the first hundred turns, economy vs. expansion vs. wonders

[Hamilton321]

I am a monarch player who wins his games half of the time via space race. However I would like to improve my abilities I've played twelve games on continents map and won six of them. I believe I could win more if I knew how to do cultural/diplomatic victory better, or could expand enough by the renaissance era to be able to win domination. Hard to dominate the world when you have to fight industrial era wars to unify one's own continent.

This gets me to the point I am asking abouthow to do well in the early game, the ancient and classical eras. I believe that if I find a way to create the right balance between economy, expansion and wonders I can finally win more than half my games, however when I tried doing this I learned what emperor Trajan said the hard way,"It is impossible to apply a general rule to a fixed formula."

So I am wondering how does one tell for each individual game the right early game balance between the all important things of economy, expansion, and early game wonders, one almost always needs alittle of each. Another question is how can I leverage this early game advantage intomidgame.I have had a few games in which I lost the game in the medieval era. Including one game as Elizabeth(one of my prince games) where I took the lead in the ancient and classical eras, but then got smashed by a sneak attack of the alliance of Julius Caesar and Napoleon and watched my hopes of victory go up in smoke.

 

[Fish Man]

You should post a save so we can guide you through the process. At this point it's almost impossible to tell where you can improve without concrete examples.

 

[blunderwonder]

The balance comes from playing more games. I dont think there is a hard and fast rule, but you can only expand so much early, because the extra cities bog down your economy if you dont have currency/courthouses and good trade routes, to say nothing of crappy tiles they might be working. If every city had gold/sheep, you could basically expand indefinitely and be fine, by the time you were bogged down youd have the necessary techs and infrastucture to support that many cities, as for wonders, most of them are not much more useful than the fail gold youd get from them, so i wouldnt be too concerned. As far as teching goes, most people just look to lib something like military tradion, and then try and stomp the map. You dont need a super economy, you just need one thats good enough to get you an edge in military tech. This is often easy because ai's will not have elephants, or theyll take forever to get rifling because they went for astro on pangea, or democracy and corporation, or divine right, or because theyre just backwards because noone trades with them etc.

as for culture victories, they require a fair bit of diplomacy, which is important to every game, but you usually are a bit backwards during culture pushes because you spend all your gold on culture and buildings and alot of your production and science slider is going towards wonders and techs that wont help you if someone DoW's you.

 

[Archon_Wing]

For a cultural victory, it's actually not about building wonders. Some help, such as the Sistine Chapel but remember that 3 cities must hit legendary. It's actually about generating a strong commerce base for 3 cities so that the commerce gets converted to culture via slider, and getting those temples in. This means cottages!

The easiest thing to do is to only build infrastructure you actually need. For example, don't build that forge in the city with 3 hammers, and don't get a market in that hill city. Also, look for city placement. Distance matters for maintenance and it's often a better idea to build a more compact empire with cities that overlap and share food. Until you get more happiness, your cities can't grow that big anyways. And even if you did, a lot of tiles are just not worth working. It's better to have 2 medium sized cites than 1 big unhappy, unproductive city plus it is also more convenient to whip.

Diplomacy really depends on your AIs. If you are next to those psychos you should be plotting war of your own or at least in a position to take cities should they attack. If the AIs around you aren't really religious, then getting your own can help. However, if they are, don't go founding your own religion. Ideally, you want to form blocks where both ends will fight each other, leaving you out of it. Bribing a backwards AI to war upon some techers is always a good option. Naturally, you want people that will impede your dipomacy to die first.

Oh, and beg for peace treaties. If you ask for help when they are pleased with you, it leads to a 10 turn peace treaty. This can help buy time especially if you know they are plotting war. You can tell if you try to ask them to go to war with someone but it's in red, and mousing over the text reads "we have enough on our hands right now"

Finally, attack earlier. Rennisaance "Expansion" comes in the form of spamming cannons or mounted units to conquer neighbors. You should control your landmass by the time you get to industrial.

 

[Ringo Kid]

Research Bronze Working. Chop a settler and mine the bronze. Locate closest rival civ. Whip and Chop about fifteen Axmen. Take their capital , destroy the rest of their cities. Research currency and construction while building two or three more strong cities in the land you just took.

 

[Hamilton321]

You should post a save so we can guide you through the process. At this point it's almost impossible to tell where you can improve without concrete examples.

I don't how to do that.

 

[Hamilton321]

I have an isolated start game with carthage, do you think I could run a cottage economy, then crank up the cultural slider once I have all the positive cultural modifiers?

 

[Archon_Wing]

To post a save, click on "more options" at the bottom of the window. You'll get options to "upload a file"

Your save files are generlaly located in the documents ----> beyond the sword folder (if Windows)

 

[lymond]

I have an isolated start game with carthage, do you think I could run a cottage economy, then crank up the cultural slider once I have all the positive cultural modifiers?

seems I recall us giving you pointers on culture victories recently With that said, isolation games have their own challenges, although for the most part there are not much concerns for your safety. You just won't be able tor tech trade or trade for gold which will slow you down. (not sure how isolated this map is or what type of map it is)

The land you have can impact the decisions on how you approach your culture victory. Can't really say without seeing the game. But if the land sucks for cottages, you can try building more wonders and maximize food for running artists. Sistine would be a must and try to produce as many Great Artists as possible for bombs.

Heavily cottaged and mature L city(ies) with Free Speech and culture multipliers, plus slider, are going to produce the most cpt in the long run, but it is not the only way.

 

[Kallikrates]

Space race is among the harder victories, even on monarch, I'd say. If you can keep powerful or peaceful long enough for space you can do the same for a cultural victory. Usually the easiest way on many maps is domination. Look up some guide for cuirassier rush. This should work almost always on monarch (it works almost always on emperor and immortal (I usually play the latter, unless I haven't played for a while, then I usually go back to Emperor, always normal speed) if one does not have crazy neighbors or a very poor map).
For practice, re-roll crazy maps (I seem to get those a lot, especially annoying if the staring position is good but I realize after some exploring that the capital is the only decent site I have) or those with very poor starting tech synergies (but don't get used to cheesy maps with super high trade starting points either). On "normal" maps it should not be hard to get 6-8 cities until about 0 AD. You will usually not get boxed in quickly like on deity (or sometimes immortal). If you have enough land, you can build a few more. With currency and a few cottages maintenance should not kill you on monarch. Build wealth if necessary. For a cultural victory you ideally want 9 cities and three religions everywhere but for whipping cuirs or drafting rifles 7 are probably enough.

Decide early if you want to do an early rush or a war with catapults in the early BCs. Because then you need to beeline certain techs and will also not build more than 3-4 cities but rather conquer the rest you want. But for me cuirassier war is the easiest option, then probably an early rush but for this the conditions have to be right. I find a classical war with catapults considerably more difficult and usually not worth it (because I am too slow and could as well wait a few hundred years for my cuirs which will be a far more decisive advantage) but it all depends on the map. I also like to try for some wonders if they fit nicely which is a point against early wars. This might not be such an issue on monarch but already on emperor I find it hard to square expansion and research with an early war at tech parity (or if unlucky against nasty early longbows). The cuirassiers (or later cannon) warfare is popular for a good reason because by then one has built up the infrastructure, has more options to mitigate expansion costs etc. And one is even on immortal usually fighting against older units, not at tech parity. It is fairly idiot proof compared to e.g. a HA rush, I think.

(I am not sure I ever managed a diplo win. Maybe quite a while ago but this was probably after conquering/vassalling a lot of the map.)

 

[Pangaea]

I find space games a lot of fun, at least apart from the end (building parts basically), because I'm a builder at heart and in those games you can build more stuff

You tend to get an indication early on whether you can expand peacefully, or if you need early-ish war to get a good chunk of land. If you have plenty of free land to settle, I think often that is the best approach. Naturally you can also take out a neighbour or two early, and then backfill the land also. It depends, that love/hate phrase

Especially for learning purposes, I think it's good practice to get into the habit of NOT building wonders. There are a few that is often worth it, like Oracle or Great Library. But the latter can be got later without too much fuss (especially if you have marble), and for the former you need to sacrifice expansion to get it, at least on the higher difficulties. To get a better grasp of the balance between expansion and tech pace, I think the best way to learn is to play games where you play peacefully and just expand. It's important to get up cottages early to counter the increased maintenance costs of expansion, and a library or two doesn't hurt either, so you can start working on a couple GScientists, principally for an Academy if your capital can make for a good Buro spot.

Don't build stuff you don't need everywhere, like temples, theatres, monasteries and markets. Nice stuff for the capital, but not everywhere.

One of the keys for getting better at the game, is to understand city specialisation, and particularly for your capital. A strong capital can carry your research for a large part of the game, and then I mean it can contribute 40-60% of your empire's research. A capital with a handful (++) nice cottage tiles + Academy + Bureaucracy is a very strong combination. Learn to take advantage of it

Since you specifically mention 100 turns (a good idea for practising), you can try different approaches on the same map, and then compare in turn 100. That gives you a decent idea for what is best in more general terms.

 

[Hamilton321]

The first game I ever won on monarch I was playing as Victoria and I only won because I had the space elevator and a super production city and also for some reason Peter didn't research fusion until pretty late. He had a whole spaceship just waiting for an engine. I also did a decent amount of the reload from autosaves trick.

Another thing I think that one is guaranteed to get a space race victory so long as they have decent diplomacy and build the space elevator and get to fusion first.

 

[Fish Man]

The first game I ever won on monarch I was playing as Victoria and I only won because I had the space elevator and a super production city and also for some reason Peter didn't research fusion until pretty late. He had a whole spaceship just waiting for an engine. I also did a decent amount of the reload from autosaves trick.

Another thing I think that one is guaranteed to get a space race victory so long as they have decent diplomacy and build the space elevator and get to fusion first.

NOOOOO! Space elevator is n00b trap and a waste of hammers. Teching for and building it will cost you 5 turns at best and lose you a game at worst.

 

[lymond]

Yeah, if you are playing BTS, space elevator is total crap. It's located in a tech that you never need, so not only do you waste a load of beakers teching that tech, but then the hammers needed to build it when you should already long be into building space parts. Just get labs up in parts cities, Ironworks in a great production city, secure aluminum asap, and get workshops up everywhere and you will be fine. On Warlords and Vanilla, Elevator was actually ok but the tech tree is different.

 

[Hamilton321]

So I've been falling into a "noob trap" all this time when I've been rushing to robotics right after getting superconductors. I can't believe that I've never noticed that the Space Elevator is that bad, however I have noticed that my main late game delay is researching genetics and ecology so if I stop rushing to robotics then I can get those more quickly.

Mostly I've been worried that the leading ai will get it and even if he has less production he'll beat me because of the Space Elevator. Also I play a significant amount of vanilla, warlords and scenarios so my gameplay isn't exactly attuned to ordinary bts gameplay, also I developed my space race strategy on my own without any help from the forums and can get it about half the time on whatever difficulty I'm currently accustomed to playing.

 

[lymond]

Well, there really should be no "leading ai" on this level. One of the big keys to space is more land, so at some point early/late, you should be taking big dents out of the AIs, possibly vassaling a couple on the way. (my goal in Space games is to get as close to the Dom land limit as possible, as fast as reasonable, without exceeding it) You can direct vassals tech path so that they help you early on with trading, but then steer them away from space techs later...no one should get close to space besides you. I never see Space Elevator built in any of my games.

BTS is the ultimate version of Civ, so I highly recommend playing it for normal games. The warlords scenarios can be fun though, but are usually highly specialized unique in terms of victory - most of which focus primarily on combat. (Interestingly, I recently went back and played through a few...it's interesting to play those later when you become much more experienced. The first time I played them was when I was just starting out years ago)

I confidently suspect that there is still a lot for you to learn about the game, especially even basic mechanics. One of the key factors of the game that new players or players that have had little guidance playing on their own for some time, is how important the early game is overall success and the ability to move up levels. Guidance in this area will help you a lot.

Another note about BTS that you may or may not yet realize, besides the obvious changes like the addition of stuff - buildings, wonders, techs, etc., are some key changes that impact your overall success. One of these is the power of Golden Ages. Besides the boost to commerce, hammers and culture yields, a GA gives a 100% boost to great person generation (great people are hugely important and how you use them). Also, you get no anarchy civic/religion switches in a GA, so you can switch to civics that further boost your great person generation temporarily like Caste System and Pacifism, and/or save general important civic switches to a well-timed GA.

 

[elmurcis]

And don't forget - keep exploring the map (this was from AoE2?!)

 

[SnipedSoul]

Expansion is best, but you need to keep a decent economy to avoid falling too far behind. Wonders are a trap, especially on monarch. Just go take wonders from the AI after they build them for you. I often gift away my stone or marble if I'm near a wonder spammer. I'll even give away a tech like calendar so that they build MoM for me.

The Great Lighthouse is an exception on coastal maps. It will make any coastal city pay for itself, allowing you to expand until you run out of land. Make sure to build 4 island cities to maximize internal trade route income.

Mids are definitely powerful, but they are super expensive. I never build them without stone and a place to chop them.

 

[Hamilton321]

I often gift away my stone or marble if I'm near a wonder spammer.

I should really give that a try.

 

[Gumbolt]

Erm it's the start of the game where you are going wrong. This robotics vs superconductor stuff is trivial/meaningless. By that time you should of won or lost the game. On Monarch you should be well ahead of the AI and have 10-20+ cities. I suspect you build 4-5 and stop. Try uploading a save. I can't remember the last immortal game I played past Cuirs or rifles/cannons.

Focus discussion on the starts of your game. That is where you win or lose a game.