So How Horribly Am I Doing?

[MrMitra]

So I went out and bought BtS today and decided to give it a whirl as Churchill using the things I've learned over the last few days. I'm playing on Noble with Standard Continents. I have screenshots in the spoiler below. Right now I'm in an interesting diplomatic situation. From what I can tell, Musa has the lead with me in close second. Khan is in living hell. Musa is my tech partner and is friendly with me. For some reason I don't have the option of bribing Musa to go to war with Khan (They've been fighting all game so if I had the option it wouldn't be too hard). I once declared war on Khan when he was at war with Musa, but he quickly signed a treaty with Musa and focused on me, which wasn't what I was expecting. I snagged one of his cities before his SoD started knocking on the door of Hastings. I treatied with him since I didn't feel like I was in a good position to be in a 1 on 1 war with him. I'm not sure how to approach Khan since although I have a significant tech lead on him (I'm the only one on the continent with muskets), he has horses and he ends up destroying my infrastructure since I don't really have any units that can keep up with horses. And swarming tiny pillaging parties leaves my forces too weak to march on his cities. I'm afraid if I get into a big war with Khan, my infrastructure will take a big hit and Musa will start to pull away. Anyone have any suggestions?

Spoiler :

 

[mariogreymist]

You really need to build some caravels and check out the rest of the world. You might be far worse off than you think.

But the real thing you should have been doing here is settling the area on the east coast. While the desert tiles are unworkable, there are fringe tiles north of london already improved and ready to go, and all those flood plains are a dream come true for getting a city up and running fast. Not to mention the three oasises. Oasi? whatever. You should be getting a lot of that you're missing out on.

 

[DMOC]

Any reason why the floodplain/fish hasn't been settled?

 

[mariogreymist]

As for handling horses: station muskets on roads (preferably on hills, but within one turn's move of two cities) between cities. That way they can respond to defend a city, or to kill a keshik who's out to destroy your towns and villages.

 

[MrMitra]

So I think I am still confused on when I should build cities. I thought it was more about quality versus quantity. I figured I shouldn't build one out there due to all the dead tiles. I don't want my maintenance costs to get out of hand.

 

[mariogreymist]

Profitable cities are ones that can generate population and , both of which come in abundance on floodplains. While your maintenance will outweigh your revenue from the 2-3 cities you can get in there at first, once the cities get up to size 4-5 they should be breaking even, and in the end, a well placed flood plain city there could be a real cash cow (with cottages). Generally speaking, I will build a city if it can work at least 6 improvable(or water) tiles. And I work out my dotmap such that there are few, if any, workable tiles within my territory not within a city's BFC.

 

[dirtyparrot]

Any reason why the floodplain/fish hasn't been settled?

Same question popped into my mind. And there's really not much use in maintaining such a larger treasury unless he was planning to massively upgrade his troops in preparation for a war. The slider is at 70% and he's still making 10GPT. Please MrMitra, settle your land (you have 2 good spots), build a large army and go knock some skulls. Make sure to plan things well and get a good idea of what you're facing from either spies or open borders. And forget about the score. The game will in all likelihood not be decided by the score, but you reaching one of the other victory conditions.