Took the plunge to up my game

[vhhawk]

I thought I would hate this: controlling every worker, carefully picking every new city's location, specializing every city, chopping every forest, tweaking through the civics for every little advantage. I thought it would be irritatingly slow and annoying. But no. It opens up the game and makes it more engrossing than ever. I have a more precise understanding of each city's economics and support needs and am able to map out something of a rational growth plan. So thanks to you for your encouragement and advice. I still have much to learn here but this is a good step.

I still seem to go through a fiscal recession between 500BC and 0AD, but this time I was able to keep the research slider at 80%. I can see now the value of cottaging early. I'm still on the fence about walls, if you will pardon the pun. I don't need them in my current game with Gandhi as a neighbor. But I sure like to see that little graphic they add to my cities.

 

[Bluto_Longneck]

Nice, I love having Gandhi close.

By 0 AD you should aim for 10-12 cities, then sort out the economy aspects and military too of course. Teching isn't a problem with 80% (wtf?) I'm more into the 30-40's at this stage before getting all courthouses and stuff up.

Gandhi is yours, he already possibly founded a religion or two, about this time they also should have shrines. Those shrines are rightfully yours and so are his cities.

Now build a dozen catapults and 2 dozen maces, go and take it all.

Then build up your economy again.

Forget walls, they should only be a whippable last resort in cities, which borders an enemy.

 

[Baldyr]

It sorta makes my day to hear someone progress by taking the time to actually learn the game. It sound like you have left that infant stage where you just play by intuition not knowing exactly what your decisions will result in.

The single biggest obstacle on the learning curve seems to be the City Screen for most new players. It helps a lot to know how the multipliers work, how you rearrange your work force or what to do with specialists. Not to mention effective spawning of ! Some players haven't even figured out how a city grows or whether there is a surplus or not. But hopefully they will, before they decide the game is simply too difficult or confusiong, and stop playing altogether.

vhhawk, I guess you're familiar with every aspect of the City Screen then? Otherwise this should probably be your main focus of attention if you wanna take your game to another level.

 

[DukeofDokken]

It sorta makes my day to hear someone progress by taking the time to actually learn the game. It sound like you have left that infant stage where you just play by intuition not knowing exactly what your decisions will result in.

The single biggest obstacle on the learning curve seems to be the City Screen for most new players. It helps a lot to know how the multipliers work, how you rearrange your work force or what to do with specialists. Not to mention effective spawning of ! Some players haven't even figured out how a city grows or whether there is a surplus or not. But hopefully they will, before they decide the game is simply too difficult or confusiong, and stop playing altogether.
.

I too am feeling the same way. The city screen has been my friend and it's taken a little messing around to see how it works. Mostly with cits that are unhappy with over population. I used to think ok I need to stop growth. But then I increased "food" and by making it grow that worked. I know this is basic and a little common sense, but this really confused me at first.

 

[AveiMil]

Nice, I love having Gandhi close.

By 0 AD you should aim for 10-12 cities, then sort out the economy aspects and military too of course. Teching isn't a problem with 80% (wtf?) I'm more into the 30-40's at this stage before getting all courthouses and stuff up.

10-12 cities by 1AD? What difficulty do you play?

 

[Sporknife]

Yeah. Try playing on emperor or immortal and getting that many. You can do it, but the slider's gonna be at 0-10

 

[Bluto_Longneck]

I mainly play on Monarch, sometimes Emperor.

Economy can be treated in many ways, like cottages, trading with Currency in, begging/demanding gold and the healthy whipping of courts/markets. And don't forget those merchant specs if you are really tight for money. Even priest GP's are nice in my games.

As a fact, I play most of my games as vhhawk does, controlling everything and planning ahead, sometimes I learn new stuff on the way as well.

And I always aim for those 10-12 cities, I never said I always got them. Some games I had only 6-7 and stayed with that for the better part of the game, other times I went out and took more cities. The map and the opponents give me the rule of play, every game is different.

But I still love having Gandhi next to me.

 

[AveiMil]

Building 10-12 cities on Immortal with Normal speed is probably not going to work at least and you won't have enough workers for that many cities at 1AD. No way!

I generally aim for 6 cities and 12-14 workers by 1AD.

Perhaps you play a different game speed, I'm really only familiar with Normal and I genrally only play Standard or Small maps.

Either way feel free to post a game with 10-12 cities at 1AD

 

[vhhawk]

But I still love having Gandhi next to me.

It rocks. I just now got some military up to Gandhi's borders, and I'm shocked to see he has one longbow in Bombay. And one missionary. That is all. Gandhi you friendly fool. Let's not think of it as destruction, shall we? Let's think of it as assimilation into a better future.

My expansion was slowed because Boudica rapidly went from pleased to frowny at me, possibly because I was staring at her boobs, and dumped 4 galleys worth of sword sharpeners on the hill outside my capital. And now she refuses to talk. Talk? Who said anything about talking? Sigh.

 

[vhhawk]

PS. Another bit of learning put to practice - proving the world round through map trading. I kept trading maps with people but there was a part of the world no one had explored yet. Then late last night the civ in the black part of the map contacted me. Instead of trading maps outright with him, I bought his map for 45. Voila. The next turn I have proven the world round and have the +1 movement bonus. This is going to be really handy.

 

[Baldyr]

My expansion was slowed because Boudica rapidly went from pleased to frowny at me, possibly because I was staring at her boobs, and dumped 4 galleys worth of sword sharpeners on the hill outside my capital. And now she refuses to talk. Talk? Who said anything about talking? Sigh.

And this story just made my day.

 

[Crowpocalyptic1]

My expansion was slowed because Boudica rapidly went from pleased to frowny at me, possibly because I was staring at her boobs, and dumped 4 galleys worth of sword sharpeners on the hill outside my capital. And now she refuses to talk. Talk? Who said anything about talking? Sigh.

You know, even if she doesn't want to talk to you, you can still pay her a visit and stare as long as you want.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I too am feeling the same way. The city screen has been my friend and it's taken a little messing around to see how it works. Mostly with cits that are unhappy with over population. I used to think ok I need to stop growth. But then I increased "food" and by making it grow that worked. I know this is basic and a little common sense, but this really confused me at first.

Lol, well if this is basic I'm afraid I still need it explaining to me. If your citizens are unhappy from overcrowding then I don't understand how forcing the city to grow more can cure this?

 

[Boom12389]

If you make the city grow more, you have more people to slave away, and slaving makes people happy! (It's not as crowded! WOOO!)

 

[PreLynMax]

10-12 cities by 0AD? This is the standard map, right? On normal speed?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

My expansion was slowed because Boudica rapidly went from pleased to frowny at me, possibly because I was staring at her boobs, and dumped 4 galleys worth of sword sharpeners on the hill outside my capital. And now she refuses to talk. Talk? Who said anything about talking? Sigh.

She probably got all frowny because you were so busy staring that you didn't hear her when she said:

"Hey! HEY!! I'm - UP - HERE!!!"

Jeez, you men. No wonder you always complain we're so hard to understand. You aren't listening.

 

[Bluto_Longneck]

10-12 cities by 0AD? This is the standard map, right? On normal speed?

Standard map and normal speed, low sealevel and playing Monarch. Emperor and Immortal is a different cookie, as AveiMil mentioned. The game isn't really optimized, but I've got 10 cities and 10 workers, will get more of them soon. The economy is good.