Am I the only one who thinks Slavery is incredibly overpowered? I use it waaaay longer than I should just because my cities can grow so fast that I can get buildings done in half the time.
Doesn't it piss your people off?
I rarely resort to slavery untless a Wonder's on the line and I load it up after losing by a turn or two to some upstart motherfucker halfway around the globe.
Am I the only one who thinks Slavery is incredibly overpowered? I use it waaaay longer than I should just because my cities can grow so fast that I can get buildings done in half the time.
Doesn't it piss your people off?
I rarely resort to slavery untless a Wonder's on the line and I load it up after losing by a turn or two to some upstart motherfucker halfway around the globe.
It generates 1 Unhappiness when you use it, which isn't anything too horrible
In fact, I use it to make my cities happier! When you rush production, the unhappy citizens die first, and if I'm just 1-2 unhappiness/happiness, it usually brings me back into perfect balance.
In fact, I use it to make my cities happier! When you rush production, the unhappy citizens die first, and if I'm just 1-2 unhappiness/happiness, it usually brings me back into perfect balance.
Killing those who dissent is always the proper answer.
In fact, I use it to make my cities happier! When you rush production, the unhappy citizens die first, and if I'm just 1-2 unhappiness/happiness, it usually brings me back into perfect balance.
Actually, usually you kill two or three people. So that's at least +2 happiness gained because of alleviating their overcrowding issues, and then -1 happiness for slavery, so a net gain... sort of.
Anyone up for a bit of friendly competition? At civfanatics they generate a map and choose a leader, then upload the save file at the first turn for everyone else to download. Then everyone can play through it at their leisure, and we can compare the different tactics we chose to try and win.
It's just kind of a fun little challenge thing.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
That'd be fun, though i would really like the to get the followup up game going again, those were epics, especially when people made the mini-stories of their reigns (I remember bear related hilarity from one).
I often find it very hard to decide where I need to start allocating construction to combat units instead of research buildings. Especially with the commerce tax for a high number of units, it seems to become a choice of "Big Army and Stagnate" or "Weak Army and Research". Worse, the CPU seems to have little problem with this, quickly diving ahead of me when I build an army and managing to keep up completely when I peacemonger.
I'm not losing per se, but I'm still trying to figure out how to push ahead of the pack with any consistency. This is on Warlord difficulty, by the by.
Generally whenever I declare war on the next largest jerk behind me I tend to get dogpiled by a bunch of jackholes who I can't get beyond "Pleased" because gold does nothing for their favorable outlook on me and I don't want to just hand away my technological superiority.
This is sort of a rambling post, but I'm curious how I can improve/what information more I can give to help you, help me.
I often find it very hard to decide where I need to start allocating construction to combat units instead of research buildings. Especially with the commerce tax for a high number of units, it seems to become a choice of "Big Army and Stagnate" or "Weak Army and Research". Worse, the CPU seems to have little problem with this, quickly diving ahead of me when I build an army and managing to keep up completely when I peacemonger.
I'm not losing per se, but I'm still trying to figure out how to push ahead of the pack with any consistency. This is on Warlord difficulty, by the by.
Generally whenever I declare war on the next largest jerk behind me I tend to get dogpiled by a bunch of jackholes who I can't get beyond "Pleased" because gold does nothing for their favorable outlook on me and I don't want to just hand away my technological superiority.
This is sort of a rambling post, but I'm curious how I can improve/what information more I can give to help you, help me.
This is exactly what occurs to me on noble. Counsel, please?
I often find it very hard to decide where I need to start allocating construction to combat units instead of research buildings. Especially with the commerce tax for a high number of units, it seems to become a choice of "Big Army and Stagnate" or "Weak Army and Research". Worse, the CPU seems to have little problem with this, quickly diving ahead of me when I build an army and managing to keep up completely when I peacemonger.
I'm not losing per se, but I'm still trying to figure out how to push ahead of the pack with any consistency. This is on Warlord difficulty, by the by.
Generally whenever I declare war on the next largest jerk behind me I tend to get dogpiled by a bunch of jackholes who I can't get beyond "Pleased" because gold does nothing for their favorable outlook on me and I don't want to just hand away my technological superiority.
This is sort of a rambling post, but I'm curious how I can improve/what information more I can give to help you, help me.
Well I only got to the point where I can win consistently on Noble so I am not an incredible player but I think the best advice for you is to consider your options very well. There are a thousands of things that you can do in the game but you must weigh and pick the best option.
For example do you build a library with a city or produce yet another unit. I personally had the tendency to just go for the library as I used to turtle and build up my cities (which often resulted me being too weak militarily). What I should do is look at the benefits of each: do I have enough units to defend my cities against an attack, can such an attack from another civ occur, do I plan a war in the near future, is the culture and/or research boost to significant, etc.
Also do not go for the next largest jerk, pick the wars and battles which you can win with a minimal cost. Go ahead and attack that small civ near you, with their cities added to yours you will shoot ahead of the others fast (and you are more likely to take on the next largest yerk). Also going for the total annihilation of a civ is useful, it is not always the best option. Often if you gain a few cities you already crippled them and you do not have the resources to conquer them fully. You can ask for peace, pick up a few techs/gold that they give you for it (note always always ask for such stuff if possible). Than you can catch up on the research and consolidate your new cities. You can wipe them out on if it is useful.
If you're going to grow a big army, make sure you spend the units. IE, send them to war and get them killed. If you stew on enough units to win a war for any reasonable number of turns, it'll totally drain your economy, unless your civics are just right. You need to have a decent defense force (I think three well-upgraded archery units per city is plenty) and don't build anything else until you genuinely intend to send them off. This will also help with the problem of unit redundancy - if you don't build units until you need them you won't find you're rushing a horde of axemen against crossbowmen and pikemen.
You should be winning wars on your production output rather than your reserves. As soon as you're ready for war just pump out new units as quickly as possible and funnel them directly into enemy territory. They'll be slaughtered quickly but soon the numbers will make a difference and you won't end up with a force that will cost you thousands in upkeep.
It's also largely a game of momentum. An aggressive early game gives you a production and research base that makes the gap just keep getting larger and larger as the game progresses. It also isn't always a horrible idea to hit the next biggest fellow, you should really be concerned on hitting who gives you the most to gain with the least effort over anything else. The score is usually a relatively poor reflection in the early game, especially for industrious civs who like to build lots of wonders. If you see a neighbor who is relatively undefended, then seize them.
Just finished my first multiplayer game with a friend. We ended up just allying at the end since my vast tank armies were slaughtering the poor pathetic musketeers and riflemen en route to his civilization and then immediately got a domination win from it.
I also have to reevaluate my opinion of the Cristo Redento. We discovered the "Use spies to change civics/state religions" and by that late, you've got more than enough EP to go nuts with it and cause all sorts of havoc with their economy and religionhood.
Also I've found that Peace Treaties don't immediately cancel after 10 turns. You might have to go into the "What deals do we have?" dialog option and cancel it manually.
It also seemed at one stage that if I clicked "no" to the "Entering XX's land will declare war, etc!" it meant that next time you tried to enter it would just not let you, rather than ask confirmation again. Solution was to actually go into the conversation menu and tell them where to stick it. And by 'it' I mean the monstrous army stewing on their border.
Also I've found that Peace Treaties don't immediately cancel after 10 turns. You might have to go into the "What deals do we have?" dialog option and cancel it manually.
Hrm. I haven't ever seen that problem, but BtS is so damn full of obvious bugs otherwise, that it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, seriously, did they do any bug testing on the Apostolic Palace and Corps at all?
Fuck this game right in the fucking butt. I was crushing the competition. Small map, 8 civs, I'm the Native Americans. My Dog Soldiers and super-powered archers raped my continent. I took over 5 other civs by 1000 AD and had my continent to myself. I'm getting techs like every other turn because I have so much land, blah blah... so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades to invade Mansa Musa. Mansa and Pacal each have like 5 cities on the shitty other continent. I kill Mansa in 2 turns and make him my vassal. I'm thinking, I'm going to destroy Pacal and get a super high score, right?
Pacal II has won a diplomatic victory
He voted himself in through the new wonder, the Apostolic Palace. Fuck that palace. Apparently it was because he was so Hindu or something, because I had 3 times as much population as him.
My score at the end was 4500, his was only 1000.... and the game called me Herbert Hoover.
Also, the Civilopedia has zero info on the Palace, so I don't even know how he won. I tried building it myself in a previous game and just ended up voting myself the chief over and over because it wouldn't let me do anything else. Are the options to do resolutions not automatic like they are with the UN or something?
Apparently I had 10 turn peace treaties with about 6 Civs, despite never having been to war with any Civ in the history of the game.
Also what the fuck has happened to happiness? I usually play on Noble but I went one difficulty easier, I've done exactly the same as I normally do (tech and build all city improvements) and yet all of my cities have like +5 unhappiness and are all starving due to lack of workers. I've got Emancipation and everything.
Meh, written that game off as a lost cause even though it was near ending. I think I'll try war mongering...
Edit: Have they made resources rarer? Only there was no coal or oil on my half of the globe.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
Think I'll restart then, I've spent ages doing nothing but pumping out dog soldiers and without catapults we've no chance of victory, I'd better spend the time on improvements and churn out soldiers when engineering is almost done.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Yeah, uh... that wasn't really a smart battle to pick if they were on hills or had basically any kind of city defense upgrades. You were probably trying to attack at 4.8 (4+20% city attack) against probably something in the range of 7.95 (3 + 25% fortify + 25% hills + 25% archer hills + 40% culture city + 50% archer city). Or substitute walls for the hills bonuses... and god help you if they had both. It was pretty much a lost cause if they had garrison upgrades too.
7.95 versus 4.8 means that you had about a 2% chance to win with that initial attack, but you only even have about a 1/3 chance of even doing damage to the archer while it only needs to win 4 dice rolls (and let's not forget that it gets a free first strike) to kill your unit... so it wouldn't even be unusual for it to take down a unit without even taking damage.
And like I said, the odds only likely get worse from there. In theory, the odds were in your favor, but you still 'should' have lost about 8 units anyway, so they really weren't in your favor all that much.
So, I've dug up Civ4 and bought BtS. I never cared for Warlords but damn BtS looked good.
Anyway. I'm playing on Noble. Warfare is something I really really suck at. If there's an aggressive civ nearby I have no clue how to deal with them, especially during the late classical/early medieval era. Yes, I know about catapults, reducing the enemies defences and such but the other civ always has huge stacks to defend/retaliate and the whole war becomes a stalemate. When they retaliate, I'm fucked.
The game still rocks.
Ferrus on
I would like to pause for a moment, to talk about my penis.
My penis is like a toddler. A toddler—who is a perfectly normal size for his age—on a long road trip to what he thinks is Disney World. My penis is excited because he hasn’t been to Disney World in a long, long time, but remembers a time when he used to go every day. So now the penis toddler is constantly fidgeting, whining “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How about now? Now? How about... now?”
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
I can't seem to be able to take cities at all early on. The starting units have just too much City Defense that even without walls I have like a 2% chance of winning.
so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
Well, by this point I had taken over 5 other civs already. I was probably at about 10-12 cities, but half of those were former capitals. I typically play on Emperor (about 50/50 on wins) or Monarch (haven't lost on monarch in a long time), but this was down on Noble. I wanted to mess around with some of the BTS upgrades without having to fend off tough enemies.
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
Well, by this point I had taken over 5 other civs already. I was probably at about 10-12 cities, but half of those were former capitals. I typically play on Emperor (about 50/50 on wins) or Monarch (haven't lost on monarch in a long time), but this was down on Noble. I wanted to mess around with some of the BTS upgrades without having to fend off tough enemies.
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
(haven't lost on monarch in a long time)
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
WHAT?!?!
This sounds identical to my typical strat, excluding if my civ has an early unique unit. I play on noble as well.
So essentially, it boils down to me constructing moar pults and axes?
so I get Astronomy, send over 25 rifles and 15 grenades
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
(haven't lost on monarch in a long time)
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
WHAT?!?!
This sounds identical to my typical strat, excluding if my civ has an early unique unit. I play on noble as well.
So essentially, it boils down to me constructing moar pults and axes?
No neccessarily. There's a lot to be gained or lost in early research order, build order, and early military scheming. Just getting a 20 turn jump by stealing an opponent's worker instead of building your own makes a damn huge difference and effectively creates about a 40 turn advantage over that person... even more if you do it again/pillage what few roads or farms they do manage to build.
Well, by this point I had taken over 5 other civs already. I was probably at about 10-12 cities, but half of those were former capitals. I typically play on Emperor (about 50/50 on wins) or Monarch (haven't lost on monarch in a long time), but this was down on Noble. I wanted to mess around with some of the BTS upgrades without having to fend off tough enemies.
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
I have a hard time figuring out how this "early attack" strategy works. I just quit a game where Isabella started reasonably close to me, I teched to bronze and started building axemen. But it didn't work because the archers were easier for her to build, tougher to kill because they weren't melee and they just holed up in her cities, and she didn't even blink at my constant harassment of improvements. Eventually I took over two cities, then lost one back as she just built more cities and more army to overwhelm me. It got to the point where other civs were very nearly as high-tech as I was because I was just so bogged down in a stupid war I couldn't win.
Founded my capital and one extra city, built some workers and city improvements while I teched to Construction. Then I built 8 Dog Soldiers and 3 Catapults, easily took over Philadelphia to the south and Washington, which was the optimal (4 square) distance from my second city.
Didn't think I really had the momentum to carry on as America seems to have sprawled cities across the continent, so I got a tech out of them for a 10 turn peace treaty, and now I'm nearly ready to declare war on them again and take the rest of them.
I'm bleeding small amounts of money, but I'm keeping my treasury up with plundering.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Posts
Doesn't it piss your people off?
I rarely resort to slavery untless a Wonder's on the line and I load it up after losing by a turn or two to some upstart motherfucker halfway around the globe.
It generates 1 Unhappiness when you use it, which isn't anything too horrible
Slavery is very good if used properly.
Actually, usually you kill two or three people. So that's at least +2 happiness gained because of alleviating their overcrowding issues, and then -1 happiness for slavery, so a net gain... sort of.
It's just kind of a fun little challenge thing.
I'm not losing per se, but I'm still trying to figure out how to push ahead of the pack with any consistency. This is on Warlord difficulty, by the by.
Generally whenever I declare war on the next largest jerk behind me I tend to get dogpiled by a bunch of jackholes who I can't get beyond "Pleased" because gold does nothing for their favorable outlook on me and I don't want to just hand away my technological superiority.
This is sort of a rambling post, but I'm curious how I can improve/what information more I can give to help you, help me.
This is exactly what occurs to me on noble. Counsel, please?
Well I only got to the point where I can win consistently on Noble so I am not an incredible player but I think the best advice for you is to consider your options very well. There are a thousands of things that you can do in the game but you must weigh and pick the best option.
For example do you build a library with a city or produce yet another unit. I personally had the tendency to just go for the library as I used to turtle and build up my cities (which often resulted me being too weak militarily). What I should do is look at the benefits of each: do I have enough units to defend my cities against an attack, can such an attack from another civ occur, do I plan a war in the near future, is the culture and/or research boost to significant, etc.
Also do not go for the next largest jerk, pick the wars and battles which you can win with a minimal cost. Go ahead and attack that small civ near you, with their cities added to yours you will shoot ahead of the others fast (and you are more likely to take on the next largest yerk). Also going for the total annihilation of a civ is useful, it is not always the best option. Often if you gain a few cities you already crippled them and you do not have the resources to conquer them fully. You can ask for peace, pick up a few techs/gold that they give you for it (note always always ask for such stuff if possible). Than you can catch up on the research and consolidate your new cities. You can wipe them out on if it is useful.
You should be winning wars on your production output rather than your reserves. As soon as you're ready for war just pump out new units as quickly as possible and funnel them directly into enemy territory. They'll be slaughtered quickly but soon the numbers will make a difference and you won't end up with a force that will cost you thousands in upkeep.
I also have to reevaluate my opinion of the Cristo Redento. We discovered the "Use spies to change civics/state religions" and by that late, you've got more than enough EP to go nuts with it and cause all sorts of havoc with their economy and religionhood.
Hrm. I haven't ever seen that problem, but BtS is so damn full of obvious bugs otherwise, that it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, seriously, did they do any bug testing on the Apostolic Palace and Corps at all?
Pacal II has won a diplomatic victory
He voted himself in through the new wonder, the Apostolic Palace. Fuck that palace. Apparently it was because he was so Hindu or something, because I had 3 times as much population as him.
My score at the end was 4500, his was only 1000.... and the game called me Herbert Hoover.
Also, the Civilopedia has zero info on the Palace, so I don't even know how he won. I tried building it myself in a previous game and just ended up voting myself the chief over and over because it wouldn't let me do anything else. Are the options to do resolutions not automatic like they are with the UN or something?
Fuck Pacal and the Palce
In like... every single possible way that you can imagine.
Also what the fuck has happened to happiness? I usually play on Noble but I went one difficulty easier, I've done exactly the same as I normally do (tech and build all city improvements) and yet all of my cities have like +5 unhappiness and are all starving due to lack of workers. I've got Emancipation and everything.
Meh, written that game off as a lost cause even though it was near ending. I think I'll try war mongering...
Edit: Have they made resources rarer? Only there was no coal or oil on my half of the globe.
My military is mediocre in comparison-what's your number of cities? I typically remain at 4-6ish cities and mass produce units, razing all that remains.
I'm not sure I've really got the hang of a military campaign.
7.95 versus 4.8 means that you had about a 2% chance to win with that initial attack, but you only even have about a 1/3 chance of even doing damage to the archer while it only needs to win 4 dice rolls (and let's not forget that it gets a free first strike) to kill your unit... so it wouldn't even be unusual for it to take down a unit without even taking damage.
And like I said, the odds only likely get worse from there. In theory, the odds were in your favor, but you still 'should' have lost about 8 units anyway, so they really weren't in your favor all that much.
Anyway. I'm playing on Noble. Warfare is something I really really suck at. If there's an aggressive civ nearby I have no clue how to deal with them, especially during the late classical/early medieval era. Yes, I know about catapults, reducing the enemies defences and such but the other civ always has huge stacks to defend/retaliate and the whole war becomes a stalemate. When they retaliate, I'm fucked.
The game still rocks.
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
Well, by this point I had taken over 5 other civs already. I was probably at about 10-12 cities, but half of those were former capitals. I typically play on Emperor (about 50/50 on wins) or Monarch (haven't lost on monarch in a long time), but this was down on Noble. I wanted to mess around with some of the BTS upgrades without having to fend off tough enemies.
I typically found 1-2 cities, then produce Axemen and crush the closest civ. If there's another weak civ nearby, I'll blast over and take them out too. If not, then I'll hole up with my 4-6 cities until catapults, and then proceed to rape and pillage everyone in sight. I'm still a builder at heart though, which is why I typically play Continents. That why I get a ton of land through warfare, then just tech my way to the win.
A man after my own heart.
WHAT?!?!
This sounds identical to my typical strat, excluding if my civ has an early unique unit. I play on noble as well.
So essentially, it boils down to me constructing moar pults and axes?
No neccessarily. There's a lot to be gained or lost in early research order, build order, and early military scheming. Just getting a 20 turn jump by stealing an opponent's worker instead of building your own makes a damn huge difference and effectively creates about a 40 turn advantage over that person... even more if you do it again/pillage what few roads or farms they do manage to build.
I have a hard time figuring out how this "early attack" strategy works. I just quit a game where Isabella started reasonably close to me, I teched to bronze and started building axemen. But it didn't work because the archers were easier for her to build, tougher to kill because they weren't melee and they just holed up in her cities, and she didn't even blink at my constant harassment of improvements. Eventually I took over two cities, then lost one back as she just built more cities and more army to overwhelm me. It got to the point where other civs were very nearly as high-tech as I was because I was just so bogged down in a stupid war I couldn't win.
Founded my capital and one extra city, built some workers and city improvements while I teched to Construction. Then I built 8 Dog Soldiers and 3 Catapults, easily took over Philadelphia to the south and Washington, which was the optimal (4 square) distance from my second city.
Didn't think I really had the momentum to carry on as America seems to have sprawled cities across the continent, so I got a tech out of them for a 10 turn peace treaty, and now I'm nearly ready to declare war on them again and take the rest of them.
I'm bleeding small amounts of money, but I'm keeping my treasury up with plundering.