Post patch puppets rock!
- Thread starter Poomermon
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John-SJ
Chieftain
nm. I thought I was answering a recent post.
elthrasher
Revcaster
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2009
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- 712
It's nice that puppets don't build armories anymore, but does anyone know why they don't build museums? I was trying to get a culture win with three actual cities and a bunch of puppets. They built all the science and gold buildings and they built temples, but wouldn't build any more culture after that. I was really hoping for museums and then broadcast towers, but after building the above (and some extra junk like granaries), they just stopped building anything at all (they didn't even build gold).
Licinia Eudoxia
Empress
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 424
In the pursuit of gold, they'll build early tier culture buildings so their borders will grow enough to grab tiles. Their AI is built towards getting gold, gold, gold. The Monuments and Temples aren't really for the culture, they're just a means to that end.
At least, that's my guess from what I've observed. You'll notice that the economic advice icon will tell you to build monuments and temples too, so I'm guess that's what the AI is doing.
wurstburst
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 301
I'm liking the new puppets so far. In my first post-patch game, I got a really bad start on a small continents map (standard size, emperor). I got started in a poor corner with only 1 luxury, no horses (or iron as I found out later) and a CS blocking off from the rest of the continent. The continent was small for sure, but was packed with me (Siam), Germany, Russia, China, Japan and England (I kid you not)! By far the worst start I have ever had (or at least had and didn't rage quit!!! 
)
I plopped my second city down next to China to grab 2 horses and warrior rushed China (with my upgraded scout archer) to grab one more city with another 2 horses resource. By the time I got that done, everything near me was settled wall to wall, as you can imagine with all those civs running around. Being all decked out with a shiny advanced army of newly minted horses, I proceeded to (and am still working on), pacifying the rest of the continent.
With all the nearby civs, I couldn't risk razing as I was too busy pumping out more army to get any settlers and I didn't want the rest of the civs backfilling in areas I had cleaned out. So, I amassed a much larger puppet colony (8 and counting) than I am used to. And only 2 settled cities (capital + 1)
At turn 175, I have a rocking GPT economy, 139 BPT, 2000+ stored up SP points - even after taking 3 SP already, 2 GS waiting to pop and zero unhappiness. In 4 turns I'll pop the GS's and take scientific revolution to get to the industrial age. I should have enough SP left to go down through the center column of Order for some real fun. Then I can start razing newly taken cities and go ICS for the rest of the landmass. I doubt I'll raze my current puppet states as they seem to be just fine...
Or maybe a culture win - haven't tried that yet.
Currently my puppets are building a nice mix of markets, banks, wats (siam univ.), and coliseums.
So, new puppet state behavior =
)I plopped my second city down next to China to grab 2 horses and warrior rushed China (with my upgraded scout archer) to grab one more city with another 2 horses resource. By the time I got that done, everything near me was settled wall to wall, as you can imagine with all those civs running around. Being all decked out with a shiny advanced army of newly minted horses, I proceeded to (and am still working on), pacifying the rest of the continent.
With all the nearby civs, I couldn't risk razing as I was too busy pumping out more army to get any settlers and I didn't want the rest of the civs backfilling in areas I had cleaned out. So, I amassed a much larger puppet colony (8 and counting) than I am used to. And only 2 settled cities (capital + 1)
At turn 175, I have a rocking GPT economy, 139 BPT, 2000+ stored up SP points - even after taking 3 SP already, 2 GS waiting to pop and zero unhappiness. In 4 turns I'll pop the GS's and take scientific revolution to get to the industrial age. I should have enough SP left to go down through the center column of Order for some real fun. Then I can start razing newly taken cities and go ICS for the rest of the landmass. I doubt I'll raze my current puppet states as they seem to be just fine...
Or maybe a culture win - haven't tried that yet.
Currently my puppets are building a nice mix of markets, banks, wats (siam univ.), and coliseums.
So, new puppet state behavior =
Monthar
Deity
It was post patch that one was building Apollo, so I had to annex it, shift it to production and it actually completed it in a decent time then. Probably because my worker army hadn't reached that city yet to change all those production tiles into TP's.
Get rid of all the farms the AI loves to build. That's one reason I blanket the Puppets with TP's. The other is to significantly reduce their production so they aren't eating all my profits with walls, castles, and every other non-military building they build.
I'd be perfectly happy if the Puppets only built Wealth or Science instead of the buildings.
Marshall Thomas
King
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2005
- Messages
- 700
I think that puppeting is overpowered for the AI civs. The only drawback is that they can't build military units. But that's a very good rule, because runaway, conquering AIs can only build new/ replacement units in their core cities. This can help keep them in check.
But since conquering AIs (that conquer other AIs) always seem to puppet, their conquest isn't limited by unhappiness problems.
But since conquering AIs (that conquer other AIs) always seem to puppet, their conquest isn't limited by unhappiness problems.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Balance between puppets and razing is good.
Puppets don't build units and wonders and don't allow buying, so you need to take some balance here.
Conquering cities is underpowered, though (unless they have wonders), but that just a part of general problem with too high building costs, so I think fix will come from here.
Puppets don't build units and wonders and don't allow buying, so you need to take some balance here.
Conquering cities is underpowered, though (unless they have wonders), but that just a part of general problem with too high building costs, so I think fix will come from here.
Yeah, why don't they just hand over the cash. Instead the force me to actually do something ...
/Sarcasm off
This is easy enough already, I don't want a(nother) golden, egg-laying woolmilksow in this game (CSs ...).
Monthar
Deity
If the only thing Puppets build is wealth or Science, once the techs are researched to build them, then they won't be adding additional culture from those culture buildings, they won't be multiplying their gold input from those multiplier buildings. They won't fix your happiness problems for you buy building happiness buildings.
In other words it would make annexing much more appealing, because the puppets would not contribute nearly as much as they do now. In fact the only buildings a puppet city would have are those that survived the capturing. Since all culture buildings get destroyed upon capture, that means they would not be contributing much, if any culture, thus making it more logical that they don't increase the SP costs.
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2004
- Messages
- 12,418
That would be the best concept.
Puppets build Wealth and Nothing else....
(And they produce 0 culture, even if you are France, or they have a World Wonder)
Puppets build Wealth and Nothing else....
(And they produce 0 culture, even if you are France, or they have a World Wonder)
wurstburst
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 301
I believe that puppets are running specialists. In the emperor game I mentioned above, I finished around 1910. By that time I had 2 settled cities (capital + 1) and had 24 puppets. I was pumping out about 4000 BPT and getting a future tech every turn (when I was happy, a bit less when unhappy). Chose a culture win, but could have done a science win around the same time, no problem.
When you look at the puppet cities, you don't see any specialists filling the slots, but if you check out the stats in the city view for science, for example, you will see that specialists are being used and are contributing towards science. I had a few puppets generating over 300 BPT each to my research. And they were definitely using specialists.
Science was never a problem during my game and I easily out-teched the AI. Plus, I got a ton of GA and GM towards the end of the game from the puppets, that I used for an extended golden age.
atteSmythe
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2010
- Messages
- 243
Heh, another vote for city sprawl. With overlapping cities, if the puppet isn't working a high-production tile like that, you just let the city next door do it. Either way, it gets worked.
i disagree. they are allready pretty good as they are now. (tho the AI might be made a little smarter. maybe, so it doesn't choose a 1 food and 2 gold tile over a 2 food and 4 production tile for example.)
and when they are finished building (except the useless buildings ofc.), they should always just build wealth until some other usefull building will become available.
aimlessgun
King
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2010
- Messages
- 783
Yeah I just realized this! But they only use merchant specialists. Is there a setting I can change?
Also 300 bpt? How?
wurstburst
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 301
I didn't do anything to the puppets. Just let them roll along (with tradepost spam everywhere). Keep in mind that I got the full Order SP track by bee-lining (not directly, but mostly beeline) to Industrial, so I had +5 hammers per city at a nice early time. This let the puppets go hog-wild building buildings. First they built the gold and happiness buildings. When that was done, they had no problem going on to the science buildings.
With only 2 "real" cities, I was able to pick up a ton of SP's. Rationalism really boosted science. I picked up later on the SP that lowers specialist unhappiness and the one that lowers specialist food consumption. Maybe those encouraged more specialists. Also, with all the economy I got going (and only 2 cities to spend it in), I had plenty of gold to spend bribing all the maritime CS (and all the rest too, if you really must know!).
I think with only a few settled cities, you can really juice your puppet economy via SP's. And since captured cities tend to be spread far apart, there's plenty of room to grow population. Add in maritime CS food and you get some good populations to build research on.
I just went back and checked my facts...I must have misremembered the 300 BPT. My capital did have 378 BPT and my other settled city about 300. My highest puppet was 239 BPT. Here's how it got there:
5 Terrain (tradeposts)
35 specialists (33 buildings and 2 from an unemployed citizen)
19 population
9.5 extra population (library)
---------
68.5 base
+50% public schools
+50% wat (siam university UB)
+100% research lab
+50% national college (counts in all cities)
--------
+250%
Total BPT = 68.5 * 250% = 239 BPT
Of my 25 puppets, 19 had 100 BPT or more, and the lowest puppet was rocking 50 BPT (my most recent additions didn't have as many buildings, but were quickly adding on). My puppets averaged above 150 BPT each
Also, note that on this particular turn I was at -1 unhappy. A few turns early or later and the research would be boosted 15% due to that SP (forget which one). From what I can tell, that 15% is on the base BPT, so another 10 BPT to the puppet described above.
So, puppets do excel at science once everything gets cooking.
In summary, to get a puppet research going, you may want to:
1 - build only a small number of your own cities - 2 is best if you can pull it off without dying early game.
2 - Beeline to industrial to get Order/Communism to get the +5 hammers per city, so that puppets can build all the research buildings as quickly as possible (and since they aren't prioritized, this is key to churning through the list of other buildings quickly).
3 - tradepost spam...
Although a decent number of farms mid-to-late game won't hurt either. Once the Order economy kicked in, my GPT went through the roof and a few less TP wouldn't have hurt me a bit. I could have rush built 15 GRDs at the end of game if I wanted (although only 2 per turn!). Ran out of things to do with my money.4 - Horse rush to get a viable military that will capture early game puppets and have enough staying power to keep you alive mid-game. I think I diverted from a straight beeline, to get Chivalry. Alternatively, you could bypass these 4 or 5 techs and get to renaissance sooner, at more risk. I like the route I took because it gave me catapults and markets and eventually elephants (knights) and my economy needed some juice and I needed some more firepower at the time. But it wasn't optimal for the fastest slingshot.
Without Order/Communism, your puppets won't get around to the science building soon enough and your research will fall behind. You can expect with this strategy to fall behind in science mid-game until you can pop to the industrial era. The next turn, you can expect to have a 2-1 or 3-1 lead on your best rival in manufacturing and you'll catch up in science in a very very short time. After that, you've gone viral and nothing can stop you. You just need to survive the midgame science deficit.
One last note. With only 2 cities, I had a very low SP cost. By the time you bulb your GS and take the last rationalism policy for your last 4 techs to industrial, you should have enough culture left to go right to communism. If you go 3 or 4 cities, it might take you a bit longer to get there.
I got to industrial around turn 180 and I'm far from the best player. I would guess a good player could easily shave some time off this by taking a more direct tech route to acoustics.
Puppets still build stuff like Utopia or apollo program
If your puppet starts building Utopia, it's obviously griefing you. Solution? You're about to win culture anyways, so burn their city to the ground for having the gall to stand in your way!
