PLEASE!!!! Help me with this game!

[Shadow Phoenix]

So... I have been playing this game for a long time, I am at #1 place, i Have like a lot of Wonders, BUT I was NEVER good at wars. Guess what? The Ottomans attacked me with 6 knights(its 1000 AD). I have the most cities/ but least army. please help me with this!

 

[Shadow Phoenix]

btw its PTW and version 1.27f (latest)

 

[DragonRunner]

Um, I haven't looked at the save, but I guess i would just build up a defensive force and keep trying for a favorable peace deal. and 6 knights should fall to 10 knights attacking. Watch out, because Ottomans get Siphai, which have 8 attack. Also make sure your cities have 3 or so defenders. Also read the war acadamey, I guess.

 

[Mescalhead]

I took a look at your save. Here is my advice:

#1-Build terrain improvements. Very important. You only have a few squares covered with roads in the cities' boundaries. There is no reason to be falling behind in tech other than low revenue due to unimproved terrain. Look in your city panel and see what terrain is being worked. Build roads and other improvements in those squares.

-Grasslands should be mined.
-Hills and mountains should be mined as well.
-Plains should be irrigated.
-Forests that are not being used should be cut down, you get 10 sheilds and there could be a bonus grassland underneath.
-Everything else being equal, terrain next to rivers are preferable to those not. The reason is that all terrain adjacent to a river gets 1 extra commerce.
-Build roads in all wroked squares, they will all provide extra commerce.

I see that you are irrigating the grasslands around your capital. As ia have mentioned, there is no reason to do this. Simply mine them and you will automatically get 2 food from each terrain, which will support another citizen to work the next tile. Irrigating grassland is useless before hospitals and I don't do it after, unless it is in a city surrounded by mostly desert.

In order to improve terrain you must build workers! You are playing what appears to be a huge map, and you have 5 workers and a handful of slaves (captured enemy workers). Keep in mind that slaves work at half the effeiciency of normal workers, lazy maggots. Always have 15-20 workers by the beginning of the Medieval age on a huge map.


#2-Upgrade your units, and on border cities have at least 2 up to date defensive units and at least 1 offensive unit. In the interior you can get away with offensive units. They will count more toward your military's reputation anyway. There is no reason to pay a gold per turn for a warrior when you can pay the same for a knight. You are coming to the end of the Medieval period, and you have mostly spearman and archers. These units are far past obsolete and will not help you against modern units.


#3-Do not build wealth before you have the Economics tech. It is a waste. Simply keep building workers (with your smaller cities) and military units with your larger. If nothing else is happening, plan an invasion. I see that in Kyoto you are building wealth, when it could very well benefit from a bank, well it could if it had more roads.


As far as war with the Ottomans, it could go either way. Their invasion force wouldn't be considered threatening if you had better garrisoned your outer cities, and had better production with which to build units. You may lose some.

What you may try is puling out of your farther cities, and putting a big garrison in a closer city by making a stand and bottlenecking you terrain at the same time. This will force them to engage that city or leave them open for attack when passing by.

Or, you could switch all of your cities to building military units and hope the Ottomans are incompetent enough to fail taking even one city. I doubt this though.

One final option, and this is what I would do:

You can quit this game, start over taking the advice I've given you about improving terrain and keeping the army modern. But before you start another game, read the articles of the links below and pay attention because they will improve your technique. Then, start a new game with a civilization that you would excell with, but this time play on Warlord. Go straight for it. It's easier than you think. You won't learn much on Chieften because the oppenents are handicapped and they pull their punches. Seriously read these key articles. If you feel like reading more, do that. And remember, build workers and improve terrain!

Good luck.

Babylon's Deity Settlers

Cracker's "Improving your Opening Plays"

Faster Expansion

Commercial Management

As far as military advice. Simply read the articles that focus on the area with which you have trouble. I haven't read any of those. Perhaps I should. But anyway, move up in difficulty, you will learn more from losing than winning, provided that you don't give up at the first moment it looks hopeless.

 

[Oddible]

I see that you are irrigating the grasslands around your capital. As ia have mentioned, there is no reason to do this. ... Irrigating grassland is useless before hospitals and I don't do it after, unless it is in a city surrounded by mostly desert.

I believe this is incorrect. You get an extra food when you mine grassaland under anything but Despotism. So if you are in Republic and you are trying to grow your cities, irrigating grass is fine. I normall try to get my cities up to a higher population when during peactime by irrigating grass - then when it reaches 12, I make adjust tiles to ensure the city is only producing enough food to stay at 12.

In order to improve terrain you must build workers! You are playing what appears to be a huge map, and you have 5 workers and a handful of slaves (captured enemy workers). Keep in mind that slaves work at half the effeiciency of normal workers, lazy maggots. Always have 15-20 workers by the beginning of the Medieval age on a huge map.

Probably the biggest mistake made by the most people - almost everyone underproduces workers at first. I almost always build a worker first from every city - and if I find a remote city that produces enough food to build a worker every 10, I'll frequently keep it as a worker factory for an entire age. BTW, captured workers are GREAT - they don't cost you any unit cost - but as stated, they are slow. Also, you need a lot of workers for strategic roads - make sure you have roads to get military units to the trouble spots quickly - you don't want any large blocks of land unroaded or you lose troop mobility.

Or, you could switch all of your cities to building military units and hope the Ottomans are incompetent enough to fail taking even one city. I doubt this though.
...
You can quit this game, start over...

Nawww, don't do that. Losing one city doesn't mean losing the game. Mescalhead provided a lot of great advice. Just make some adjustments and push the suckas back. I haven't looked at your sitch but sounds like you've been offered some options in the above advice. When a war starts, and you are in a rough spot, switch almost EVERY city to producing military units. Dunno what age you are in, but you could even consider mobilizing - which means that you can't produce anything but military units, but you'll produce them faster. The cities closer to the front should be producing foot soldiers and the farther cities should be producing fast units (like knights).

Don't give away the city that you are potentially going to lose, leave at least one unit in it, but you may want to pull back and try to muster a defense farther back. Bump your economy all the way to zero science and try to make some quick cash to pay for unit upgrades and to buy production of troops (a bummer of a thing to to, but if yer deperate).

Last but definitely not least. As stated, Ottomans get Sipahi as their UU. This means 2 things. 1) They attack at 8 and will roll through land defended even by Riflemen (which you don't even have right?) and 2) They only need to defeat one unit with a Sipahi to trigger their Golden Age - which means you will surely die. So Make Peace and quick - even if you have to give them some remote city - if you see a Sipahi or anticipate that they are close to Military Tradition.

 

[Mescalhead]

I believe this is incorrect. You get an extra food when you mine grassaland under anything but Despotism. So if you are in Republic and you are trying to grow your cities, irrigating grass is fine. I normall try to get my cities up to a higher population when during peactime by irrigating grass - then when it reaches 12, I make adjust tiles to ensure the city is only producing enough food to stay at 12.

I meant useless as in non-irrigated grasslands being sufficient to get to a size 12 city, provided that terrain is in the majority. I head straight away to mining grasslands regardless of govt. since I find that the cities climb to twelve population in a short enough time. I'd rather have the extra shields than food while the population climbs. However this is what works best for me.

Nawww, don't do that. Losing one city doesn't mean losing the game.

I suggested that because he is very good at expanding, which is probably the most imortant concept of the game, at least for me. What he did wrong was underdevelopment of tiles, and obsolesence of military units. If he were to remedy this, then chieften would be a cakewalk for him, hence no challenge. It just seems that he knows enough about what he is doing, that if he goes by my advice and the articles, I think he could handle warlord no problem. I wasn't suggesting his situation is hopeless, far from it, just that higher levels make for more fun and learning. And I see no reason not to jump right in--after some reading of course.

 

[Shadow Phoenix]

#1. Thanks!
#2. I do have Rifleman, and they are sooooo weak.
#3. How come every turn is so sloooooow?
#4. Is it possible to win the game?

 

[MSTK]

#3. How come every turn is so sloooooow?

It's because so much has to be processed by the computer. Do you mean load times or the actual gameplay during the turns?
If you want to speed up load times, shut down background tasks.
Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and click "Task Manager". Go to the "Processes" tab, and click on the "User Name" slot to order it so that every process under your user is shown. Delete every process under your user name only EXCEPT for explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe.

 

[alamo]

Almost all the units are war units. It's a bit of a contradiction to play the game often but not be good at wars.

You will never survive the higher levels without good strategy and tactics. It is time to become the warlord, rather than the conquered.

Try winning a game by conquest instead of building.