[BTS] Some Critique, Please

[keyboard-rider]

I am looking to improve my skills a bit. I had a very recent game which I gave up on, and I would like to have it analyzed to see what I can improve.

Here is a rough outline:

- Rolled Elizabeth with English.
- Noble, Pangaea, Standard, Ancient, Normal.
- West coast start. Sury to the south, Mansa to the east.
- Rough plan: Get to Redcoats on a hybrid economy. Vassalize Sury, then deal with Mansa. Then try to win a Domination victory.
- Reality: Get to Redcoats on a... something economy. Vassalized Sury with some trouble - he had a counter-attack stack that I dealt with, losing valuable turns as I went back to town to heal before proceeding to his capital. Tech up to Infantry. Attack Mansa. A couple of turns later, he started producing Tanks, and I had no counter as the only available Oil was in his territory.

I am wondering what I could have done differently here.

I have attached pertinent saves.

#1: 4000 BC, game start.
#2: 0625 BC, all four cities established.
#3: 1630 AD, the Khmer declare war on me next turn. I had planned to do this as soon as I had 4-6 Trebuchets ready.
#4: 1834 AD, I vassalized the Khmer.
#5: 1913 AD, I declare war on Mansa Musa.
#6: 1928 AD, I give up.

And some comments:

- I had Horses, but no Iron or Copper.
- There were two available tiles with Oil. One was on the border to Mansa, and as his culture outpaced mine, he got that tile. The other was on sea and would have needed Plastics research.
- The only Aluminum on allied territory was in Khmer territory.
- Calendar was very important to research, as I had tiles with Dyes and Silk available.
- I generally dislike playing against the Khmers, as they end up getting an absurd amount of cities, are Creative with great culture, and have nasty Ballista Elephants to deal with.
- I am admittedly not very good at diplomacy, tech trading, especially. The AIs always seem to be getting the better deals...
- Mansa built Apollo Program at some point, indicating he was going for a Space Race victory. But, who knows.
- I play with BUFFY-3.19.005.

 

[soundjata]

Hello and welcome here

If you wish to improve your skill a bit, the best is to start a game and sollicitate advice along the way (shadow game)

It's hard to give meaningful advice on a series of saves but without looking into them, i noticed you formulate your strategy around late game concepts (redcoats, oil, aluminium etc...)

Generally, you want to control the game as soon as possible (easy life > hard life)
On noble difficulty, you can do that quite early in the game (first 100 turns no more)

You can forget about aluminium for a little while and learn how to own them AIs with copper and horses

 

[jorissimo]

Just an observation: forget about the whole XYZ economy thing. It's an obsolete concept from like 15 years ago. The same goes for city specialization. Cottages are important in every game and specialists cannot sustain an economy.

Edit: to elaborate, specialists are generally run for generating GP and not for their yields. And really only in GAs coupled with Caste and Paci to get multiple GP out in a burst.

 

[Gumbolt]

Had a quick look. The general land here is terrible. You got stuck on 4 cities for most of the game. Then gave up when it became clear the AI had so many more cities/units. Ideally you need 6-7 cities at least before 1ad.

You don't need 8-9 units in each city. Generally 1-2 is fine with a main stack. 10-15 redcoats with cannons should of owned the AI here on your later save. With only 4 cities very hard to build big stacks later on.

I would of built horse archers or chariots and rushed Sury very early on. 1000bc or before 8-9 HA. (Chop and whip the units.) Sury was pretty much blocking your expansion here.

Don't be afraid to reroll a start if you see the land is horrible at start or one AI is blocking you in. Learn the basics before creating challenging games.

 

[Gumbolt]

So option 1.

Warrior rush. Moved to plains hill. built 4 warriors with 1f2H and city centre. Lost 3 warriors. I didn't use the one that got experience from a hut. Captured a worker too.

 

[Gumbolt]

So with only cows you are forced to go hunting/Ah or agriculture AH at start. 6 turn down time for the worker at start. You can farm a grassland.

So went settler size 2 with farm and improved cow. Second worker to speed up chopping.

BW after AH then TW. Settled next to horse as capital border pop would get the corn.

Roads to 2nd city with 2 workers. (You actually only need 1 road as the horse is on a river tile already.)

Whipped cities for 1 pop. All chops into london and I pre mined one of the forest hills while i waited for TW.

7 chariots and sury had 2 archers in capital. Units to spare. I whipped a further chariot in 2nd city.

5 units was enough for his second city.

All very slow and painful but on Noble this worked. Not sure on higher levels it would of.

Plenty of saves for you to look at. Warrior rush was so much simpler but that won't work on higher levels.

I think you could of expanded to 4 cities. Buillt cottages and have gone HA here. Your city placement was not ideal in your game.

 

[pigswill]

Option 3. Chariot/HA fusion.

Spoiler :

SIP. Three cities. Build chariots while researching HbR. Then rush. Captured three Sury cities, lost four chariots.

 

[Gumbolt]

It's a tricky save. Health and happiness issues. So you need to connect your health resources early on. Happiness calls for early calendar.

Back to your 625bc save.
Nottingham 1E would of had flood plains to cottage.
You wanted the wheat flood plain city East of your capital.
The corn city needed to be grabbed. Maybe taking corn in inner ring then monument for the horse. Looks like you got unlucky that Sury settled north so early. I think your distant York city forced his hands a bit. Maybe corn should of been settled first.

Getting 3 cities super early really does help. Getting flood plains and cottages is very nice on financial.You had 7 or so flood plaines near your cities and you only managed to get one in your cultural borders cottaged.

Don't be afraid to cottage calendar resources. Albeit you were well on the way to calendar in your game. The misplaced cities was costing you a lot commerce wise.

 

[aitkensam]

I played a few turns from the 625 BC save. 50AD save attached.

My observations from what I saw in the first few turns.

• It's good that you build granaries.
• It's good that you were building monuments to get the resources in the second ring, but it would have been more efficient to settle in a way that got them in the first ring.
• There were lots of trade opportunities available but not used. I think I got about 5-6 techs within 1-2 turns.
• Calendar was a decent choice for an economic tech as you were struggling happiness-wise.
• You had a fairly sensible amount of workers but they hadn't been doing the best things (i.e. you had lots of improved tiles that weren't being worked, so you probably shouldn't have been improving those tiles and instead got your rice and horse hooked up and spammed cottages on floodplains). I immediately built two workers to catch up on missing improvements.
• There was space for a 5th city to use the wheat and floodplains (not that I settled it either - too busy planning murder). The wheat and cow city had too much food for the low happy cap so extra city probably would have been worth it.
• There was a crap ton of forest begging to be chopped. I teched Horseback Riding, chopped out an army and killed Sury. I put too much faith in Noble AI to tech Monarchy for me. Should have already done it myself to improve happiness!

 

[Gumbolt]

Is settler size 1 here with a mine the best start or does not reaching size 2 slow down the 3rd city.

I tried a peaceful run to calendar and Sury attacked me.Even on Noble come 1000bc the AI can build a stack of 5 or so units. Without HA or archers. hard to fight that off. That is the other issue here. If you have 8 border tiles with an AI it makes you a viable target war wise.

Of course I have not been trying to worker steal here to see what is possible on this save. Warrior rush seems a pretty good option here just to take out Sury and avoid the worker issues.

 

[jorissimo]

Even on Noble come 1000bc the AI can build a stack of 5 or so units. With HA or archers. hard to fight that off.

Wow. Even on Immortal that would be an early attack date, let alone on Noble.

 

[Gumbolt]

Wow. Even on Immortal that would be an early attack date, let alone on Noble.

725bc so not 1000bc. I was 2 turns off HA but had calendar.I perhaps could of saved it. AI stack had about 6 units. Still quite impressive for Noble AI.

 

[keyboard-rider]

Warrior rush.

Very interesting. I had a look at keyboard shortcuts of the BUG mod and learned about editing and placing dotmaps. By the way, I noticed you placed some dots on Desert tiles. And read up on how placing a city on them affects available resources. Educational. Desert and Tundra are not as bad as I thought.

Did you capture that Worker from the enemy, or train it yourself, using it to scout for the Warriors?

7 chariots and sury had 2 archers in capital. Units to spare. I whipped a further chariot in 2nd city.

Hmm, I did not even consider a Chariot rush. For some reason, HAs are more talked about. You have opened my eyes to a new possibility.

I found your placing of York to be aggressive. But, why not? You are not only hooking up a Horse - which you could have done to the north, as well - but you are also denying the enemy that same resource. And your units will have a shorter path to take into enemy territory. Smart.

Captured three Sury cities, lost four chariots.

A commendable trade!

Nottingham 1E would of had flood plains to cottage.
You wanted the wheat flood plain city East of your capital.

I was set on getting that Wheat into Nottingham's BFC somehow. Perhaps it would have been better to have it in the first ring of another city, as you say.

There were lots of trade opportunities available but not used. I think I got about 5-6 techs within 1-2 turns.

Entirely possible. I do not have a general sense of how to tech trade sensibly yet. One thing that I read is that the AIs tech trade amongst each other, anyway. So I am either doing that as well, or they will simply do it without me.

 

[pigswill]

I guess the main point is that if you're hemmed in with a small number of cities its worth considering early warfare.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think I prefer the corn as second city and whipping for monument to get horse. The corn is best tile near you. Easier to hook up for health.

You can worker steal on Noble level but I did not do this. Harder on creative leaders but crippling Sury here is a good idea. He might spam units is only downside. You can also kill his warrior settler escorts too. 2v 1 warrior should be a win.

I think i did capture workers when i attacked Sury.I would of built 1-2.workers. Any outside my usual cultural borders were captured.

The flood plain rivers are great for cottages. Coastal tiles are good too. So long term not a bad city. With wheat too can be whipped for units. Same for the aggressive city near Mansa. Cows vs 3 flood plains to work was a hard choice. Either way its a 3F resource but you would still grow at same speed. Whip monument at size 2 once you have myst.

Tech trade wise never really trade 2 for 1 techs aslong term the Ai do keep count and eventually say you are too advanced if they see you trade 10+ techs with other AI. On Noble level build plenty of cottages and techs come fast enough.