Handing over the Throne

[LexiSilva]

Okay, I need serious help with a game (Vanilla CivIV) I am playing. It's a small Pangaea, on Noble difficulty (yeah, lame, I know :/)
I am the Queen of England Elizabeth, and I rule a small empire including Seville (conquered from a war with Spain to curb power), and Satsuma (culture flipped, like 5 turns after it was founded!). I was recently at war with Spain, and currently fighting Toku (he declared first!) and fought him back to his capital.

At this point, I can't turn back to stop Toku's constant horse archer raids (too many turns), nor can I capture the capital (too many units). My economy is good, but I have no friends since I had to cancel deals with my buddy Alex to prevent Spain from raiding me.

I have no clue what to do. I'm handing over the throne to the next Noble of England!

[haphazard1]

I have not yet figured out where my Vanilla Civ IV disc ended up after my latest move, so I can not load the save. Can you provide a bit more information?

What units do you have? Types, numbers? Swords? Horse archers? Knights? Catapults?
What units does Toku have, other than horse archers?
How many cities do you have?
What tech are you currently researching?

I'll do some digging and see if I can't find that disc. I would like to take a look and see if I can offer some advice, even though I am not that great a player. Especially compared to many here at Realms Beyond.

[LexiSilva]

This is my current situation. The unit names on the bottom left are Kyoto's troops. Meanwhile Satsuma has been being raided by Japanese troops for the longest while!

[TheHumanHydra]

Researching Chemistry? Looks like a bunch of grens should solve several of your problems.

[Brian Shanahan]

How many workers do you have? Though Satsuma looks to be pillaged more than anything.

Also if Nottingham is your production city it should have farms, no point mining the hills otherwise.

Regarding the HA's if they are pillaging, catapults are your friends.

And it would be nice to see civics too.

[Molach]

Id cancel university build 5 turns ago...spearmen/pikes are good against mounted. Whip some.
Your stack over in Japan can pillage too if it cant take a city. - then reinforce with catapults/grenadiers. You need to think total war for a while now - you cant build long-term buildings while your beds are burning, so to speak.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Problems:

1. You only have 4 workers. Build more workers!

2. Where are your forges?

3. You don't have any horses, but this isn't necessarily a problem. Waddling stacks are fine for killing AIs, too.

Civics - Look fine for this situation. Bureaucracy on a small map is good. Slavery and Theocracy will help nicely with whipping out an army of grenadiers for killing Tokugawa.

Solutions:

Just take peace with Tokugawa! You have an advantageous position over him. I demanded 50 gold for peace and he accepted. In the position you're in you have a tech, land, and population advantage over him. All you need is some time to finish a few key technologies (you're England -- why not draft redcoats?) and then draft an army to annihilate whichever enemy you want? It looks like the clear #2 in the game is Greece. I'd leave him alone and kill everyone else, that should finish the game off nicely.

Why are you researching Chemistry? It's going to obsolete your Parthenon and you don't really need grenadiers right now. You'd really rather have redcoats, they'll destroy Tokugawa's mounted units and everything else your enemies can put in the field.

Anyway, things I did: Swapped research off Chemistry and onto the Rifling line (we have some internal empire development work to do before we go killing people -- we need more cities to draft from). I'm going to settle four more quick cities and start growing them ASAP.

I went ahead and grabbed Liberalism, taking Nationalism. You have marble, may as well build Taj Mahal if we get time (I never got around to it), but for now London is busy pumping longbows (cheapest HR garrison unit available) and growing as fast as possible. Your small civilization means your bureaucracy capital is that much more important.

I ended up playing forward a bit, up to 1615 AD. It's the last turn of a golden age and the game now sits in a place where you have your options about how you want to win the game. You can cruise forward in peace knowing that no one can safely attack you (you have 13 drafted redcoats and six cannons, with more cannons or redcoats finishing every turn in your Heroic Epic city Nottingham). You can turn on research and blow through the tech tree, building a spaceship if you want. Or you can build more cannons and draft more redcoats (Globe draft camp is 2/3 complete in Hastings), and annihilate any neighbor you choose. I'd suggest starting with Japan to relieve cultural pressure from four of your cities so they can grow larger and draft more. I've been spending more cash on unit upgrades than I normally do, because your economy is very strong and your production isn't great.

In any case you're poised to win however you want, you have twelve cities now, I think the most cities your rivals have is six. When you don't have much land you need to pack cities in tightly and maximize what you have. And since you're FIN, working coast tiles isn't bad at all.

Photos:













Save:

CJ AD-1615.Civ4SavedGame

Lessons:

1. Build more workers.
2. Although war is always the answer, war right now isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's better to wait to kill your enemies.
3. Build more workers.
4. On a tight map, cram in cities and swap tiles.
5. Whip more often. With lots of food (or farms!), you can whip more often than you think.
6. Build more workers.
7. Don't forget to build your forges. Those hammer bonuses apply to whip overflow, so even if a city has poor hammer production, if it is food rich it still needs a forge if you're whipping. And if you don't have much production but you have a high happy cap, you should be whipping.

Happy killing time!

[spacetyrantxenu]

I forgot to mention, you're in the last turn of golden age now, swap civics going forward if desired.

Current production (assumes killing people is the plan):



Current military:




There's a lot of happy cap left to draft away especially in the new cities that are still growing toward size six.

[LexiSilva]

I forgot to mention, you're in the last turn of golden age now, swap civics going forward if desired.

Current production (assumes killing people is the plan):



Current military:




There's a lot of happy cap left to draft away especially in the new cities that are still growing toward size six.

Ty ill follow the advice than compate to that save

[Sian]

a good rule of thumb is 1 to 2 workers per city ... exactly where in that range it should be depends on a multitude of things (how much coastal areas you have, how many forests/jungles there is around, that sort of thing), but the game would have to be tiny islands or something like that for fewer workers to be acceptable ... its first when you know why you'd have to have that many workers that you can safely skimp on them since you know exactly why you're doing it (the early wonder "10 Axes" is a valid reason, although building workers and then chopping the axes is a strong counterargument)

Actually looking at your settlement dates for city planting gives a good idea why you're having issues ... Not fast enough settling ... aim at 5-6 cities at 0ad