Q: for TMiT

[JoeMacUnGee]

TMiT -- I really enjoy your insights into the game. I have a question for you. I'm playing a Prince-level game currently as Augustus. In this game, I am playing a continents map, raging barbs and no tech brokering. I built the great wall, and had the following civs on my continent:

Victoria
Shaka
Montezuma
Tokugawa
De Gaulle
Justinian

So, obviously, I'm on the larger of the two continents. Oh, and note the usage of the word "had." it's 700 BC in my game and the following civs are eliminated (by me or the barbs):

Shaka
Montezuma
De Gaulle
Justinian
And Tokugawa's down to one city

Did I mention I love Praetorians? Anyway, on to the question: I'm in a dire situation despite all the carnage. My slider's at zero, no one will trade with me and Victoria is the only viable opponent. Soon, my units will be striking, and I've run out of places to pillage before I reach CoL. How would you handle this situation? I'm whipping libraries and running build research, but I've still got like 80 turns till CoL. When units strike, will some cities be left undefended?

Edit: I have 10 cities, my army consists of about 8 archers, 8 praetorians (2 GG'd).

 

[Ghpstage]

Not TMIT but still,
Could you post a save or some screenshots? Going for CoL is likely not the best move for saving yourself from economic collapse, courthouses are greatly overrated. Most of the time currency will be a much bigger help, especially if warmongering!

Have you tried getting AIs to give you a tech or two for peace? It can be very helpful.

Edit -Doh hadn't read it right, you've wiped out most AIs already . Techs for peace is a no go then

 

[JoeMacUnGee]

Not TMIT but still,
Could you post a save or some screenshots? Going for CoL is likely not the best move for saving yourself from economic collapse, courthouses are greatly overrated. Most of the time currency will be a much bigger help, especially if warmongering!

Have you tried getting AIs to give you a tech or two for peace? It can be very helpful.

Unfortunately no screenies at work. But I have extorted back-fill techs from the AI (I'm way ahead in tech). None of them have CoL or Curr. My thinking is that the barbs will keep victoria busy even if I crash. It's just going to be a tough slog to get where I need to be

Edit: Question remains: if units strike, will cities be left undefended or will there always be one unit left in each?

 

[shyuhe]

Units have a percentage chance of disbanding due to strike each turn in strike. However, the last military unit in each city will NOT disband from strike - so you can still maintain minimal military garrison while in strike. Also, I don't think settlers disband during strike, although workers do.

 

[JoeMacUnGee]

Units have a percentage chance of disbanding due to strike each turn in strike. However, the last military unit in each city will NOT disband from strike - so you can still maintain minimal military garrison while in strike. Also, I don't think settlers disband during strike, although workers do.

Excellent. Thanks! So if I was smart (and apperntly I'm not ) I would garrison my two GG units as the sole garrison of cities during the strike!

 

[barbertje]

Unfortunately no screenies at work. But I have extorted back-fill techs from the AI (I'm way ahead in tech). None of them have CoL or Curr. My thinking is that the barbs will keep victoria busy even if I crash. It's just going to be a tough slog to get where I need to be

Edit: Question remains: if units strike, will cities be left undefended or will there always be one unit left in each?

If you're still at negative gold with an unit upkeep and unit supply of 0, all your units will disappear, including city garrison and workers. If you build a new worker in this situation, you can get 1 turn of work out of him, before he disappears.
At this point, leaving a few cities for the barbs to conquer may be the fastest way out of the tech hole. Doesn't work if you have the great wall of course.

EDIT: Oops, a single garrison won't disappear. If it sets one step outside of the city however,it goes *poof*

 

[Sian]

got Currency yet? ... i find that more important than CoL when getting out of a hole, by being able to build Wealth

 

[vranasm]

building wealth for me works best too. but if you fell in tech hole before getting it, it would be tough and even if you manage to get back you will probably be a lot behind.

If you have writing (i hope you have!), whip asap libraries (that you plan, sorry wall of texts are tough to read), make scientist and wish yourself the best. Scientist will produce beakers even at 0% slider.
Ah and switch research to currency.

 

[michmbk]

I would definitely assign as many cities as possible to building research to get to currency, then wealth to get to COL. Also, if you're done with warring for awhile, consider deleting some of your units - you don't want to lose workers from strike. Make sure every city is working as many commerce tiles as possible too. I've often found I can get out of the red simply by reassigning citizens to working commerce tiles.

Sounds like you're in the situation where you conquered a ton of cities and maintenance is killing you. That's ultimately a good problem to have. If you pull out of it, you'll win with your size.

Another alternative is to keep using units to attack and raze some of the cities instead of keeping them. Chances are you kept too many cities if you're in this hole. While I try to never raze a city unless it's really a poorly placed city, if you can't handle the maintenance on new cities, you'll want to try razing them instead. You still get the gold.

 

[tempuraki]

- work ocean tiles.
- get the units inside your culture border will save you some gold.
- I think when in anarchy your units can't go on strike, so maybe you can change civics a few times so the workers can build some cottages.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Currency is a faster stopgap than CoL generally.

But the real trick when doing this is to kill your slider early ---> bank lots of gold while killing multiple AI (I frequently use this tactic with HAs, but can verify its use with prats also). If you can, extort alphabet or math for a clean shot to currency. If you have it and see that war targets have something like multiple techs that cost as much as math or better, go ahead and extort them. Sometimes I leave a civ almost dead (aka one very weak city) for 10 turns to get peace...sometimes I come back and finish the civ, sometimes I just press the next extortion target. The unhappiness later sucks if they peacevassal between wars but having 1000's of beakers NOW is worth that risk.

Other than that just ASAP research ----> currency ----> CoL/Monarchy, and get cottages going early during conquest so your commerce cities have a chance to grow/save you.

The banking gold technique I can't stress enough though. I've been as bad as -50 or more gold/turn at 0%, but since between slider off pre-conquest and the gold from taking cities I had > 1000 gold, I had enough time to right the ship before running out (in one case I turned the slider UP during that time to get currency).

 

[JoeMacUnGee]

Thanks for all the advice! I was able to salvage this game because England was clear on the other side of the continent. I only lost three or four units to strike before I developed currency thanks to a couple random barb cities. I'm headed toward an easy diplo win.