The step up from Noble to Prince

[mystyfly]

I always go for Hinduism or Buddhism and I cheat a little; save the game when I start researching Polytheism, and if someone beats me to it but I can see I'd get Buddhism, reload and switch to Meditation instead. If I can't get either one, start over. I agree beelining for Judaism you give up way too much other research. Seems to me by the time you get to Confucianism without beelining your missionaries will have a hard time making headway against established multiple faiths in most cities.

Usually Founding Early religion < early empire growth
If you're not isolated you can capture the nearest holy city. If you're lucky, the shrine has already been built. But as you increase your difficulty level, you find that the AI settles faster. If you can't improve your land, you can't build those settlers fast enought and end up with a small empire. Same with early wonders (Stonehenge, Mids, Great Lighthouse, Temple of Artemis, Great Wall). Those often stop growth when it is most important.

 

[gopher666]

It was not my intention to mark you as stupid. I merely want to help you improve your game.

Oh, I didn't take you that way. That was my own observation.

Wouldn't more land mean more cottages?
And health/happy ressources allow you to get better cities. Meaning you can increase your population more than your maintenance increases by growing your cities.

Definitely granted. I've had more than my share of games where I overexpand and break my back, so I guess I've become too cautious.

A 'normal' city has 20 tiles. Most of Medina's tiles are Desert/flatland, Desert/Hill or Coast. It has two plains and one grass tile iirc. This is very poor. And then even one of those two plains you can't work. This city is not really worth it.

You're entirely correct. My greed for Pyramids blinded me.

You only need to fogbust if you want to settle the land. Otherwise, like in this game, you wouldn't need settlers, you only need to capture barb cities. Cities on another landmass than your capital pay more maintenance, so-called colonial expenses (not sure there). It would've been better to settle your island as you can't win the game with your small empire.

Ever heared of Missionaries? I heared rumours that they spread religions... Also, having OBs create diplo bonuses (only small ones but still...)

Heh. With regards to the missionary bit, fair point. I've gotta admit, I never felt the AIs where very eager to send their missionaries to me. Maybe I smell bad.

As for the diplo bonuses; the penalties I'd get from the RAAAAH-YOU'VE-TRADED-WITH-OUR-WORST-ENEMIES-factor would probably have killed any bonuses and then some. Oh well.

Anyways, I've started a new game, and so far I've got my neighbour (Hannibal) beat, score-wise. Now to settle like mad.

 

[Hammurbabble]

Mystyfly: That's great, I know the trade-offs; now how about a stab at answering my question, please.

How do you AFFORD (financially) not to do what I've been doing?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Sisiutil]

Mystyfly: That's great, I know the trade-offs; now how about a stab at answering my question, please.

How do you AFFORD (financially) not to do what I've been doing?

Thanks in advance.

There are plenty of sources of income in this game besides religious shrines.

• Cottages (of course)
• Merchant specialists (and priests, to a lesser extent)
• Settling Great Merchants/Great Prophets
• GM trade missions
• Gold, Gems, Silver and other (less commerce-intensive) resource tiles
• Pillaging
• Naval blockades
• Capturing cities
• Trade routes and their multipliers (harbours, customs houses)
• Selling techs/maps/resources (post-Currency, of course)
• Extortion
• Commerce multipliers in your best commerce cities (markets, grocers, banks, Wall Street)
• Later in BtS games, corporations (by spreading them to other civs)
• Building but failing to complete wonders

I'm sure there are others I've forgotten, but that's a pretty good list.

 

[mystyfly]

As for the diplo bonuses; the penalties I'd get from the RAAAAH-YOU'VE-TRADED-WITH-OUR-WORST-ENEMIES-factor would probably have killed any bonuses and then some. Oh well.

Anyways, I've started a new game, and so far I've got my neighbour (Hannibal) beat, score-wise. Now to settle like mad.

You should decide early who to befriend. Its as simple as that
Keep in mind that the score doesn't reflect the real current situation.
Settle your first cities only to block land. Whip Monuments there so you can work your 20 tiles. Then recover your economy (whip courts everywhere, cottage some cities not all cities !). After that, backfill your land.

Mystyfly: That's great, I know the trade-offs; now how about a stab at answering my question, please.

How do you AFFORD (financially) not to do what I've been doing?

Thanks in advance.

On Monarch you can found an early religion. You just MUST start with Mysticism and probabely work an +1/+2 commerce tile which hurts your food/production.


The most important thing for big empires are courts. Whip them ASAP. Probabely try a game as the gilgamesh of the sumer. His UB, The Ziggurat replace the Courthouse, is already unlocked by Priesthood and costs less. After you settled your cities to ensure you have enought land to backfill, pick certain cities where you can work as many cottages as possible, preferabely only grasslands, and riverside.
Another way is settling close to Gems/Gold. These provide you with 6/7 commerce. Unconquered Sun did this impressively in Justinians University. After you can put your slider back to +/- 50% you can backfill your land. Always make sure you have a 'good' ratio of commerce and production cities. What this ratio is, you'll have to find out by trial and error, I'm afraid, as the map is different from game to game.
Once you get Code of Laws, you can switch to Caste System and run Merchant specialists who should keep your economy going.

hth

 

[mystyfly]

Naval blockades

Don't only blockades preformed by Privateer gain you GPT?

 

[Hammurbabble]

There are plenty of sources of income in this game besides religious shrines.

Sure, but the problem is getting to them. This is an immediate, early-game, short-term difficulty I'm facing, not a long-term one.

• Cottages (of course)

• 
  
  Requires time for the cottages to grow up, and a big enough population to work enough of them to generate enough gold to support a good-sized army without cutting your research to nil. Without a religion at Prince level your cities are a max size of 5 until you get Monarchy (absent luxury resources).
  
  

  [*]Merchant specialists (and priests, to a lesser extent)

  
  Priests require a religion. Merchants you can't get until Currency and markets.
  
  

  [*]Settling Great Merchants/Great Prophets

  
  Requires a religion or Currency.
  
  

  [*]GM trade missions

  
  Those are gorgeous, but certainly not early-game.
  
  

  [*]Gold, Gems, Silver and other (less commerce-intensive) resource tiles

  
  If you have a few gold tiles you're in fat city, but you can't count on that.
  
  

  [*]Pillaging
  [*]Naval blockades
  [*]Capturing cities

  
  Requires a decent-sized army, which requires money to support it, which you can't get from these sources until you have a decent-sized army/navy.
  
  

  [*]Trade routes and their multipliers (harbours, customs houses)

  
  Requires tech you don't have to start with.
  
  

  [*]Selling techs/maps/resources (post-Currency, of course)

  
  Exactly.
  
  And so on. All of these are good sources of dough once you've gotten over that initial hump. The shrine gets me over that initial hump. It's not a long-term need, it's a short-term, early-game need.
  
  Here's the problem. You got that 5-pop limit on your cities, which drastically cuts your commerce income. (Make that 5+ number of luxuries, usually no higher than 6 or 7.) Once you get Monarchy, that limit disappears, but you need to do your early expansion before you get Monarchy.
  
  First city puts you into the red. I deal with this preferably by eating the loss, hopefully having racked up some gold from goodie huts while exploring. Usually that's the case but not always.
  
  Second and third cities put you seriously in the red, and your surplus from the goodie huts disappears fast. With a founded religion, I deal with that by building a temple (also lets me grow 2 more pop, 1 for the religion and 1 for the temple) which gives me 1 gold per turn. I chop out an early wonder, usually Stonehenge but sometimes the Oracle. This gives bonus GP points and a Prophet comes along quick, especially if I'm Philosophical. This founds the shrine, for another 1 gold per city I have (because I always link up my cities so they get religion real fast without missionaries. I use the missionaries strictly for foreign consumption. I try to get an empire of 5-7 cities early on, and I have one cranking out settlers & escorts, another building military units, and a third missionaries. I get Open Borders with everyone I can ASAP of course. The missionaries get me more gold, and also I'm still generating Prophets from time to time for another +5 gold each (also boosts my capital's production by 1 hammer each).
  
  This way, I can get that 5-7 city empire, plus usually 1-3 barb towns captured, and I never drop my research below 80%. Often it stays at 100%. I get to Iron Working, Monarchy, Horseback Riding, and Construction, crank out the swords/horse archers/catapults/elephants and pick a victim, or hunker down and build if I'm big enough without doing that. And once I've reached that stage, the shrine becomes superfluous.
  
  But it's getting there in the early game that's the problem.
  
  What do you do before your cottages become towns, before you have a religion, before you have Currency, and before you have an army capable of ripping off your neighbors?

 

[mystyfly]

you did see my post, did you, Hammurbabble, as I focused on the early game

 

[Sisiutil]

What do you do before your cottages become towns, before you have a religion, before you have Currency, and before you have an army capable of ripping off your neighbors?

Dropping your science slider below 60%--often way below it--is not the end of the world. If you run a SE, you can run it quite low--often at 0%--for much of the game. I often drop the slider quite low during and immediately after a war of conquest, then gradually recover--after which it's time to start the cycle all over again.

You may want to check out some of the ALC games to see how the I and the contributors there deal with early game finances.

 

[Sir Janus]

There are plenty of sources of income in this game besides religious shrines.

• Cottages (of course)
• Merchant specialists (and priests, to a lesser extent)
• Settling Great Merchants/Great Prophets
• GM trade missions
• Gold, Gems, Silver and other (less commerce-intensive) resource tiles
• Pillaging
• Naval blockades
• Capturing cities
• Trade routes and their multipliers (harbours, customs houses)
• Selling techs/maps/resources (post-Currency, of course)
• Extortion
• Commerce multipliers in your best commerce cities (markets, grocers, banks, Wall Street)
• Later in BtS games, corporations (by spreading them to other civs)
• Building but failing to complete wonders

I'm sure there are others I've forgotten, but that's a pretty good list.

Perhaps the most important early source of income is goody huts.
Next most important early on is settling by rivers for the extra gold for each square worked next to the river. Coastal cities with sea food resources will also pay for themselves early on.

 

[mystyfly]

Perhaps the most important early source of income is goody huts.
Next most important early on is settling by rivers for the extra gold for each square worked next to the river. Coastal cities with sea food resources will also pay for themselves early on.

Goody huts are no source of income. They're just bonus. You can't rely on getting gold from them. Better than seafood is Gems/Gold. Try to settle near them if the map allows that. Again, check this Thread. This is an impressive example how you can seal off land for backfilling. It is on Deity where maintenance is even higher. He probabely only managed to survive because his gold ressources.

 

[vicawoo]

I once went for early religions, not for the shrine, but for the free culture for border pops. Turned out religious expansion isn't as reliable as I thought. As for shrines, if you settle a great priest, that's 5 gold regardless of religion. Early game, you have to get lucky for a shrine to do much better. Oh, and the happiness bonus at your level isn't that high. Also sometimes people hate you.

My point being religion, while nice for some things (culture, happiness), delays you in worker tech for a long time. It's not good to get for side benefits, often early religion is a long term strategy, which accepts the sacrifice of growth early and in the middle (to build missionaries).

People are covering a lot of management issues, so let me delve into diplomacy. Once I discover most of the people on my continent, I open the diplomacy screen, look at the relations web. First check to see if there's one person that everyone hates. Treat him like a pariah (no open borders). Then look for cliques of friends, often religious of warmonger blocks. Now think about everyones score/land relative to you, who you want to take out first, and then choose your friend(s). This is often not a simple problem, I will stop and think about it, sometimes even delay the game half a day or so, because this diplomacy (and war plans) basically determine my long term expansion strategy.
Convert to his religion if you can, do not adopt any other religion, and if you have a spare resource, consider gifting him it. His enemies are not your friends.
Try to goad some infighting, but hope that nobody gets too strong. That slows them down. Tech trading, try to trade with as many not pariahs as you can to multiply your tech benefit. If you have a tech lead, ration out tech trades until other people are on the verge of getting it themselves (check tech diplomacy frequently), then give it to everyone in a clique, even for gold or just diplomatic status.
This way, you minimize AIs trading with each other, reducing the mutual benefit. If you trade 5 times, and they only trade with you, your techs are worth 6x and there's is only 2x.
And tech smartly, you can trade for iron working, mathematics, currency, calendar, feudalism.

 

[mystyfly]

My point being religion, while nice for some things (culture, happiness), delays you in worker tech for a long time. It's not good to get for side benefits, often early religion is a long term strategy, which accepts the sacrifice of growth early and in the middle (to build missionaries).

That worker techs hit home later is just one of the disadvantages. A major disadvantage is the hammers you 'lose' for Missionaries. If you don't build Missionaries thought, your religion will be worthless, meaning nobody follows it.

 

[Hammurbabble]

It's not like missionaries don't give you anything for the hammers you spend. The alternative is to spend them on either buildings or military units, and I reach a point where I have all the buildings I need, have enough units to deter anyone from jumping me, and am not ready to go on the warpath yet. So why not? It not only gives you money, it also improves relations with your neighbors. As for the GP gold boost, it's not an either-or, because the shrine cranks out GP points too, so you get more prophets if you build it. Plus you can make more priests that way, although I never do. (Once I have the pop to make more than 1 specialist I always go for scientists. Later on merchants and engineers. Priests are my last priority except in the early game.)

Last game I played I was the Byzantines, founded Hinduism, Buddhism and I think Judaism too were founded on the other continent, and I spread Hinduism all over the place, everyone converted to it, and everything was peace and quiet for a long time. The Imperialistic boost to settler build let me crank out new cities fast and I had the biggest empire without fighting anyone but barbs. Lots of money coming in, I kept the research high, and didn't have my first war until the 1500s AD (Epic speed), using cataphracts/trebuchets/various infantry. Ended it using cavalry/riflemen/cannon. All possible because of the tech lead I was able to get thanks to all that gold coming in, and the good relations spread.

Nobody's going to convince me that founding a religion is a waste of time or not a good idea; the only problem on my mind is that as you get to higher difficulty it becomes impossible, or at least impossible for any civ that doesn't start with mysticism. So I need to figure out how to play without it. I'm sure it can be done.

 

[Sisiutil]

It's not like missionaries don't give you anything for the hammers you spend. The alternative is to spend them on either buildings or military units, and I reach a point where I have all the buildings I need, have enough units to deter anyone from jumping me, and am not ready to go on the warpath yet.

If you find yourself reaching a point early in the game where you have all the buildings you need, you're ready to move up a level.

If you have enough units for deterrence, you're ready for the warpath.

Nobody's going to convince me that founding a religion is a waste of time or not a good idea; the only problem on my mind is that as you get to higher difficulty it becomes impossible, or at least impossible for any civ that doesn't start with mysticism. So I need to figure out how to play without it. I'm sure it can be done.

Of course founding a religion can pay off big time, as you've found. But we're talking about moving you up a level, and one of the best ways to adjust to a new difficulty level is to initially forgo the extensive tech/hammer detour of founding a religion and spreading it. Just let one of your neighbours found a religion and spread it to you and maybe even build the shrine. Meanwhile, build up your military and then go and pry the holy city out of their cold, dead hands.

Try playing as Julius Caesar. Research Bronze Working, the Wheel, and Iron Working, then worker techs. Found your second city to claim iron, your third to claim gold or gems. Spam Praetorians (whip and chop 'til your hands bleed) and go kill somebody. It's fun!

 

[mystyfly]

Its nice if Buddh/Hindu pays off for you. But you'll quickly get bored if every game you play you're so much ahead it makes no sense to continue. This is the moment when you probabely consider moving up a level. And there surely will be the level where founding your own religion is very disadvantageous. I wrote my posts so you know what to change in your game if you move up and find yourself losing consistantly.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

I always go for Hinduism or Buddhism and I cheat a little; save the game when I start researching Polytheism, and if someone beats me to it but I can see I'd get Buddhism, reload and switch to Meditation instead. If

Guess I'm not alone...

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I always go for Hinduism or Buddhism and I cheat a little; save the game when I start researching Polytheism, and if someone beats me to it but I can see I'd get Buddhism, reload and switch to Meditation instead.

Guess I'm not alone...

Three thoughts come to mind here:

• It's better to know why you won't win the race than to know why you lost it. If you frequently save and reload the game, it's probably because you're gambling on luck instead of relying on skill.
  
  
• Pursuing gambits is gambling. You shouldn't gamble if you can't afford to lose.
  
  
• When you pursue a gambit, make sure you have an "out" -- a way to make failure still lead to something good.
  
  
  For example, if you're going to beeline Theology or the Temple of Artemis, you need Polytheism anyway, so failing to found Hinduism off of it isn't the end of the world.​

 

[mystyfly]

When you pursue a gambit, make sure you have an "out" -- a way to make failure still lead to something good.

Thats what those movie-criminals call 'Plan B'.
You should always see several ways to win a game. Then, pick the quickest/easiest/safest/most enjoyable way to win.

 

[vicawoo]

Founding 3 religions doesn't benefit you much more than 1 religion, well I guess until free religion, or more cathedrals. Shrines are 1 GPP, better than nothing I guess. The more religions the AI adopts, the more infighting there will be. Also, if they adopt a religion, they spend all those missionary hammers themselves, which you get if you conquer the shrine. You also have to decide whether you want the whole world to be your shrine religion, which is more gold but a lot tougher fight to beat.

Serious rapid expansions are extremely resource intensive. You need settlers, a lot of workers, often monuments, some defenders/fogbusters. I rarely have hammers for barracks/granaries. At the next era, my hammers are on more workers if needed, mass warriors for hereditary rule, a few libraries, courthouses, GL/NE at my GP farm, and huge mass of barracks/units = more cities.