units and will do well, with some losses, against the likes of grenadiers and curassiers. Grenadiers or curassiers backed by cannons will crush everything pretty easily as long as the AIs don't have rifles.

 

[pigswill]

I also played forwards from your 100ad save.

Spoiler :

100ad Peace with Gilgamesh, got IW and myst for peace. Cancelled all builds and converted cities to building research, research 10% also hired scientists where possible. Workers roadbuilding, clearing jungles on calendar resources. Opened trade routes where available.
200ad Calendar in, workers start plantations.
300ad. Currency. Build wealth instead of research, increase research slider. (Libraries get 25% from research slider, 0% bonus from building research).
Pick up Monarchy (and pre-reqs) in trade (delayed tech trading until currency to get cash added to tech trades). Adopt HR 375ad, more happiness.
400ad CoL. Whip courthouses asap (cheap w organised).
Diverted to music beeline ,Music ?640ad, GA from music.
Settled city on marble, started building MoM and Glib.
Got GS 560ad, bulbed philosophy.
Completed Glib 720, MoM 740.
Researched CS 740ad, switched to buro.
Decided that I would aim for Cuirassier rush so building stables and HE in Amsterdam (highest hammer city) to stockpile HAs for later upgrade to cuirs.
800ad started nationalism for Taj before starting on lib beeline, free GAge from Taj and waiting to get another GS for education bulb.

 

[Gumbolt]

Having massive rants when people point out issues is not going to help your game here. I was trying to work out what had gone so wrong. Please treat those trying to help you with respect.

I agree playing on the 1760ad save is not going to really help your game play here.

Tech order is a massive thing here. You can't skip out techs like currency, civil service or education. Calendar too for resources. Music/Lit for wonders and free great artist to start a golden age.

Civil service is such a big tech as the bureaucracy civic gives +50% on commerce in the capital and 50% bonus on hammer. Which can add 35 or so commerce to your capital. Which can add 40-50 science a turn at 100% science rate .If running wealth that can be an extra 5-10+ gold a turn from the 50% bonus.
Same for Education. I am guessing you are not bulbing techs with great people here?

You missed a big trick on Codes of law with such high upkeep here in your cities too.

Skipping music for a guaranteed free great artist. Which allows you to use him for a golden age. Great library with Literature is great if you have marble.

You just seem to of skipped most of the tech tree here and beelined grenadiers? Most here will skip machinery line as it stop you bulbing liberalism.

 

[pattison1100]

Not looking bad.

 

[Gumbolt]

Probably would of switched to a hammer economy but somewhat recovered. Good luck!

 

[lymond]

Moderator Action: Everyone please be nice. Folks are only here to help and to learn.

 

[pattison1100]

You should want to know how he did it! What I'll say regarding warfare is that the key units are siege units. Siege units causing collateral damage to the enemy stacks are how you win wars. I haven't loaded your saves as I'm typically posting on mobile but from what you've described it sounds like what you essentially want to do is defend until you have teched Steel for cannons, then you can mass-whip cannons and that should pretty much take care of all your problems. Cannons are extremely strong against all pre-gunpowder units and will do well, with some losses, against the likes of grenadiers and curassiers. Grenadiers or curassiers backed by cannons will crush everything pretty easily as long as the AIs don't have rifles.

Well, that's what I did, more or less, and thankfully it worked.
I first whipped a ton of Grenadiers. Then I beelined to Railroad to have Machine Guns and a fast way to get my units where I need them to be. When I had Steel I started producing Cannons and upgraded by Trebs.
Then I produced MG's and Cannons in parallel, adding the Cannons to the Grenadier stack, which I used to attack the south. I'm 1 city away from taking the entire southern shore. Managed to grind up the major stack of Mao which drained him severely. He brought another one later on but that was about half and bounced off.
My normal attack method is to send a spy to the city, make a revolt, then attack with Cannons (now Artillery) for Collateral (that's what I'm boosting for experience on them), and then I go in with the Grenadiers with little losses.
In the meantime both SB and Ragnar freed themselves from vassalhood of Mao and made peace with me. They weren't able to get anywhere close to taking anything from me before that as I had significant Machine Gun numbers in the border cities towards them.
I just completed the Manhattan Project, so I think I'm winning the arms race.
Culturally I have a primitive empire, but this game ended up being more about military than culture. I still don't have some of the early cultural techs but apparently getting better guns was more important here, as all the other civs teamed up against me before.

 

[pigswill]

Part 2. 1240ad.

Spoiler :

800ad+ finish HE, build HAs in Amsterdam.
1010 Nationalism. Start Taj.
1040 Paper.
1050 Launch GA (music GA). Switch to OR, start spreading Islam for later Theology.
1060 Education (part bulbed)
1050 Theology
1090 Gunpowder.
1140 Lib>Miltrad. Upgrade HAs. Adopt theocracy. Start whipping cuirs. Dow Gilgamesh.
1180 Finish Taj, next GA (12T w MoM).
1240. Destroy Gilgamesh. 41 Cuirs, looking for next target.

A fairly standard miltrad beeline, better players would have got it earlier.Time to cuirstomp the world.

Part 3. Victory 1470ad.

Spoiler :

Straightforwards.Built/whipped cuirs, built some wealth to research rifling.

Annihilated Japan 1290ad, capped Vikings 1360ad, capped China 1420ad,

1420 finished rifling and started upgrading/whipping cavalry.

Invaded SB, hit dom limit before he capped.

Domination victory. 122k.