Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Lanzelot said:
Yep, that is one major disadvantage compared to Republic. In Republic, you sooner or later have enough cities so that you don't pay any unit upkeep. In Democracy you pay for every unit. This probably more than outweighs the slight decrease in corruption. So I would say in most cases you have even less net income in Democracy than you would have in the same situation with Republic.
Click to expand...
So the only real advantage to Democracy might be the increased worker efficiency, then.
 
CKS said:
For 4-turn research, science farms are really helpful, as are libraries and universities. I tend to limit my growth too much early on, but even so, I usually hit 4 turn research about halfway through the middle ages in my fast science games at emperor or below.

Libraries are helpful even when you only get one additional beaker from them, because the upkeep for the library can be paid for by income from other civs, but you can't get beakers from the money other civs pay you. This helps me justify my overbuilding of libraries. ;)

I do tend to build at the expense of growth, so I've started playing some science games where I'm not allowed to build libraries until some specified point - not until Astronomy, or until two opponents are gone, that sort of thing. Generally I hit 4-turn research sooner this way. It just isn't as much fun for everyday, though - I like to build rather than conquer.
Click to expand...
I am like you (evidently without the skill) in liking to play without too much fighting.
CKS said:
Spoonwood has a couple of screenshots in the interesting screenshot thread showing lots of beakers (around 850, and not even maximized for beakers, because he has unneeded clowns who could be scientists).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10822894&postcount=3335
Click to expand...
Awesome pic.
 
walletta said:
Lanzelot, how in the name of all that's holy do you manage to get to be researching techs at four turns each? We are talking about the same game aren't we … ? :(
Click to expand...

What difficulty level are you playing? Admittedly on Deity it is a bit more difficult to achieve, but on Emperor and lower it shouldn't be much of a problem to reach 4-turn research in the early middle age (Education), if you follow these guidelines:

  • Most important: go for the slingshot and become a Republic asap. (1500BC is a decent date to aim at, depending on the quality of your start position. With a good start, it can be even earlier: just take a look at the First Spoiler of COTM112 (if you have finished the ancient age already): here the earliest Republic dates are in the 1700s BC, and that was on Demigod, where tech prices are much higher than on Emperor.)
  • Make the most out of your food bonus to settle a first and second ring quickly and let them grow to size 7.
  • Workers, workers, workers. First they build your infrastructure and then they can be joined to first ring towns to grow them to size 12 quickly.
  • Get every luxury resource in sight. (Sell obsolete techs to neighbors to get some more.)
  • Make sure to get marketplaces and libraries in your first ring cities. Aqueducts, if they are not on fresh water.
  • The second ring also gets Courthouses. Harbors are excellent in coastal towns with a food shortage to get very high commerce there.
  • Cities that have finished their civilian improvements, will build Horsemen. (We'll see later why...)
  • Make sure to build the Forbidden Pallace early and in a useful location. (What do I mean by "useful"? Well, FP location is a whole new topic by itself...:D)
  • Have pre-builds ready by the time you approach Education in order to get Universities asap. Usually it's a good idea to start your GA around that time to get those Universities faster (especially if you are non-scientific). The extra commerce from the GA also enables you to hit 4-turn research for the first time.
  • In order to keep up 4-turn research for the time after your GA (and when the tech prices increase), you now need to keep expanding. (Get the idea what the Horsemen were good for...? ;)) Irrigate everything outside the second ring and use the territory as science farms in ICS-style (lots of size 6 or size 12 cities - depending on the fresh water situation - with 3 or 6 scientists in them. This gives 10 or 19 beakers a piece. If you have 50-100 of those it helps a lot...

The most useful wonders to get are:
  • Colossus (First rate wonder! One of the cheapest and at the same time one of the most powerful, as it provides its benefit from the early Ancient Age right up to the end of the Industrial Age. (Make sure to research Flight as the last industrial tech...!)
  • Hanging Gardens (Another excellent wonder, especially when short on luxuries)
  • Pyramids (Not important early on, but very useful during the phase where you want to settle and grow your science farms. Give yourself double credit, if you manage to let your neighbour build it for you and then capture it when needed... ;))
  • Bach's Cathedral (Again double credit, if you let a neighbor build it for you...)
    I never go for the Sistine Chapel, because I never build temples and consequently very seldomly have Cathedrals in my cities...
  • Theory of Evolution (Needs to be well-timed to coincide with the completion of some tech, so that you don't waste a turn of research)
  • And of course Copernicus, Newton, SETI and possibly Internet

Getting Temple of Artemis is a nice bonus, but usually the AI is not quick enough to build it before I reach Education... (Artemis expires with Education, which is the very tech you need to bee-line for in a fast research game, so it doesn't fit in very well with such a game. Also the hefty price of 500s means you can't build it yourself fast enough to be worthwhile: there is more important stuff to build during that phase! The best you could hope for is to finish it at the beginning of the Middle Age, and then it will already expire 3 techs later... :crazyeye: ==> 500 wasted shields...)
 
Lanzelot said:
on Demigod, where tech prices are much higher than on Emperor.
Click to expand...

Well, 14.29% higher. The only really sharp step is Deity to Sid with +50%. If you struggle with 4 turns per tech on Deity, than at Sid you will struggle with 6 turns per tech.

Nationalism(120) at a standard map(240) costs

2880 beakers at chieftain, warlord and regent(10)
3200 beakers at king(9), that is 11.11% more
3600 beakers at emperor(8), that is 12.5% more
4114 beakers at demigod(7), that is 14.28% more
4800 beakers at deity(6), that is 16.67% more
7200 beakers at sid(4), that is 50% more

Sid really is a league of its own. Getting 900 beakers per turn at emperor is if not easy at least possible. But 1800 beakers at Sid is a challange and later techs are even more expensive.
 
Lanzelot said:
What difficulty level are you playing? Admittedly on Deity it is a bit more difficult to achieve, but on Emperor and lower it shouldn't be much of a problem to reach 4-turn research in the early middle age (Education), if you follow these guidelines:

  • Most important: go for the slingshot and become a Republic asap. (1500BC is a decent date to aim at, depending on the quality of your start position. With a good start, it can be even earlier: just take a look at the First Spoiler of COTM112 (if you have finished the ancient age already): here the earliest Republic dates are in the 1700s BC, and that was on Demigod, where tech prices are much higher than on Emperor.)
  • Make the most out of your food bonus to settle a first and second ring quickly and let them grow to size 7.
  • Workers, workers, workers. First they build your infrastructure and then they can be joined to first ring towns to grow them to size 12 quickly.
  • Get every luxury resource in sight. (Sell obsolete techs to neighbors to get some more.)
  • Make sure to get marketplaces and libraries in your first ring cities. Aqueducts, if they are not on fresh water.
  • The second ring also gets Courthouses. Harbors are excellent in coastal towns with a food shortage to get very high commerce there.
  • Cities that have finished their civilian improvements, will build Horsemen. (We'll see later why...)
  • Make sure to build the Forbidden Pallace early and in a useful location. (What do I mean by "useful"? Well, FP location is a whole new topic by itself...:D)
  • Have pre-builds ready by the time you approach Education in order to get Universities asap. Usually it's a good idea to start your GA around that time to get those Universities faster (especially if you are non-scientific). The extra commerce from the GA also enables you to hit 4-turn research for the first time.
  • In order to keep up 4-turn research for the time after your GA (and when the tech prices increase), you now need to keep expanding. (Get the idea what the Horsemen were good for...? ;)) Irrigate everything outside the second ring and use the territory as science farms in ICS-style (lots of size 6 or size 12 cities - depending on the fresh water situation - with 3 or 6 scientists in them. This gives 10 or 19 beakers a piece. If you have 50-100 of those it helps a lot...

The most useful wonders to get are:
  • Colossus (First rate wonder! One of the cheapest and at the same time one of the most powerful, as it provides its benefit from the early Ancient Age right up to the end of the Industrial Age. (Make sure to research Flight as the last industrial tech...!)
  • Hanging Gardens (Another excellent wonder, especially when short on luxuries)
  • Pyramids (Not important early on, but very useful during the phase where you want to settle and grow your science farms. Give yourself double credit, if you manage to let your neighbour build it for you and then capture it when needed... ;))
  • Bach's Cathedral (Again double credit, if you let a neighbor build it for you...)
    I never go for the Sistine Chapel, because I never build temples and consequently very seldomly have Cathedrals in my cities...
  • Theory of Evolution (Needs to be well-timed to coincide with the completion of some tech, so that you don't waste a turn of research)
  • And of course Copernicus, Newton, SETI and possibly Internet

Getting Temple of Artemis is a nice bonus, but usually the AI is not quick enough to build it before I reach Education... (Artemis expires with Education, which is the very tech you need to bee-line for in a fast research game, so it doesn't fit in very well with such a game. Also the hefty price of 500s means you can't build it yourself fast enough to be worthwhile: there is more important stuff to build during that phase! The best you could hope for is to finish it at the beginning of the Middle Age, and then it will already expire 3 techs later... :crazyeye: ==> 500 wasted shields...)
Click to expand...

Thanks Lanzelot. Awesome.
 
So I am playing a huge map regent level game with 11 opponents but am facing a Big problem. Most of the AI although they're earning more than - 150gpt are not agreeing to give me gpt for techs. The deal is acceptable if I ask them for lump sums but as soon as I add 1gpt into the deal they refuse to accept it (techs like astronomy and physics are definitely worth more than 30 gold, right) ) . This has happened in earlier games too but in those games I usually had Already broken lots of deals and destroyed my rep. But this time, I'm very sure that I've done nothing of this sort. Still only Greece is willing to give me gpt deals and nobody else (there are 10 other civs too )
Is there an explanation for this or is it just bad luck. The year is 990AD and I'm about to enter industrial ages (1 tech away) Hope somebody can help me. Thanks a lot.
 
AI not being willing to give away gtp is a common thing. Usually AI becomes more willing to accept paying gtp when it becomes more developed. If AI has 30 cities of size 12 than chances are good. If AI is still small both in terms of size of its cities and the total size of its empire it will be less willing to give away gtp.
 
justanick said:
AI not being willing to give away gtp is a common thing. Usually AI becomes more willing to accept paying gtp when it becomes more developed. If AI has 30 cities of size 12 than chances are good. If AI is still small both in terms of size of its cities and the total size of its empire it will be less willing to give away gtp.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this was what I thought too but the fact that civs earning 250-300 gpt should, after expenses at least have 4-5 gpt to spare. So I thought that maybe I was missing something. Thanks.
 
This issue is a bit of mystery for me, too. I recall being able to extra at least minor amounts of gtp from civs with incomes much below 200 gtp. Exporting luxuries to them might help. But still it would help them more than you. My preliminary conclusion on the issue is that one should not try to aim at receiving gtp from AI.
 
Actually I'm trying to get a spaceship victory so there are lots of times when I have to give techs to the AI (to get them to research a few techs for me to buy) . Because the AI is generally low on treasury, gpt deals seem to be a good idea so I won't have to give them techs dirt cheap. Anyways, I'll just keep playing as it is. Thanks.
 
I'm not completely sure, but I think the trade reputation has no influence on wether the AI will pay you gpt. So even with a broken rep, you can still get gpt for "hard goods" from them, they will just not accept "per turn goods" (gpt, resources) from you!

In my experience, the main reason, why the AI is unwilling to give gpt for hard goods like techs, is that they are broke... High number of units, many unnecessary city improvements, no marketplaces and bad empire management (the notorious entertainer instead of hooking up luxury resources...) could easily mean that they are running a deficit, even if you think they should be making 200gpt... And then it is only Regent level! In my experience you need at least Emperor for the AI to become half-way productive...
As justanick said: gifting them your spare lux resources (or hooking up their un-used ones for them), might be the only way to get a bit gpt out of them.
 
if you really want to plan for AS-gpt however, you will need another approach anyway, that is double-trading. like, you first PAY them gpt, then in another trade get the gpt back, and either hope you can continue the gpt trades towards you after 20 turns (without continuing YOUR payments) or deliberately finding ways to cancel your payments even earlier. this goes deep into the mechanics of trading, but is not new. klarius described it already long ago how you had to get gpt INTO the system so can expect to get gpt OUT of the system.
t_x
 
Yeah, but that is now banned as an "exploit" under GOTM rules... (At least if you cancel your gpt payment while keeping theirs intact. Which is the only way to get some benefit from it, because why would you want a deal where both sides are still intact... It would be a "plus/minus null game" in the best case... :crazyeye:)
 
I also share Lanzelot's opinion. I'm not really inclined to getting gpt deals. I just wanted to get something that is actually worth the tech I'm giving the AI.Also, I slowly see more civs agreeing to gpt deals (even if it's just 8-10 gpt) Maybe the AI is growing finally. Anyways I'm quite happy with the 300 gpt I'm getting from Greece.
 
Need a word of advice here.
I'm about to complete the wonder Theory of Everything in 5 turns and I've adjusted my research to be complete in 5 turns too. What I want to ask is whether my plan of getting 2 techs completely free work ? In other words, will the game count the research as completed first or will the wonder be done earlier ?
 
I wanted to ask if I can submit my scenario somewhere in civ Fanatics. Thanks
 
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