What to do when significantly behind..

[Shoobs]

I have a game where an AI has -significantly- exploded well ahead of most of the other players. There's Very little chance any of the AI as well as myself will have any ability to catch up. I have yet to reach Ancient era while it is beyond clear they have hit metals and have something on the order of 12-14 cities by now.
I am also constantly in the hole $ wise, and expanding is not remedying this situation. Am I going to remain hosed for the rest of the game? I don't seem to have any really game breaking access to good high money resources in close vicinity even when I DO hit metals and then jewelry....
Edit:
I may need to look into slavery and its true benefits? You can settle captives in cities right?

 

[Septimius]

Slavery is definitely one easy way of increasing your income. Just watch out for the crime rate. Also keeping the crime rate steady can be of great importance, especially as you hit writing and you get that 75 crime maintenance thing. After that I make sure to keep all my cities under 75 crime...

Take a look at your finances, what's causing your economy to tank? Consider that everything you do, is increased by inflation, so keeping costs low is real important. Get rid of units you don't need, but note there's a difference between military and civilian units - and policemen units count as civilians. Use all the free units you can, but maybe get rid of anything you don't really need - like too many workers.

Use CTRL + A to remove maintenance buildings you don't absolutely need from your cities. Things like the pit traps, some of the extremely expensive health buildings (graveyard, sky burial) or maybe the abatis, can be gotten rid of in all your cities, to reduce maintenance.

Big, merged units are more cost-effective than many smaller units. And can even the odds when the opponent has discovered more advanced techs.

Culture units are great ways of evening the odds without metals f.ex.

Ignore the AI, he may very well overextend and start imploding at some point because of revolutions etc. Just make sure you build some serious defences if you are on his borders and be ready with enough military to surround and murder his invasions. And maybe have your hunters pick off stragglers in his area. Generally just harass him if you're at war and at some distance.


Other than that I can only say that some time after you hit writing the economy starts to right itself, because more and more gold producing buildings become available. You get the treasury with monarchy f.ex.

Also great scientists are seriously important to build the standard of measures (or something along those lines) and the academy. So don't waste them on teching or other stuff, before you've had them build these two amazing structures.

 

[Shoobs]

Slavery is definitely one easy way of increasing your income. Just watch out for the crime rate. Also keeping the crime rate steady can be of great importance, especially as you hit writing and you get that 75 crime maintenance thing. After that I make sure to keep all my cities under 75 crime...

Take a look at your finances, what's causing your economy to tank? Consider that everything you do, is increased by inflation, so keeping costs low is real important. Get rid of units you don't need, but note there's a difference between military and civilian units - and policemen units count as civilians. Use all the free units you can, but maybe get rid of anything you don't really need - like too many workers.

Use CTRL + A to remove maintenance buildings you don't absolutely need from your cities. Things like the pit traps, some of the extremely expensive health buildings (graveyard, sky burial) or maybe the abatis, can be gotten rid of in all your cities, to reduce maintenance.

Big, merged units are more cost-effective than many smaller units. And can even the odds when the opponent has discovered more advanced techs.

Culture units are great ways of evening the odds without metals f.ex.

Ignore the AI, he may very well overextend and start imploding at some point because of revolutions etc. Just make sure you build some serious defences if you are on his borders and be ready with enough military to surround and murder his invasions. And maybe have your hunters pick off stragglers in his area. Generally just harass him if you're at war and at some distance.


Other than that I can only say that some time after you hit writing the economy starts to right itself, because more and more gold producing buildings become available. You get the treasury with monarchy f.ex.

Also great scientists are seriously important to build the standard of measures (or something along those lines) and the academy. So don't waste them on teching or other stuff, before you've had them build these two amazing structures.

The worst part is that I am not even at the point where I *CAN* worry about much of these maintenance items as I haven't even built them or CAN build them yet .
As for metals, I'm referring to the tech tree, not actual resources. I might need to reduce the number of chasers / trackers / hunters I have maybe? I have 5 master hunter, 2 or 3 regular hunters, 5 trackers, and 4-6 chasers all hunting, as well as 3 super units for taking out barbarians.

 

[Noriad2]

Hunting has diminished returns as the game progresses. As borders expand, less area is available for spawning new animals. Furthermore, all the myths etc. can only be built once, so additional subdued animals of the same species can only be traded in for a few beakers and culture. In V37, if you do this in a city with cave painting, this is a significant amount, but in the SVN version this is no longer the case. However, if before sedentary lifestyle and without auto-teleport, it will take several turns for animals to reach the city, all the time costing money. So nowadays I settle master hunters in my future military city, for the food bonus, and the xp bonus for new hunters. But in your case I'd delete all the hunting units except the Master Hunters. And without auto-teleport, delete any animal that you have no more special use for and is too far from any city.

Furthermore, there is an undocumented feature with banditry civic (military civic tree) and that is the free Marauder promotion, which in combination with the Looter promotion you get from bandit's hideout, gives up to 20 money and up to 20 beakers per enemy you kill with it. In the period between rogues becoming available, and the enemy getting dogs, rogues (str 4; 2 movement all-terrain; invisible to most units, max. 2 units) can make some serious cash killing any weak unit they can find. I usually start with killing all the enemy scouts and trackers that are stealing my animals, then move on to killing enemy worker units and other units with low defense. After a while, my rogues have so many promotions I can thin out the weaker enemy military units as well. Until the enemy gets dogs and that is usually the end of my rogues if they stay inside enemy territory. Just keep your rogues away from your own cities as they increase crime.

 

[Shoobs]

Sorry, auto teleport is on even without ancient era, which is why I have so many hunters.

I knew that existed but I have often overlooked the bandit hideout due to its crime increase. Are you telling me this is worth getting?

 

[Galadrion]

Rogues - and other criminal units - can be an incredibly effective way of slowing down an opponent. They can boost your espionage against said opponent by a huge degree, and are almost as effective as ambushers and the follow-on units at keeping such an opponent under control. Not to mention that the various HN units are, until you get axe-men or something equivalent, probably the most effective way to deal with barbarian and neanderthal raiding units. So yes, the bandit hideout is (in my rather experienced-with-it opinion) quite definitely worth getting. Just make sure you also increase your LE garrison to help compensate for the crime increase - one, maybe two units should be more than enough to cover it.

Honestly, I find the HN units to be so useful now that I often run the Banditry civic long past the time most people would abandon it - I'll usually hang onto it until I'm ready to shift to militia units, and just when I make the change is something I tend to wrestle with. Burglars and Scoundrels in particular are a strong counter-argument against shifting too soon...

 

[Thunderbrd]

Awesome discussion folks! SO should read through this if he currently still doubts the value of his criminals as they currently stand.

 

[Shoobs]

I gave up on that game, I just couldn't see a way to save it reasonably.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Nice to see all the "bandit" type units maturing in this mod. What were one odd and weird units now have become their own established part of the game.

 

[Galadrion]

I probably would've stuck it out and tried to fight back from that deficit, Shoobs. It may (or may not) have been impossible, but it certainly would have been a learning experience - and one good thing about such a lost-cause situation is that you needn't be afraid of trying something you normally wouldn't. That was how I originally learned to use both slavery and banditry effectively - and while I didn't win that game, I didn't lose it to the AI who almost ran away with it, either. (We pretty much took each other out of the running - he had me too hemmed in to do much, and then I destroyed and conquered him, but by that time I was firmly out of the running for a win. I learned a great deal from that game; now I'm a lot better at using HN units and more likely to use slavery for a while. Still tend to get rid of it by some time in the Medieval Era, though - I find the benefits tapering off about then.)