On strike - help!

[whizkid]

In several recent games, my subjects went on strike, chanting: "We want dsalfjl, we want alsdkf". (I don't know what they are chanting, as I can't make it out.) Then I am screwed. My science drops down to 0%. I am not making money, and sometimes go into deficit, causing units to be disbanded each turn.

I have no idea what they want. I will surely give it to them, although without any money and science, it is quite hard.

What are they striking about? Any ideas on how to prevent this, and how to fix it afterwards?

 

[Cam_H]

Strike? is one of many, many threads that can be accessed when you put the word "strike" into the search facility on this forum with the criteria to search titles only within the Civ4 forums.

 

[gunnerxtr]

I had this happen to me recently in a game with the Aztecs. Strikes happen when you have no money to support your troops. So for me it was a matter of over expansion and too much military. So once my troops were disbanded I did everything I could to get currency. (currency gives you +1 trade routes per city, and allows you to build markets I believe). So once I did that I was able to build my economy back up. So, if you situation is like mine you need to be cautious of early overexpansion.

 

[whizkid]

Strike? is one of many, many threads that can be accessed when you put the word "strike" into the search facility on this forum with the criteria to search titles only within the Civ4 forums.

Appreciate the reminder. However, after searching for 'strike', and wading through the hundreds of posts using the military form of the word 'strike', I was only able to find two decent posts regarding a general population strike.

These posts helped me only somewhat. In my situation:

- my income did not slowly go to zero. It seemed to jump down all at once, with my science slider going to zero. (No happiness slider yet.)

- At the lower technology point that I am at in the game, I can disband troops, bud in most of my cities there is nothing I can build besides troops. I have no option yet to set any of my cities to build income, research or culture.

So, I am stuck building troops in most of my cities, and have no other choice. Any ideas?

 

[curtadams]

Your science slider drops when you run out of money and you need to increase your money flow. Normally this keeps you from disbanding if you forget to lower your science slider. In your case your expenses had gotten so high that even on 100% gold you can't pay them. You had been paying them earlier from saved cash; you generally get a few hundred in early exploration. Most likely this is city expenses. Every city you own costs gold upkeep and the more cities you have the more EVERY city costs.

Your outs are to: a) get rid of cities b) disband units or b) get more income. You can increase gold by switching citizen to tiles that get more commerce - river squares, cottages, or certain resources. You can gift cities to the AI sometimes or leave them undefended and let barbarians take them. Generically, though, if you build too many cities you can't really fix things. Even being driven down to 30% or so will often cause you to lose. If you can't fix things by disbanding you should probably restart.

A good rule of them is that expenses shouldn't exceed 1/3 of income. If they do, stop building cities and build more cottages. The tech Currency is a big boost; so is Open Borders and trade routes with at least one other civ. Courthouses (and the Forbidden City and Versailles) reduce city upkeep although they often aren't great investments until well into the middle ages. Longterm cottages are the best way to make money but they take quite a while to mature.

Civ4 is very different from most 4X games in that bigger is not always better.

 

[Mutineer]

I would disagree with some of previous poster sad.
If you fall to 20% you are still fine.

Your expances raise up as more cities you take come out of resistance or you building cities.
Follow advice is valid:

Switch you population to work commercial ties.
Try to open border with some one to have foreign trade routes.
Disband units you do not need.

Expancion is a ballancing act and one of keys to victory is to ballance your economic development with your expnasion. As your ssities become more productive they could support new unproductive cities. As you getting more technologies you can make your cities more productive.
Some wanders help you economy.

 

[Syndrome Zed]

- my income did not slowly go to zero. It seemed to jump down all at once, with my science slider going to zero. (No happiness slider yet.)

- At the lower technology point that I am at in the game, I can disband troops, bud in most of my cities there is nothing I can build besides troops. I have no option yet to set any of my cities to build income, research or culture.

So, I am stuck building troops in most of my cities, and have no other choice. Any ideas?

Yep, too much horizontal expansion, not enough vertical. You built too many cities too fast, without giving your core cities time to develop enough of an economy to support the expansion. I've never been at a point where all I could build was troops - AFAIK the only way to reach that point early in the game is to over-expand, since most basic techs will give you at least another building or two to develop in that time period.

Your only hope, and it's a hope in the sense that you'll almost definitely not be able to win the game (digging out of a hole like this will put you waaay back) but may recover enough to at least give yourself a lesson in how to stimulate your economy, would be to try and declare war on a neighbor - suicide runs against his/her cities will deplete your extra military in a hurry, and your cities sound underdeveloped enough that war weariness won't be a factor. Pillage whatever you can find, and if you do manage to capture a city even better, but that'll net you a little gold for a turn or two. Make sure you raze the city, though. You could even potentially leave some of your outer cities undefended, and let the neighbor take care of them for you. That would get you back on track pretty fast. If you get some gold from the war, take some of your citizens from the commerce tiles in your two or three top cities, and put them on "extra food" tiles for as long as you can. It doesn't sound like you have enough citizens to generate commerce in your cities right now, so even moving them to high commerce tiles may not help much. But if you can get your core cities, esp. your capital, to develop faster (ie grow), your commerce will grow rapidly. Between that and the war, you should be back in the black at a low rate fairly quickly, but it'll be a long time before you're doing more than just scraping by probably.

 

[bippukt]

- At the lower technology point that I am at in the game, I can disband troops, bud in most of my cities there is nothing I can build besides troops. I have no option yet to set any of my cities to build income, research or culture.

So, I am stuck building troops in most of my cities, and have no other choice. Any ideas?

How on earth did you manage to get to such a situation? I have had my science slider automatically adjusted several times, but never have I come to a situation where I couldn't build anything but troops. Don't take it otherwise, but IMHO that's also quite an achievement (when done unintentionally). I didn't even know it was possible. Now I have another reason not to expand like a maniac

 

[whizkid]

Well, I have way too many troops. What sucks is that they are 'sword & arrow' types, while my neighbor (only one) has musketmen. I am already in the 1700's and desperately backwards. I will disband many troops to save on cash, even though right now, I can only build new ones. For every new one I build, I will disband an existing, more primative if possible, troop.

I have a couple of cities in the middle of my half of the continent, that I can do without. This will still prevent anyone from taking over my expansion land. My score is still relatively high, however. I am playing the current CIV4 GOTM, so I am still going to do what I can to try to improve, without going suicidal. (I have yet to be in a war.) If I can keep my profit up, I can get back to science and perhaps get a money-making technology. My next door neighbor and I are the same religion. I have already asked him to gift me a technology (for a friend), and he did so. I guess he felt sorry at my backwardness.

I will also concentrate my workers on monetary growth, as opposed to population expansion. I just wish I was at the level where I could put cities on 'research' as opposed to building new buildings or units. (And I have no buildings to build.) What technology allows this?

 

[curtadams]

Well, I have way too many troops. What sucks is that they are 'sword & arrow' types, while my neighbor (only one) has musketmen. I am already in the 1700's and desperately backwards.

Dude, you've lost. You're just unimaginably behind if you're facing computer musketmen and you can't even build research (I forget exactly which tech gives it but it's fairly early) It's masochism to try to dig out of this hole, and not really all that instructive since you have to do weird things like abandoning cities and mass disbands that don't have much to do with how you win. I don't see how even the most aggressive approach can save you anyway. By this point you need lots and lots of cottages developed up to towns; that will take you 100 turns of waiting for them to develop. The strategy it sounds like you took would work in any earlier civ but the rules were changed with Civ4 precisely to stop this kind of thing.

Start a new game, at a fairly low difficulty level, and apply the suggestions in this thread. You do need a strong military but pay attention to getting your cities large, without any unhappy people and with at most few sick people, and to technologies that permit booster buildings like libraries, markets, universities, grocers, etc. Civ4 is a balancing act and you have to learn to do a lot of things at once.

[edit: I admire your sticktoittiveness; I just think in this case there are better ways to learn than by toughing it out]

 

[Mutineer]

Alphavit let one to build research.

 

[cabert]

no alphabet in 1700AD?
no currency in 1700AD?
And you expect to win the game ?


Suicide all your units on an enemy.
Pillage everything in sight
Raze every city you manage to take

then die...

 

[whizkid]

Start a new game, at a fairly low difficulty level

Why at a low difficulty level? Do you think I am some sort of CIV noob?

Of the few things I may know about CIV, was striking. I'm not toughing out because I think I can win. I'm playing 'til the end to get my (pityful) score. Its a GOTM. You can only play it once.

 

[cabert]

Why at a low difficulty level? Do you think I am some sort of CIV noob?

Of the few things I may know about CIV, was striking. I'm not toughing out because I think I can win. I'm playing 'til the end to get my (pityful) score. Its a GOTM. You can only play it once.

yes but you'll get a better score if you resign now, than if you wait till you're dead

 

[bippukt]

yes but you'll get a better score if you resign now, than if you wait till you're dead

You have a wickedly clever mind, Cabert