I'm trying (and failing) to beat the game on Immortal.
My early game and through the middle ages is good. I keep up with the other AI tech wise, found 5-6 core cities, grow them all to populations of 8-10, maybe puppet a city or two or else just weed the garden by razing AI cities. All my cities have all the food producing buildings, science buildings and most have markets and/or production focused buildings. My road network is up and turning a profit. Religion is spreading happily. I've built NC and perhaps another wonder or two. All in all it's all coming along nice.
Then I reach the renaissance, I start lagging behind.
I hit a happiness wall and my cities stop growing. The hammer cost rises and production slows to a crawl. I start having to dedicate myself much more to paths on the tech tree. While I'm researching naval techs in order to intervine with the runaway who I've just met via caravel, I'm forced to neglect my military techs and now I'm facing muskets on my borders while I'm still turning out pikes. Alternativly I dominate my continent, but in doing so I never get that fleet up and running in time to stand a chance overseas, all the while putting myself into such crippling unhappiness that I never really recover and spend the rest of the game battling smilies.
I think that's the biggest problem. I get all the happiness I can get early on, either through luxuarys, trade, religion or policies and then struggle to find more so I can keep up in the race. The game becomes a case of scrounging for :) - it goes positive, a city grows a fraction - back to negitive and everything goes on standby - aquire a little more, yadda, yadda, yadda. While this start-stop gameplay is going on the AI just pulls away and I start to get left in the dust.
So I have three questions really.
How and when do you start building a strong navy? I find that it not something that grows naturally. Naval tech is pretty worthless in the early game, and all the good techs seem to come at once later on. Costal sites are generally pretty poor spots for production and everything naval is so hammer/gold intensive.
How do you deal with the happiness drought that comes about around this time of the game?
What do you do to maintain stability on your continent? Turtling up seems to just invite wave after wave of enemy troops with no end in sight. Wiping your enemies out brings peace, but also hatred and unhappiness. Liberating you allies from the local warmonger, or else just weed-wacking is resource intensive and can go on indefinatly. Is there another way?
My early game and through the middle ages is good. I keep up with the other AI tech wise, found 5-6 core cities, grow them all to populations of 8-10, maybe puppet a city or two or else just weed the garden by razing AI cities. All my cities have all the food producing buildings, science buildings and most have markets and/or production focused buildings. My road network is up and turning a profit. Religion is spreading happily. I've built NC and perhaps another wonder or two. All in all it's all coming along nice.
Then I reach the renaissance, I start lagging behind.
I hit a happiness wall and my cities stop growing. The hammer cost rises and production slows to a crawl. I start having to dedicate myself much more to paths on the tech tree. While I'm researching naval techs in order to intervine with the runaway who I've just met via caravel, I'm forced to neglect my military techs and now I'm facing muskets on my borders while I'm still turning out pikes. Alternativly I dominate my continent, but in doing so I never get that fleet up and running in time to stand a chance overseas, all the while putting myself into such crippling unhappiness that I never really recover and spend the rest of the game battling smilies.
I think that's the biggest problem. I get all the happiness I can get early on, either through luxuarys, trade, religion or policies and then struggle to find more so I can keep up in the race. The game becomes a case of scrounging for :) - it goes positive, a city grows a fraction - back to negitive and everything goes on standby - aquire a little more, yadda, yadda, yadda. While this start-stop gameplay is going on the AI just pulls away and I start to get left in the dust.
So I have three questions really.
How and when do you start building a strong navy? I find that it not something that grows naturally. Naval tech is pretty worthless in the early game, and all the good techs seem to come at once later on. Costal sites are generally pretty poor spots for production and everything naval is so hammer/gold intensive.
How do you deal with the happiness drought that comes about around this time of the game?
What do you do to maintain stability on your continent? Turtling up seems to just invite wave after wave of enemy troops with no end in sight. Wiping your enemies out brings peace, but also hatred and unhappiness. Liberating you allies from the local warmonger, or else just weed-wacking is resource intensive and can go on indefinatly. Is there another way?