Strike!?

[dreamvirus]

I need some information on strikes, because I don't understand them and I can't find anything in the manual or the Civilopedia on them.

I just played a game with the Incans on Epic-Immortal, tiny world, and found myself neighbours with Caesar...yuck...so I spammed Quechas and after a while I had taken 2 of his cities and had a stack of promoted-to-*** quechas ready to pillage and destroy the rest of his territory, when it happened...STRIKE!

I knew that I had overexpanded and had some war weariness...the negative income was okay for the moment, because I was making gold from capturing cities. After a few turns of strike, though, I was in trouble - I had no gold left and my units started to disband. I figured okay, I had gained enough ground for the moment, so I made peace with Caesar, figuring that once the war weariness was gone I would stop losing units.

Nope. The strike continued...until I had lost every unit and every worker, apart from a single fortified quecha in a couple of cities. Nothing I did helped. I played on for about 15 turns after making peace with Caesar...I couldn't build units without them instantly disbanding...my income was still negative...the strike wasn't over...so I just quit. NOT FUN!!!!

So, I need to know...what causes a strike? How do you know when your war weariness or income is bad enough to trigger it? And how the **** do you stop it once it starts? And if you can't stop it, how long do you have to wait? And why is there no info about it? Or am I missing something?

 

[narmox]

Look where the word STRIKE appears on your screen

Answer: Right where it shows you how much money you have and how much you're losing per turn.

Strike happens when you have 0 gold and you're still losing some. The first turn of strike nothing happens. AFter that, you lose 1 unit per turn until your economy stabilizes.

 

[dreamvirus]

Hmm, now I feel like I asked a stupid question. So a strike happens when you have 0 gold and negative income, and will stop when you no longer have negative income? Man, I should have worked that one out for myself...ha.

I was right to abandon my game. I still had negative income, I had maxed commerce in all my cities, had no workers and almost no military, and no chance of getting courthouses for...um...about 300 turns of research?

Gotta watch that exchequer in future.

 

[narmox]

There's plenty of ways to recover from that. Once enough units are gone you should start having a positive cash flow. Meanwhile you can use merchat specialists and focus cities in commerce to get more $$$ and research faster. Then slaver to get your courthouses built everywhere. You'll be a few techs behind the AI by that point, and don't forget to quickly rebuild your military and your economy or you'll get overrun.

I did it once. I loved the challenge

 

[dreamvirus]

My problem was: I didn't have code of laws and couldn't research it. Even when all my units disbanded I was still in negative income due to the distant cities I'd conquered. I couldn't create merchant specialists. I would have had to gift the AI the cities I'd conquered just to get back into positive income...in which case I had just wasted the last 40 turns doing nothing...on Immortal...so it really was hopeless. I'd rather take the lessons I learned and move on...but thx for the comments anyway

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Damn you are playing on Immortal and you never experienced strikes before?