Still Suck at SVs as Mid-Level Player - Help Please From Higher Level Players

[Fish Man]

I've been playing for a while now, and I think I've mastered early game BO's, teching, GS spam, and growth to achieve a t300-ish SV. However, a couple of elements hinder my progress, and I need help on how to fix them.

1. Is there any way to deal with early DOW's? At least one still comes at ~t100, and in my recent game, there came three waves: Germany/Ottoman on t92, Ottoman/Songhai/Arabia on t150, and Hunnic on t225. Though not really a threat on emperor, they're still annoying and force me to waste 25-50 turns on producing archers. Only upside: got collective 75 gpt from peace deals in Ottoman/Songhai peace.

2. How to deal with low production? My cities grow fine but they're stuck at taking 10-12 turns to build things for most of the game, even with factories, workshops, etc.

3. How to get gpt up and running? All the way until modern/atomic my caravans produce measly sums of gold and I'm stuck with 25-50 gpt.

4. How to reach research milestones on time? I get education at t115, st t175, plastics t225, which are more than 10 turns behind their respective milestones. This problem is only exacerbated for satellites/apollo, which I don't reach until 250-260. And that's without taking a single tech not required to reach those milestones.

5. How to culture? I build my guilds late medieval/early renaissance, and work them full-time (at the cost of a lot of food) but still can't get above 50-60 cpt and 10 tourism. I only make like 4-5 gw a game, and can't get museums fast enough to make archaeology/GA worthwhile. Why? See aforementioned tech problem - though I think that's only part of the problem, since increasing culture even a bit will take too much production/lost resources. This hurts me a lot since besides tradition/rationalism I only get about 3-4 tenets, and have to anarchy due to neighbor always being culturally superior/diff ideology.

6. How to late-game tech? I don't see high-level players bulbing 12 GS in desperate last-ditch attempt to reach particle physics in time, so what am I doing wrong? What's the path I should take for late-game tech? Right now, after plastics, I go straight to satellites, then to adv. ballistics, then to robotics/nanotech, and finally to dreaded PP (there's like 10 techs I need to research just to get to PP). Also, getting philosophy seems to take a really long time (15-20 turns) and doesn't seem worth it. How do people get NC/Oracle so fast while founding 4 cities?

7. How to produce spaceships parts quick? Even with hubble, spaceship factories, and hydro dams they take 12-20 turns.

Attached are my starting and ending saves for emperor Shoshone Pangaea (t295 SV is cutting it really close in my book). Any tips? What would you have done?

 

[Fish Man]

Here's the ending screenie.

Spoiler :

 

[Uzael36]

1) The best way to deal with early DoW is to have enough military that they simply do not DoW on you and trying not to push your borders up against theirs. Between building granaries, libraries, universities and caravans/cargo ships, build a few archers before they decide to declare war.

2) How big are your cities? You say they grow fine, but you didn't describe what fine is. My guess is that you are not growing large enough. As your population grows, it is easier to do everything, including production and filling specialist slots.

3) Earning gold usually comes from trade networks and market/banks/etc. You can also sell excess resources to the AI.

4) Not every start will reach those milestones, and every game is different, but if you are only 10 turns behind those milestones, you aren't doing so bad, and should still beat the game many turns earlier. You might want to plant some of those scientists for increased science earlier. You also need to make sure to get rationalism going soon. The fact is, I can't hit those milestones either, but still win SV games on turn 252-272.

Don't neglect your Ideology either. Order gives you increase science with factories.

5) Don't forget to make allies with cultural CS's. If focusing on a SV win, they are very important to keep things rolling. Make sure to get a writers guild early and work that above the others as they can be used to bulb lots of culture at once in the later game, and fill out your slots in the early game.

6) I've learned I can take off a ton of time simply by bulbing straight to Satellites, using several GS's. Rather than holding onto my GS's until after Apollo, I've found getting to Apollo and hubble to be more important and gives you more time to build the parts while you research further techs, which will be assisted by the hubble scientists, and a couple purchased GS from faith.

Be sure to build a lot of faith buildings so that at the end of the game, you can buy GS's and possible Engineers. My last few games, I've focused a lot more on faith, and it has taken 20 turns off my victories, if not more.

7. If you use your GS's on bulbing to Apollo, rather than holding onto them after, it gives you more time to build your parts. If you take Order, you can use Great Engineers to build the parts if you get to the 3rd tier or buy them with Freedom from the 3rd tier policy. Make sure to have enough culture to get there, and don't forget about the worlds fair and other such proposals which give free policies. Having a good amount of faith to allow you to purchase an engineer or 2 is quite useful.

You may also want to research for the "rocket boosters" before the "spaceship factories" so you can get your 3 top cities building parts all at once, and save gold to purchase factories once you get that tech next.

Note: I'm mostly playing Immortal with a couple successful Deity games (but didn't really enjoy them).

 

[Fish Man]

1) The best way to deal with early DoW is to have enough military that they simply do not DoW on you and trying not to push your borders up against theirs. Between building granaries, libraries, universities and caravans/cargo ships, build a few archers before they decide to declare war.

2) How big are your cities? You say they grow fine, but you didn't describe what fine is. My guess is that you are not growing large enough. As your population grows, it is easier to do everything, including production and filling specialist slots.

3) Earning gold usually comes from trade networks and market/banks/etc. You can also sell excess resources to the AI.

4) Not every start will reach those milestones, and every game is different, but if you are only 10 turns behind those milestones, you aren't doing so bad, and should still beat the game many turns earlier. You might want to plant some of those scientists for increased science earlier. You also need to make sure to get rationalism going soon. The fact is, I can't hit those milestones either, but still win SV games on turn 252-272.

Don't neglect your Ideology either. Order gives you increase science with factories.

5) Don't forget to make allies with cultural CS's. If focusing on a SV win, they are very important to keep things rolling. Make sure to get a writers guild early and work that above the others as they can be used to bulb lots of culture at once in the later game, and fill out your slots in the early game.

6) I've learned I can take off a ton of time simply by bulbing straight to Satellites, using several GS's. Rather than holding onto my GS's until after Apollo, I've found getting to Apollo and hubble to be more important and gives you more time to build the parts while you research further techs, which will be assisted by the hubble scientists, and a couple purchased GS from faith.

Be sure to build a lot of faith buildings so that at the end of the game, you can buy GS's and possible Engineers. My last few games, I've focused a lot more on faith, and it has taken 20 turns off my victories, if not more.

7. If you use your GS's on bulbing to Apollo, rather than holding onto them after, it gives you more time to build your parts. If you take Order, you can use Great Engineers to build the parts if you get to the 3rd tier or buy them with Freedom from the 3rd tier policy. Make sure to have enough culture to get there, and don't forget about the worlds fair and other such proposals which give free policies. Having a good amount of faith to allow you to purchase an engineer or 2 is quite useful.

You may also want to research for the "rocket boosters" before the "spaceship factories" so you can get your 3 top cities building parts all at once, and save gold to purchase factories once you get that tech next.

Note: I'm mostly playing Immortal with a couple successful Deity games (but didn't really enjoy them).

1. Good idea, but I don't have enough production in cities to spend on this.

2. Te-Moak was at like 20 pop by t125, and as you can see in the screenie I have well enough pop.

3. Also my plan, but hard to build everything when it all takes 10+ turns. Could take less, but need to sacrifice major food.

4. Idk about that, since researching 3 eras and building 6 parts in less than 80 turns seems a bit hard.

5. Allying with culture CS requires gold which I don't have; see problem 3.

6. As said, I need my bulbs for the final stretch/tech bottleneck.

7. I only get 3 sps in my ideology since I'm bad at culture. This means I can't get to the really juicy level 3 tenets.

Basically, all of my problems lead to each other, and I really can't find a root cause. If anyone else has tips, please reply .

 

[The Pilgrim]

Just based on your SS - the land is somewhat underdeveloped - you have two unimproved hills in your capital after completing the game?! I suspect you invested too much in food by neglecting production. Balance is the key in everything. You do need to work some mines. Compensate for 'lost' food by sending food caravans. Later on switch to production caravans.

Did you found Confucianism? If you did, you should have pushed faith much harder as well. Faith purchasing GP is really, really powerful. Getting a good faith pantheon can shave off many turns of your victory.

Try to plant GS pre-public schools and save the rest. Otherwise mid-game teching might slow you down.

Indeed, your culture is really low. CS allies, culture buildings, Hermitage - they all are very important. You have a cultural CS on your doorstep. Allying it asap should have been a priority. Just go hard after CS and their quests like trade routes, luxes and barb camps early on. Barb camps are very easy on emperor, you barely have any competition over them.
Create landmarks within workable tiles instead of GW. Tourism is less important than raw culture.

Try to save GA for golden age during parts building phase. Also make sure you have all possible production boosters (factories, spaceship factories, solar/nuclear plants, hydro plants etc) and railroads.

But bottom line, seems like you are doing most of the things right and have a good understanding of what needs to be done. Tighter micromanagement and more attention to faith/culture and general details is what takes you to another level. And yes, as mentioned above, milestones are not set in stone. How fast you finish depends on many factors, some of them are not under your control. Like land quality, opponents, RNG luck and so on.

 

[Uzael36]

1. Good idea, but I don't have enough production in cities to spend on this.

2. Te-Moak was at like 20 pop by t125, and as you can see in the screenie I have well enough pop.

3. Also my plan, but hard to build everything when it all takes 10+ turns. Could take less, but need to sacrifice major food.

4. Idk about that, since researching 3 eras and building 6 parts in less than 80 turns seems a bit hard.

5. Allying with culture CS requires gold which I don't have; see problem 3.

6. As said, I need my bulbs for the final stretch/tech bottleneck.

7. I only get 3 sps in my ideology since I'm bad at culture. This means I can't get to the really juicy level 3 tenets.

Basically, all of my problems lead to each other, and I really can't find a root cause. If anyone else has tips, please reply .

I've decided to play through the map as well, just to see how its going. So far, my capital is a weak production city, but I did manage to build Petra and Borrodor. At turn 115, I'm not doing all that great on science. I'm 4 turns from education. About what you got, but I have2 archers, a composite bow and 3 of his scouts which are similar to warriors as you no doubt know, and a couple spearmen. 2-3 of my units were gifts from Allies. I have 3 Allies at this point. This is important.

Now to your responses.
2) If your city was that big by turn 125, I am quite surprised it is so small at the end of the game. I'd expect it to be about 40 pop with that kind of start, but you are right, your total population should be enough.

3) In most your cities, that is what it will take to make a lot of stuff. You just need to prioritize. Skip the market/bank/etc if the city has very poor base gold. Don't build everything, pick what is most needed. Culture tends to suffer a bit with a SV, but you can do better than you have. CS really help a ton here. Do the non gold quests. You don't have to rely on gold alone.

4) You can do it far faster, though some planning is needed. After getting plastics, I like to get Penicillin. Then get to Flight and Railroad, and bulb straight to Satellite, or close to it. Make sure you get full value of those bulbs as you do this, so you may have to wait a turn or 2 between uses. Unlocking Apollo earlier, gives you more time to build those parts. It is better to be there early and have lots of time to finish the parts, than get their late, and bulb to the end, waiting 10+ turns to finish up parts.

One obvious problem you have is 14/turn faith just is not enough. If you build up your faith early, you can have 100-200 turns of faith build up, which can net you 3-4 extra scientists, and engineers. With the right faith choices, you can earn 100+ faith a turn, which means nearly 10k worth of faith points to spend at the end of the game once rationalism is finished. You should be able to finish the game the turn after you get your last tech finished after using an engineer. 4 GS and an GE to finish off everything will save you 25-40 turns right there.

5) Watch their quests. They are constantly giving quests to do, which are free points. Put spies in them to get free points, use gold only when they are offering extra points for gold. By the end of a game, you should have many Allies. Not 2. By the end of most games, I'll have 75% of the CS's as an ally. Those are huge. The earlier you start collecting allies, the more they help you.

6) You need a mix of bulbs and early plants. Getting all those early techs sooner snowball into more science per turn. Use faith to help finish all the techs. You might not plant a lot, but I'd expect to see 3 planted near your National College city.

7) Yes, that can be fixed by CS's and getting those buildings up. Getting culture CS's early is huge. Don't forget about worlds fair, international games, the international space station. Those are free policies. The Oracle also gives you one.

8) Another issue I did not mention before, is you are lacking 2 trade routes and none are used to grow your cities.

I can't fix it all for you, but I would suggest playing the game again, and see if you can't improve the game. I have learned a lot by playing the same game over and over and seeing how my choices and focus changes effect the game outcome. I have also tried different endings of the same game to test out what is faster. This is why I know that bulbing from Railroads and flight to Satellites is much faster. I played the same end of a game two times, one where I waited to bulb, and one where I did not and the result was 20+ turns faster with early bulbing. I also learned that faith was huge and took 15 turns off my victory (I still built faith prior, just not as aggressively, you should see a bigger boost as your faith is extremely low). Your lack of allies is also killing your ability to propose international policies (not sure what they call them). This will allow you to have the worlds fair when you want it, get GA 33% faster and all the policies you want, when you want.

 

[Janskey]

Also, remember to take advantage of the we love the king day.

 

[Acken]

I've been playing for a while now, and I think I've mastered early game BO's, teching, GS spam, and growth to achieve a t300-ish SV. However, a couple of elements hinder my progress, and I need help on how to fix them.

1. Is there any way to deal with early DOW's? At least one still comes at ~t100, and in my recent game, there came three waves: Germany/Ottoman on t92, Ottoman/Songhai/Arabia on t150, and Hunnic on t225. Though not really a threat on emperor, they're still annoying and force me to waste 25-50 turns on producing archers. Only upside: got collective 75 gpt from peace deals in Ottoman/Songhai peace.

2. How to deal with low production? My cities grow fine but they're stuck at taking 10-12 turns to build things for most of the game, even with factories, workshops, etc.

3. How to get gpt up and running? All the way until modern/atomic my caravans produce measly sums of gold and I'm stuck with 25-50 gpt.

4. How to reach research milestones on time? I get education at t115, st t175, plastics t225, which are more than 10 turns behind their respective milestones. This problem is only exacerbated for satellites/apollo, which I don't reach until 250-260. And that's without taking a single tech not required to reach those milestones.

5. How to culture? I build my guilds late medieval/early renaissance, and work them full-time (at the cost of a lot of food) but still can't get above 50-60 cpt and 10 tourism. I only make like 4-5 gw a game, and can't get museums fast enough to make archaeology/GA worthwhile. Why? See aforementioned tech problem - though I think that's only part of the problem, since increasing culture even a bit will take too much production/lost resources. This hurts me a lot since besides tradition/rationalism I only get about 3-4 tenets, and have to anarchy due to neighbor always being culturally superior/diff ideology.

6. How to late-game tech? I don't see high-level players bulbing 12 GS in desperate last-ditch attempt to reach particle physics in time, so what am I doing wrong? What's the path I should take for late-game tech? Right now, after plastics, I go straight to satellites, then to adv. ballistics, then to robotics/nanotech, and finally to dreaded PP (there's like 10 techs I need to research just to get to PP). Also, getting philosophy seems to take a really long time (15-20 turns) and doesn't seem worth it. How do people get NC/Oracle so fast while founding 4 cities?

7. How to produce spaceships parts quick? Even with hubble, spaceship factories, and hydro dams they take 12-20 turns.

Attached are my starting and ending saves for emperor Shoshone Pangaea (t295 SV is cutting it really close in my book). Any tips? What would you have done?

1. Early dow are sometimes unavoidable. You need to be able to recognize them. Civs like germany songhai and huns are agressive and if they are next to you and open honor its a big clue you should make archers. Watch whether or not the ai is sending a caravan too, it can be a clue. 50 turns of archers seems like a bit too much, dont overproduce them. Usually defending with 8 is enough on deity so emperor should be fine with even less.

2. You just need hills. Theres no secret here, a city on grass with no hills will jjst require a lot of rush buy. Note that gold is the same than saved hammers. So if you really have no producton but a ton of food, work some luxuries and try to get a good gpt.

3. Sell everything and horses/iron/etc for 2gpt 1 by 1. Then find good gold cities and build market bank there. Try to get machu pichu. Use a couple gold caravan if you feel the trade of is good. If you get tithe, spread fast and strong.

4. As you fix other potential problems these will fixed at the same time. Just make sure you build good cities, beeline the techs, time rationalism well and get good growth.

5. Guilds and cultural cs. The later is very important, no cultural cs means slow culture theres nothing to do about it. Writers guild should be worked before education or as ratio timings requires. Later, make sure to win the world fair and save gw for it. Ga should be used for golden age, use one for world fair too.

6. Like number 4 it just means your science is lower than expected. Your tech path is probably okay but make the point cited in 4 are checked. Philosophy takes 15 or 20 turns. So what ? If you dont have anything else pressing like lux techs you are not losing anything getting a slow tech. A fast nc is important. Oracle can be built either before nc if you really go fast philosophy and 4 cities. Its possible your last city will require a rushed library. Or you can attempt faster nc like 2city or 3city.

7. You need a very strong production city for fast parts with many hills. 12 turns isnt too bad, make sure you rush last part with a ge.