Please look at my saved game and comment!

[ironic_lettuce]

Hi guys!

I'm playing against Alexander on Noble on a Continents map and this is my saved game at the minute. Please have a look at it and tell me where I'm going wrong in the game!!! Although I'm ahead on points, I don't feel in control at all. I have 3 cities going for culture (I want a cultural victory), with Medina producing my military, and my other cities earmarked for commerce.

Please look at this game and help me! Feel free to rip it apart (which I think it deserves) but please be constructive! For instance, do I have enough workers? I dont think I do personally. Do I have too many units? That's one of the reasons my money is so low, but I want to keep Alexander away from me!

So, any tips whatsoever would be great!

thanks

 

[Welnic]

I am just a noble player also, but I thought that I would chime in. I don't think that you really have too many units, but I do think that you have too many archers. I would build a little more variety, some chariots and lots of axemen. Your power rating is not only based on how many units you have but what they are. The power rating is going to be the main thing that Alex uses to decide to attack you or not. The cost to maintain units is just based on the number, so you can have a higher power rating with less expense with better units. If you hit F2 you can see that you are paying 12 gold a turn for your army.

I would make some missionaries and spread your state religion around. You are not taking advantage of the 25% building bonus in a lot of your cities. You will need to spread religion around for cultural anyway, so you should go ahead and spread that one first. And I would make a Great Prophet to build the buddhist shrine, since that will bring in 1 gold from each city.

I would build a granary in the newest city, and bring in a worker that you built somewhere else. I would go ahead and pick your farthest behind cultural city and install that Great Artist. The 14 culture per turn is much more than the 4000 you get from a culture bomb if you install him this early. Plus you get 3 gold per turn.

I would build a couple of chariots and finish scouting the map. And while you have open borders you could send over a couple of buddhist missionaries to convert a couple of his cities, then you could see what he has.

 

[Jarred Darque]

plus hell make money off of Alex's scitites with the religion correct? Money is always a plus,

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies

I've already built the Mahabodi (I think!), so I'll get some missionaries up and spread it around a bit, which will hopefully give me a boost

Any other tips from anyone more than welcome!

 

[cabert]

i'd like to help you but:
- here i'm at work
- when i come home i play my own games

But basically, if you build troops to deter alex, you could just as well kill him, don't you think?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Um, wow. OK... Wow.

Disclaimers: I don't play quick speed, and I have never played duel on a map that size. Take all that follows with a wife of salt.

First point - yeah, you aren't doing well. Take a look at the GNP graph, and you'll see that Alexie is killing you in research. He may not have time to get to you before the game ends, but if he does you'll be looking for stone memorials for about 15 brazillian archers.

Second point - you've got too much land, and it's making you sloppy with your city placements. Cultural wins are about building up a small collection of cities, not sprawling across half the globe. There's a lot of good territory in your immediate neighborhood. You wouldn't need nearly as many workers if they could reach the next city without an airplane.

Third point - it's not clear that in approaching this game you had any sort of plan. Or if you did, you completely failed to modify it according to your circumstances.

Rough outline of a plan. You decided in advance you wanted a cultural win. There are two general approaches - building up a lot of commerce, and converting it to culture, or generating a bunch of artists, and acquiring culture that way. Both of these are effective ways of maturing three legendary cities. The usual routes normally involve obtaining (if not founding) many religions.

Saladin is Philosophical, so the great artist approach is a natural fit. And religious techs are lovely toys for a Spiritual leader. It's a good fit.

Now, the big advantage to a spiritual leader is that you can zim zam your civics. In particular, you should be considering swapping between Slavery+OrgRel when you need to get buildings up, and Caste System+Philosophy the rest of the time. That is, you should have a regular cadence of "put one hammer into a building in each city, revolt to slavery, whip production, put a few more hammers into something else, whip production, revolt to caste system, grow".

Three of those civics have religions tied in with them, which is nice. Theology opens up the Sistine chapel, which gives your specialists extra credit (as well as shoring up your defense a bit). Music will unlock the Cathedrals to boost the culture in the city. Grabbing the religion yourself allows you to spread the religions at your own pace, and therefore you can get the temples, and therefore cathedrals, up quickly.