Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

I like some mechanics there. Minor civs, revolutions, influence driven war. Something I feel should have been there in the first place, hence I understand where the authors went with the whole "feels like an expansion pack" thing. One thing I don't understand so far is ranged bombardment; how it's different. I really like the idea of starting as minor civs, but I am wondering if that impacts AI performance. I'm kinda torn on the new AI thingy. On one hand it does something that seems to be smarter, on the other hand it doesn't. In my test run of the mod I got pretty damn far ahead in science. There is no way I'd get that far in vanilla while being so sloppy all over the place just trying stuff out. Though they are still able to field armies bigger than mine, even if outdated. And the composition feels much more different, smarter perhaps. There's only so much my superior samurai's can do against their swordsmen and axemen (nada to be exact) when they send a bunch of freaking elephants and spearmen (so I couldn't just send a bunch of spearmen to counter). Who does that? It's like they're trolling me, because it's not like they're even dreaming of taking a city with that bunch, and yet they go straight past my attacking stack (which can't do crap to them), past my frontline city deeper into my territory and park their asses next to another city... waiting for someone to take care of them ??? */%&%#!! Then there's Romans who pillaged 2 towns back to cottages and empty field on their way to my city. That hurt. Hurt, but smart, and yet again, that stack while quite biggish and diverse (legions, horsemen, spearmen), has way too few siege with it to make a difference. Stayed outside the city doing nothing until I wiped them off eventually with my 2 super promoted warlord units making a dent into their stack until eventually the rest of samurai's started getting 95%+ odds.

 

Looking for some help as regards happiness in cities.
I've had trouble keeping a city happy and sometimes even prevent population growth in cases of unhappiness.
I generally have to divert time and beakers to researching Monarchy to counteract this.
I know gold, ivory etc. are useful for raising that happiness cap but I wanted to know if it's efficient to use Hereditary Rule as a means of raising happiness?
I tend to look at potential settling sites only in terms of riverside commerce, food and hammers, and generally ignore happiness resources and health resources.
I find some of my cities having 8+ military units just to keep them happy. Should happiness resources be one of the top priorities when settling a city?

 

Slavery is your friend. Whip like you've never whipped before

No, seriously, particularly in the early game when you have a low happiness cap, whipping away population on useful things (like settlers and workers and granaries) is a good thing. Regrow on something else, and whip again when needed. It's pretty common.

Another thing, if you are already a brutal slave master, is to hire a few scientists in a library. That way you not only limit growth, but get a Great Scientist, that can be used to instantly research a technology (but don't do it with cheap crap) or to build an Academy in your capital. Good in itself with the right setup (essentially many cottages), and very strong once you get Civil Service and can run Beaurocracy.

Hope this helped a little. I don't know how experienced you are

Didn't really answer your question, but then I don't like to base happiness on Hereditary Rule, particularly if I need a pile of units in a city to keep it happy. Every unit costs money.

 

Happiness is just another tool how to convert what player can have into any kind of advantage (and at the end - victory). Growing cities into unhappiness when running Slavery is almost like "usual thing" even if not going for instant whip - I would "save food" (with some extra pop) for military advantage window.
Most times only city that got sense of extra units (for HR) would be Burea capital with Academy (for me - also with Moai+Heroic+late Military Academy but thats because my game settings where capital often is miltary powerhouse so not general advice at all, others would go for Oxford and stuff..). And No-tech trading games (where all research is done by human) learned me good thing about HR - you can win without it (ever, I just got US civic after Democracy) and just focus on getting towards victory.

 

While I don't disagree with the previous responses, yes -resources are valuable and I very often settle a marginal city to claim some. Make sure to trade resources from AIs, too. Being in a situation where you need 8+ military units in a city is not optimal. Sometimes I've had like 5 warriors in a -rich capital by 1AD, but not more. There are many ways to get : religion (maybe temple if spiritual), resources and forge if you have the appropriate resources. Prioritize calendar if you have many calendar resources.

 

I had to come back to this... riverside commerce is great, but your goal is to settle cities where there are resources, especially in the early game. An early improved Gem or Gold (assuming you have a food source) will carry your research like nothing else. Improved Ivory is better than a vanilla Mine, Silk or Dye or Spices gives Town-sized yield immediately. And that's aside from being able to grow your cities bigger.

I make a point of grabbing resources, even if I can't use them right away, because I know I'll need them later.

But if you don't have happiness resources, the solution is Hereditary rule, grow your Bureaucracy capital with a dozen Warriors/Archers if necessary. Everything else grows to the happy cap and gets whipped down.

 

Monkybone, I think you are on the right track. It's the granary that changes tile values so drastically that whipping becomes very attractive - of course depending on what kind of tiles you have available. You don't build cottages on riverside grass and then whip them away. And while granary is the best building in the game, you don't always need to build it immediately when available (you should build it when you plan to grow or fluctuate a lot in size). Stagnating at size 2-3 slow-building settlers/workers might be better, again depending on the tiles. Just don't build a granary and then stagnate, because stagnating renders the granary moot.

Also your traits matter. If spiritual, I'm much more prone to put in an early whip or two, because switching to slavery is free. If not spiritual, I sometimes don't use slavery or granaries at all before say 500BC (double switch to hereditary rule + slavery usually). If expansive, granary is very lucrative and earlier whips become strong.

 

Quick question: Do Moai and Dike stack for the hammer benefit? If so that would make for quite the production during a Golden Age with 3 hammers per water tile. Add HE or Ironworks on top and that seems like almost an unfair city specialization ploy

 

Pretty sure it does, although don't think I've ever done it. Playing as Willem was a crutch when I started with the game, so I don't play him any more.

FIN + Colossus + Moai + Golden Age is quite nice too (not tried this, but with Unrestricted Leaders you could add Feitoria on top)

 

You can do more hammers in any land city with workshops at that point, neither Moai or Dikes are very impressive.

 

Indeed. Here is one example from an ancient game. It's boosted by Corporations too (Sushi and Mining), but it shows how powerful a well-workshopped Ironworks city can be (and they can be better than this too). Of course, in a Golden Age it would be boosted quite a bit.



(Sorry about all the BFC crosses, it's become a habit of mine as it's easier in-game, but it makes screenshots a little 'messy')

 

Just hit CTRL+X?

 

Well, Bureau Moai+Dike+Heroic+Military Academy with MoM during 4 Golden Ages on Mara speed (that was 96 turns of 2F3H4C tiles ) gave me my 1st Huge Archip Deity Conquest win. No wars up to 1000 AD (no-tech trading) but after that couldn't build anything smaller than Rifle/Cavalry/Cannon per turn (and even than had to pump some overflow into wonders time by time) - on any faster game speed that would be impossible to find how to use that production at all

 

True and easy solution, but I usually forget it when taking screenshots. Have a (bad) habit of taking loads of screenshots when 'stuff' happens, just in case I want to write about later.

 

That was on an older version or patch, right? Because I'm pretty sure we only get 16 turns of GA on Marathon now. Probably more balanced to be honest, but it also kind of sucks to only get x2 GA turns when most other things are x3 (except unit costs, which is a huge boon for Mara warfare).

 

234 is certainly a good tile, but doesn't even beat the production of a normal grass workshop under SP+caste, assuming GA. Just saying that the described combo definitely doesn't make water tiles unfairly strong.

 

well, I already mention MoM wonder (1st target was civ with that wonder just before finishing TajMahal) so 4x16 (Taj + 3 from GP) turned into 4x24 (is there 25th turn if burn GP golden age during Taj Mahal golden age?)..

 

Of course, sorry for the silly question. I forgot about the MoM part. From what I hard some previous version of the game had longer golden ages, though, at least on Marathon, which incidentally makes some of the games in the Hall of Fame kinda tough to beat.

 

Because the trade penalty/bonus is tied to the number of turns you have known the civ. Easiest way to go around it is to gift a small amount of gold if necessary, I mean you can get +4 fair trade for something like 20.