theres something im not doing right and I dont know what it is. I cant beat this game no matter what I do. Build wonders when? Use specialists when? Declare war when?
Are tech priorities different for each civ?
Ok, here are some very basic points to follow that should at least let you win on Warlord. It will probably be a peaceful beginning, with the possibility of war later on. The comments in brackets [ ] are to help you know where you can develop.
Assumptions:
A. You know what the BFC (big fat cross) or workable tiles mean when talking about a city location.
B. In general, you know which resources are needed to build which units.
C. That you understand a damaged tank can sometimes be weaker than a healthy warrior. Health of the unit is very important.
Pre-game:
1. Avoid island type maps if you are having a hard time. Actaully, play some Pangaea map types first, it helps a lot.
2. Choose any of the "Creative" leaders. This makes the border expansions easier. Yes, it is a crutch, but if you are having difficulties lets eliminate a couple issues.
[Later on, using monuments to get you border pops will open up other leaders]
The Beginning:
1. Settle in place. I don't care about anything else at the moment, just settle your unit right where you appear.
[In the future, you should learn to read the terrain and potentially see the benefits of moving your settler if needed]
2. Use you starting scout or warrior to search around your starting city. Spiral out from your starting city, do not just go in one direction. You are looking for places to settle your next couple of cities.
[Later you can start to learn how the maps are generate and you can skip some direction because you can guess what will be there]
3. Your first city should in this order: worker-warrior-warrior (until you grow to a size two city)-worker-settler. [In the future, you can alter what you build to start based on experience]
3a. If you are on the coast and have seafood tiles, go: worker-warrior-workboat (you should be size 2 by now)-worker-settler.
4. Your starting techs should give your worker something to do. If you have corn/wheat in your workable tiles for the city, research Agriculture. If you have cattle/pigs/sheep, go for Animal Husbandry. If you are on the coast with seafood resources, get Fishing. If you have deer nearby, go Hunting.
5. The next techs have some priority (typically for me these are the next ones researched) for a couple of reasons:
Bronze Working - reveals copper on the map, allows slavery civic, allows you to chop trees for production
Animal Husbandry - reveals horses on the map, allow chariots
Pottery - allows te Granary to be built, allows the worker to build cottages
Hunting & Archery - after Bronze Working, if there isn't a reasonable copper nearby, then I will use archers for my barbarian defense.
Iron Working - if BW didn't reveal copper nearby and AH didn't reveal horses, this will reveal iron which hopefully will be nearby.
Ok, the Second City
1. By now you should have revealed a lot of territory around your starting city. Where to settle the next city? [As you improve, where and why to settle may change]. Ideally, you are looking for somewhere that will allow you to connect a copper or horse resource that also allows you to work at least one food tile.
[In the future, there are some great city sites that you want to claim before the AI even if there are no immediate benefits]
2. This city should be relatively close to your starting city. I would say no more than 7 tiles from the place that you settled. Keeping them close will allow you to aid in the defense of each other and you start building your empire as a mass.
3. Try to plan it that you leave 1 defender in the first city, build another defender for the second city and send it to the location that you are going to settle. Build the settler noted earlier, and send it along. When a worker in the first city becomes available, send it to work the second city and build a new one in the first city. The builds in the second city should be a military unit-granary-(workboat if needed)-worker-military unit.
Barbarians
At this point, the barbarians might start becoming a problem. Actaully, I like them as they are a source of easy exp. You are going need to do a couple of things.
1. Fog Busting units. Barbarians can only spawn where the tiles are black or greyed out [
This is not entirely accurate, but good enough for now]. If the tile is "lit up" or bright, then it is within the visibilty of your borders or a unit. Every ttile hat is not lit up, is the fog. The same applies to the AI, so the fog is only in unoccupied lands.
2. I typically build archers to go out into the fog and fortify them in a forest, jungle, or hill tile. Ideally, you form a little ring of defense around your empire that will prevent barbarians from spawning close.
3. I then will have a couple units (usually axemen or chariots) dedicated to killing the barbs if they don't attack my sentries. I hold these back a couple tiles from the sentries so they can intercept the barbs.
4. You'll have to work these units into the build order of your cities. Sometimes, being able to chop down trees for the production boost makes creating these units easy.
5. As you settle more cities, just move your ring of defense out some. As your borders meet other civs, you can start moving the ring of defense troops to other spots.
Additional Cities
1. Your first city will tend to be your early game production center. Use it to crank out other settlers, workers, and warrior. Go back to the 2nd city comments and start expanding your empire.
2. In the upper left corner will be your research rate shown as a %. Keep expanding until the slider automatically drops to 50%. As you build you infrastruture, the rate will stay at 50% but you are now gaining gold. Every once in a while, try to up the % and if you are still gaining gold, you are fine.
[Later on, you'll learn how to use libraries, specialists, and cottages to help you economy]
3. Build workers in established cities and move them to the newer cities.
Tips
1. If you have a resource, build the appropraite improvement on it.
2. Mine every hill [In the future, windmills, etc. can be better]
3. If the tile is along a river and doesn't have a resource, build a cottage [In the future, farms may be better to run specialists]
4. After the initial expansion phase, build a military unit as every other build. For example, go granary-axmean-workboat-axeman-light house-axeman. With a strong military, you are less likely to be invaded. Plus, we'll use those troop later.
[In the future, look for a production city site(s) to pump out all of the units that you will need]
5. In terms of techs, you need to to see what your empire needs. If you need happiness, look at techs that will unlock happiness buildings. If you need health, look at techs that will unlock health related items.
6. In terms of techs, try to mix up the techs. Don't go all military based ones because your research, health, and happiness will falter.
7. At this level, just build every building in each city. [In the future, learn to read the city information screens and you'll see, for example, where a barracks is a waste in a city that will never produce a unit]
8. Don't build any wonders.
[In the future, certain wonders are worth it] If you have nothing to build, build troops, research, or money.
[Sometimes, building culture is worth it in new cities].
9. Once you get Mathmatics, starting building catapults.
Your First War [In the future, you can go with earlier wars]
1. Once you get 10 catapults, take them and 10 of your most modern units that are good attackers (axemen, swordsman, maceman, horse archer, chariot) and two defenders (like archers).
2. Choose a neighbor that hates you, and go to war. You goal is taking two cities.
3. At the first city, use five catapults to bombard the defenses. It is ok if there are still some % defense left in the city. If you get it to zero after 2 cats, just skip three cats. Use the next five catapults to attack the defenders. It is ok if these five die since the goal is to do as much collateral damage as possible. You will see the collateral damage reports in the chat window at the top of the screen. If a catapult goes in and there is no collateral damage reported, then don't send any more cats in.
4. Attack the city with your attackers.
5. Once you take the city, move most of the troops that have some movement left into the city, but leave a couple units to defend the wounded and used catapults.
6. On the next turn, if you have 5 healthy catapults and 5 healthy attackers, send them to the next city, leave all of the wounded in the city to heal. With the healthy troops choose your next target.
7. Keep the war rolling as long as you have catapults to suicide agasint the city defenders.
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If you do the above, you should have a good basis to keep everything rolling. The beginning of the game sets you up for the rest of the game.
This by no means a great guide on how to play every single game, but with this you should be able to learn at the lower levels so you can improve to play at the higher levels.
There is a wealth of information on this board. If you ask specific questions you'll receive help.
Therefore you can beat the AI, at least at the lowest difficulty. When it comes to the higher difficulties, well, you'll have to share a game with us so that we can see what you did wrong / why you lost. General advices can be found in the war academy.
