What am I doing wrong?!

[Mano3]

I've finally reached the point of maddness over this game! I've read all the strategy articles and have played the game over and over and over and I still can't consistantly win. None of the 'canned strategies' seems to really work:

Cottage Economy - I'm always behind in science and money.

Specialist Economy - Ditto, i'm still always behind in science and money.

War Monger - The AI is always stronger and more advanced than my troops, even during an early rush with Archers and Axemen!


Here's a saved game - PLEASE comment harshly on what I'm doing wrong.

MY GAME SETTINGS:
Noble
Random Leader
Fractal Map
Temperate Climate
Medium Sea-level

 

[oyzar]

as long as you are building workers and expanding early enough it should be very hard to fall behind during the early stages... looking at your save you can see that you got your second city out actually slower than the AI. Somehow you managed to not kill mehemed when you attacked him. Also your second city which you prolly have discovered by now is total crap. Not much you can do about that though. IF you absolutly wanted that copper city you could have settled on the copper though the resulting city would be about just as bad. Settling the iron city or the horse city first would have been much more beneficial(or maybe both). Then viping out mehemed, building troops isnt very hard... just build / whip troops and dont stop and when you have 5-10 axemen or num cavs you are ready to attack. Admitedly your little island is pretty crapy however you should focus on taking advantage of what is there and doing so prolly involve wiping out mehemed as fast as possible. Having 2 capitals would help alot on your journy towards astronomy.

 

[xanadux]

Several things can set you back even if you are putting effort into a good economy. On noble, just making economy somewhat a priority should be enough to run away with the tech lead, but not if you make too many other mistakes such as:

Not having a good build order. many early build orders are reasonable, but some are plain bad. Don't have a bad one. An example of a bad one is in a current thread ... poster said builds warrior-warrior-settler. You need a worker, and you need a worker fast, otherwise, you are stunting your growth by working unimproved tiles.

Not teching well. There is a wealth of knowledge on this site on early tech choices. Many techs can be passed on, and if you are having trouble on noble, you should almost definitely skip all the religious techs entirely in the early game with the possible exception of meditation if you need a monument.
Basically, one or 2 worker techs, then BW, then straight to alphabet. Once you have alphabet, you will catch up nicely through tech trading. BW is crucial for early game production ... bringing us to the next mistake ...

Not getting BW early for chopping and whipping. Why let your capital sit at size 2 for 15 or 20 turns while you build that settler? Chop some wood and get that capital growing!!

Building too many building early. You don't need that granary in your capital for a while. It's going to reach it's max quick enough, and you need to use those hammers elsewhere. Library? If you are going specialist economy, of course it's important, but otherwise, it usually should wait a while ... that's a big investment and you would probably do better to make a few more axemen and take someone else's capital first.

Not building enough military early. Build it, you will use it. If no opponents are nearbye, you will still need it for barbs.

 

[nullspace]

Your surroundings look bad because there are lots of deserts and plains, but Mehmed has it just as bad as you. I think you really need to work on settling your cities in better locations. Utica was the first city you settled, but it is terrible because it has no food bonuses, floodplains, or even grasslands. It can't grow. If it had a lighthouse, it would be barely okay, but you haven't even researched sailing. You founded Utica for the copper, but you should have done it a different way. The copper in the northeast is a much better site. It has a lot of tundra, but it also has two food bonuses nearby and decent tiles. That city wouldn't be good in the modern era, but in the ancient era it would be quite useful. Maybe it would have been even better to settle near the horses to the northwest. There's some sheep and furs up there, too, although it is closer to Istanbul then to Carthage. If you didn't have animal husbandry early, you wouldn't have known about it. Or you could have just waited for Carthage's borders to expand to the copper.

Actually, Carthage is a great city, and it has stone and marble! You should have used those to build some useful wonders. And that would expand its borders to the copper.

There also is space for two nice cities near the floodplains, gold, and crab to the southeast. Gold is great for commerce in the beginning of the game.

When I'm settling cities early in the game, the main thing I'm looking for is a food surplus. Food resources, floodplains, or grasslands near water are vital for quickly growing, or working mined hills, or specialists, or whipping. So, once you have the food surplus, you've got multiple ways to make hammers or commerce, or gpp. Strategic resources are important too, but for a strong city, you want the strategic resource, and the food.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

An 1100 AD save doesn't offer a lot clues to how you got there, but here are some things that are in evidence.

1) You are playing without a plan.

2) One consequence of this is that your tech order is incoherent. For example, you started with Masonry off the bat, followed by The Wheel. Ergo you can connect up the marble and start looking at all of the lovely wonders that resource accelerates. But you didn't try to construct the Parthenon, or the Oracle. You even made Alphabet a priority, but then stopped without continuing to Literature.

3) Your city placement is terrible. Food is the wellspring of prosperity in this game, and you ignore it.

4) You haven't even tried to generate any Great People to help you progress.

 

[Mano3]

An 1100 AD save doesn't offer a lot clues to how you got there, but here are some things that are in evidence.

1) You are playing without a plan.

2) One consequence of this is that your tech order is incoherent. For example, you started with Masonry off the bat, followed by The Wheel. Ergo you can connect up the marble and start looking at all of the lovely wonders that resource accelerates. But you didn't try to construct the Parthenon, or the Oracle. You even made Alphabet a priority, but then stopped without continuing to Literature.

3) Your city placement is terrible. Food is the wellspring of prosperity in this game, and you ignore it.

4) You haven't even tried to generate any Great People to help you progress.

I'm beginning to see the light...

Here's a recent save. I felt I was doing well, then around 1900, the AI just passed me by...