Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Connecting cities via routes is absolutely necessary; the revenue lost by road maintenance is more than made up for by the benefits. On the other hand, if you've got a city dozens of hexes away from your others, getting that road there might be more trouble than it's worth. A sea route is usually the best way to go in those situations, even if it means capturing opponents' cities that are in the way.

You could also play Carthage, who get free city connections right off the bat, or the Inca, who have reduced road maintenance costs, if you want to quickly hook up your cities for that extra gold.

Or Romans, whose UU can build roads as well as fight off barbarians. Too bad they don't keep that ability when they upgrade.

Hrm... well, I went back to my Babylon game after a while, and man is the situation worse than I initially thought. Though I was able to get my happiness on track and my economy... out of the red, at least... within a few turns, Rome then took Freedom and slammed me with Public Opinion unhappiness. At this point my Civ was stagnating: I was constantly having to jump through hoops and just to stay out of debt, had to jump through more hoops to keep my citizens happy, I was inching further and further behind scientifically, and if I didn't do something drastic fast I would just kind of fade into the background.

At this point, I figured my best bet to change things for the better was a war - I'd suspected as much for a while, and even before the Ideology bit I knew Rome would have to be the target, for a variety of reasons. So I started producing units and went on the attack.

I'm further behind in tech than I thought (Rome had great war infantry while I had riflemen, and even then only a few until I started producing like crazy because I'm generally too broke to upgrade units). Amusingly, I still won (mostly because Augustus was too distracted throwing all of his forces at my City State ally to actually counter my forces, while I picked his forces attacking the City State off with Frigates), even though his army was both bigger and more advanced than mine. The rewards were not worth the expense - the war sent me into unit-dispanding debt before the first shot was even fired, and I was in a much worse place diplomatically than I was before.

Warmongering reared its ugly head once again, with a healthy dose of politics this time (I became friends with Assyria, Rome's old enemy - in order to convince them to join. Not only did they not join, but the turn after they denounced pretty much everybody, giving the others even more incentive to hate me). Pretty much all of my friends to denounced me - again, before combat even started. At this point it's worth noting that there are two continents on this map - one of them has all of the most advanced and powerful nations in the game (that's mine), while the other has a lot more Civs but they're all not as powerful - I was stuck on a continent full of bigger, badder adversaries (at least I've still got Ethiopia... maybe). Learning my lesson from my first game, I lessened the hurt by never capturing anything and peace treaty'ing for cities, but the damage was still done. I've got more enemies than before, I don't have the economy to support a tiny war (let alone a prolonged one), I'll have to tank my standing army just to avoid further debt, I have the minimum of city state support and there's a chance my cities might start starving any turn now...

The only thing worse than that is the realization that, all things considered, this is still probably on par with the situation I was in before I declared war in the first place - at least war forced something to happen.

So... on a scale of one to ten, how screwed am I in that game?

My Arabia game, on the other hand, is going amazingly. I'm starting to think the power of money is a lot more effective in-game as well as out...

edited 1st Jul '14 3:20:09 PM by KnownUnknown

What ideology do you guys usually pick? I usually with up with a quite large empire and find Order to be very well suited to maintaining such a sprawling blob of an empire to such an extent that I have a hard time justifying the other two ideologies.

Freedom. I can't help it, even if it doesn't really suit my playstyle

Order's good for just about everything. Certainly it's ideal for the kinds of sprawling empires I like to build.

It depends entirely on the state of my empire at the time. That said, it's usually between Order and Freedom. I rarely see a need for Autocracy, as the things I would want to get out of it are still possible with the other two - though not all at once.

edited 1st Jul '14 10:30:12 PM by KnownUnknown

I go Autocracy. I have a problem with keeping happiness levels up, so the more or less free boosts from law enforcement buildings is convenient.

I find that Order's boost to happiness from both production and science buildings fits that bill quite well. As a bonus, it also lets me go conquering without incurring unhappiness for occupied cities.

edited 1st Jul '14 11:10:55 PM by Balmung

Thing is for some odd reason I tend to get bum deals with my neighbors. A few times I end up next to Monty. One time I ended up with an unusually aggressive Washington. And the first time I played an Elder Scrolls mod I ended up sandwiched between Mehrunes Dagon and the Ayleids. They are about as friendly as you think.

So yeah I tend to have to militarize a lot.

edited 1st Jul '14 11:41:41 PM by Spirit

Those seem like the kinds of threats you'd normally have to deal with before ideologies even come into play unless you're starting in a later era.

Anyone here got any tips for Civ I? At the moment I'd say my skill is "Incompetent Farmer". I've yet to make it beyond 1360AD and anytime I'm doing good Barbarians show up to ruin my day.

Based on your post in the other thread, I remembered that the old versions of Civ had the concept of units being supported by the city that produced them. Units cost a certain amount of food, gold, or production (I forget which) each turn and if you run out, they get disbanded automatically.

Units can be "re-based" by moving them to another city and pressing a hotkey; I think it's 'H' in the default layout.

Home Cities: we did not miss you.

Just got farther than I ever have before. Nova Roma the last holdout of the once continent spanning Roman empire fell in 1948AD. T_T

Wasn't fun because I constantly had warmongering Egyptians in my face, and when I tried one last ditch effort to leave the continent the genocidal Chinese drive up in a battleship (I'm not even at war with them) and kill my civilian transport.

Leaving to a slow death by Egyptian tanks, random insane Chinese invasions and Greek pirates (Who I was also not at war with, hell we had an embassy). Strangely enough the one people I wasn't at war with or for that matter never got into conflict with were the Zulu.

Only way I held out so long is that when the Egyptians mindlessly attacked Carthage I was able to steal away riflemen technology.

I'm also playing on Prince, since I'm new to the series I'd say I'm doing fairly well.

A big problem I've noticed is I was forced to sign peace with the warmongers, who was at war with everyone else, so I couldn't sign peace with them, because eventually one side would command me to stop being peaceful. And I always had to sign with the Egyptians because they beelined riflemen and tanks. And there seems to be no nuetral setting, just peace and war. Oh and no matter what, spies are instantly detected and count as an act of war.

edited 27th Jul '14 8:28:09 PM by Blackcoldren

I thought peace was the neutral setting.

edited 28th Jul '14 3:33:39 AM by Druplesnubb

I've no idea. I think I misspoke. Still new. :<

The thing is they were forcing me into friendship agreements. Egypt forced me to leave them. This angered them and as their on another continent and I had no way to contact them and make peace. And for whatever reason they never left "Peace" in my information.

Maybe they declared war and my intelligence just went cross-eyed.

There is neutrality but I was too frazzled to know what I was doing.

You could have contacted them through the diplomacy menu. It should be at the top-right of the screen.

This is Civ I I was playing. Top right is the in-game encyclopedia. Maybe there is a long distance contact but so far I haven't found it.

At one point (How I found out spies are a declaration of war) I tried with all my might to contact Egypt but no matter how many diplomats I threw at their knights, they just killed them all. (That's when I dubbed them "The Warmongers")

edited 28th Jul '14 3:34:47 AM by Blackcoldren

Its tough to get used to the old ways of things when you've played 5 for a while. I tried doing some Civ 3 and it wasn't easy, but later I realized that barbarians only remove gold from you when they break into your city.

edited 28th Jul '14 5:19:43 AM by StephanReiken

Whoops. Sorry. Thought you were talking about Civ V, not Civ I. My bad.

Order is generally best.

Also it is ridiculous how warmongering status seems impossible to get rid of. I mean. Maria started it. I took her capital and wrecked her empire and cities. No need to hate me for that, rest of the world.

I think in Civ V you can get rid of the warmonger status completely by liberating one capital city. Though that itself ain't exactly easy.

edited 28th Jul '14 10:45:43 AM by Spirit

Hey now. I need that capital. For slavedriving purposes. And fueling my endless war mahcine of destruction and death. I can't just go liberating hings all over, who do you think I am!?