Strategy Questions

B52

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 6, 2003
Messages
25
Location
Vancouver, Canada
I have read the most recent Democracy Game thread, and a number of strategies I saw brought up some questions. Could someone please answer the following:

1. I noticed that the demo guys regularly have cities "celebrate" for extended periods of time. They went back to this celebrating status periodically, presumably because it brought some benefit. What is the purpose and benefit behind this practice, and how should it be done?

2. When deciding where to place cities, should one keep the empire clustered close together so that it's not too spread out, or does that matter?

3. The demo civ was able to get the AI civs to be very friendly, and one was even "worshipful." How can I get AI civs to be "worshipful" towards me?

4. I have always set my tax rate so that I am getting the most money possible for the fastest tech rate possible. I rarely care about luxury, except to give maybe 10% in the early days of democracy to shut the people up. Watching the Demo-game thread, I realize that my strategy is not that great - they regularly adjust the tax ratios to optimize whatever their targets are at a given time, which I want to learn to do. So, what is the best strategy for tax rates?

5. I notice that the Demo-game guys focused on trade for the first part of the game, then seemed to shift to a "conquer and destroy" mode at some point. What are the strategies around this? How do you know when you are ready for a shift in your civ's focus?

6. Finally, can someone tell me the nubers of cities you should have at various times in the game? For example, you don't want to grow TOO much early on, since other AI civs will freak out at you, etc. What are some other ideas on this?

Sorry for the huge list - if anyone has answers, please reply! Thanks in advance!
 
1. A city "celebrates" "we love the * day", where * is the title of the leader (e.g. king or consul). If you are in despotism (or anarchy?) a city that celebrates gets the pruduction of cities in monarchy, communism and fundy, i.e. a square can be worked to its full potential. In monarchy, communism and fundamentalism, you get the production of Republic and Democratic cities, i.e. each square producing at least one arrow produces an extra arrow. If you're in Republic or Democracy the turn after the celebrations started the city will grow one pop (i.e. from size 10 to 11, from 15 to 16) if the city has the required improvements and there is at least 1 food surplus. Unless the city stops celebrating because of the growth, it will do the same the turn after that.

If you want to see the effects of celebrations in fundy check the cities of Dounughtia and Lucy's Crossing.

There are three conditions for a city to celebrate, it has to have reached size 3, half of the citizens or more have to be happy and there can be no unhappy (red or black) pops. The next turn (or the same turn if something happens to the city, like engineer being built or market place) you will get a message that the city is celebrating.

The reason we want to celebrate for periods is that we give the cities very high luxury-rates so that most of the cities celebrates and can keep celebrating for this time. We therefore don't celebrate all the time so that we don't lose too much science and money.

Try to search for this, there are a few tricks that can help you celebrate your cities, also the war academy has some about it. Good ways are luxuries, happiness wonders, market places, banks, stock exchanges (they affect both money and luxury), happiness improvements, courthouses in democracy, trade routes.

2. There is a strategy called ICS (try searching for it), where you build all your cities two squares from each other and keep them small. If you're not planning to play this, make sure that there isn't too much overlapping. It's also good to get colonies, for trade purposes later on. The more cities you have, the unhappier the cities get from the start, eventually they are black from the start. Corruption also get worse in some of the govs when the distance to the capital increases.

3. You can gift them techs (or money). Don't use dips and spies against them, (don't sneak attack?)

4. Luxury is good when you want to celebrate, and to keep cities happy in demo and republic. At the moment we have shut down science in the demo game (I'm not personally fond of this). The reason is that we don't want industry yet, fundy gives lower rates and we need money to fund the wars.

5. Trade gives beakers as well as money when they are delivered. This means we can research techs faster. Once we got tactic we decided to take care of the zulus and the greeks, so we switched to fundamentalism, which is better suited for war. At the moment we don't want industrialization, (because the AI usually turn against the human player once they discover it?), so we have shut down science. We are about to restart it now though, and hopeully we get the caravans flowing again.

6. That depends on what type of game you want to play.

Hope it helped a bit.:)
 
Howdy. I'm still pretty new, so I think like a new guy and will try to add some details that might help out. (Of course, I don't know how new you are, but I like to try to be helpful ;))

1. Imagine a city with 3 population and decent food production, any government, and with pyramids/granary. In five turns under normal circumstances this city might be able to grow by one naturally.

Now imagine another city with 3 population, only a little extra food production, under Democracy or Republic, and no granary/pyramids. Under a celebration, the second city in five turns would grow by 5!! That's the power of celebration. Fast city growth like that makes your city's productivity skyrocket.

A few trick I've discovered that help things out are 1) Don't let your city grow to more than 3 or 4 before you start to celebrate. You'll be busy building caravans, expanding, and getting your happiness wonders such that you won't have time to make temples or other city improvements. 2) Before you celebrate, make sure that about half your city's squares are developed with roads and irrigation, depending on terrain and special squares. Otherwise, you won't be able to provide enough food and trade to keep the population celebrating. 3) Grow in spurts. I find it more effective to do whatever it takes to get all my cities to grow at the same time, even if it means putting Luxury tax really high. Afterwards, set it down low enough just to keep everyone out of revolt.

2. Number of cities and placement seems to be a matter of personal style. Sprawling empires can work as well as tight communities. I'm currently trying a game on emperor with only 7 cities on one island. I'm about to build the hoover damn, I'm ahead in tech, well defended, and my power is supreme. However, everyone is starting to hate me, but with the UN I should be able to maintain some level of peace.

3. Diplomacy is still a bit of a mystery to me. It would be great to see a listing of all the possible civ types, as far as aggressive militaristic, expansionist, perfectionist--there are lots of them but I have no idea how to read them all. As far as worshipful goes, the only way I know to do that is give them lots of stuff, and never backstab them. But even then they can change and become hostile in the matter of a few turns. Unless I have something to gain from it, I generally don't bother with it.

Well, that's about all I have to add. If there's anything wrong with what I've posted, please correct me, as I'm still learning too.
 
1 -- answered by others

2 -- ditto

3 -- ditto

4 -- short answer -- one can ‘count’ (set the science rate to zero, and readjust any Einsteins; then press F5 for the count of ‘years’ = beakers) the beakers required for the next advance & then optimize for that goal. I’ll toggle this from time to time -- i.e. switch to more luxuries for some growth in my republic after Mike’s is built & some markets are in place, build aqueducts during that expansion, toggle back for more science later. Once I have a decent trade network in place, I might lower the science, accepting my tech per turn through the trade activity.

5 -- Trade = the gains are in coins AND beakers. A good trade network can generate a tech a turn in the late mid-game and beyond.

6 -- I’ll have six to 10 cities by 1 AD, but I’m a little slow on this. Also, make sure that you have one truly nice city that gets some specials and all of the city specific Wonders (Copes, Isaac’s, Shakes, Colossus) -- a super science city. Have that city grow & trade & se the dramatic benefits accordingly. Part of the reason, I have fewer cities is that I’m also building camels for wonders and other purposes…
 
1. Celebrating cities. IMHO the most powerful non-cheating technique available. I find it hard/impossible to celebrate all my cities together as recommended by others, but even so, it is a huge power boost.

2. I try to minimize overlaps and minimize gaps. Overlaps restrict the ultimate growth of cities. Gaps represent unused resources. You only get so much land (though it varies how much) before you have to fight for it!:ninja:

3. Depends on which version of the game you play. In classic civ (apparently) the ai is pretty friendly. With the multi-player gold edition (MGE) the ai is inveterately hostile. Funxus also makes a good point... regardless of the version you play, the ai starts making alliances against you, and trading all their teches to each other, once you get industrialization. I try to get all the techs which you do not need indust/the corp before taking that fateful step, unless my chance of getting women's sufferage is in jeopardy! In every version, the ai likes you better when you are small.

4. Ya got to celllllebrate good times, COME ON! Remember that in rep/dem they science/taxes you "give up" by setting a high luxury rate are being swiftly replaced by the work of you many new citizens... and that is before you set the tax rates back in favor of science/$$$$$!

5. Trade is the one "open ended" growth element which the game allows. Everything else, from the number of squares a city can work to the amount of food and shields it can produce and even the number of specialists (elvis/einstein/cpa) who can be employed is subject to some limit or balance. Not so with trade. When you make a trade route, BOTH cities get new trade arrows. The number of arrows a trade route gives is subject to a variety of factors, including the amount of trade arrows produced in the other city on that trade route. That means that the trade route you create will cause that city to give a bigger payoff with the next delivery, which will give yet more trade arrows to the sending city and so on.

6. For myself, I never stop building cities unless there is literally no place to put them. Very early, my settlers/engineers go right to their new city spot (maybe a single road square, if the new city would otherwise not produce any trade). Later, each one improves a few squares before "settling down." There are limits on the number of cities you can have in the early government types (Des, Mon). These manifest not as a hard cap, but as an increase in unhappiness. It should motivate you to get into a better government, not dissuade you from building cities!
 
Originally posted by Terrapin
5. ... The number of arrows a trade route gives is subject to a variety of factors, including the amount of trade arrows produced in the other city on that trade route. That means that the trade route you create will cause that city to give a bigger payoff with the next delivery, which will give yet more trade arrows to the sending city and so on.
Actually, when the pay-off is calculated it only includes the trade being worked on the field, and not trade that is added from routes and tithes in fundy. But, as you say, you can gain a lot from trading and trade routes, and I have yet to get better at it...
 
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