Shadow Game - Monarch Cyrus Flood Plains

[Build2Much]

Also - pikes can be neutralized by 1-2 maces, axes, longbows (crossbows if you want) in a stack. Unless your entire stack is mounted units they aren’t a big threat, and even then, you could get away with it at this level because you can whip 20+ units per turn.

I admitted in one of these threads that I basically ignored siege weapons and any unit promotions other than city raider and combat until I got to immortal level and I hit a wall.

Now I tend to build an initial army, try to promote thoughtfully, and use siege as “disposable” but keep my main stack alive and becoming highly (and thoughtfully) promoted. I might also use Vassalage and Theocracy sometimes, which I never would have done for 20 years.

A couple of units with “shock” and a couple with “formation” go a long way.

 

[sampsa]

Experience tells me that I will fall behind very quickly from this point. If there's some way to prevent that, I'd love to know it. How do I get my tech rate back to a reasonable level from here?

My initial thoughts are:
1. Put more citizens on high commerce tiles (is it too late to cottage more tiles?)
2. Build more wealth
3. Run Merchants/Scientists
4. Build more libraries/Markets (Apothecaries when I get to Guilds) in key cities
5. Build Courthouses as pmarc mentioned above.

What are my best bets? Is there anything I'm missing?

Happy to provide more info/screenshots if they would be helpful.

Was now able to check the save you attached and I echo jorissimo, it seems just a completely won position. However I can't see how much unhappiness you have because world builder save sets a bunch of things back to zero (unhappiness, bar, towards builds, probably towards a tech etc).

I think your city management is not great, especially capital in this save. You have 5 uncottaged river tiles!! Together with academy that seems blasphemy to me. If you build an academy, you must try to make it worth it. Most important thing in recovery is imo grow to work cottages. Build mainly things that help immediately - wealth, maybe courthouse. I wouldn't be building libraries or forges for example.

In the save you have plenty of units so I would certainly use them.

edit: oh one more very important tool in recovery once you have +20 cities - golden age. Academy doesn't do much for you in this position since you are running a very low average slider. GM:s would help a lot.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Well, it took me three attempts (from that T166 position that everyone said was easily won), but I finally got a domination victory on T254 (1720AD).

Attempt #1, was just playing normally (before I saw any specific comments). I gained a lot of territory but fell just short of victory before my attack stalled. I got stuck at around 62% of land. I made the error of trying to pick up all the unclaimed islands before attacking Sitting Bull. I was gambling that there would be enough land to get me over the line. There wasn't. By the time I realised my error and moved on SB, he had grown too powerful and was able to fend me off.

Attempt #2 I don't remember exactly what happened, but I failed to keep up with the AI in tech and abandoned my position around T221.

Attempt #3, I followed @pmarc 's advice. Picked up CS, Engineering, then Steel. It didn't hurt that Saladin volunteered to peace vassal himself to me. In fact, the trades I made with him were the only thing that allowed me to get to democracy when my citizens were screaming at me for emancipation. I managed to take Napoleon fairly easily. It took me 20 turns to get him down to 1 city, then I extorted him for a stack of techs that I had neglected. 10 turns later I finished him off. I had started to upgrade my siege to cannons towards the end of that war, so I moved my army to the East coast. Through a fortunate series of trades and a couple of conveniently timed Great Scientists, I was able to bulb Chem, most of Education and pick up Liberalism which I used for Astronomy. From there, it was just a matter of whipping a heap of Galleons and a few Frigates. I did have Rifling and Military Tradition by the end of that war, but not in time to actually upgrade any of Elephants or knights to Cavs. Didn't need to.

What I learned:
- My city placement and identification of strong spots still needs a lot of work.
- My usual tech path is too scattershot. I needed a better plan for acquiring key techs sooner.
- Annexed cities are often better off producing wealth. The buildings I usually put in them aren't always as useful as I think they are. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is what allowed me to keep up with the AI in my third attempt.

Anyway, that was a complete rollercoaster of a map for me. Losing twice from a position everyone said was easily won was a particular low point, but I got there in the end.

As always, thanks to everyone who offered advice and perspectives.

I'll try to implement it all as best I can. No doubt I'll be back when I hit another brick wall.

 

[floydmcw]

Sorry for the dumb question -- how do I load the WorldBuilder save? it didn't appear in the Load Game menu (I assume because of the file type) and when I entered the file name it said something about a 10-digit version number being unexpected.

Did this save use a mod?

(Civ4 from Steam on Windows 11 if that matters.)

 

[Thrasybulos]

how do I load the WorldBuilder save?

Chose "Play a scenario".

 

[floydmcw]

Chose "Play a scenario".

Thanks Thrasybulos!

Is there a way for me to turn a game I played into a scenario so I can replay it as one of the (AI) Civs? Did a quick Google but didn't find anything.

 

[Thrasybulos]

If you still have the initial save, enter the Worldbuilder and click "Save".
Ideally, you'd then need to do some slight edits to the resulting file (it's a plain text file): give the appropriate bonus techs to the former player civ and remove those for the civ you indeed to play, remove units on the map so both you and all AI civs start with the proper units, you might also want to change the team numbers around so you are Team 0...