Prince walk through (I hope)

[Pitman]

Plenty of people talk and succeed by beelining rifling. Personally I quite like steel and cannon for levelling cities and the mop up units are almost irrelevant once maximum collateral damage has been achieved. Drill longbows and CR maces for instance.

The nice thing about rifling is that if you get it quickly enough you don't have to worry about collateral damage. A single big multiple trebuchet (or later cannon) blast to get rid of cultural defenses, then attack straight with the riflemen. If you get rifling before the AI opponents it's a huge advantage. Getting rifling first (though depending on where my opponents are I don't necessarily beeline) is really important to me.

 

[Joshua368]

Since moving up to emperor and trying to find the fastest solid military advantage after the medieval era, I've gotten newfound respect for BtS Grenadiers. Mainly because when I get into Industrial era, I want cannons. Five accuracy cannons can take down city defenses all by themselves, and then city raider cannons have a wonderful survival rate.

Since my enemies tend to stick nearly a dozen units behind each city (until the end of the war when there's almost nothing left) I don't want to risk lots of rifles at 80% or so odds, one or two cannons is more convenient for me.

Problem is Steel is a pretty dedicated beeline to aim for, unless you can nab it with liberalism it'll take a while. By the time it takes you to learn it and printing press/replaceable parts/rifling, your military advantage has probably come and gone. Military Science on the other hand is right there, and gives you the combat/seige combo you need to dominate. Toss in Military Tradition afterwards for cuirassiers afterwards and you got a full renaissance army and can delay rifling until assembly line.

Then again, I completely ignored grenadiers/cuirassiers until emperor. Not sure why, guess things weren't as urgent. Partially ignoring seige like above should work fine at prince with a tech lead and relatively few defenders; just tossing in this alternative to the rifle beeline which I've found very effective.

 

[Mr.Morph]

1) Early on (on higher lvs) you're cities can only grow to size 3 or 4 without happiness resources. What's then the point of wasting on them? Unless you whip a granary (and again why in said circumstances?--the second the city grows it will be at its happiness cap) A lot of folks here Im convinced like to whip basically "because they can". There has to be a point to the whipping.

Dude I keep wondering. Are You stoned? With granary you can recover from whip 2 times faster. You can grow your cities 2 times faster. That is why you need monarchy really fast and I have mentioned it before. Making granary with expansive civ takes 2 or 3 turns because you can slave it. I just can't understand your point of view. I guess you just don't know how to slave. I can make 2 or 3 times bigger army by slaving units.

2) Cottage Economy folks (like myself)...I do whip items, but very selectively, and only generally very early on. Whipping and cottages is normally self destructive.

Whipping is always good. Most of your cities won't have 15 hammers per turn so whipping will be huge advantage for those cities. And in cities with high production you will get overflow of hammers.

Larger cities cost more early on (its marginal, but can make a difference, especially on high lvls)...I often keep them small and productive/commercial on purpose.

Wow that is the most ridiculous thing I have heard for a long time. If you make library in city and you have it size 4 then lets say you will work 3 cottages and 1 food. 1 cottage let it be 4 gold with in civ per cottage. so it gets u 12 gold plus bonus from library 3. On city size 8 you can work 7 cottages and 1 food. 7*4=28 gold plus bonus from library 7. If you don't see the difference then good game dude.

I definitely will build granaries when the circumstances fit, but that's always game/circumstances dependent.The ai seems programmed to almost always build granaries first (after a monument)...which doesn't always help when my axes and chariots are rampaging through it's lands

Well when you compare your skills to ai, then hmmmm. No comment.

 

[MyOlde]

Is anyone else offended by Mr Morph's tone? He seems to be new to the forum and doesn't know the difference between rudeness and polite disagreement and discussion. Let's have no more of it.

 

[Joshua368]

1) Early on (on higher lvs) you're cities can only grow to size 3 or 4 without happiness resources. What's then the point of wasting on them? Unless you whip a granary (and again why in said circumstances?--the second the city grows it will be at its happiness cap) A lot of folks here Im convinced like to whip basically "because they can". There has to be a point to the whipping.

There certainly is a grace period where granaries aren't needed, the capital has more than enough food to grow to its cap and you have a much higher need for things like warriors, workers and settlers. I'd say on average this lasts for the first 3,000 years, before you start building up structures within your cities to improve them.

However he's signfigantly past this early period of the game. His cities are reaching size 6 - 8. Once your city starts growing and its time to build up infrastructure, libraries and courthouses and lighthouses, the granary should be first. It speeds the city up, doubling growth speed. There is nothing bad with a city growing to his happy cap faster. You work more tiles sooner. And once it reaches that happy cap, it means it's time to crack the whip again. Not "because you can" but because whipping gives you way more hammers than you can usually obtain in the early game except from chopping, and once your city reaches its happy cap you'd be wasting your food resources if you don't. The granary doubles the whip's effectiveness so once you start whipping (and you should!), you want it to be one of the first buildings you get through.

2) Cottage Economy folks (like myself)...I do whip items, but very selectively, and only generally very early on. Whipping and cottages is normally self destructive.

I'm probably one of the most adamant cottagers here, often spamming my cities with nothing but them and mines. But the cottage economy and whipping do not hurt each other. Well okay, so there's a minor hit in commerce for a few turns, but it's the same effect as when you whip your specialists away.

Let's face it, early cottages are not really that good. Even a fully matured town will only give four commerce, five if riverside. Nice, but not extremely powerful. They don't really get great until Printing Press and Free Speech. And your early cottages will have plenty of time to mature until then. So don't feel bad for whipping your men off the cottages for a little bit, those cottages will be towns long before they matter.

Plus another thing is that as opposed to an SE, there's no pressing reason to go into Caste System, so you can stay in Slavery all the way till democracy!

Note that there are cities you don't want to whip, cities without any sort of food tile whatsoever for very slow growth. There's some common sense here, it's pretty instinctive. Obviously if the city is nothing but cottaged grassland with no bananas or rice you don't want to be whipping, but those are the exception rather than the rule.

3) Larger cities cost more early on (its marginal, but can make a difference, especially on high lvls)...I often keep them small and productive/commercial on purpose.

Wait, what? So what exactly are you advocating here? You advise not building granaries because you want your cities smaller? I understand that bigger cities have higher maitenance but purposely keeping your cities below their happy caps just to avoid maitenace is awfully ineffeciant. I mean it may be best if you've captured nearly a dozen cities before the ADs and your economy is teetering on the edge of disaster, but under normal circumstances advising someone to not build granaries just so their cities grow slower doesn't seem like good advice.

I mean expecially when the game includes a very nice way to get rid of these unwanted population points without simply throwing away half of your food storage or working suboptimal tiles.


Also Mr. Morth try to keep things civil. Phrases like "are you stoned" probably won't help anybody learn.

 

[Mr.Morph]

Maybe I was too rough for him but seriously when someone says

I definitely will build granaries when the circumstances fit, but that's always game/circumstances dependent.The ai seems programmed to almost always build granaries first (after a monument)...which doesn't always help when my axes and chariots are rampaging through it's lands

Then it makes me so mad. You think if you can beat stupid ai it means you have some skills? I've played ladder games alot, and I can tell you that ai is a stupid morron on every level. It just gets good bonuses on teching and production. You can f*ck ai with 2 warriors on every level. You don't believe? I can show you...

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Dude I keep wondering. Are You stoned? With granary you can recover from whip 2 times faster. You can grow your cities 2 times faster. That is why you need monarchy really fast and I have mentioned it before. Making granary with expansive civ takes 2 or 3 turns because you can slave it. I just can't understand your point of view. I guess you just don't know how to slave. I can make 2 or 3 times bigger army by slaving units.....................
Whipping is always good. Most of your cities won't have 15 hammers per turn so whipping will be huge advantage for those cities. And in cities with high production you will get overflow of hammers........

Wow that is the most ridiculous thing I have heard for a long time. If you make library in city and you have it size 4 then lets say you will work 3 cottages and 1 food. 1 cottage let it be 4 gold with in civ per cottage. so it gets u 12 gold plus bonus from library 3. On city size 8 you can work 7 cottages and 1 food. 7*4=28 gold plus bonus from library 7. If you don't see the difference then good game dude.

I can pretty much tell you're an MP player from this. The phrase"whipping is always good" shows this fact. Whipping is NOT always good. If you're trying to quickly build an army, then yes of course it is. But otherwise (especially with longer gamespeeds I play) you whip a library (ho hum, so you're taking away the mediocre commerce a city has, to increase science (see below)?). If a city has capped out at max happiness at say size 4, then in a CE, you should have switched it to max commerce say 2 grass hamlets and 2 growing plains cottages, then by whipping, you are taking 2 commerce tiles for 30 turns(marathon, that's what I play sorry). That DOESN't make up for a library's meagre +25%. You are also taking away the future growth potential for said tiles.

Let's take the size 4 city at turn 1, working 2 riverside hamlets and 2 plains cottages (say both 5 turns from hamlets for simplicity).

Thats 3+3+1+1 = 8 plus 1 from city square plus 1 trade route = 10 per turn.

After whipping for library (assuming one pop whipped), that's a size 3 city with 1:- all you can work is the 2 grassland hamlets, for 30 turns (you're granary is completely pointless atm as "growing back" isn't a factor.)

so with the whipped city after turn 30:-

(6 commerce from worked tiles + 1 trade route + city square)*30 turns =240 PLUS 30

Without whip:- 5 turns at 10 commerce + 25 turns at 12 commerce = 50+ 300 =350 PLUS 90

Assuming science rate of 50% (for convenience) :-

Whipped city makes :- 120 (120+25%)= 150 30
Non Whipped :- 175 175 90

If whipped again, same city's cottages/hamlets fall further and further behind each time..Still advocate whipping and CE?

When people discuss whipping and cottages they always
seem to miss out the future growth of the cottages, plus the missed commerce while growing back.....Yes, if you are going to run a SE, then the equations for whipping become better, but then you have to drop your overall science rate to pay for the empire...

Anyways, this isn't the place for a discussion of whipping and slavery, so enough from me.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

There certainly is a grace period where granaries aren't needed, the capital has more than enough food to grow to its cap and you have a much higher need for things like warriors, workers and settlers. I'd say on average this lasts for the first 3,000 years, before you start building up structures within your cities to improve them.

However he's signfigantly past this early period of the game. His cities are reaching size 6 - 8. Once your city starts growing and its time to build up infrastructure, libraries and courthouses and lighthouses, the granary should be first. It speeds the city up, doubling growth speed. There is nothing bad with a city growing to his happy cap faster. You work more tiles sooner. And once it reaches that happy cap, it means it's time to crack the whip again. Not "because you can" but because whipping gives you way more hammers than you can usually obtain in the early game except from chopping, and once your city reaches its happy cap you'd be wasting your food resources if you don't. The granary doubles the whip's effectiveness so once you start whipping (and you should!), you want it to be one of the first buildings you get through.


I'm probably one of the most adamant cottagers here, often spamming my cities with nothing but them and mines. But the cottage economy and whipping do not hurt each other. Well okay, so there's a minor hit in commerce for a few turns, but it's the same effect as when you whip your specialists away.

Let's face it, early cottages are not really that good. Even a fully matured town will only give four commerce, five if riverside. Nice, but not extremely powerful. They don't really get great until Printing Press and Free Speech. And your early cottages will have plenty of time to mature until then. So don't feel bad for whipping your men off the cottages for a little bit, those cottages will be towns long before they matter.

Plus another thing is that as opposed to an SE, there's no pressing reason to go into Caste System, so you can stay in Slavery all the way till democracy!

Note that there are cities you don't want to whip, cities without any sort of food tile whatsoever for very slow growth. There's some common sense here, it's pretty instinctive. Obviously if the city is nothing but cottaged grassland with no bananas or rice you don't want to be whipping, but those are the exception rather than the rule.



Wait, what? So what exactly are you advocating here? You advise not building granaries because you want your cities smaller? I understand that bigger cities have higher maitenance but purposely keeping your cities below their happy caps just to avoid maitenace is awfully ineffeciant. I mean it may be best if you've captured nearly a dozen cities before the ADs and your economy is teetering on the edge of disaster, but under normal circumstances advising someone to not build granaries just so their cities grow slower doesn't seem like good advice.
:

I was generally referring to very early on in the game. If you build a new city and it has say 2 food sources, then if you rush it up to its hap cap, then your going to need a small army of workers to then improve all the necessary land.

All this time, its not really doing anything positive for you (if using food to max grow), and only costing you money in maintenace. Id often personally rather work the higher commerce/production with slower growth. Possibly because I play high lvls/huge maps/marathon, I often overexpand just to grab early land than play science catch up, needing at points every possible commerce point (it works very well if you know how). There really isn't much whipping to be done in such circumstances.

On cottages and whipping, see the post above. I also often use the Pyramids to go into very early Uni Suff (Yes, I hate the SE, and love the CE that much)..

 

[MrG]

Blimey, its been busy and animated while I've been away.

Big thanks for the feedback, but as has been said before, please keep it civil we don't the mods marching in. However there has been some great discussion about whipping, which should be educational.

As I promised last night, here are some musings on my long term strategy.

I've got lots of nice cities, they are growing rapidly and approximately half the continent is there for the taking.

I'm currently aiming to do the following.

Short term

-Build up military (cats and maces)
-Spawn great scientists in the capital
-be nice to my religious chums
-Spread my religion to all my cities
-Infrastructure

Medium term
-Great library and national epic in my capital (for great scientists)
-Adopt pacifism (see above)
-remove Bismark's iron and other resources through spies.
-Destroy Bismark
-plantation on all relevant resources

long term
-Beeling to liberalism
-Choose nationalism as the free tech
-Beeline to rifling (sorry)
-Build taj mahal for golden age, spawn great merchant
-use great merchant for the cash, convert all macemen (CR 2 because of my barracks remember) to rifles
-draft riflemen until there are 30-40 of the violent little buggers
-Turn the world blue

If that doesn't work its more traditional methods, basicall on Prince that involves trying to get to industrialism first - for some reason the other civs seem to ignore it. If I manage that, there will be carnage...

Other musings, I think apart from the city placements, which were'nt that bad, I've played this reasonably well although I did come perilously close to throwing the computer out of the window wIhen I was getting squeezed left right and centre.

All things considered things have happened at the right time. My cities are all right, my military is pretty good and none of my rivals are too strong.

Now is a good time for a civ to emerge and start to dominate, I think it should be me, I just need to keep an eye on Gilgmesh and pick my targets carefully, and I should be good for a domination win.

Oh and the sharper eyed ones of you will notice that yes, I am reverting to my original strategy, it'll just take longer than I'd hoped...

Thanks for all the posts, lets keep it clean and try to reach the magic 100 replies.

Oh and can you put what level you play at when you post.

Ta

 

[Mr.Morph]

Wow you challenge me in math? Ok so i will teach you a lesson. I will show you on your example

After whipping for library (assuming one pop whipped), that's a size 3 city with 1:- all you can work is the 2 grassland hamlets, for 30 turns (you're granary is completely pointless atm as "growing back" isn't a factor.)

That is not correct. When you slave city size 4 with no unhappiness then you will have a city size 3 with also no unhappiness. Which will cause you make huge mistakes in counting in future and I won't hesitate to point it out.

so with the whipped city after turn 30:-

(6 commerce from worked tiles + 1 trade route + city square)*30 turns =240 PLUS 30

Not correct i will work 2 grassland cottages and 1 plain cottage.

5 turns at 9 commerce + 25 turns at 10 commerce = 45+ 250 =295 PLUS 60 (from tiles) and PLUS 90 (from whipping)

Assuming science rate of 50% (for convenience) :-

Whipped city makes :- 120 (120+25%)= 150 30
Non Whipped :- 175 175 90

more math how nice. 295*50%=147,5 PLUS 25% (from library) 184 150

And your non whipped strat :- 175 175 90

Still advocate whipping and CE?

Sure I am!

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Wow you challenge me in math? Ok so i will teach you a lesson. I will show you on your example


That is not correct. When you slave city size 4 with no unhappiness then you will have a city size 3 with also no unhappiness. Which will cause you make huge mistakes in counting in future and I won't hesitate to point it out.



Not correct i will work 2 grassland cottages and 1 plain cottage.

5 turns at 9 commerce + 25 turns at 10 commerce = 45+ 250 =295 PLUS 60 (from tiles) and PLUS 90 (from whipping)



more math how nice. 295*50%=147,5 PLUS 25% (from library) 184 150

And your non whipped strat :- 175 175 90



Sure I am!

Yeah, I did screw up (dunno where I got a size 3 city only working 2 tiles from, I think I was thinking that it couldn't work the 3rd tile without starving, but of course it can...bleh, I had only just woken up..I was wrong in this example:- admitted.)

The point about the early granary in this kind of case, being overrated (if not pointless in the longterm) still stands though, as does the point about repeated whipping and longterm growth effect on cottage type improvements...

Now that IS enough on whipping ok If you want to discuss it more then lets start a new thread for it.

 

[Airey]

Except his tone, the guy actually knows what he's talking about.
No pain no gain. Pain is a part of growing. Keep in mind OP is doing a Prince walk through on his own will. Try to be nice. Players don't need to hit everything perfect like in Deity. And to OP, if people actually bother to look at your saves, they're prob really trying to give you advice on areas where one can improve. So what if their tone is not constructive? Just rephrase it for yourself. The action they've taken is enough for one to appreciate

Whiping gives immediate production benefit, and the building wiped gives immediate multiplier effect in science/culture/production. These multipliers start immediately while the city re-grows into it's original size. Rather than staying at that size and waiting for the building to be built. In OP's game for instance, he did try to place city to block AI off. Nonetheless his culture buildings come up too late thus allowing neighboring AI to build a city right next to his and gradually taking his workable tiles away from his 2nd and 3rd city. Granted OP was trying to build an army. Then execute it. Take Germany out so its cities aren't stealing tiles away from you.

Anyways, enough about whipping, it's a free country. People can play what they want.

In terms of Granary, even if a player can't whip well, he's got to at least recognize the benefit of growing faster. Early granary is very good especially at 1/2 of the cost. Even if you don't whip, the earlier you reach your happy cap, the earlier you can have more citizens working for you. One can always hold growth at max if whipping is not your thing.

And lastly prob OP can spend some time construct a plan base on leveraging the leader trait and the initial map. Good Example of Map analysis/plans at Turn 1 The point form stuff DMOC had near the end of his 1st post. Get into the habit of doing it and you will be seeing more details very soon, yes even at turn uno.

But in terms of the game itself, lots of more experienced players are giving advice based on anticipation of what is going to happen. Most of OP's moves are so far based on reactive instincts so far. The decision to attack Germany so late for example. Had OP build the necessary culture buildings to protect his tiles, Germany would get the short end of the stick by now with city revo's. It would be easy to take Germany out early without a source for any religion, thus no culture defense bonus. If I were the OP, with the military advantage I wouldn't waste time with spy on Germany's single Iron source. Prob don't even need to destroy the improvements. Also, why are we researching Currency when its something Germany can provide for the 10 turn peace break we can use to heal our attacking forces. Nothing personal, but statements like "tradeable soonish" can basically describe every tech in the game.

Now in terms of the Greeks. Because of Athens, you will prob be getting a great Prophet soon. One thing is for sure, your first great person will very likely not be a GS. You might want to finish Alex or at least take Corinth - the funding place of Confucianism. You can use the GP to build a shrine there. Looking at the geographical location of other religion founding place, it's likely that Gilgamesh has many Confu cities. It's prob a good idea to take out the little ones first (Germany, Greeks...etc) before taking on Gilgamesh soon.

Lastly, can OP elaborate on the purpose of:
-be nice to my religious chums
-Spread my religion to all my cities

Why be nice to Confu/them if you are going to "Turn the world blue."
Why spread the religions if you don't have the shrine in your plan. Oh, okay, you are using Organized Religion. Why are you in Confucianism when only 1 of your city has that religion? Why are you in OR if you are not getting the 25% bonus in your cities building buildings (ie. Great Library, Courthouses)?

Musa is spreading Jud for you. All of Germany's cities are Jud prep'ed.
Convert to Jud has more benefits just because of Musa's Techs, and your military superiority over the Confu nations.

Even if spreading Confu is the way to go, why aren't you in Pacifism while building units and missionaries? Oh ya, you don't have Phil. Why not keep beating the ___ out of the Greeks until they give it to you?

Now to the Musa' side. Musa has both Civil Service and Theology. He prob had a head start on paper. Not sure why you are spending time researching Currency while planning to attack the Germans whom already has it. You prob need to start your Lib race soon. And you decision not to side with Musa in religion means you prob won't be getting those freebie techs.

I might be wrong on somethings. It's rather late here, my brain isn't working. Hopefully you have more ideas on how you want to plan your next 100 moves now. Cheers and have Fun I think you've won the game already. Just a matter of how high a score you can get from now on.

 

[Mr.Morph]

well I've just played this initial save and I have played it much different. I have attacked mansa musa first and in my opinion he is the best target. Conquering him won't make my civ harder to defend (as it was when you attack greece) plus i've gotten 2 religions 2 holy cities (judaism and hindu). On turn 120 with swords and catapults I have declared war. 16 turns later i had conquered every city of mansa. 30 turns later i was preparing to attack bismarck when he and ragnar declared war on me. All they did was pillaging few cottages. After repelling ragnar from my land i moved for bismarck with stack of knights and another mace/treb stack. 20 turns later he was dead. My next target was greece while he had very nice land. I've made something like 70 cavalry and moved in. In few turns he was dead. He really didnt stand a chance. Ater him I went with same army for gilgamesh who was quite good in tech. I lost many units on him while he had triple promoted rifles but as soon as i took his capital he capitulated. And domination victory was achieved.

 

[MrG]

Except his tone, the guy actually knows what he's talking about.
No pain no gain. Pain is a part of growing. Keep in mind OP is doing a Prince walk through on his own will. Try to be nice. Players don't need to hit everything perfect like in Deity. And to OP, if people actually bother to look at your saves, they're prob really trying to give you advice on areas where one can improve. So what if their tone is not constructive? Just rephrase it for yourself. The action they've taken is enough for one to appreciate

Whiping gives immediate production benefit, and the building wiped gives immediate multiplier effect in science/culture/production. These multipliers start immediately while the city re-grows into it's original size. Rather than staying at that size and waiting for the building to be built. In OP's game for instance, he did try to place city to block AI off. Nonetheless his culture buildings come up too late thus allowing neighboring AI to build a city right next to his and gradually taking his workable tiles away from his 2nd and 3rd city. Granted OP was trying to build an army. Then execute it. Take Germany out so its cities aren't stealing tiles away from you.

Anyways, enough about whipping, it's a free country. People can play what they want.

In terms of Granary, even if a player can't whip well, he's got to at least recognize the benefit of growing faster. Early granary is very good especially at 1/2 of the cost. Even if you don't whip, the earlier you reach your happy cap, the earlier you can have more citizens working for you. One can always hold growth at max if whipping is not your thing.

And lastly prob OP can spend some time construct a plan base on leveraging the leader trait and the initial map. Good Example of Map analysis/plans at Turn 1 The point form stuff DMOC had near the end of his 1st post. Get into the habit of doing it and you will be seeing more details very soon, yes even at turn uno.

But in terms of the game itself, lots of more experienced players are giving advice based on anticipation of what is going to happen. Most of OP's moves are so far based on reactive instincts so far. The decision to attack Germany so late for example. Had OP build the necessary culture buildings to protect his tiles, Germany would get the short end of the stick by now with city revo's. It would be easy to take Germany out early without a source for any religion, thus no culture defense bonus. If I were the OP, with the military advantage I wouldn't waste time with spy on Germany's single Iron source. Prob don't even need to destroy the improvements. Also, why are we researching Currency when its something Germany can provide for the 10 turn peace break we can use to heal our attacking forces. Nothing personal, but statements like "tradeable soonish" can basically describe every tech in the game.

Now in terms of the Greeks. Because of Athens, you will prob be getting a great Prophet soon. One thing is for sure, your first great person will very likely not be a GS. You might want to finish Alex or at least take Corinth - the funding place of Confucianism. You can use the GP to build a shrine there. Looking at the geographical location of other religion founding place, it's likely that Gilgamesh has many Confu cities. It's prob a good idea to take out the little ones first (Germany, Greeks...etc) before taking on Gilgamesh soon.

Lastly, can OP elaborate on the purpose of:
-be nice to my religious chums
-Spread my religion to all my cities

Why be nice to Confu/them if you are going to "Turn the world blue."
Why spread the religions if you don't have the shrine in your plan. Oh, okay, you are using Organized Religion. Why are you in Confucianism when only 1 of your city has that religion? Why are you in OR if you are not getting the 25% bonus in your cities building buildings (ie. Great Library, Courthouses)?

Musa is spreading Jud for you. All of Germany's cities are Jud prep'ed.
Convert to Jud has more benefits just because of Musa's Techs, and your military superiority over the Confu nations.

Even if spreading Confu is the way to go, why aren't you in Pacifism while building units and missionaries? Oh ya, you don't have Phil. Why not keep beating the ___ out of the Greeks until they give it to you?

Now to the Musa' side. Musa has both Civil Service and Theology. He prob had a head start on paper. Not sure why you are spending time researching Currency while planning to attack the Germans whom already has it. You prob need to start your Lib race soon. And you decision not to side with Musa in religion means you prob won't be getting those freebie techs.

I might be wrong on somethings. It's rather late here, my brain isn't working. Hopefully you have more ideas on how you want to plan your next 100 moves now. Cheers and have Fun I think you've won the game already. Just a matter of how high a score you can get from now on.

I'll try to answer this lot.

With regards the be civil quip, I've no complaints about how people are responding to me. It's more a request for you to be pleasant to each other. Trust me I have a thick skin

I don't really want to aggravate Alex now, because he's Gilgamesh's vassal and I can do without fighting the pair of them.

Similarly with regards the religion side of things, my plan is to keep them happy and away from attacking me, until I slaughter Mansu and Bismark. Then and only then do I plan to deal with Gilgamesh and Alex if neccessary.

Again with ref pacifism, that's the next job, again i can't dogpile alex, because of the reasons above but I'm hoping to get to liberalism first. It should be doable.

I do take the point about currency though.

I'll play some more tonight and post an update.

 

[MrG]

I think the tipping point has now been reached, after a short and bloody (well it was for him) war with Bismark, I have taken Essen, Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg, Hamburg having been razed as soon as it was captured.

This has given me access to new luxury resources for happiness - silk and a total of 12 cities. More than enough for me to get in front and hopefully stay in front now.

Additionally I have spawned a great scientist in mayapan who was used to generate a golden age. This in turn enabled me to reach liberalism first, which in turn was used to gain nationalism as the free tech.

I am now teching towards rifling, as I said I would, I have a small but significant tech lead (but only on that path) and I am frantically building infrastructure that I need to, courthouses and the like, which was a bit neglected during the war.

Additionally, I am now building ball parks in all my cities to help with happiness when I start drafting rifles in a couple of hundred years. Mansu is definitely my target -he has only five cities and a relatively light defensive force (I may even take him earlier if I can concentrate my forces effectively - but I've still got four fronts to worry about).

I have also during my war taken cities containing the pyramids (great), great library (OK) the parnathon (good) and the Schwedagon Pagoda (ok) and have consequently shifted to universal suffrage for the rush building, caste system for unlimited scientists in my capital and free speech for the culture and gold bonuses in my mature towns.

I am also building the Taj Mahal for another golden age, and will be generating and using more great scientists to lightbulb towards rifling. When I am a bit further down this road, I will be shifting my efforts to produce a great merchant (Or I'll shift towards economics) and send him on a trade mission to generate enough cash to upgrade my city raider maces to riflemen prior to the next war.

The only thing that has been a bit on the rubbish side is that athens keeps revolting, and I've had more important things cropping up that have demanded resources that couldn't be allocated to stopping that from happening.

i will be stopping that from happening by rushing culture buildings there and sticking hundreds of troops in there.

Additionally I've also failed miserably in efforts to spread confucinism, even in my capital, which despite this is generating 32 GP points a turn...

I think I've probably won this, here are the updated screen shots..

Just one question, can someone explain why i'm being referred to as OP?

Thanks for all the feedback and I'll post again tomorrow.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

....Just one question, can someone explain why i'm being referred to as OP?

Original Poster.

 

[Marlowe13]

I'm planning it in advance because, its prince level and if you don't plan what you're doing you stumble through the first dozen turns and it tends to go wrong.

Plus in my experience you need to specialise your cities if you want to win at noble or above.

Shrug. I beat the game on Prince regularly. I don't plan in advance and I never specialize cities. Except for beelining to Judaism (probably a negative gameplay decision, but required for roleplaying reasons when you rename your empire Judea ) and generally building the Great Wall ( I hate barbarians), I play by the seat of my pants, reacting to conditions on the ground. Frankly, Prince ain't that hard (though I never plan to go any higher) and beating it does not make you a genius or a Civ4 maven. I sure ain't.

 

[MrG]

Hello,


I'm back! Apologies for the delay in posting, but I haven't been able to get someone to look at the boiler I mentioned a while back, so I've been living at my mother in laws ...no civ and a mother in law too boot....almost intolerable.

Anyway, I just wanted to bump this and let you know I'll be playing a bit tonight (assuming the boiler is fixed) and I'll post if I do.

thanks

Apologies for the gaping void in updates, but there haven't been any.

Cheers

 

[MrG]

Hello,

I've news. It is now 1600AD and more importantly my new boiler is nearly installed.

This means I'm a) at home and b) able to play/post some news.

I've done a bit of housekeeping, to increase my happiness and the like in my cities, with ball parks- this is to ensure I don't get revolts when I start drafting riflemen in about 6 turns time.

I've also started mass producing spies and catapults and CR Maces for the next stage of war.

I will be spawning a great merchant in Mutal hopefully and will use a trade mission (probably to Gilgamesh's capital) to raise the cash to upgrade my maces to rifles.

Once I've done that I plan to shred Mansu, then Bismark. By then, I expect Gilgamesh to have rifles too so, I'll beeline to infantry and strengthen my south eastern frontier to defend against an attcak from there - i don't expect one because I'll be militarily strong but you never know.

Other things I've done, converted to buddhism for the boost to GP points in my capital. (Altjough I still need to spread my state religion I've also built the heroic epic and the taj mahal (for the golden age) in my production city - Lakhama, which now builds a maceman each turn (very helpful)/

I've used my golden age to change civics again to free market and free speech to boost my borders and my cash flow and I'll be building the forbidden palace somewhere to reduce maintenance payments.

i have used Justinian as my tech trader- I got a load of techs like engineering and drama off him in exchange for education and economics, which I needed but I won't trade for any techs now as I don't want to help any of my rivals reach rifling too soon, I need to maintain my tech advantage as long as possible.

It's shaping up nicely and soon I'll be unleashing all hell on Mansu, now that will be worth watching.

It's not all been well played though I forgot to switch my espionage focus onto Mansu early enough, so spying won't be terribly useful against him in terms of knocking down cultural boundaries and a couple of cities -notably Athens and Berlin keep revolting, my solution - extra troops and the hermitage in athens, the complete annihilation of Bismark (soon) for Berlin.

I'll play some more and post either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[LDiCesare]

Did you get some great generals by the way? I love putting all of them as specialists in a production city. With lots of cash, you can produce City Raider 3 macemen which you instantly turn into rifles.