Stagnant Empire

[MT5678]

Hey.
I play on noble, and I like the Earth2 mapscript.
When I play, I get a problem sometimes.
I think I overexpand or something.
But pretty soon, I gotta get to 40% to maintain a surplus, and my cities are pissed! and then I cottage spam. This gets me into the 60-70% range. But by now, I have 6 cities, and a lot of happiness problems.
In my last game, it was 475 AD, and I was only midway through the classical age.
Maybe its because I am not getting many wealth-based resources (no gold or floodplain or nuttin), and so I get lots of production resources. Or maybe another reason.
If you can tell me how to get a screenshot on, I will show you.
Can you give me a sorta optimal schedule for city founding?

 

[Nick53]

Press [Print Scr] in the game and then press: Go Advanced --> Additional Options --> Manage Attachments --> Browse --> My Documents --> My Games --> Civ4 --> ScreenShots

[Edit] I play on Noble also, I had the same problem. What is your city founding "plan"? I wait until size 3-4 until building a settler

 

[Uncle E]

I think a cure to your happiness issues might be easily solved by researching monarchy earlier for the hereditary rule civic that gives you +1 happiness for each military unit based in that city.

I also make sure to found cities near resources and hook them up to the rest of my empire w/ roads while timing monarchy research when most of my cities are reaching their natural happiness limits.

An expansion guideline has been suggested at 60% research, so maybe you're making too many settlers too fast and could swap that out for more workers and military units?

Cottage spamming from early on also helps, or if you spread a religion and use a GP to build the appropriate shrine, that may give you enough gold to keep going.

 

[MT5678]

My build order goes:
Worker/Settler/Warrior/Stonehenge. The second city will start off building a worker. Then, after a granary or something, I will chop another settler. He goes and founds, and the newest city builds a worker.
I do this to stake out land quickly. I realize now that it is sort of problematic.
If I don't cottage spam, I will quickly get doomed.
The idea to get monarchy quicker sounds good.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

My build order goes:
Worker/Settler/Warrior/Stonehenge. The second city will start off building a worker. Then, after a granary or something, I will chop another settler. He goes and founds, and the newest city builds a worker.
I do this to stake out land quickly. I realize now that it is sort of problematic.
If I don't cottage spam, I will quickly get doomed.
The idea to get monarchy quicker sounds good.

why not, for your capitol worker/warrior/warrior/settler if not size 2 another warrior or if you have bronzeworking let it grow to 3 while you prechop forest for settler/warrior/setler at size 3/granary/worker.then you are ussually size 5 or 6 for your capitol.

you can have 3 cities around 3000/2500BC for your newly founded I ussually start with worker archer/granary. or let your capitol make some archers to send to your new cities, before expanding again.
When I have 6 cities at around 1000BC I trie to have at least one worker each city maybe more depending on growth of cities and start cottaging as soon as possible for my first 3 cities.

 

[Dnomal]

I've recently jumped from prince -> monarch, my build order isfirst warrior or scout goes off exploring)
warrior
settler
warrior
worker
archer

If you are worried about money i recommend The Great Lighthouse, giving 2 free trade routes is fantastic for boosting the finiancial potential of empires, especially large coastal based ones.

For happiness i agree with Uncle E, go for monarchy and run heridetary rule, or if in danger later you might think of running the culture slider if you have theaters or colis.

Also i highly recommend building wealth, in most of my war games i end up qith 1/5 of my cities building wealth since it REALLY helps to keep an economy up, also another method fo getting money is selling resources to other civs, especially since when you expand you tend to get a surplus of resources that no one else has selling them can bring in hard cash, while diverting other civs wealth away from research.

 

[oyzar]

worker setler is just fine. the problem is probably that your not whiping enough. whip away the unhapiness.

 

[futurehermit]

try and keep your wars short and efficient.

 

[Sparta]

worker setler is just fine. the problem is probably that your not whiping enough. whip away the unhapiness.

QFT.

(Also, just having enough workers to ensure that you are working improved tiles in connected (and thus trade-route-having) cities should suffice to get your economy through some of the very earliest game IMHO, so it might be good to make sure you are continuing to build enough workers. Having citizens working unimproved land is not a real big help to your empire, as they are costing extra maintenance and typically bringing in very little beyond the two food they consume in the first place. Also, whip more. )

 

[Ruler]

It's hard to say without screenshots but from my experience common mistakes among new players are 1) not enough of workers basically you should have a worker already when you find or capture new city. 2) cities are growing too slowly 1-2 food surplus is good if you are one away from your max happiness but if it's 2 or more you should definitely do sometimes what I like to do is keep at least one specialist in every city so I can put work on farm when I want to grow faster.

From this we can get to my suggestion. More workers and faster growing and what you should do with your 6 happiness if I remember right it's on Noble.. 1 citizen on food preferably resources, 1-2 on hammers ie copper or hill, and rest on cottages this COULD work all way to city size 10.

Just common hint when you reach your max happiness you should think what you can do to raise it and not to wait too long.

 

[dragomaster]

one good way is to reserch bronsworking then go thowards curency. cottage spam after you have worked the food resorces. start to build military and setlers.

as fast you reserched new buildings start to build them where apropriate, grow the city in to unhappines with one citicen, whip away three citicens if posible, try to time it. (if happy limit was 6 then you overgrowed it to 7 after the whip its 4.) continue to build military, when you have 7 or 8 axmen go on attack thowards a neigbour. if your economy is bad this is often the best way to earn monney. keep the citys you like, raze the outhers and bring in reeinforcments. continue like this untill the neighbour is so small that he newer again will be a thret against you or crush him to oblivion, its you chose. during the wars you will earn alot of monney, that will make you able to have scinence in red during you build makets and outher economic buildings. you can even become the tech leader during the wars the techs can be traded with outher techs and monney. in this way you will newer have any problem. code of law is a nice thech, try to reserch it early if you wage war.

 

[MT5678]

Hey.
I am doing somewhat better now.
I am Bismarck, and I am preparing for war against my impoverished neighbor Napoleon.
Right now, I have built 3 axemen, and have 2 chariots scouting out his land.
I went Worker/Warrior/Warrior/Settler/Stonehenge.
I had somewhat better results.
More in a later post.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

on noble you can skip stonehenge ussually till your third city is build. the ai most of the times don't build it till well beyond 2000BC. I would skip stonehenge till after your second settler from your cappitol is ready, and then chop 1/2 forest and rush the rest. you will still have it at 3000BC 2500 bc.

btw. maybey a little bit larger army? remember you ussually need to outnumber the defender 2:1

 

[dragomaster]

seven to eight axmen is often enough to do damage with, don't hesitate. attack his new citys when you get them. the more you wait the stronger he will be. so attack with that army and build reeinforcements during this time.

 

[CosmoKing]

Yeah, I think you are expanding too fast, since for every new city you have to pay maintanance, and build too soon too quickly and you will be in floods of financial problems! Build city's steadily, making sure you have a sizeable treasury with money going in before you build any settlers.

I would also knock Science down to 80% or less as soon as you have several city's.

I reccomend instead of going "cottage spam" all at once, build a few at a time for each city gradually. This way, you will get a steady increase of villages and towns rather then a lot of tiny cottages that produce little compared to the former two.

As suggested before, I would switch to Hereditary Rule as soon as possible and then fortify 2-3 soldiers in each city at least, and that should quell your happiness problems in the early game.

 

[30+]

I'm currently playing on Emperor with Catherine with the following settings:

Pangea/Standard/Temperate/Medium/Ancient/Normal/Random/Cylindrical/STANDARD

No Barbarians
No Tech Trading
No Vassal States

+ I always have closed borders. The only time I open them is to scout the people I want to attack.

Conquest/Domination only

I am a firm believer in expanding as much and as fast as i can!! Especially at higher levels where AI starts off with a settler already it is very important to grab land while you can.

Since I have mining and hunting already, I can research BW and AH and already know where key resources are so.......

My Build order goes:

Worker/Settler/Settler/Settler/Warrior/Barracks

BW/AH/Wheel/AGR/WRT

With Cathy being imperialistic I get a full 30 per chop so it only takes me two chops to make one settler.

This will often take my research down to 0-10%(Emperor pays much stiffer penalties for more cities and units), and in some severe cases, NEG, therefore making me have to tile swap in my cities to get the most commerce, even if it means stagnating growth for a few turns.

The key is to make sure I get the wheel finished before my research plummits where it takes 20-40 turns to finish the next tech, lol. My first expansion city will always be the one which has at least a few 2 commerce tiles, or 1 three commerce tile, or a gold/silver mine (preferably).

This ensures I can start getting research up ASAP. 2nd Expansion city will be hooking up the horse/copper, and the 3rd new city will be commerce again. The goal is 2 to 3 commerce cities spamming cottages while ONE city will be my production power house (although in 80% of games I usually get a hybrid city where my gold/silver is at and have a decent production + commerce from it).

My tech path after the above usually follows something like pottery/ (i do after writing cause Cathy gives super fast libraries and a fast boost to my capital and my gold/silver city) then all the techs needed for Monarchy for the happiness. Then math/construction/currency/COL/CS/Iron/Met Cast/Machinery.

Within a couple hundreds year I become point leader and normally keep compounding my lead as the game goes on. I try to make it a point to attack the guy who is closest to me in score. Same goes for next war etc etc.

The whole point is LAND LAND. Even if you stall your initial growth and research a TAD bit, lol, VERY VERY soon you will have MANY MORE workable tiles.

At emperor Cap gets 4 happiness cap and other cities get 3. That means I usually have a 5 Happy Capital and 4 Happy other cities. If I only had 2 cities I would only have 9 workable tiles. Having 4 cities early (and more very soon after economy kicks in!) I have 17 workable tiles. Obviously the more tiles you can work the higher your research and production will be.

Even if I play with a civilization w/out imperialistic and mining, I will still aim for as many cities as possible to maximize the amount of tiles I can work.

 

[CivSetä]

seven to eight axmen is often enough to do damage with, don't hesitate. attack his new citys when you get them. the more you wait the stronger he will be. so attack with that army and build reeinforcements during this time.

I think you should always go for capital first, if possible. I usually build only 8 axes before declaring war, if I can attack before city defences of capital go up to the 40% (just monitor your own capital to get hint about border expansion). All surviving axes gain promotions, so after capturing their capital you can just vander around their countryside and burn their minor cities with your superior units. In my opinion you should not start from smaller cities, because during the time you spend elsewhere AI can whip huge amount of defenders in capital. They can't whip that effectively in smaller cities, so start from the capital.

 

[dragomaster]

true, the capitol is the best city to attack. If the capitol is in reach then i go for it first. it can get dirty if the attack don't go well though. leavs you there with three axes and a civ that counters, can be a dirty jobb to manage.

 

[CivSetä]

The key is to do it soon enough. I build only two cities with barracks and start pumping axes/chariots, it's child's play if you can attack when city defences are still only 20%. If you can't grab copper/horses nearby, and attack thousand years later, it really can get dirty as you said.

 

[Kietharr]

Ok, as soon as you start beeline for bronzeworking, with any luck you will have a source near your capital. If not, grab the worker techs and go for financial techs like monarchy and currency, grab ironworking as soon as it costs a reasonable ammount of beakers, if you don't have copper you will have iron near your capitol.

If you see copper, send a settler out ASAP to claim it, mine the bronze and connect the cities, improve the second city with barracks and other buildings, and build as many axemen as possible in your capital. You should have no more than four cities built at this point, any more risks your economy and science. If you don't have copper, expand around, grab elephants if you see them, and keep a settler in reserve for iron, which is easier to find than copper. Start building swordsmen and war elephants asap. If you ABSOLUTLEY have to, trade for metal. Trading is generally bad because you can be cut off if the guy starts to hate you for warmongering.

Now, as soon as you have 5-6 axemen or swordsmen, you can start your wars. Attack the closest civ's border city and beeline for their capital (which is almost always a very good city), destroy them in one war if possible, the sooner you kill them off the better. You should have 2 or 3 cities set for pure production of military units, your capital is generally powerful in most respects, then another city for science. Possibly a GP farm if you have a nice floodplains river in close proximity. Use your first cities as production or commerce cities, as the cities conqured in pre AD wars will revolt for a very short ammount of time and be easily made into 100% your nationality. Remember to raise any cities in desert or tundra areas without resources.

From there, you should have a powerful military and a score lead.