Warlord difficulty

[42*42=42]

Recently after defeating chieftain several times by conquest I decided to try warlord: Small; Pangaea; Ancient; Epic; Rome; Vanilla; 4 rivals. I was ahead in score for a while and then I got iron. I have two cities; my capital and my commerce city to the north. So after getting iron (there was no bronze or horse in the area) somewhere around 1500 BC I start training praetorians in both cities to make up for lost time. After getting seven praetorians and having two more almost finished I invade Hatshepsut, raze Memphis, and take Heliopolis (I clicked the wrong button). Then I take 5 praetorians and head to Thebes. My praetorians all have a strength of 8.0 while her two archers have a strength of 7.0. My praetorians get pwnd. And in the meantime: Alex, Elizabeth, and Tokugawa are now ahead of me in score, technology, army size, and land area. This is about 1100 BC.
Does anyone have any tips for helping me be better on Warlord that they will share? Thank you for any help,
42 squared.

 

[v8_mark]

Just a bigger army and more production will sort you out. Sending 5 of anything - even Praetorians - always leaves you trusting to luck somewhat.

 

[Gooblah]

You sound like you are doing fine; Setting up specialization of cities at Warlords is a great start! I think you should focus Settling until you're forced to 60% or lower research. Then, use the city lead you should have obtained to maximize production and commerce, thus making up for the lower research slider. When using Civs with early Unique Units, prioritize production cities over commerce cities. Thus, you can pump out unit after unit to conquer land around you, hunker down, then go back to peace. Dividing your wars between eras lets you catch up to everyone during peace, and sometimes beat them.

Also, the Thebes assault:
We're looking at Archers vs Praetorians. Archers get 3 strength, and then +50% when defending a city. This gives them 4.5. If the Archers got City Garrison, then they would receive and additional +20% in the city. Thus, +75% on 3 would mean they would have 5.25 strength. Knowing this, we can say that the odds of an unpromoted Praet beating a CGI Archer is still pretty good. Now it all comes down to the RNG. Maybe you just got unlucky?

 

[Verge]

Just a bigger army and more production will sort you out. Sending 5 of anything - even Praetorians - always leaves you trusting to luck somewhat.

Yes, get in the habit of building more and more units during war, even if it threatens the stability of your economy. Rarely will you find yourself with too many units rather than too few.

 

[42*42=42]

The archers were promoted but I forget if it was City Garrison I or City Garrison II. And I think Thebes was on a hill but I'm not sure. I just know it was 8.0 vs 7.0.

 

[semirami]

In my recent game 5 spies in a row failed to preform an active mission all at 74% chance of success. Thats about 0.11% chance, or once in 900 games. Some days we are just very unlucky.

 

[Zanttu]

In my recent game 5 spies in a row failed to preform an active mission all at 74% chance of success. Thats about 0.11% chance, or once in 900 games. Some days we are just very unlucky.

This exactly same thing happened to me today... I was trying to run an espionage economy and after stationing my spies for few turns I start using them.. 5 spies (all of what I had that time) fail in a row with 72% odds..

And I've noticed that when I attack and should have around 60% odds of winning, I win once if I attack 5 times. That's CIV mathematics I guess. Or a superstition. Anyways, it seems like it's better to attack if I have 50% odds than 60% odds.

 

[Gone Dark]

This exactly same thing happened to me today... I was trying to run an espionage economy and after stationing my spies for few turns I start using them.. 5 spies (all of what I had that time) fail in a row with 72% odds..

And I've noticed that when I attack and should have around 60% odds of winning, I win once if I attack 5 times. That's CIV mathematics I guess. Or a superstition. Anyways, it seems like it's better to attack if I have 50% odds than 60% odds.

It's all selective memory. Ask any poker player about that.

 

[Jtownsend]

Or anyone that's worked in a casino. Knowing about selective memory makes all the difference. None of those nice 50% chance victories with minimal casualties stick in the brain.

Of course, a sequence of random results will always have streaks, even with some anti-streakiness built-in.

 

[CivMcNut]

Early in the game I pay alot of attention to the culutral defense that a city has too. Without siege weapons some of those seemingly poorly defended cities can take a lot of your troops if they already have a 60% culutral defense value already tacking onto the bonuses the defending troops already get. You'll need more a good deal more troops to take out those 40 and 60 % cities than you would a 0 or 20 %

 

[Zanttu]

It's all selective memory. Ask any poker player about that.

I know, I play poker for my hobby as much as I have time from playing civ =P.
Last time I started in a tournament, I got AA in the first hand.. All-in.. And some noob with K-J beats me. But, as I start to think of it, that was the first time in my life I lost with AA so it wasn't so bad luck at all.

 

[Gone Dark]

I know, I play poker for my hobby as much as I have time from playing civ =P.
Last time I started in a tournament, I got AA in the first hand.. All-in.. And some noob with K-J beats me. But, as I start to think of it, that was the first time in my life I lost with AA so it wasn't so bad luck at all.

Only lost once with AA? Either you are pretty new to poker or I really hate you

But people remember their aces getting cracked very vividly, since a lot of people can't let aces go. But if you don't improve on the flop you still only have a pair. Playing against tight players or ten handed, you are almost always beat without a decent read on the other player if you are getting played back at. Therefore, if you can't realease AA you often win small pots with them, and lose the big ones. If you are an ok player it may still be EV+ in the long run though, unless you overplay them constantly, but you don't really take notice from a $5 win here and a $20 win there. But when you lose $400, you suddenly do.

Sorry for the derail

 

[TheTemplar]

The key is numbers. I play Roman as well. I beeline Iron, then work on techs relative to my surroundings, by then I have 3 cities pumping out Praets every few turns. I attack when I either have more than 15 Praets, or when the debt really begins to kill me (%0 science with losses.) You only have to really worry when the agressive players are ahead of you.

Hope you can beat your game now!

 

[JesusOnEez]

This exactly same thing happened to me today... I was trying to run an espionage economy and after stationing my spies for few turns I start using them.. 5 spies (all of what I had that time) fail in a row with 72% odds..

And I've noticed that when I attack and should have around 60% odds of winning, I win once if I attack 5 times. That's CIV mathematics I guess. Or a superstition. Anyways, it seems like it's better to attack if I have 50% odds than 60% odds.

The RNG god is a . .. .. .. .. .. I've recently completed a mathematics course and I remember a section that may be relevant to the way the RNG works.

A task asked that the student pick 20 random numbers from 0 to 9. A human brain is most likely to pick the first number, then pick a random number from the numbers left. So, I pick 8 for my first number. The human brain won't pick 8 again until much later, it'll pick a random number from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9. The result of which is that after picking 20 random numbers, you end up with fairly equally chosen numbers. 2 ones, 3 twos, 2 threes etc.

With a computer random number generator, it will pick a random number from the complete collection of numbers it can pick from every time...it doesn't care what the last number it picked was. A calculator program created in the course created a random number list which resembled something more like 5 ones, 1 two, 4 threes, 0 fours, 6 fives, 0 sixes etc.

Putting this in the context of civ, our view of what the RNG god does can sometimes seem unfair as it's not the human brain version of the RNG.

Think that's as clear as mud, and has probably been put much better by someone else somewhere along the line.

 

[Winged Monkey]

Only lost once with AA? Either you are pretty new to poker or I really hate you

But people remember their aces getting cracked very vividly, since a lot of people can't let aces go. But if you don't improve on the flop you still only have a pair. Playing against tight players or ten handed, you are almost always beat without a decent read on the other player if you are getting played back at. Therefore, if you can't realease AA you often win small pots with them, and lose the big ones. If you are an ok player it may still be EV+ in the long run though, unless you overplay them constantly, but you don't really take notice from a $5 win here and a $20 win there. But when you lose $400, you suddenly do.

Sorry for the derail

That's why everyone should have Poker Tracker and a decent sample size (100k+ hands) to decide whether they have perpetual bad luck. Most people will find that things even out over time (unless you play at Absolute Poker!)

Or scratch that. It'd be better if noone had PT, and everyone remained ignorant come to think of it!

 

[Zanttu]

This is going pretty much off-topic so no need for others to read.

Only lost once with AA? Either you are pretty new to poker or I really hate you

But people remember their aces getting cracked very vividly, since a lot of people can't let aces go. But if you don't improve on the flop you still only have a pair. Playing against tight players or ten handed, you are almost always beat without a decent read on the other player if you are getting played back at. Therefore, if you can't realease AA you often win small pots with them, and lose the big ones. If you are an ok player it may still be EV+ in the long run though, unless you overplay them constantly, but you don't really take notice from a $5 win here and a $20 win there. But when you lose $400, you suddenly do.

Sorry for the derail

Well, idk if you have to hate me as I have played poker only for a year actively (3-5 days a week, usually more than 1 hour). And I have only got the rockets 10-15 times, so maybe I haven't been incredibly lucky. How to play AA is very dependable on the situation of course (what's the situation in chips, how other players play etc..) but IMHO slowing down the rockets is the worst thing to do, AA should always be played aggressively pre-flop to play players with 8-9 off suit out of the game. After the flop it's a whole different game so I'm not going to talk about it.. In this very specific game where I lost, it was a freeroll tournament (so yea lot of noobs there) with starting chips of 1000 and blinds 20/40. I got AA in the first hand and thought I would go all-in (it's a pretty slow tournament and I was playing another tourney at the same time). 2 players call, first one with 7-J off-suit and the other one with K-J off-suit. In the flop there were both K and J, and all other cards had no role.. It always pisses me off when I lose to a hand I would never go all-in with, though it would have been worse if the 7-J one had won.

 

[arbarbonif]

Only lost once with AA? Either you are pretty new to poker or I really hate you

But people remember their aces getting cracked very vividly, since a lot of people can't let aces go. But if you don't improve on the flop you still only have a pair. Playing against tight players or ten handed, you are almost always beat without a decent read on the other player if you are getting played back at. Therefore, if you can't realease AA you often win small pots with them, and lose the big ones. If you are an ok player it may still be EV+ in the long run though, unless you overplay them constantly, but you don't really take notice from a $5 win here and a $20 win there. But when you lose $400, you suddenly do.

Sorry for the derail

Heh, I remember losing twice in one night when starting with pocket aces and getting an ace on the flop. Stupid straights....

 

[Jaaboo]

I'm also playing my first game on Warlord difficulty (or my second, maybe) as Genghis Khan, attempting to play a lot more aggressively than I ever have. After what I felt was a slow start, I founded my second city in an area rife with hills, gold and horses (but low on food, DOH!) I started pumping out Keshiks and axemen, and by I'd say 100 BC or so, I eliminated Shaka (who hid his cities like a little punk). I took a few of his cities, rather than resettling, since they were decently placed, and I was falling behind on research.

Next target was Alexander, just to north of me. He was a different religion than everyone else, and had the Conf. holy city (and I had a prophet which I had no idea how to use). It was clear Alexander needed to die. My keshiks however were no use against his phalanx, so I had to sue for peace after taking three of his cities to rebuild and let my people get their taste for war. As it stands now, Alex has probably one city left, which is getting swarmed over by French culture.

So this is where it stands. Currently my research is 40% and I'm starting to lose heavily in the tech race. Fat Louie is my closest rival in score and has just researched Music, clearly going the culture path. He doesn't rival me in military power, but he's the leader of the Jewish bloc that I am part of (along with Ramses) that I have been keeping happy as I push out my borders. Togakawu is encroaching my western border (on the other side of Shaka) but he's a joke in this game. The Celts are on the other side of the French, and are less than pleased with me.

Tech-wise, I have more military techs than the others, and I can use Metal Casing as a bargaining chip. However, once that's gone to the French, I've lose my only advantage in the tech market. I need to get the best value I can, I think, and I need to start bringing in more money to get my slider back up.

My question is how? My cities have made a shift to cottages when possible, just to try to remove the deficit, but none are specialized in any particular way (other than my production city which is really just that, a city in the hills). My capital could be a solid GP farm, so could Shaka's, but right now I'll I'm putting out is Great Prophets, and I've already shrined my only holy city. I suppose I could put them to task to light bulbing for me. Should I also keep with the killing? Genghis of course smiles and drools when he thinks of looting those rich fancy French and I do have all my troops along that border, including many catapults and level 4-5 swordsmen and keshiks.

Is it Louis' time to die?

 

[Gone Dark]

My question is how? My cities have made a shift to cottages when possible, just to try to remove the deficit, but none are specialized in any particular way (other than my production city which is really just that, a city in the hills). My capital could be a solid GP farm, so could Shaka's, but right now I'll I'm putting out is Great Prophets, and I've already shrined my only holy city. I suppose I could put them to task to light bulbing for me. Should I also keep with the killing? Genghis of course smiles and drools when he thinks of looting those rich fancy French and I do have all my troops along that border, including many catapults and level 4-5 swordsmen and keshiks.

Since Genghis is a warmonger at heart, and both his traits, as well as his UB and UU are military ones, you need to work a bit more on your economy. Here's some things I'd do:

1. You have a shrine. That's great. Think of this as your future Wall Street city from now on. Add a market, a grocer, a bank and, later on, Wall Street to maximize the output of your shine. Designate one city to only build missonaries for a while and spread your religion to all your cities. If you get any prophets, settle them in this city to benefit from the gold they yield (+5).

2. Currency and code of laws. Make sure to research them early on for traderoutes, markets and courthouses. Have you build courthouses in your cities, and especially the ones far from your capital? If not, build them and open up the Forbidden Palace for significantly reduced maintance.

3. Set up that GP farm. Either run cast or build a library. AI capitals make excellent GP farms since they most often have an abundance of food as well as decent production. Pop the National Epic - and if you still can - the Great Library in there.

4. It's not to late to specialize cities. Cities producing military in BCs may well be commerce cities later on. Keep your 2-3 best production spots and cottage up the other cities. Make sure you also work the tiles.

5. If possible, cottage your capital to take advantage of the Bureaucracy civic. Use your first scientist from the GP farm to make an academy here. The +50% bonus on commerce will make this a great research city and I often put the Oxford university in my capital.

Is it Louis' time to die?

It's a little hard to say without knowing what year it is and how many cities you have. It sounds like you have about 8-9 cities, no? And are a few hundred years past AD? You have a lot of time left if you want to kill Louis. The most important thing is to recover the economy and build up the infrastructure, then you can take him on without seeing your economy crashing. You also need to give Louis enough time to build some wonders for you

 

[vicawoo]

I'm going to be snarky and say ask fireaxis to buff praetorians or play boudica of rome.

Well, if I have swordsmen in a situation like that, I usually get more, and try to get them city raider 2-3 on weaker cities first.