Sufficient expansion on all levels

[Sincro]

And I'm in the process of trying to jump to Monarch level, and I just do not understand how this can work.

I drew Zara. Which is nice, cause I like Zara. Anyhow... It's now 1 AD. I do not have Alpha. I do not have any great people produced. I have not built any wonders, but I did have to build extra libraries to generate some science. I also built temples because unhappiness prior to teching Monarchy, which took F O R E V E R, was out of control.

The only civ I can trade techs with has 6 more techs then me, I'm at 0% on the science slider, and the only reason I have any research whatsoever is because I ignored the rule to only build 2 total libraries. All my research, ALL OF IT, comes from science specs. My military is crap, and I can't use it because I'm already so hopelessly overexpanded that any additional growth would be utter suicide. I've got 7 cities, and 7 workers, and as far as I can tell, the situation is the next best thing to utterly hopeless.

Have a look at the save. Tell me where I went wrong. Because clearly I did.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And I'm in the process of trying to jump to Monarch level, and I just do not understand how this can work.

I drew Zara. Which is nice, cause I like Zara. Anyhow... It's now 1 AD. I do not have Alpha. I do not have any great people produced. I have not built any wonders, but I did have to build extra libraries to generate some science. I also built temples because unhappiness prior to teching Monarchy, which took F O R E V E R, was out of control.

The only civ I can trade techs with has 6 more techs then me, I'm at 0% on the science slider, and the only reason I have any research whatsoever is because I ignored the rule to only build 2 total libraries. All my research, ALL OF IT, comes from science specs. My military is crap, and I can't use it because I'm already so hopelessly overexpanded that any additional growth would be utter suicide. I've got 7 cities, and 7 workers, and as far as I can tell, the situation is the next best thing to utterly hopeless.

Have a look at the save. Tell me where I went wrong. Because clearly I did.

Alright, I took a look:

1. In your entire empire of 7 cities, you are working 2 cottages at 1 AD, so that's not following the advice here.
2. You are in monarchy, but you are not using it. Not a single city is at its happy cap, and your non-capitol happy cap is 9. You are building a temple rather than a cheap unit, although right now (and long before now...
3. You need more workers. That 1.5 workers per city rule isn't a joke. You have an unimproved tile here or there and if your cities *did* grow to their cap, you'd be working unimproved tiles empire-wide outside your capitol!

The whole point of growing onto commerce tiles is so that the cottages can grow and contribute. You're not working them .

Where you could have started working them by around 2000-1500 BC, only 1 cottage has even grown.

If you post the autosave at 4000 BC, I will give you saves at 1500BC and 1 AD to show you what I mean/compare.

 

[Sincro]

I had just gotten Monarchy a couple turns prior to the 1 AD save. You really have no idea how long it took to tech monarchy. It was awful. I kept playing it out, and it's not as bad as it looked, but it's still pretty bad. The main problem with trying to work green tiles for cottages was... had way too much brown land as you can see. I'm still light on workers in the 1100 AD save that is posted, but I've taken 2 cities from Sury, and another got auto-razed due to size. I just took a peace treaty from him for all his gold and techs. Still no-where close to Lib in 1100, which you don't have to tell me is too slow.

I can see the value of the advice, but it really is contingent on the map. If you don't have sufficient green tiles to cottage, you don't, and there's not much you can do about it. A couple of my cities are small, and can't get any bigger without making them worse at everything they do.

 

[yanner39]

I had just gotten Monarchy a couple turns prior to the 1 AD save. You really have no idea how long it took to tech monarchy. It was awful. I kept playing it out, and it's not as bad as it looked, but it's still pretty bad. The main problem with trying to work green tiles for cottages was... had way too much brown land as you can see. I'm still light on workers in the 1100 AD save that is posted, but I've taken 2 cities from Sury, and another got auto-razed due to size. I just took a peace treaty from him for all his gold and techs. Still no-where close to Lib in 1100, which you don't have to tell me is too slow.

I can see the value of the advice, but it really is contingent on the map. If you don't have sufficient green tiles to cottage, you don't, and there's not much you can do about it. A couple of my cities are small, and can't get any bigger without making them worse at everything they do.

Ouch.

I hate it when that happens and it's happened way to often lately.

 

[vicawoo]

I had just gotten Monarchy a couple turns prior to the 1 AD save. You really have no idea how long it took to tech monarchy. It was awful. I kept playing it out, and it's not as bad as it looked, but it's still pretty bad. The main problem with trying to work green tiles for cottages was... had way too much brown land as you can see. I'm still light on workers in the 1100 AD save that is posted, but I've taken 2 cities from Sury, and another got auto-razed due to size. I just took a peace treaty from him for all his gold and techs. Still no-where close to Lib in 1100, which you don't have to tell me is too slow.

I can see the value of the advice, but it really is contingent on the map. If you don't have sufficient green tiles to cottage, you don't, and there's not much you can do about it. A couple of my cities are small, and can't get any bigger without making them worse at everything they do.

Spoiler :

Aksum: huge mistake. You're running a lone scientist over your clam. You've whipped it twice, when it has 6 grassland cottages you could be working. It has "other" buildings, it's kind of the opposite of what TMIT is advocating.
Grade: D

Gondar: you could be working the lake and a grassland cottage, which is only necessary if you're really hurting for commerce. In theory it's a hammer city, so this isn't a big deal. Also in theory growing and whipping it at around size 5 will provide more hammers than 4 hammer mines. It's biggest crime is it's building a temple for no reason. It doesn't need happiness, it could be building workers for other cities, chariots for hereditary rule, or units for conquest.
Grade: C+

Lalibela: A city with a purpose. It's producing your first great scientist for that academy, which will power all those cottage that you should be running in your capital. You could be working two cottages, but that scientist is more important. Another city, say, gondar would be better off making that settler so lalibela could grow to work those cottages, and the missionary in queue is pretty suspect, but it's "playing the right way", as larry brown would say.
Grade: A-

Addis Ababa: This city could be many things. It could be a production city, remember that grassland hills are much much better than plains hills. It could be working 2-3 grassland cottages. It should not be building 3 temples for no reason. There's 2-3 tiles that could use improving, so it needs a worker, whipped or from elswhere.
Grade: B-

Yeha: two grassland forests that could be cottaged. Once again a temple, and a plains tile is being chopped inexplicably. Running scientists, but at the current tech rate the 3rd scientist will be useless.
Grade: C+

Debra: Not many tiles to work with. Improve the grassland mine and pump units or build wealth.
Grade: B

I'm not sure why this city was founded, horses aren't worth the -10 gold this city is likely putting on your economy. It has no food sources. Since it exists, you might as well farm the grassland river tile and slap up 4 grassland cottages.
Grade: C-

Stop building temples. You only need temples when you're about to become unhappy and don't want to spend maintenance on units. There's enough grassland tiles, you've just chosen not to work them. The capital has been whipped twice, leaving among other things a clam tile, 3 riverside cottages/hamlets, and a bunch of other grassland tiles. There are enough workers, but they are aimless. The horse city is killing your economy.
Aside from the first great scientist, grow to full size and then run specialists.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I had just gotten Monarchy a couple turns prior to the 1 AD save. You really have no idea how long it took to tech monarchy. It was awful. I kept playing it out, and it's not as bad as it looked, but it's still pretty bad. The main problem with trying to work green tiles for cottages was... had way too much brown land as you can see. I'm still light on workers in the 1100 AD save that is posted, but I've taken 2 cities from Sury, and another got auto-razed due to size. I just took a peace treaty from him for all his gold and techs. Still no-where close to Lib in 1100, which you don't have to tell me is too slow.

I can see the value of the advice, but it really is contingent on the map. If you don't have sufficient green tiles to cottage, you don't, and there's not much you can do about it. A couple of my cities are small, and can't get any bigger without making them worse at everything they do.

There's nothing wrong with following my advice on this map. Autosave and I'll prove it .

Vicawoo's advice is very sound too.

 

[vicawoo]

I'm pretty sure I can double your beakers per turn in 10 turns.

Reorganized.

Alphabet in 10, you can snag mathematics/iron working and some other techs. Working 12ish grassland cottages. Reached 40 bpt, although I could cheat it up to 47 if I run two scientists in the capital.

 

[fenrus]

I play on Emperor and I know it might be tempting to build temples because your cities can only grow to size 4, but you have to hang in there. This is where city specialization is important.

My current game was tough because there were was no Gold/Silver/Gems and no flood plains and no religion. After my 5th city, I was only bringing in 5 per turn at 0% science. I slowly stockpiled gold and shifted my capital to pure commerce. My capital was tough to start up because all I had were Pig, Clam, Sugar, Banana. So with a size 5 city, I decided to run 2 river Hamlets, 2 Scientists, and 1 Clam with my Library and Academy. With Palace and city tile, that's 23 * 1.75 = 40.25 beakers.

I'm pretty sure your capital has 2 grassland tiles that you can cottage, even that can go a long way when your other cities can only reach a size 4 max.

 

[MyOtherName]

So with a size 5 city, I decided to run 2 river Hamlets, 2 Scientists, and 1 Clam with my Library and Academy. With Palace and city tile, that's 23 * 1.75 = 40.25 beakers. I'm pretty sure your capital has 2 grassland tiles that you can cottage, even that can go a long way when your other cities can only reach a size 4 max.

Of course, that 40.25 beakers needs to be averaged over all the turns you were stockpiling gold.

Wait a minute... *does math* ah, you built pyramids and are running representation. So, in addition to the fact you haven't seemed to have teched towards monarchy, this doesn't really reflect the situation in the thread.

 

[Sincro]

Basically, I screwed it up, and need to do a better job of setting up how I go about my business.

Step 1, stop whining.
Step 2, start being smarter.
Step 3, stop finding excuses for screw-ups, learn from em, and move on.

 

[fenrus]

Of course, that 40.25 beakers needs to be averaged over all the turns you were stockpiling gold.

Wait a minute... *does math* ah, you built pyramids and are running representation. So, in addition to the fact you haven't seemed to have teched towards monarchy, this doesn't really reflect the situation in the thread.

A scientists gives you 3 beakers, der...

It is just an example of using city specialization even if your city is only size 4-5 so you have the ability to tech Monarchy in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[MyOtherName]

A scientists gives you 3 beakers, der...

I forgot palace -- and made up the deficit by adding in representation and financial bonus to the hamlets. (But forgot about the financial bonus to the clams, which would have tipped me off) My bad.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you build pyramids, monarchy becomes pretty low priority unless you have like 6 wines and lots of AIs to trade with or something.

 

[yanner39]

Good stuff. It's nice to see good players take a save and re-organize it.

However, I can see where you could draw a map that makes TMIT's tips more difficult to execute. I mean, I've had maps where there was just, IMO, way too much brown land. I have been "guilty" of simply re-loading.

In this case, I do agree that this map is definately playable.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Good stuff. It's nice to see good players take a save and re-organize it.

However, I can see where you could draw a map that makes TMIT's tips more difficult to execute. I mean, I've had maps where there was just, IMO, way too much brown land. I have been "guilty" of simply re-loading.

In this case, I do agree that this map is definately playable.

If you can't find even ONE city worth growing you got a bum start indeed. Usually you have 1-3 good cities even on trash maps like tectonics. In this case monarchy might be even more important, as useful horizontal expansion is more limited. With starts like that you still want to grow, but you are going to be leaning a lot more heavily on GPP and possibly certain wonders to compensate (divert hammers from settlers ---> wonders OR just bulb shot until you have techs that let you use more land).

The AI will settle trash sites like plains sheep surrounded by nothing but plains. That kind of city will be suckage until biology, so even if it doesn't drain the AI that much it won't HELP them a lot either (it stagnates at pop 6 unless it's just food-neutral farmed and gets there very, very slowly). But after biology, that kind of city can be reasonable.

Your options with plains filled starts is either to put out as much GPP for bulbing as possible OR just go and conquer some quality land. Usually SOMEBODY has some decent land.

 

[brothatactics]

Great topic. Now that I look back on it, I wonder why I always delay monarchy so much and grow into unhappiness and have to play with the tiles so much. : /

 

[ManiacalLlama]

I think this guide is best for aspiring Emperor/Immortal players. Will help them break bad habits, which is probably the most critical thing in moving up to these levels. I wouldn't follow this for more than a game or two though, because then you're just building a new habit, instead of adapting to the game yourself.

I recently made a pretty smooth transition to Immortal (was winning 90% of my Emperor games and managed to pull a win my first Immortal game. So far its been the easiest difficulty level transition for me). The biggest thing I can credit this to is forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone. Up to Emperor I basically cottage spammed every game and made way too much infra. So I forced myself first to do a game without cottages. Also played one where I forced minimal infrastructure. After those I was able to adapt much better to the map, and actually understand why I was building improvements/buildings. I think that's really the key to moving up to Immortal and above. Understanding why you're doing things. Not just slingshotting Aesthetics every game, or relying on mass cottages--but doing those things when appropriate.

 

[yanner39]

Early production

As you stated, you want to work all the grassland tiles, and build settlers, workers and military. Does the bulk of your come from chopping? Whipping is not really a good idea I assume since you want to keep working the cottages.

After settling my second city, usually a commerce city, I try and settled near a food resource near production terrain such as hills. City specialization is still alive and well under this exercise correct? I mean, production has to come from somewhere right?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, city specialization is fine. GPP and hammer cities still matter, although you generally want to grow them too. Besides, you need some place to hammer out your HR .

Chops do aid expansion quite a bit when available.

 

[Gorey]

Not sure i agree with not building courthouses. Especially so if you are organized.

I build/whip them as soon as i can. Actually, it's usually the last building i'll whip.

The EP per turn alone is worth it. Without them, you wont be able to see squat on the demographics.