I'm curious how some folks say you have time to build three or four cities and still build GL. Or how it's so easy at King level to build every wonder with no problem whatsoever. I just rage quit a game. Playing Shoshone and three cities (king). GL gone by turn 30. -5 unhappiness starting at turn 50. No one has anything to trade. I got of unhappiness (+1) by having to spend all my time building collesiums instead of infrastructure.
Every classical wonder was built by someone else by turn 90.
Don't even get me going on how it takes 18 turns to build a settler.
Some games it's possible to do okay, but I did this game as Shoshone (with a ton of silver and I mean that literally--each city had at least four silvers, and two cities had cotton).
I couldn't do a darn thing because of unhappiness.
So how in the heck do you build three our four cities, keep happiness positive, and still build a wonder?
I've watched videos, I read these forums (I have some subjects practically memorized).
But this nonsense that someone can build any wonder they want at King? Or having three cities and then building GL? My God--it was built by the AI while I was still in the process of pumping out my second settler.
Docbud,
Are you playing standard speed or epic? Because I play Deity, not King, and turn 30 (well, turn 25-30) is the norm for GL going up, it should be significantly later on King level. May have just been one of those games where you had a remarkable runaway. Either way, you can still win any VC pretty easily without the wonders, so I wouldn't get too frustrated with that part.
The happiness part, though, is concerning. Here's what helped me the most in this area:
-take a look at an AI's territory and you'll often find that they have multiple copies of a resource, and yet when you go to the trade screen, they seem to only have 1 available and will not trade it (realistically; they will trade a 4 for 1, but you don't want that.) This is because they are trading to other AI. Then, they'll often renew those deals and you're pretty much "locked out" of trading for that resource with the AI. Sometimes you can break the chain (or they'll do so themselves) if they end up warring with a civ, which cancels the deals, and makes that resource available for trade.
More frequently though, the way to correct this is to get trade deals early and keep renewing them the very turn the deal ends; get yourself "locked in." Usually, I do this with my "monopolized resource." Some resources (always marble, sometimes silk, dyes etc.) are scattered across the map, while others (salt, cotton, sometimes others) have the entire world's cache all in one localized area, one of which there are probably multiple copies of in your capital's 3X range. Try to get the monopoly on at least one type of resource, and then every time you hook up one of those resources, try to make a lux for lux trade with it. Plan ahead, in the game you mentioned it sounded like you had a monopoly on silver, so each time you hooked up one of those, look to see if anyone has a lux to trade for it. Even if it's your only copy -
the most important thing to remember is if you know you're going to hook up another copy of a resourcein a few turns, go ahead and trade your last copy - you lose 4 happy but gain 4, no loss, and when you hook up the next copy you'll gain 4 more happiness.
Also observe which lux resources CS's have and don't trade for those.
