Sufficient expansion on all levels

If by "hooking up" you mean "developing," then hands down yes. But if we're talking just roading, wouldn't some early chops beat out +1 assuming you're not surrounded by flood plains or jungles?

 

I can assure you he's talking about "hooking up" meaning "improving/developing/whatever you want to call it".

You can't "connect" a resource without the improvement anyway. A road without an improvement does nothing but increase unit movement. That should make TMIT's point a bit clearer I think.

 

Yes, I mean "improving" them. A road won't matter until you need it for movement or for /. Although sometimes depending on starting techs and land layout early roads aren't bad either.

 

Is there a reason you choose to build wealth over science?

 

Yes. Science multipliers tend to be easier to obtain.

When you build Wealth or Research, it doesn't go through gold or science multipliers, only the hammer multipliers like a forge, factory etc.

Since the science multipliers are easier to obtain (for example, libraries are cheaper than markets, Academy is free (once you have a great scientist)), it means you want to run your science slider as high as possible (compared with the gold slider which you can't see). Building Wealth is more likely to let you run a higher science slider than building Research.

It's kinda tricky to explain (or maybe I just ain't good at it) but I hope it made sense.

 

^you forgot to mention that the same *commerce* is converted to beakers or gold. So 10 commerce at 100% research w/ academy and library is 17.5 beakers, and 10 gold at a 100% gold w/o bank/market/grocery.
Thus having the slider at 100% research and building 10weight to pay the bills is more efficient (results in 17.5 beakers) to have the slider at 100% gold and building research = 10beakers.

 

Some good tips for different tech paths, thank you.

Instead of expanding too slowly, I typically go to the other extreme. I get alphabet first, because I crashed my economy a few times from expanding too quickly, then found myself in the vicious cycle "I can't build any city improvements (no techs for it), I don't want MORE units because they cost more money too...what should I do now?".
If I have Alphabet I can set the city to produce beakers and get out of this situation. Although usually if this happens I must have made seriously bad decisions, and tend to abort the game.

I also like your advice about early great people. Usually I try to build Stonehenge and then just let that build me a prophet to found a religion...but I guess scientists may indeed be better. Especially since I often play as Hatshepsut and get cheap libraries...then again, I could also try using obelisks for a priest, but as I said, so far I just let SH take care of that for me

 

Monarchy is a substitute for wealth. The reason might not be readily apparent at first however. Monarchy lets you put into units to allow more tiles worked. However, because your caps are higher and the rate at which you build units is variable, you don't have to overbuild units even if they're your only option. Rather than hammering out more units, just swap tiles over to cottages or other non-hammer based tile improvements, and you'll get the units more slowly. You can got a long, long time and tech very far this way before you need converter techs, and with the amount of raw commerce you should get there before long. Once you get writing that's another way to increase research at the expense of (for the moment) unnecessary production. If you do go monarchy before writing, writing is a high priority after doing so actually, and then you have something to build.

You need a whole hell of a lot of cities to slow down the tech to writing enough to make this untrue ----> I've not managed it. The youtube video with sully is a good example because although initially the gold helped out, I still managed to settle over 15 cities peacefully w/o courthouses on this tech route on immortal. That would be really, really nice on deity, but the AI won't let you get that kind of land .

For levels below that it's even easier. You don't eat as much maintenance and thus the engine never really sputters. On noble one could cover an entire standard sized map w/o anything but granary/rax in cities if they had enough workers to keep up with the tile improvements...and still vastly out-tech all opposition.

 

Interesting article. I realize I don't have my priorities straight, I'm just to much of a builder. I even go for Stonehenge sometimes without stone, at least for charismatic leaders.

In my last game I've done a decent amount of early expansion though, through warfare. But at the time I got to the later classical age, got access to cats, swordsmen, horse archers etc., My economy was struggling a bit and I had to reduce science rate to maybe 20% at some point. I were building cottages but you don't always have the tiles for it. Although my capitol has sheep, 2 cows AND copper, it has mostly plains other than that and there is not enough food to support many plains cottages.

At this point getting the courthouses in my famost cities and saving 4+ gold per building went from nice to being necessary. They take alot of time to profit from, but the quick boost in gold means you can get more science out as well.

Of course getting out more workers and cottaging like hell should work too! I just hate seeing my cities not growing... especially when I have so much happiness resources.

Oh and since I'm playing LoR stabilizing the economy will mean I won't have revolutions all the time.. already lost 2 cities to revolutions, and almost lost more because of religious unrest and the occasional nationality unrest.. ah you have to completely rethink civ when you're playing some mods but it's worth it.

 

Nice. Despite what you say I think it's a good strategy article. A lot of "strategy" articles are too focused and are more like tactics and gambits articles.

 

How do you define unsuficient military?

I usually have 2-3 defencive units per city (helps with monarchy) - 2 longbow and 1 pike for instance and in my border cities I add one mace and one knight.

Besides this I have two or three stacks with lets say 4 knights, 4 maces, 2 longbow, 2 crossbow and 2 pikes plus 5-6 trabs. I relly on GG to make super units that can devastate enemy towns, cost no money to upgrade and generate double GG points (leadership). Besides this by the time rifles come in game most of my towns have library, corthouse, market and grocer printing me money and bulbs keeping me in line with AI for the research. Am I doing something wrong here?

 

Just in case anybody wants to see what this might look like:



View attachment Bagging_Sand AD-1886.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment AutoSave_Initial_BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave

A lot of those buildings that were "built" were actually produced via production automation governors late-game while I got lazy...in the island cities. The only buildings I built consistently were granary barracks, and theaters in captured cities (some culture and dealing with motherland in vassal cities). I also built a couple temples earlygame while teching to monarchy, since religion spread to me anyway.

For much of the early game, sury/khan were jewish, hammy hindu, and wang/liz buddhist. I went judaism and there was some minimal fighting between khan/wang. I followed the usual plan = worker techs, bw/pottery, monarchy. Took a while but eventually I was able to trade monarchy for alphabet.

At one point I had a lot of units (you can see the pre-rifle unit counts in the screen shot) and switched to wealth to get to rifles sooner. I farmed out 2 great merchants after lib ---> nationalism and used them to upgrade all of my troops to rifles, hit sury/khan, and then regroup for an infantry/arty finish. The only reason this wasn't over much earlier is that khan managed to get magic rifles during our war, so I took peace to get cannons before kicking him off the continent.

Once I won those first 2 wars, it was easy. I beat liz to infantry by a little bit, mass upgrade, and curb stomped all her redcoats/MG/arty. Then it was a mass push on hammy and his voluntary vassal wang. I actually teched out rocketry and "upgraded" some of my infantry to SAM status because hammy beelined gunships even before industrialism.

The save is one turn before victory, if anyone wants to check it out. I'll also attach the auto save, since I'm sure if someone else wants to they can beat it faster. If I'd have just built mounted to upgrade instead of melee I'd have been through Sury, Khan, and possibly wang in the rifle age and sooner than just sury/khan, and more aggressive early strategies should work too.

 

Patak, what you describe is a quite bad army distribution. I usually have one warrior in most of the cities.
The Leadership promotion doesn't double the great general points, only the experience the target unit receives.

 

That is all true, but you can easily trade alpha and currency for monarchy (and much more), while the opposite isnt true, because theres bound to be some ais that prioritize the religion line, so they'll get monarchy before you.

 

Ironic that the post covered many facets of economic development except expansion. Deciding between growing and building workers/settlers is the key expansion decision. Grow to pre-monarchy cap then build workers/settlers is far too slow.

After special tiles, growing=economy. Expanding=production yield. Production begets more production, so at different difficulties you only need about as much economy as you need to keep up in tech. Settler imperialistic start is an example of the power of expansion over growing. Cottaging non-riverside tiles is inefficient before you've stopped expanding. Every population is important, and working a tile that is half as effective is horrible. Your economy should be timed so you stop expanding when or before you get your first classical tech.

If you're playing at lower difficulty levels where you don't need to focus on economy early to keep up, this weighting of expansion over growth means you don't have to improve as many tiles in each city. This means you can get away with fewer workers, sometimes significantly less than 1 per city. This snowballs into more production (settlers).

Slowbuilding infrastructure isn't bad, it's a matter of estimating whether it will net a return over the opportunity cost, before you get liberalism or kill an enemy. For example, courthouses might save you 3 gold per turn. Then it will take 120/3=40 turns for the hammers you've invested to overtake building pure wealth.

 

If I advocated growing to a pre-monarchy cap, that wasn't my intention (excepting when you run out of room or have things sealed off). I usually get on the high-yield specials and start chopping, only growing to cottages after some expanding has done (sometimes I will transition the capitol to grow + cottages earlier than others depending on passive commerce).

Not exactly. The point on return vs opportunity cost is accurate, but the 40 turns probably isn't unless you're insta-whipping it.

Say you're getting 10 hammers/turn. Courthouse takes you 12 turns to complete and saves you 3 gold/turn. AFTER the 12 turn investment you still need the 40 turns to come out ahead.

52 turns all wealth: 10(52)= 520 gold
52 turns CH then wealth: 12(0)+10(40)+3(40)= 520 gold.

Of course that's assuming wealth is the next-best alternative, but I would argue that very often the best alternative is actually a unit, either to push a cap up, to defend, or to capture more cities. If nothing else, this should be a good exercise for rookie players.

 

When making such calculations one shall remember that they must include the inflation and the fact that city costs depend on the size of city and the number of the cities (vassals too).

About infrastructure: if you get to utilize organized religion, don't hesitate and whip it.
While espionage is not possible to use every time, at least having demographics is useful and the passive 2 espionage points are never lost in terms of spy effectiveness.

 

My mistake, I was too deliriously happy after watching the Best Quarterback to Ever Play lose. I remembered there was some issue with the turn estimate if you whipped/chopped, so I got lazy and used the safe number.

I believe building units is covered under opportunity cost->killing an enemy.

 

Vicawoo,
you watched a game where Elway lost?

 

I'm just in the process of going up to noble (again), and decided to give the strategy a go today. It worked pretty well in the beginning. But I made some poor decisions with city placement, which dragged me down financially and made me suffer through a looong period of low science (~20%). I attached the saved game with my current position in case you want to have a look.

I founded my first city to the west, so it could work all land and get the corn (this turned out to be a lucky place, as the site also has iron and coal). I then discovered copper further to west, along with marble and pig...since I saw no other metal close then, I decided to found a city there. And then I made the first set of mistakes, founding another city south of the copper to get hold of some spices, and YET another to deny De'Gaulle the horses. These two cities cost me a lot (distance maintenance). Maybe they kept the french from becoming too strong in the long run, but for the time I was crippled economically and couldn't continue settling the nice area east of my capital.

In the other regards, the strategy of focusing on units worked very well. As you can see in the power chart, I kept up ok...however, I never put my army to use, which probably was the next mistake I made. I now think I could've got some gold from capturing (and razing) the french cities. On the other hand, we mostly had tech parity, with De'Gaulle always having a slight lead militarily...he had catapults when I didn't yet. So it might have been risky.

How to proceed from this point? I am not certain. De'Gaulle just got Infantry, and with the large stack in his northern city I don't think my (now outdated) troops could do much. I am on good terms with Cathy, but knowing her I fear for a backstab attack...she must've got cossacks, and lots of them, looking at the power graph. The other leaders are probably ok.

I think I'll attempt a space victory. I'm not tech leader, but also not much behind. I have some good cities (I need to go over the tile improvements, don't tell me and with focus on space techs I should be able to win.