Quick Game Critique, Anybody?

[Dubzilla8]

Hello everybody! I frequently read these forums but I hardly ever have the chance to post. However, I started a random game last night (Prince difficulty, continents, 6 opponents, flat, temperate) and drew Kublai Khan. I started out on a seemingly large continent and, at first, I thought I was alone. Then, Ragnar, Roosevelt (my boy), and Hannibal popped up some distance away. I founded Confucianism and adopted it to increase the size of my cities, had some trouble with some barbarians, built the Great Wall, then switched to Hinduism to build relations with its founder, Roosevelt, and Ragnar, who also adopted it.

Strangely, very early in the game, Roosevelt asked me to stop trading with Ragnar. I mean, this was real early. I wish I knew the date but it was shortly after writing was discovered and I never seen this request so early. Anyway, my plan for the game was to try and build good relations with one or two of the AI's and, I like Roosevelt, so I agreed to his request. Normally I tick everyone off which is why I wanted to work specifically on diplomacy for a game.

Another funny thing is that I had a GS and popped Taoism, and now I have an opportunity to found Christianity. So, ironically, with Kublai Khan I might have a legitimate shot at a cultural win. For the most part I don't like warring, and I try to only war early or when absolutely necessary, so I end up being pushed into a space race attempt since my diplomacy skills are so bad.

Anyway, in an attempt to make this shorter, I thought I'd post this game and see what the collective mind of the Civfanatics can muster for me. Should I try for a cultural win? Who should I plan on invading? Should I try to capture the whole continent? What sort of technologies should I approach? What do you think of tile improvements and the tiles I am working? Any advice would be nice.

Thanks in advance. And, if there are a reasonable number of responses, I'll update when I have the chance.

 

[pigswill]

Starting point might be exploration to find out where your rivals are located, how big, what resources etc.
Roose is unpopular with both Ragnar and Hannibal; every trade with him will give you diplo penalties.
You've got enough space for three or four more cities so peaceful expansion could be a short term objective.
An army of eight warriors and an archer is pretty naff and asking for trouble imho so you might want to address that (you've got horses available for chariots, you could do with a city to snag some iron).
You probably don't know enough yet to decide on easiest victory.

 

[Collier20]

The Creative trait isnt the best for a cultural win. A lot of other UB/traits are better if not more useful. The Inca's (Industrious and Financial) UB gives +2 culture, so basically you are giving up cheap theaters for cheap wonders. But IMO religion is the key to a cultural win. Ok but I am ramblin'. I am going only on the screen shot, but here's what I would do.
1) Capture the barbarian city and keep it. With three food resources it would make a Great GP farm.
2) Settle one square east of the stone. This is better than your blue stop because a) land is better than water, b) you will have 10 squares (if I counted correctly) next to a river, and c) you will still have the same three resources.
3) Do you have marble? If not, can you get marble? If so, get it. Marble and stone really help with building which means fast wonders and catherdals.
4) If you want to go for a Cultural win, build the Sistine Chapel right away. The +2C per S is a nice bonus.
5) Also head for Divine Right and whatever gives you the UofS. Build UofS and the Sprial Mignet. For a cultural win, you will need to build a lot of religious buildings b/c you will want Catherdals. So when these things produce Gold and Science its a big plus.
My computer can't handle a late game standard map, so I only play small. On small you need two temples per catherdal. On standard I think its three temples per catherdal but I am not sure. Any way you want to make sure you have enough support towns to build a catherdal in each of your Cultural towns.
6) I am assuming on standard its a 3 to 1 ratio for Catherdals. So get three more towns (I counted 4 original towns plus the barbarian town plus the town nead blue for a total of 6). Build them, capture them, whatever. Yellow looks like a good location for one city
7) Have the pyrimads been built? I love Representation and use it for most of the game. As soon as you get Representation, you can start running artist without a falling behind.
8) Stay friends with Washington. Do what he wants. When you start working on a cultural win, you are going to fall in the power score. You will want to keep a strong ally incase you get in trouble with another civ.
9) Ok Once you get nine cities, here is what i would do
a)Three are going to build whatever cultural building becomes available. Temples, walls (so you can build castles), theaters, monestaries, libaries, universities, Wonders, some of the national wonders. If you dont have any cultural buildings to build, have them build missionaries to spread religions around your empire. You want each city to have all 7 religions.
b) Dont worry about science cities. Until Astromony all science buildings produce culture and you are going to be building libaries, monistaries, and universities in your cultural cities. With representation and the Sistine Chapel, specialist are going to be producing culture and science.
c) Any holy city (if its not one of your three cultural cities) will be a financial city. If you can build a temple, build a temple. Then build markets, groceries, and banks in this city. Once you have built a shrine send out missionaries to spread your religion.
d) Try to run two specialist cities. Use the barbarian city for one. You can probably use the cultural cities for the other. The idea is you want to build all your shrines and three academies. I wouldn't worry about lightbulbing techs.
e) In all other cities, build temples when available. Then build units. Once you have a shrine built. Alternate between missionaries and units. You can only have three missionaries for each religion at once so this shouldnt be too hard to do.
f) Civ wise, I go with Representation, Bureaucracy, Caste System, Merc, and Organized Religion. When computers come around (or if you lost the race to UofS and SM) switch to Freedom of Religion. This will give all of your cities +7 culture (assuming you have each religion in every city).

 

[Dubzilla8]

First off, thanks to both of you for replying.

Pigswill, I completely agree that the army is very lacking. It is my main concern that Ragnar will attack me early if I don't build up. I meant to have my iron city as my third city, but barbarian activity prevented me from doing so and I built Turfan instead until the Great Wall was up.

Collier, thanks for the tips for a cultural approach. Im going to post shots of my country because Im not sure keeping that barbarian city would be best. It takes 4 tiles from Ning-hsia and I thought Karakorum would make a very good GP farm. On the other hand, water tiles do kind of stink and there isn't much production for creating a navy from a coastal city in the spots I planned on settling. Let me know what you think.

I thought my next city should either go to yellow in order to block off enemy expansion in that direction, or to black in order to pick up some more production. It seems no matter how I settle, I will be wasting some green land in the center of the empire.

- Thanks again -

 

[Collier20]

1) Beshbalik is going to be a great city. Three gold, cow, rice, and a shrine. Thats big bucks. Get a GP fast if you dont have one and spread Con.
2)Why did you build the town over the sugar in Karakorum? I have never seen this before? I know undeveloped it gives you an extra food, but IMO food resources are better developed with farms and plantations.
3) Ning hsia's location was a poor choice. After seeing more of the map, the Barbarian city would have four food resources in its BFC. Thats a lot of specialist. If Ning-hsia was one squares North, it would have swapped out the iron and bananas (which would have gone to the barbarian city) with marble and cows. It just might be me, but I LOVE cows and marble is needed for a cultural victory (fast wonders and catherdals).
4) There is nothing you can do about Ning shia now. Destory the barbarian city and settle one square east of the bananas. A plantation will make up for not having a lighthouse for three sea squares.
5) I would love to build a city on the forested hill above the desert to caputre the cow, gold, and incense. But with all those plains and only a cow for food, there is no way you are going to be able to work the incense and the gold. Is there by another food resources hiding in the northern most bfc squares?

 

[Dubzilla8]

I see what you mean about Ning-hsia. At the time my thought was to grab as much green land as I could to maximize cottaging (word?). I wanted the iron and figured I would grab the marble in two border pops.

Also, the barbarian city didn't appear until after Ning-hsia was built, so capturing it seems to come out of hindsight. The way I read the map, I was looking to split the food resources - Ning-hsia would have the bananas to support the plains tiles, therefore I could have everything cottaged and then another city could grab the food that the barbarian city claims at this point. I thought having two cottaged cities would be better. Would you still have put in one city for all those food tiles and ran a specialist economy there? Im not too familiar with doing that but I think I could in my next opportunity. Or would you have made it a GP farm and turned Karakorum into a cottage city? Its pretty standard to have only one city Great People, right?

On the subject of Karakorum - I cottaged the sugar simply for the early game with the intention of plantating it as soon as I grab calendar (I can make a trade for it right now I believe). I suppose I could have farmed it and kept using the whip, but I'm not too great at whipping so I use it sparingly.

Finally, a question about religion, which is something I usually don't use a whole lot. I can pick up a great prophet for Beshbalik, as Collier suggested, but what about the other religions? Should I only have one shrine and then spread Confucianism to the AI's? Or should I try to get multiple shrines? Seems like more than one shrine would require a ton of missionaries.

 

[Collier20]

Use your GP to build shrines. Shrines give you 1 g per city with that religion. Plus once you start spreading a religion to other areas it will spread itself too. Hit capitals and other large cities first.

Last night I openned up your game and got a better look. The first thing I noticed was you have half the number of cities as the Americans do. Then I realized it was 400 AD and you just built your fourth city. The worker being built in Ning hsia is unnecessary. You have way more tiles developed than you have population to work. I think you are building too many city improvements and not enough settlers. I limit my first city to workboats, a worker, warriors (or archers), and settlers until I have my second settler built. Then if I have stone or am industrious I go for the Pyramids. Running at 80% science this earlier in the game is a good sign that your Empire is too small.

As for grasslands, they are nice, but if you dont like whipping, you won't build anything with just grasslands. You want your cities to have combinations of tiles.

 

[Dubzilla8]

Collier, you're definately right about the size of the empire. I didn't realize how large the other civs were at that point. When I played the game, I quickly found myself boxed in and could only place two more cities in the area. I didn't want to go to war with America and I was so friendly with everyone else on the continent since I was trying to actually work diplomacy in this game. Bottom line is, I don't think you can grow a big enough civ without an early war. Furthermore, if you wait too long then chances are you might not be able to keep up in tech because you have fewer early cities which means you don't have a chance at a successful war later.

I think another thing that threw me off was all the religion I had developed. It was a lot different than when I avoid religion completely and I noticed I had fewer settlers and a much smaller army. I think for the time being I might avoid founding several religions until I understand diplomacy more. It just seems pointless to found, say Confucianism, after your whole continent is one of the earlier religions, and then adopt it. Also, it seems like most of the time I don't have any religions spread to me so I rarely get to use that part of diplomacy to my advantage.

Anyway, thanks for all your suggestions and I definately want to try to apply what you've said about cultural victories. I like the building and hate the war so I think that would be a fun victory type to approach.