Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Yes, Perfect!...........Thank you for the Fast Response, WeirdoJoker.

 

Playing at Monarch, Rome/Small/Pangaea/80%. AI has a tech lead I can't seem to overcome (despite being Commercial, my income is still relatively low, tho' the Great Library - I missed the Pyramids - helped a little), and I didn't get Iron early enough to make Legionnaires until I already was making MedInf. America & Egypt have excess Horses but won't trade them, and I want (it'll still be a few turns) to be able to make Knights now & Cavs later. (AI also has excess Gems & Silks, but I don't need them at this point.) I have excess Incense they all want for practically nothing that barely allows me to keep a few turns behind on tech. So the question is what I could do to get one of them to trade for Horses so I can invade a third party?

 

Set research to zero and pay unreasonable amounts of gold per turn in exchange for horses. You may need to increase your income first, obviously.

1. Develop your existing empire.
2. Tech till you have military tradition or are sure to have it within 2 to 5 turns.
3. Trade for horses.
4. Build cavalry or build knights in order to upgrade them to cavalry.

As your money will be needed for research and for importing expensive horses you donnot want to have to upgrade more than really necessary. So 2 turns before military tradtion may be the most.

In the end the best choice may be to research military tradition and before the end of the interturn switch to F1, set research to zero, switch to F4, import horses, switch to F1, switch to your first city and then go through all your cities to switch production to cavalry. Best have 50 to 70 shields in the box already at that time. Before the new turn starts you will have 10 to 20 cavalry ready to move on your command.

Are you sure to have no use for Gems & Silks? The obvious choice could be to trade your luxuries for theirs.

Importing strategic resources is far more expensive than importing luxuries. Also you donnot want to give away your valuable luxuries at less than a fair price.

 

I assume you mean set research to zero after MilTrad? I'm working on Metallurgy now, so I'm reasonably close, though I'm nowhere near 4-turn techs yet.

As to the Horses ... the problem is they simply will not trade for them, and I only have two excess Luxes (I have 3 Incense, so 2 extra), and they just won't go for it.

I don't have to use either Specialists or the Lux slider yet, so trading for Luxes is not a high priority. Which is good, because they won't do a straight Lux-for-Lux trade, anyway.

That's the problem ... I cannot get what is, in my opinion, a fair price. I don't have major mood problems with the AI Civs ... they just are not biting on most trades anymore. I may have to initiate a war with someone just to improve my standing (hence my desire for the Horses in the first place) before I can get decent trades.

Of course, this has been a problem playing the Romans in C3C ... I have not won yet. It seemed easier in Vanilla. Three games - at Warlord (2) and Regent (1) - were so bad I just retired, and I lost the Space Race once before at Monarch. My only other Space Race defeat ever was playing Babylon at Regent (it was probably fairly close ... I don't remember anymore). Not that that's what I'm going for now, which is good anyway, but I'm unfortunately stymied at almost every turn so far, and I really want to win this one before I give up on playing Rome again.

 

Between the lines i am reading that you are doing something quite wrong. Or do you have 5 different luxuries already? A screenshot may help to understand the situation.

Well, that is the tricky part.

You need to increase your financial balance as AI will only accept those gtp that you have. So the first thing you should try immediatly is setting research to zero so that you have about 400 gtp to trade with. AI is probably willing to sell horses for 400 gtp, probably a lot less, but still a lot of money. If it is say 150 gtp over 20 turns it is still 3000 gold. If you buy something that expensive it better be worth it. This is just to figure out what a fair price is for AI.

Once you have researched Military tradition go into the bigger picture and do what i detailed. At that point you have researched Military tradition, but nothing has happened since. So while it is after, it is also somewhat at the same time. Production from the old turn is yet to occur.

 

I have 3 Luxes, and they seem to be working just fine, at least for now. I'll almost certainly need others later, but for right now Horses are a higher priority. And I can, as you say, try to trade for them right before getting MilTrad.

 

I wrote this before the page updated, and see I'm now cross-posting with @justanick (again!), but he and I seem to be in general agreement...

Do you mean that you can see Horses in the list of their available Resources on the trade-screen? If so, they won't sell them to you because you're not offering enough.

If you currently do not have enough net income (and/or are deficit spending), then the AI will never consider per-turn payments. So you could try dropping your SCI%-slider to zero temporarily, and then ask what they want for their Horses. If your available income is now high enough, they may make a GPT-based offer.

If possible, you could try to offset some of that GPT expenditure with Incense (next time that deal comes up for renewal?) -- but if you don't want to wait that long, then you might just have to bite the bullet and pay the price. Once you've made the deal, you can raise your SCI%-slider again, if doing so won't make you go broke immediately.

Then use your newly built Knights (or better, Cavs) to go and secure a source of Horses of your own.

 

How is that possible? Are your cities too small? At size 12 you need 10 good faces, be it happy faces or content faces.

5 luxuries with markets give 9 happy faces, 6 luxuries give 12 happy faces. Having at least 5 luxuries is a common goal for the middle age. The proper goal is to maximize population first and mitigate luxury slider second.

Getting horses is even less important. 2 to 6 muskets, 8 to 32 cannons and an unlimited supply of MedInfs will be slow but effective.

 

That is almost certainly the case, but only because I do not have much to offer. I think I figured out what the problem might be, though ... I've been running at Monarchy, out of the hope of going to war early & not having to deal with war weariness, rather switching to Republic (for less corruption/waste once I realized an early war would not happen).

That's my latest goal, getting the Cavs. Hopefully I won't be beat to it by a nearby Civ so I'm not fighting against them as well.

Probably. I have some open desert that's empty except for Saltpeter (roaded), and a bunch of jungle I'm still clearing away.

 

The difference in corruption is very small.

It is the commerce bonus that matters. It very much explains your backwardness. Not choosing republic is a huge handycap that you put on yourself, much larger than changing difficulty from regent to monarch.

I would be surprised if you would not be beaten to it. As a monarchy you are doomed to be beaten in research. And the cost of another anarchy are huge. Still they are warrented.

So bad terrain comes on top of that? I am not saying that you cannot win this game, but you have stacked the cards very much against your favour.

My suggestion would be to quit and start a new game. Optimize what you do before you research your first medieval tech, with the possibly exception of feudalism with its powerful new units.

 

Well, at least I figured out what the problem is. Hm ... I can switch to Republic and pick up the pace, at least. Still might be hope.

It's not all bad. I have some river squares (no flood plain) that become useful as I clear the jungle away. But yeah, it looks like Monarchy zapped me pretty good.

I'll have to think about that. I might be able to go back a ways to an earlier Save and switch to Republic instead of Monarchy, and play forward that way. Or just hope for better terrain.

 

Still it will take 40+ turns till you have paid off the the anarchy period. Only after that you will pick up pace.

The terrain is not the main issue. It could make sense to go back to 4000 BC and compare what you can do till 550 BC which equals turn 100. It is the first 100 to 125 turns that matter most. 50 BC is turn 125.

 

If you already can build Knights that means you can build Medieval Infantry. I know that Knights are the better overall unit but they cost 75% more so you might want to just pile on the macemen. It also depends on the terrain.

 

If there are horses available nearby, take the advice of Takhisis and invade with MDI and legionaries (if you have them), accompanied by a stack of artillery units. Then you won't need to trade for horses.

Otherwise, don't worry about getting a fair price when trading for horses. This is a lost cause. Crank the sliders down and pay up once you get to military tradition. Try to arrange things so you only have to buy horses for a single 20-turn period, though, either by conquering your own or collecting enough land from your neighbors to make you happy until the end of the game.

What is your desired victory condition?

Monarchy is a poor choice for research, but the Republic doesn't give a bonus on beakers from scientists, so if you expand so that most of your beakers are coming from science farms, your research can still be quite speedy as a monarchy.

 

More specifically, if you have a city or two that's already highly developed and can produce 35 to 39 shields in one turn (you probably won't have more than 2 if you do) then there is where you can produce Knights efficiently. In the rest just build up the infantry. Or Longbowmen! That would add some nice defensive bombardment.

 

Trebuchets and cannons are better for that.

Feudalism is a good point in time for the Romans to wage war and thereby trigger their golden age. The legionaries may seem outdated, but they are more or less pikes with attack 3 instead of 1. So build 5 to 25 cheap legionaries and once you have enough legionaries build MDI instead. Add some catapults or trebuchets to tilt the balance in your favour.

 

For cannons you need more advanced techs and also saltpeter. I'm not sure that the bombardment power of earlier artillery is worth the expenditure in terms of both production cost and upkeep, but then I'll happily admit that my view of artillery has been warped in the last few years by the unmatched power of human-operated artillery in the EFZI scenari.

 

We are talking about different things.
Bombardments units of course help in defending and offense.
What I mean with 'defensive' bombardment is the ability of a few units to fire a round first when attacked. But they can't use this in an offensive capacity. They have bombard strength, but they don't have any range - so they'll only use it defensively.

 

Actually we are not. Trebuchets give defensive bombardment just as longbowmen. The difference is just the bombardement value. Longbowmen have 2, trebuchets have 6.

Say you have a stack of 2 pikes, 2 MDI, 2 Longbowmen and 2 trebuchets. This stack is attacked with many swordsmen.

The first 2 attackers are bombarded by the trebuchets before they can start their actual attack. The bombardent value of 6 is applied against the attack value of 3, probability to hit is this 6/(6+3)=2/3. With a chance of 2/3 the attacker looses a hitpoint before the battle start. Then a regular battle sword vs. pike starts. This happens again for the second swordsmen.

A third swordsman will be bombarded by the Longbowmen before they can start their actual attack. The bombardent value of 2 is applied against the attack value of 3, probability to hit is this 2/(2+3)=2/5. With a chance of 2/5 the attacker looses a hitpoint before the battle start. Then a regular battle sword vs. MDI (or pike) starts.

A fourth swordsman will be bombarded by the Longbowmen, the fifth swordsman will encounter no defensive bombardment as it applies only once per turn per unit.

Offensive bombardement is different as it requires range and it is applied against the defense value.

Is everything clear so far? One thing i wonder about is what happens if a unit with just one hitpoint left attacks. Does defensive bombardement still apply? Can trebuchets kill off such an attacker? Can they there be promoted? I have never seen such a case to occur. AI does not attack with 1 HP remaining.

 

I think the routine probably does apply, but non-lethal bombardiers cannot continue to actively bombard a stack of units once all the targets in that stack are at 1HP. So since the Treb does not have lethal land bombard, then even if a hit was registered, the defensive free-shot would not kill the incoming unit.

(IIRC, only the Hwach'a has lethal land-bombard in the epic-game? Possibly also Radar Artillery, but I haven't built any of those for years!)

Difficult to know for sure though, because as you say, the AI doesn't usually attack with redlined units in the epic game, and even if a human player was inclined to do so against an AI-controlled Korean unit-stack, the AI's unwillingness to build land-bombardment units means that the human would be very unlikely to encounter significant numbers of Hwach'a, even at Deity/Sid (where presumably the player wouldn't be engaging AI-doomstacks in the open more often than absolutely necessary anyway?).

We'd probably need to look at mods for a definitive answer to this question, e.g. @Vuldacon's Escape From Zombie Island series makes heavy use of the lethal-bombardment ability, and also sets a lot of A-values high enough that the AI might be willing to get reckless with a redlined high-A unit, if it was faced with a relatively low D-value unit(s). But it's a while since I last played EFZI, and I can't remember if I ever saw an attacking low-HP unit (mine or the AI's) get killed by a lethal defensive bombardment.