*Punches Screen in* Damn Noble!!

[lovelyfunbags]

c) Only build as many units as you will need (tough to tell sometimes)

it's interesting this one, how do you tell? when i DOW with what i think is enough troops the AI invariably whips it's city to death and produces a load more defenders meaning my stack is insufficient, meaning it all takes 10x longer than expected to take the city and kill the civ. is there a general rule for the number of troops needed?

 

[JujuLautre]

when i DOW with what i think is enough troops the AI invariably whips it's city to death and produces a load more defenders meaning my stack is insufficient

Then it just means that your initial stack was not sufficient

I feel there is no general rule about this; for small combats perhaps you could calculate an ideal number of units, but otherwise I think it's just about practice.

 

[futurehermit]

it's interesting this one, how do you tell? when i DOW with what i think is enough troops the AI invariably whips it's city to death and produces a load more defenders meaning my stack is insufficient, meaning it all takes 10x longer than expected to take the city and kill the civ. is there a general rule for the number of troops needed?

1) Scout: Find out how many units he already has

2) Estimate whipped units: Figure 1 unit/turn and calculate the # of turns needed to get to the city (try and take the shortest route; don't dow and then need 6 turns to get to the city)

3) Prefer mobile units: Horse archers, knights, cuirassiers, cavalry, tanks, etc. are to be preferred over their slower moving counterparts because they halve the # of turns needed to get around an enemy empire thus giving them less time to whip defenders

4) Bring enough siege: Siege levels the playing field because collateral dmg makes defenders easy pickings and less of your units will die meaning you don't need 2x or 3x the military (siege excluded) to take your opponent out; also, obviously removing the defenses of the city is a must

 

[Tiepolo]

You never have everything right.

Much, much better. In this case, I think you've over-done the tile improvements, only because every city has waaaaaaay more tiles to work than they have citizens to work them. Balance is certainly better than too-many tiles to work, but as you are experiencing, too-many tiles to work is dramatically better than too few.

Make sure once your war with Washington is over to switch to commerce tiles instead of production ones (not across the board, but let's get some cottages growing, yeah?)

I can't even imagine why you aren't in Slavery and cracking the whip right now. Switch to slavery and whip in every city where it's possible this turn. The GL will be built with only 9 turns needed to add the National Epic to its scientist generating tastiness, 3 or 4 courthouses will be built as well, with lots of overflow to roll into more troops for your war. One of your whips pulls 2 citizens off 3 and 4 commerce cottages (I think) - put them back on by sacrificing hammers from forest tiles. Build 'dem cottages!

Get two settlers cranked out (I'd chop him with your forested hills by turning the trees into mines) and get one due south of your capital, 1N of the wheat. With farmed wheat and the flood plain, you can work all four hils with mines - that's a decent production city. With biology you can add a plains water-wheel and a workshop - not to mention however many miscellaneous coast tiles you can grow into for some pay-for-itself commerce. It'll never be worthy of Ironworks, but it'll make some units and a little navy for you as the game progresses.

The second settler, I approve of your #4 site. Not a good city, not a bad city, but it will be a net-gain for your civ, so get it settled.

Crack the whip, make more units to Washington with, and carry on!

I am troubled that his territory isn't already scouted out, though - you should have explored all of that terrain well before he settled it and should know what is beyond.

Just remember that learning Civ is all about baby-step improvements - and you just took a BIG one in the right direction. Play a couple games where you develop your tiles and run a nice cottage economy - then come back for diplomatic and city-specialization help if you need it down the road.

To take onn Washington, I could build horse archers and chariots just to go in a scout forward. I realized my mistake as soon as I sent my warrior back but I had to to defend one my cities from Barb attack (Never warned me until he was two turns from my city) So the Warrior was in range after doing a loop (I was about to send him to north to explore). I did have open borders though... hmm...

 

[Tiepolo]

Ok, update. It's around 1500, I've met the other continent (except izzy) and I finished my war with Washington long ago. I turned the score on when I saved but I didn't look, but I doubt I'm in first, Hannibal always kicks my ass and he seems to be doing pretty well along with most of the continent.

What I did:
- Made sure to capture the Taoist holy city for extra revenue (damn does that come in handy)
- Set up Giza which is only size six and better than my capital. It also turns out that there's fish in its fat cross.
- Built Forbiden Palace in Washington
- Set up boston
- Spread Taosim
- Turns out I already had a settler sitting in Alexandria so I sent that to spot 4.
- Chopped a settler from Thebes, left one forested hill (should I save for a lumber mill?)

What the hell should I do:
- I have a great scientist and no idea what to do with him (in Memphis)
- Basically, should I invade China and America and take the whole continent? (It would be pretty easy...) But the problem is that China is my greatest ally when it comes to trading.

Thoughts and feedback are always appreciated, thanks a lot for the help so far.

Save attached

 

[markiz2001]

here are some mistakes/bad things/wrong strategies you used in the persia game

1. you expanded away from your opponents. this is wrong because you have to think ahead. expand towards your opponent, therefore you block him off, prevent him from having a bigger empire in the future, and will allow you to have a bigger empire yourself at his expense. expanding to good sites near you can wait since no other civ can settle there anyway, it's too far for them, but close for you.

2. big mistake: your 2nd city, Pasargade, was founded in the wrong place. you do not have access to the flood plains. flood plains are probably the most valuable terrain you can have, since when you farm them, they produce huge amounts of food, which you can use to grow your city very fast, and use slavery to hurry production of anything you want. the city should have been founded on the coastal floodplain, or the mountin 1E of it. therefore your city would still be coastal, and you would have access to the floodplains and all those resources around it including the horse.

3. you did not cripple Augustus with your chariot rush. you took over/destroyed his new and useless frontier cities in the jungle. his core cities (rome, antium) remained his. The old core cities are important, because they are usually surrounded by good land and resources, and have already been developing for 1000+ years and have all the land already improved and buildings already built. because his old, core cities remained untaken, only his new and weak cities, you did not cripple him, you basically just killed his settlers and a few units and he was able to recover. If you make war, you need to take out his core/most important city/cities in order to cripple him.

4. you are wasting time and resources building things in the wrong cities. for example, in the northeastern city of Arbela, you have a courthouse and now you are building a market. both these building are unnecessary. you are close to the capital, so you don't need a courthouse and you only have 3 commerce, so a marketplace will be useless. this is, or has the potential to be a production city. you should be building barracks and units in it. in the northern city of Ecbanana you are building a worker, but this city only has a population of 2, you should have it be growing, and build the worker in cities that are already developed. either your capital, or your #2 city.

5. you should have a worker working on each city. and you should build workers quickly. settler, worker, settler, worker. try having it, so that all the land that is being used by a city is improved land, this will be hard, but it will teach you a lesson and you will see how powerful your cities become.

6. the city to the east (which was destroyed) was in a very good location. why did you destroy it? was it a barbarian city? if so, you should have waited until it's population reached 2, then capture it.

7. you have a strong army, i don't know why you're not using it. if you send it against rome, im sure you'll be able to capture it. although i don't know if you'll be able to win the war and settle for peace after you do that. why so many axeman and no catapults? as soon as you learn catapults, stop training everything and start training caatapults. they are just like axemen, except they injure 4-6 units with each attack, plus they bombard the city defences down to zero. siege weapons are the best.

to summarise, you need more worker, and try to have each worker improving each city, instead of all 3 workers improving just 1. you need to build things like libraries/markets in cities that have rivers and cottages on grasslands, and barracks/units in cities that have lots of plains (which you'll farm) hills, forests and little commerce. building everything in every city is wrong.

as far the the egypt game, it looks pretty good, i think you took the not enough workers to heart. i think you may have too many of them now, but at least everything is improved, so that's good. the only problem I see is that you only have 3 catapults and are asking who you should attack next? china's shangai is a nice target, but it has 100% defenses. you need catapults to reduce it to 0, or else you will suffer massive casualties. I think you should build catapults and defensive units like longbowmen, attack and take shangai, and also xian, and wait until the chinese army comes from the north and garrisson yourself in a city and defend for all you're worth. if you succeed, and the chinese army gets destroyed by your defensive war, then make peace and attack and kill washington, with lots of catapults and strong units, since he has plenty of longbowmen, which cannot be killed with 1 unit, you need to weaken them first, before they can be killed, best way of doing that is collateral damage by catapults.