Not sure what I'm doing wrong?

[BLACKcOPstRIPPa]

I have no clue how the AI on the second easiest difficulty is completely whooping me but they are lol. I usually will get into first in literacy at the start, and will have a super low ranked army, like 8 out of 8 players on demograhics but can fight my way out of a war ahead if one starts, but always tend to collapse later in game, and not tons later. I have not made it past classical and remained competitive with the AI. Will end up near if not last in science, my army is super small and gold is the biggest issue of all. I can't maintain large enough army to win a war by the end of second era and unhappiness grows uncontrollably. If I try to delete units and buildings I am not super heavily relying on to provide happiness, I end up with no food or production basically which hurts tons.
I have no clue where to begin to start to turn things around, but how do you keep up with AI in tech etc at least mid pack till everything else comes into play?

 

[Legen]

Chances are that you're neglecting culture; in VP, culture unlocks a lot of sources of extra yields, and you're expected to try to fill three social policies trees before getting an Ideology. It's very different from vanilla civ5, where you mostly focus on food + science, quite ignore the medieval trees and prioritizes Rationalism due to how much powerful it is compared to everything else prior to Ideologies.

We can give you better tips if you give more details of which civs, policies and strategies you're trying. Build order in your cities as well, but that changes a lot for some civs.

 

[BLACKcOPstRIPPa]

Well I just random and try to play to that civs strengths best I can.
Average build order is council, well, walls over barracks to handle crime issues early. I will try to get granary as well when a city is small and build up pop fast as possible and then sell the extra buildings thats not needed to try to keep gold coming in.

I find either I fall behind in pop from watching happiness and trying to keep it around 0 to 1 or I end up falling behind in tech because I grow tons, but then can't make enough money to afford the buildings and everything else. Should I be ignoring some of the happiness areas at the start? Like focus culture and deence building for happiness and let cities take a negative 2 to 3 happiness each while expanding?

 

[Legen]

It's not that you should ignore happiness, it's more that you're trying to raise your population too fast. A city can't produce more unhappiness than it has citizens; if unhappiness is growing out of control, it's because your population is growing too fast compared to your sources of /// in that city. You need to tone down your early growth.

You also need to give a bigger priority to Culture and Faith, as social policies and Pantheons are the biggest sources of yields early on. More than extra population and buildings, for the most part.

Further advice depends on your civ and which Social tree you'll choose. As a general description, here's what you can expect from Ancient Era policies:

Tradition: Tall-oriented gameplay, generates a lot of Culture and Food, extremely focused on the Capital. Needs few additional cities, and they will develop slowly. Struggles a lot with Production, Gold and raising an army beyond its defensive needs.

Progress: Somewhere between Tall and Wide (called "Thick" in this forum), generates a lot of early Science and has a respectable mix of Food, Production and Gold. Struggles a lot with early Culture, very hard to pull off without an early source of culture from your civ's uniques, nearby luxuries or a Culture-oriented Pantheon. Tends to have a decent army, enough for a contained offensive war. Strong lategame Production for buildings.

Authority: Wide gameplay, including early expansionist wars. Has a lot of early Production to use on military units and settlers, and a good mix of early Culture, Food and Gold (in bursts, rather than per turn, which makes it hard to gauge without experience). Struggles with Science and relies on wars to keep producing yields for your empire, otherwise falls off as the game progresses. Only tree with actual combat bonuses.

Build order changes a lot based on the chosen social tree. Authority focus heavily on units, way more than the other trees, because it's through them that you actually get yields, and doesn't bother getting into negative gold per turn. Tradition is the one closer to how you're playing, except that it tries to keep up in food and Science after it's unlocked, not before. Progress's build order revolves a lot around your civ's uniques and your pantheon, due to its struggle with Culture.

 

[BLACKcOPstRIPPa]

I tend to go the progress tree, that would explain how I can compete with science more early on and drop off later.

Is it viable early game to have cities focus 1 happiness thing or another, like build monument for culture in one city while not in another to try to get poverty down in the second city but get boredom down in the first?

 

[Legen]

It's not "viable" to focus like that, you actually want a balanced development in your cities; there's not much city specialization in VP, outside the idea of Tradition's Capital carrying the empire, having cities with guilds having more focus on food (specialists consume more food than usual, increasingly as you advance through eras) or a city with Heroic Epic (Morale promotion) being your preferred one for training units.

Progress is not a tree I recommend when beginning if you're not going for a civ that works particularly well with it. Problem is that the tree's main strength lies in the lategame, as it gives you a really solid infrastructure later on; Tradition and Authority cities tend to fall behind compared to Progress cities in later eras. For the actual early game, you need to be way more picky with your pantheon, terrain, prioritize monuments and focus more on culture-enabling techs, which comes at late Classical Era (Drama and Poetry, Philosophy).

 

[Workerspam]

Well I just random and try to play to that civs strengths best I can.
Average build order is council, well, walls over barracks to handle crime issues early. I will try to get granary as well when a city is small and build up pop fast as possible and then sell the extra buildings thats not needed to try to keep gold coming in.

I find either I fall behind in pop from watching happiness and trying to keep it around 0 to 1 or I end up falling behind in tech because I grow tons, but then can't make enough money to afford the buildings and everything else. Should I be ignoring some of the happiness areas at the start? Like focus culture and deence building for happiness and let cities take a negative 2 to 3 happiness each while expanding?

Monuments should be one of the first buildings in your build order (not sure if you forgot to list it); I'd advise just making it first until you get a better handle of the mechanics. Policies cure a lot of ills.

I don't know of any strategy that relies on selling buildings; I have to think that strategy is doing more harm than good. A lot of buildings that don't directly increase yields that effect happiness will reduce happiness needs (example: Aqueducts don't yield gold but will reduce poverty needs) so you may be making happiness issues worse. If you find you need more early gold build markets, send external trade routes, research currency to build villages, take gold yielding policies, etc.

I also tend to grow my cities quickly; big cities are fun! My build order takes my empire happiness into consideration. If I'm swimming in happiness I can focus more on growth and production buildings to turbo start my city's expansion; I'm generally not too concerned if my city happiness is -5 as long as my empire happiness is over 10. If happiness is an issue in my empire I'll adjust and get my happiness yields infrastructure in place (i.e. barracks, walls, markets, libraries) prior to growth/production.

 

[tu_79]

VP is different from vanilla in that you cannot neglect anything. You may focus on something, like science if you wish, but you can't neglect any other aspect.

You'll always need a bit of culture, a bit of production, growth and science when your happiness allows, gold for happiness and trade, an army worth of the name. Regarding religion, you can prioritize faith and be a founder, or you can usurp the religion of your neighbors, but you need to be doing things absolutely well to ignore religion.

Make city states allies even if you are not trying to win diplo victory. Work cultural specialists even if you are not trying to win cultural. Always use all of your trade routes. Use archeologists too.

In a couple of games you'll get the hang of it.

 

[matlajs]

On your place i would learn for now just one policy strategy and definetely not a tradition. From my perspective, this tree demand much more skills to handle your small empire in overall balanced shape. Anyway happiness wise. Try to connect your cities as fast as your gold situation allows to you. settle decent and balanced locations(production/food)- cities on tundra, which may initially look like absolute joke and last place to settle, may be far better than other ones, because deer is godly good source of everything how game progresses. not to mention that some mapscripts love to place there late game strategic resources(tons of them). Try to explore as much as possible to find out all the natural wonders( happiness for free). Try to befriend at least one nearby city state and send there all trade routes( it yields nice amount of culture and science along with gold), unless you can reach run away civ. as mentioned above, try to get your own religion( usually it requires you to build shrine first in new cities) and if you will be unsuccessfull, try to get one from neigbours . if you can choose from multiple opponents religions, try to pick one, which benefits followers most and defend it. happiness is quite a complex mechanic in this mod, which you have to absorb through few games and get how it works. Everything in this mod tie with everything. If you have plenty of food arround you, but less production, you need to either lot of gold for investing or spend some great engineers for manufacture to compensate this. Infrastructure here is criticaly important. Production is most important yield here, because without it you can not realize anything. You can build up as many buildings decreasing needs for particular yield as much as you want, but without that yield you never going to rid of unhappiness from that. That remind me let's plays of Marbozir, who did exactly those kind of mistakes. You should always want to be competitive with the others, so build order should be somewhat intuitive. You want a science? Library is needed. you want a culture? you have to spread your guilds as quickly as possible. you need more production? you have to send a workers to improve your land and build up things like wattermill, forge and also arena(for reasons). food may be a problem for some cities, but it is probably less important happiness wise, than not being able build up infrastructure. Also, do not forget, that unhappiness is countered by happiness. Exchange your luxuries with others, even with loss if needed.