Tips for this game..

[Weird Piggy]

I'm playing Vanilla just for starters.

I play on Prince level, Fractal, Epic Speec, with random leaders.

This game, I drew Alexander, who works quite well for a SE. I wondermonger early to grab pyramids and then later TGL. I warmongered to beat back Isabella and Nappy. Right now I'm running at 30 % research at +4 GPT per turn. Lib is coming in ~10 turns and nobody is close to me as far as I know. For some reason, maybe diplomacy, nobody wants to tech-trade me.

Please just give tips / strats / possible tech paths.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/83484/Meh_AD-0905.Civ4SavedGame
Than
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[JujuLautre]

Just took a look at your save, and I saw the following three main things (I'm really bad at analysing games, but here I go):
- your land. You did not settle by yourself any cities other than the others? Why? Remember, land is power. Also, your land is poorly developped, roads are not even linking the different cities. You need more workers asap. The jungle will not clear by itself, the roads not grow on the fields.
- your military: I can't find much combat logs, but it seems in any case that your military is very weak. Should Monty declare on you and come with 10+ units and basically you're toast. You also made mistakes in combat: attacking with phalanxes is not the best idea. Considering that you faced mostly no axemen, I would have built even more swords. Also, such a weak military is bad to exploit the agressive trait of dear Alex.
- your plan: it really seems to me that your decisions were made without any good plan. At first, with such a poor capitol-land (tons of plains), why go SE? You have only 5 good irrigated tiles + cows.Your capitol will never be a high scientific city with such poor land and specialists. Your tech-path seems without focus. Also, why war to get these 4 crappy cities and not more? Why these wars, and why stop now? Because you don't have the military is a good answer, but in this case, it is your decision of not making so much military units which stopped this war. Then why?

Other than that:
- you build lots of infrastructure and have a religion, but don't have any religious civic. organized religion is the way to go with such builds.
- workers! workers! your land is poor and you have only 6 workers for 6-7 cities, should have more than that; I did not check the possibilities of settling other cities, but this could be feasible
- military! You're agressive, for God's sake, you should emphasize more this aspect.

 

[Weird Piggy]

Just took a look at your save, and I saw the following three main things (I'm really bad at analysing games, but here I go):
- your land. You did not settle by yourself any cities other than the others? Why? Remember, land is power. Also, your land is poorly developped, roads are not even linking the different cities. You need more workers asap. The jungle will not clear by itself, the roads not grow on the fields.


When Isabella spammed down three crap cities and two cities popped up, they were much faster and easier to get than building settlers.


- your military: I can't find much combat logs, but it seems in any case that your military is very weak. Should Monty declare on you and come with 10+ units and basically you're toast. You also made mistakes in combat: attacking with phalanxes is not the best idea. Considering that you faced mostly no axemen, I would have built even more swords. Also, such a weak military is bad to exploit the agressive trait of dear Alex.


Last Time I checked, neither Madrid, Barcalona or New Oreleans were part of the Greek Empire. Also neither was Illinois or the city north of my capital. My military is weak because I just captured a couple cities from Isabella. I'll get some more 2 turn swords to take Paris soon enough.


- your plan: it really seems to me that your decisions were made without any good plan. At first, with such a poor capitol-land (tons of plains), why go SE? You have only 5 good irrigated tiles + cows. Your capitol will never be a high scientific city with such poor land and specialists. Your tech-path seems without focus. Also, why war to get these 4 crappy cities and not more? Why these wars, and why stop now? Because you don't have the military is a good answer, but in this case, it is your decision of not making so much military units which stopped this war. Then why?


My cap wasn't great, but I couldn't see ~4 or 5 plains that I ended up settling at. Once I hit biology My city will be fine. My tech-path seems unfocused.... hmmm lets see Phil, CS, Paper, education and researching Lib. It seems as though I am rushing Lib and taking Nationlism to get early cavs. MY tech path is very narrow.

Other than that:
- you build lots of infrastructure and have a religion, but don't have any religious civic. organized religion is the way to go with such builds.
- workers! workers! your land is poor and you have only 6 workers for 6-7 cities, should have more than that; I did not check the possibilities of settling other cities, but this could be feasible

I know I need workers, they have just taken a backseat to recent conquests.

- military! You're agressive, for God's sake, you should emphasize more this aspect.

I have taken six cities and settled one, that is agressive to me.[/

 

[dozenlong]

I am sensing a bit of defensiveness. If you ask for constructive criticism on civfanatics, you'll get it! None of it is meant to be insulting or demeaning. Rather than try to defend the thought process or method that drove you to post this in the first place, see if you can try changing a paradigm. It may not work of course, but that's the fun!

For example, saying "I know I need workers, they have just taken a backseat to recent conquests" is kind of an excuse; you made the choice not to build workers, so why not try to make workers more front seat?

These are all just suggestions of course and you are free to do as you wish, but most people here are genuinely trying to help and have likely made the same mistakes in the past.

 

[JujuLautre]

As dozenlong said, you ask for critics, I gave critics. Nonetheless, I will answer to you:

When Isabella spammed down three crap cities and two cities popped up, they were much faster and easier to get than building settlers.

Unless you practice a special "no-settler" strategy, you should have your first settler much quicker than that. If you wait that opponents have 3 or 4 cities before building your first settlers, you risk to loose evey good spot. And even if you capture cities, you get diplomatic penalty, cities with foreign culture and sometimes not on good places. My personnal experience (and which seems to be the same for most people here) is that my first settler is out approximately at the same time as the computer at prince/monarch, if not a little bit faster, so I never see new computer's cities before my settler is out.

Last Time I checked, neither Madrid, Barcalona or New Oreleans were part of the Greek Empire. Also neither was Illinois or the city north of my capital. My military is weak because I just captured a couple cities from Isabella. I'll get some more 2 turn swords to take Paris soon enough.

Even if you're out from a war, your military is still weak. Very weak. One of the first prince lesson I learnt when I stepped on this level was not to do so. I conquered an other civ, let my military too weak for a time, and before I knew it I was invaded by my neighbour. Since that time, I don't stop "war mode" after a war till I don't have proper defences.

My cap wasn't great, but I couldn't see ~4 or 5 plains that I ended up settling at.

I don't say that your decision of settling here was wrong, but that your decision of running specialists (and not the decision for SE actually, I was wrong in my terms) in such a capital is dubious. I am not a SE professional, but I really feel that having to reach biology to have a good capital is not a good move.

My tech-path seems unfocused.... hmmm lets see Phil, CS, Paper, education and researching Lib. It seems as though I am rushing Lib and taking Nationlism to get early cavs. MY tech path is very narrow.

I am speaking of the first techs you discovered, sorry I did not mention that. I think I remember seeing sailing in second of third position, but perhaps you got it from a hut actually? If so, I may be wrong.
-- just checked the save again: I was indeed wonfused by the fact that you got the wheel and sailing as your first techs, but considering the dates it's clear you got them from huts. So forget about this.

I know I need workers, they have just taken a backseat to recent conquests.

This is still something obvious in your save that you did not state, so I felt it was good to say it

I have taken six cities and settled one, that is agressive to me.

I must say that waiting for cats (which don't get agressive bonus) and bit pointy objects (which don't get agressive bonus either) to go to war does not seem very agressive to me
Also, settlement of new cities has nothing to do with agressivness or not.
But more than that, I find hard to believe that you lost so many swordmen and no cats. With cats in vanilla, I would have built much more of them to go to war, to reduce it to a cakewalk. Also, you declared war three times and plan to go for a fourth time? It's not too much the case here (only bismarck is affected), but the diplo modifier could hurt you really badly.
Finally, it really seems to me that you went to war without specific plans: Why? Where? What to do after? If you had some, feel free to share them.
War is not all about results. This reminds me I should read Sun Tzu one day.

On a sidenote, you can get back your ressource from Monty, andget him to cautious by gifting him CoL.

THat said, my plan from here would be:
- forget about buildings, build military asap to consolidate your army
- workers! workers! lot's of them, at least 3 or 4 more; road your cities and ressources, clear the jungle to get your new cities effective asap
- getting nationalism, and? If you plan to go toward military tradition, it will still take some time and you do not have enough production to get many cavs. So I would forget about it for some time and get back some useful techs (currency and metal casting mostly, do you have horseback riding? I think yes, but I'm not sure)
- I forgot to check for warring opportunities, but perhaps the south cities of spain have good ressources.

Well, I think I'm finished

 

[Weird Piggy]

I think my decision to run an SE was simply to get better at it and when I drew a leader with Phil, I just automatically went after it from the get-go. because I was running specialist econ, I went Pyramids before Settler. I don't know if this is a good idea, but I did it anyway. I was building a settler and had 2 or 3 locations ready, but the barb cities popped up.

I got quite lucky tech wise I pulled Sailing, Wheel and most importantly BW out of huts.

Military and workers are coming, my conquests are pretty much over at this point.