CGQ
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2019
- Messages
- 272
I'll add to the huts discussion...you can play with them if you want, but it will only make things harder as you move up to higher difficulty levels. The AI starts with several units on Immortal and Deity and will grab all the huts very quickly. With that in mind, you shouldn't get into the habit of building a scout first with the intent of looking for huts or going after huts at all for that matter. It might have helped you in this particular game, but on higher levels you just won't be able to get very many huts before the AI snags them all. Also, your first unit has more important jobs to do early on: scouting out your starting area and later on defending against barbarians. Just keep this in mind if you want to move up to Emperor.
Anyway, I've examined your 525BC save in depth. Here's what I think:
Spoiler :
My first impression is that it's a lot better than your original 225 BC save. You've captured some good land which will soon start contributing to your economy. You also got out a Great Scientist.
I got luckier with AI behavior in my save. Brennus founded the religion, De Gaulle had wine and Sailing to trade. None of these things happened in your save. So, you'll have to adapt your approach here. You have to think about other sources of happiness. You have a few options:
Option 3 probably won't work out so well. De Gaulle is not the kind of leader who spams missionaries and tries to convert everyone. You would have to establish a trade route somehow (maybe with Sailing?) and hope for auto-spread.
- Get out a settler and claim the gold
- Hereditary Rule
- Try to get Buddhism from De Gaulle
Option 2 is a good choice. You have many horse archers left over that can serve as military police in your cities. To get Monarchy, I think your best bet is to trade for Mysticism + 50 gold from De Gaulle for Writing, self-tech Meditation and Priesthood, then trade for Monarchy.
Option 1 is also a good play. I'm going to talk more about this one later in this post.
So with that out of the way, let's move on. We know what our overarching goals are in this save: get economy back on track and secure more happiness. It's important to have these goals in mind while playing, but it's equally important to think about how exactly you will accomplish these goals in game. It all comes down to city management and worker management. These are the building blocks of the game.
We'll start with worker management. Right now your workers need to be helping your economy recover from the war. Cottaging the river tiles is an obvious move here. But you also need production in some of your cities: Gergovia needs the granary, 2 work boats, and a building to generate culture. If you trade for mysticism you can build a monument there. It will take this city a very long time to build all these things if it is not assisted by chops.
So, let's take a look at each of your workers, determine whether they are contributing to economic recovery, and consider alternatives for their current actions.
To start, we have a worker in Hamburg building a plains hill mine. Hamburg already has a plains mine; in fact, Hamburg has quite a few improved tiles surrounding it. This plains mine that your worker is building won't be used for a very long time. The cottages have higher priority, especially the ones that can be shared with your capital. So, we conclude that this worker is not being very productive. What should he be doing instead? I would cancel his current action and move him 1 northwest to chop the forest there. This will help finish the worker currently being produced in Hamburg.
We also have two workers that have just finished mining and roading the desert copper in Hamburg. This is not a good use of your workers. Desert copper is a weak tile, equivalent to a non-riverside plains hill mine. It does provide you with the copper resource, but you already have that in Vienne from the grassland copper mine (which is a far better tile by the way). And of course you have iron in Gergovia. But even if you didn't have other sources of metal this desert mine would still be a waste because there is no immediate need for metal here. Your neighbors aren't going to attack you any time soon (and you could fend them off if they did), and you have more than enough units to deal with barbarians (which aren't a big deal on Monarch). To top it all off, desert tiles take longer to improve than plains or grassland. In summary, you have invested 8 worker turns into improving desert copper and gotten absolutely nothing for it!
There is also a fourth worker near Hamburg that has just finished a riverside plains cottage. This is a perfectly valid choice. As I mentioned earlier we want to be laying down cottages to improve our economy. However, there are two points I would like to make here. First, I notice that, while you have taken the time to cottage several tiles around Hamburg, the silk tile remains uncottaged. A very common mistake new players make is to not improve tiles with Calendar resources on them until they are able to build plantations. In reality, it is often quite useful to build cottages or farms on these tiles. Think about it: with a cottage the silk tile gives 3 commerce for the same investment of worker turns as a standard cottage.
With all these considerations in mind, I will present my second point. Your empire has 9 cities and 6 workers. 4 of those workers are clustered around Hamburg, leaving just 2 workers to improve 8 cities. This is a poor distribution of your workers. We can clearly see the effects of this distribution: Hamburg is oversaturated with more improvements than it can work, while other cities like Cologne are working very bad tiles.
So, I think the next step is to send the worker that just finished the plains cottage southwest to Cologne. That city desperately needs improvements to work. I would cottage the grassland tiles there. Meanwhile, chop out another worker in Hamburg and send one of the desert mine workers to cottage the grassland near Munich. The other desert mine worker can head north to improve your new cities. Trade for Sailing as soon as you can to connect the two sections of your empire. If that trade doesn't pan out you might have to build a road between the two sections.
Before I move on to city management, there's one last worker to address: the one near Bibracte that just finished the grassland farm. Bibracte has plenty of food, so a cottage would have been better here. This worker build a cottage there or chop the granary in Gergovia.
And that finishes my discussion on your worker management. Always have a purpose in mind when managing your workers. Ask yourself: do I really need this improvement right now? Will I be able to work this cottage any time soon? Does desert copper really help me, or is it a distraction? It's easy to lose track of your goals when managing workers. I definitely have a hard time with it. But it really is one of the most important aspects of this game.
So now we can transition to city management. When I say "city management", I am referring mainly to the tiles your citizens are working and your current city builds. Of course, city management and worker management are inextricably linked together, so I've already touched on this a little bit. But now I would like to examine each of your cities in detail and consider how well each is being managed. Using a bulleted list, we have:
- Berlin: A couple issues immediately come to mind. First, that clam should definitely be improved by now. This was Munich's job, so I'll address it again when we get to that city. Second, working the coast (1F 2C) is not good here. Work the cottages instead. I would also avoid working the lake now that cottages are available. In general you want to start growing your capital and working many cottages as the early game ends and midgame begins. That time has come now. Happiness is an issue here; I've already addressed how to fix that and will go into more detail soon. Lastly, building research is good but I would switch to wealth now that Currency is online.
- Hamburg: The first issue that catches my eye is that the cow is not being worked. Cow is a 6-yield tile: it should absolutely be worked at all times. Moving on, you've already gotten a Great Scientist from here, so it's time to stop working scientists here. You have other cities with much better food resources that can take over that job. Hamburg's goal should be to finish that worker with a chop then start growing while working cottages for the capital. Build wealth/failgold after the worker is finished.
- Munich: This one needs a lot of work. It's admirable that you're getting out a Great Scientist here, but you have to work the food! Food is king in this game. With 3 seafood and a granary this city will grow extremely quickly. Aside from this, don't build an archer here. In fact, don't build archers anywhere. There's no need for it. This city needs to get out a work boat for Berlin's clam. With all the forests gone I guess you'll want to build a grassland mine for that. You could also whip the boat, but I'm not very enthusiastic about that option.
- Cologne: This city is crying out for mercy. It desperately needs tile improvements. I would 3-pop whip a settler here for the gold spot. After that, build wealth and lay down some cottages for this place. Your worker in Camulodunum can road to the new gold city and build the gold mine.
- Bibracte: No problems here. Just make sure you station a horse archer here for happiness. Work good tiles and whip if none are available. You'll probably want to whip that library to get the culture flowing.
- Tolosa: Archer is no good here. Get started on a library. It's unfortunate that the rice is jungled.
- Gergovia: You haven't done anything wrong here. But this city needs a lot of work to become productive. Chop the granary and whip a monument (trade for mysticism like I mentioned earlier). Chop out the work boats, whip + chop library + lighthouse, then finally run scientists. This city can be an excellent Great Person Farm if you play your cards right.
- Vienne: Whip a monument when the city comes out of anarchy. This place could be a nice Heroic Epic city someday. Lots of jungle to cut down though.
You're learning, and this save is much better than your original save. But you still need to focus on the essential aspects of the game. You did very well in taking out Brennus, but during the war I think you slacked off a bit when managing your homeland. The game is far from lost however; I am very confident you can rebuild your economy and lay waste to the other AI here.
- Camulodunum: Improve wheat, chop granary, and lay down some cottages. This city isn't great but it can still help out. I see this city as a future "whipping pit" for Cuirs/Rifles/Cannons/whatever you go to war with.
I'm uploading a revised version of your 525BC save which includes the changes I recommended.
Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my saves! I went in and loaded your revised game and did as you said. I played to T120:
Spoiler Played to 125 AC :
I traded alphabet for monarchy with Joao and alphabet for Mansory with France. Joao demanded currency from me which I refused. He later gave me 50 gold as a gift after I asked him. I built a Confucianism missionary in Bibrate and spread it to Gergovia. I plan on spreading it to all the cities, especially for the culture against Joao. I also only improved the tiles that I knew would be worked on right away. I'm building a couple wonders for fail-gold, including the Great Library in Munich hopefully to work more scientists, though I don't think I'll get it, not sure how I can get it in less than 30 turns lol. Either way, If anything, it's more fail-gold at least. I teched aesthetics for wonder fail-gold and good trading too. What do you think so far?
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