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twistedmentat posted:So what are some pointers for a successful early game? I always feel like this is where i screw up on any of these games. I either spend too much time on research or expand to quickly or whatnot. I'm still working on that myself. I always end up feeling like I'm super far behind by Age 4 (barring my most recent game where I abused the hell out of Mound Builders). I'm pretty sure the AIs expand a lot more aggressively than I do. In my most recent game, I tried spawning a settler and integrating that city ASAP after getting the bonus food and bonus research from Tribal government. It's hard to say how much that helped, though, since my capital was crazy even by that point. Previously I've been a bit slower to expand and mostly caught up by going hard on research improvements when they come online in the middle Ages.
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Apr 1, 2024 18:44
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Zurai posted:Agreed. Mound Builders is absolutely loving busted if you have a start with enough grasslands. I had my capital pumping out 42!!!!!! culture per turn by the end of Age 3. Being able to use a culture power every 2-3 turns is just monstrous, and that's just one aspect of the boosted capital. You also get tons of bonus research, production, needs satisfaction, etc etc. And since the bonus lasts 5 turns, you can alternate between that and another cultural power as needed. Or just boost two cities. The dumbest thing about them might not even be the culture, but the fact that getting the innovation event for them means that each mound, without being worked, produces sanitation and one improvement point. If you have enough grassland, you effectively never run out of improvement points, as each mound will pay for itself in 12 turns.
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Apr 1, 2024 19:15
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I’m sure there is a good bit of balancing needed but I really like how the national spirits really alter the meta depending on what you pick. I’m fine with them being overpowered in their own way when the opportunity cost is not getting to do a different overpowered thing. I’m finishing up my first game and frankly had a blast. It really does enough different for me to recommend this to anyone who has played through a lot of 4X games. I am Egypt and ended up on the north end of a continent with only one neighbor, Rome, in the middle of the continent and the USA on the southern end of the continent. Spain was also in the south but Rome steamrolled them. I allied with Rome for a while but then got backstabbed and they declared war on me. I didn’t have a big army but I had good gold and production income so I was able to get one spun up pretty quick and ended up taking a city from them, promptly renamed “LOL Rome.” Rome became a thorn in my side with us at roughly equal power. I think we had a total of 5 wars, mostly with nothing really happening besides me peeling off 2 cities, till the big last one. We hit the era with planes and the AI actually built them which I’m not used to, but I was able to get air superiority and bomb them (which isn’t very effective against ground units but did work against fortifications.) I had a brutal slog in one of their larger cities on my border on the west end of the continent, but I cracked the shell on the east end and ran wild through former Spain and some other territory, taking almost a third of their territory and getting the chaos meter up over 150 points a turn for a minute there. Rome was my only real peer so now it’s a good bit of clicking “next turn” while I get to the last age for the final victory condition, but the game lasted longer than most 4X so before I got to that point. Gonna crank the difficulty up next time and I’m expecting to get rocked because it was fairly close this time around.
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Apr 1, 2024 19:46
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You can't write possessive 's in your custom nation's name. This is mortifying's.
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Apr 1, 2024 21:57
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THE BAR posted:You can't write possessive 's in your custom nation's name. This is mortifying's. Ala's, the greengrocers' empire s'hall not reign's 'todays. EDIT: Just entered the Age of Aether, and I have to say, the fact that it makes mountains actually useful, and VERY useful besides, might be the best reason for me to plan getting this in every game. CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 1, 2024 |
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Apr 1, 2024 22:27
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Started listening to the latest 3MA podcast on Millenia before I lost my patience with it. Having only dabbled in the game so far, my take on the era system is a bit opposite of theirs. I’m more frustrated by my own ability to trigger an alternate age than by the AI’s. I’d personally prefer less ability to direct the next era altogether for everyone, rather than being able to plan for a particular variant age and succeed or become thwarted like Civilization’s Wonders.
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Apr 2, 2024 01:50
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Super Jay Mann posted:Also somehow left out what I meant by thresholds, i.e. the growth rate is a constant dependent on certain ranges your needs fall on, so, for example, at average 200% it’s 25% but if it falls anywhere in-between 150% and 200% then it’s Iike 18.75% I think (not on my computer right now to check), and that value doesn’t go down again until it hits below 150%. Would you say that once you hit a pop threshold that requires a new need you can't fulfill (which is very easy to do TBH), that's when you're probably way better off shifting pops off the growth mechanisms and into something else?
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Apr 2, 2024 02:18
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toasterwarrior posted:Would you say that once you hit a pop threshold that requires a new need you can't fulfill (which is very easy to do TBH), that's when you're probably way better off shifting pops off the growth mechanisms and into something else? I generally don't shift people off growth mechanisms at all, since once they're built I figure they're worth using for more population growth later. But in the future I'll probably worry less about adding new workers to a need just because it's at 180% satisfaction instead of 200% and let it get a bit lower first.
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Apr 2, 2024 03:08
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LordSloth posted:Started listening to the latest 3MA podcast on Millenia before I lost my patience with it. We can go further, include an option for completely random ages, maybe also include toggles to guarantee a variant age at chosen Age stages, have the choice to exclude Crisis Ages and/or Victory Ages or maybe only one Crisis Age per game and only trigger Victory Ages when someone meets the criteria. Or no variant ages at all if you just want a straightforward vanilla game (no fun allowed lol) toasterwarrior posted:Would you say that once you hit a pop threshold that requires a new need you can't fulfill (which is very easy to do TBH), that's when you're probably way better off shifting pops off the growth mechanisms and into something else? Well low needs leads to unrest and potentially chaos, and furthermore most improvements that fulfill needs also provide some other useful yield so it wouldn't be worth unworking those anyway. And even ignoring that managing workers that way sounds like micromanagement hell, even more than this game tends to be already. Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 04:22
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Fair enough, I guess, thank you! I suppose I should just eyeball that 4 turns per new pop as an ideal.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:32
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How do i increase my wealth early on? Its really, really hard to build enough troops to both defend your cities and burn down barbarian villages when you only have huts to provide wealth.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:54
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Plantation resources and wild game usually give wealth. Plantation resources can also often get processed to really amp up the benefits.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:57
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Plantation resources and wild game usually give wealth. The ones I have access to don't produce any wealth. Its weird that markets don't. You'd think they would.
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Apr 2, 2024 04:59
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They produce wealth indirectly - by trading goods to improve production chains, and by getting Merchants from diplomacy xp
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Apr 2, 2024 05:02
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Age of Kings IMO is when you should start going for wealth; you get the treasury building (+10 gpt) and the feudalism tech gives you large plantations, which give double of their resource, so they're worth working over Public Quarters by that point.
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Apr 2, 2024 05:13
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The key to early wealth generation I find is proper town placement and merchants. A town surrounded by improvements provides 6 wealth on its own, multiplied by the town level. And of course merchants are big time moneymakers as the AI will often have very large capitals to take advantage of it. Towns are much like districts in Civ 6 in that their yields are completely passive and free, so beyond the initial cost of placing them down and leveling them you don’t have to invest anything else. You’re going to build improvements around them regardless and there’s relatively little opportunity cost in using that culture power because every region needs at least one town to continue growing anyhow. Whereas working improvements always requires a pop to work the tile, and early on you’re not gonna have enough pop to work everything you want to. EDIT - Misspoke on the town wealth bonus (I thought 12 sounded too high) but everything I said still applies. Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 05:49
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h u h. bribing alien motherships works. Sure, why not. Don't have enough troops to cover everywhere anyhow, i'll take it.  e: alium stole my fish and made an island Arcanuse fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 07:11
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Picked this up and managed to get a bit of time in yesterday going through the first 3 ages and just getting into the Age of Kings. I really like the shared pool of improvement points, its good to be able to prioritize based on a single value rather than needing to micro worker units around. I'm not sure on the way research and Ages work just yet. It feels very easy to accidentally skip over something essential while rushing to the next age. Is there any reason to try and beat the AI to the next Age if you aren't aiming for a specific one? Domain XP and national spirits seem like a good way to specialize your nation, though I haven't gotten far enough to really see much yet. One thing I really haven't gotten my head around yet its production chains, trading resources around, and optimizing all of that. I built a market that provides an import slot, but I'm not sure how best to use it. In terms of how my first game is going, I started off with an extra scout and quickly found I was settled next to a wide open plain, so picking Wild Hunter first seemed to be a no-brainer. Though, the moment I picked up the perk that revealed elephants the USA decided to forward settle on my nearest source. Barbs haven't been too much of a hassle. At least in the first couple of ages a few warbands put together were enough to keep them away from anything important, while the open space made it easy for my scouts to avoid them. My capital has quite a few hills including marble, so it's been a production powerhouse so far, while my second city is the in middle of the wide plain so is more food focused. Maybe once I've got a better idea of what I'm doing I can specialize them further and have them share the benefits.
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Apr 2, 2024 11:21
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Sybot posted:One thing I really haven't gotten my head around yet its production chains, trading resources around, and optimizing all of that. I built a market that provides an import slot, but I'm not sure how best to use it. You always use the import slot for trade goods which provide +culture which is handy in the early game. When you put envoys in other civ's cities you can import the goods they produce, you only need one envoy in each civ to gain access to all their resources. I mostly use it to set up extra industry chains or import manuscripts for research. The domestic export slots on the other hand let you spread around valuable stuff like panacea or tuna to get a new city up and running, or focus resources into a city with a specialised industry chain.
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Apr 2, 2024 11:44
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How do you guys space your cities? With only minor nations being able to be razed and the AI still very much willing to forward settle, spacing is important. I've noticed that filling out 2 hexes from your regional capitals and 1 hex from your attached towns is fairly quick; is 4 hexes between capitals a good rule of thumb? Cities certainly can handle more hexes than that but of course you need to account for opportunity cost and making sure the AI doesn't take too much of your land.
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Apr 2, 2024 11:55
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Using outposts (and the culture power that turns an outpost into a town instead of the one that plops a new town into play) can be a good way to fill those gaps early without having your cities crowd themselves out.
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Apr 2, 2024 12:04
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Sybot posted:I'm not sure on the way research and Ages work just yet. It feels very easy to accidentally skip over something essential while rushing to the next age. Is there any reason to try and beat the AI to the next Age if you aren't aiming for a specific one? You can go back and research techs from previous ages, and in fact you're incentivized to do so (there's a 10% research cost reduction for techs from previous ages). Usually I grab the 3/4 techs I feel are most relevant for me right now, then grab the age, then go back and grab any other techs that look useful. The first player to research the next age gets 10 innovation on top of getting to choose the age, so there's a bonus but not a huge one.
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Apr 2, 2024 15:50
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Finally making headway in grand master. This time map gen puts a huge distance between me and all my neighbor (there's not even a neutral city within 10 tiles). Neighboring AI (Sweden) is even further out, maybe another 8 tiles south. This left me in peace for sometimes where I was able to vasslize the minors. Unfortunately the AI immediately started to settle right next to them then got pissy at me. I popped raise army cultural power a few times to get enough forces to defend both the vassals, and was able to integrate one so when the war broke out to at least have palisade built. The AI with their huge resource bonus was able to put double to triple my forces at all three of my cities at the same time (I think when the war broke out our power was at 600 vs 1100). However, they often attack piecemeal or attack into my fortified forces and depleted themselves over time. Though I probably still wasn't able to kill their unit as fast as they were being reinforced. It was really when they lost so many units that Sweden's southern neighbor (India) attacked and really crippled them. This allowed me to push out and captured eventually all their cities and can now compete with the rest of the AI power with equal footing (only a few turns behind in tech from tech leader by Age of Renaissance. Powers from other continent is starting to show up though AI and amphibious invasion usually don't mix so I doubt they'll pose too much problem. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 16:54
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Sybot posted:Is there any reason to try and beat the AI to the next Age if you aren't aiming for a specific one? Domain XP and national spirits seem like a good way to specialize your nation, though I haven't gotten far enough to really see much yet. While you do get bonus points for taking a national spirit no one else has, it increases in value for every spirit already taken. So there is a slight catchup mechanic, albeit tied into the gamble of whether that spirit is useful to you.
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Apr 2, 2024 17:14
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The discount from other nations having a tech and for being in a later age is kinda ridiculous (-10% per nation means older techs eventually become virtually free), so if you think you can get by in your build for a while without certain techs it’s almost always a good idea to get into the next age if you can ASAP. Just be very sure you’re not skipping anything important. Also I always try to go for Innovation bonuses if I can as those seem to bring some of the best bonuses in the game and any way to get them going faster is well worth prioritizing. Super Jay Mann fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 18:29
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Yea, unless you're right on the coast, i keep skipping shipbuilding. I can never expand fast enough to actually get the coastal hex's unless I start next to them. But I do get the next age asap unless i can get a special age. Though my advice is meaningless because I've only gotten one game past age of kings and that one I lost. What I'm trying to figure out what is the best starting bonus. It feels like either bonus production or bonus culture are the best options. Has anyone played around with Map Seeds? I've just been playing with them like putting 80085 and 42069 and nothing special yet. loving AI always triggering Age of Plagues. I'ts going to take me nearly 200 turns to get out of it, that's a 3rd of the game. Why is this so devastating? I know the black death killed a huge portion of the population in Asia and Europe, but it also didn't take until the 1800s for it to go away. And I was researching techs in 10 or less turns before it. Any game I've had that's going well, this happens. Its almost like the game internally goes "oh poo poo the human player is actually doing well, better completely gently caress them over by having some dumbass civ poo poo on the street causing a age of plagues where all they can do is clear outbreaks and hit next turn because all production and research is reduced so massively. I know its because the threshold for Age of Plagues is really low and the AI civs are dumb as poo poo so they never build aquaducts early on, but it feels like it was designed for a human player to deal with but no thought was put into how the AI would handle it. Probably because the AI just builds military and expands. twistedmentat fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 20:01
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twistedmentat posted:
The best bonus is one that lets you start running ahead of the rest of the pack early given the limited resources at the start, so most of the recommendations I've seen are either for an early Production bonus or an early Scout.
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Apr 2, 2024 22:53
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Age of Plague shouldn’t be that deadly to you to take that long to get through. Yes, it sucks that you lose 1/3rd of your pop and then have to play pixel hunt whack-a-mole, but because you get most of your knowledge from buildings you shouldn’t be taking a serious hit in researching out. The most important thing to getting through a plague IMO is building up, not out. Settling new places is fine, but don’t integrate anything at all - not only is it a culture hit at a time when you want culture to be pushing you through the age and building up towns for money, but also integrated vassals become a new place plague can crop up. Also, a few notes overall from having played more: * Holy poo poo was I undervaluing clay. The difference in my starts between having a single clay pit and kiln out vs. not is astounding. I had ignored clay early because it takes valuable farming space and only gives one production so it looked worse than quarries and mines, but I undervalued how much the extra shovel a turn it gives you means, and how it made it easier to grow cities and get other production up and running because you have twice the improvement points. In addition, clay pits count for Mining Towns, and it’s usual for a good Mining Town site to have a grassland or two in it. * Keeping up your religion past the Middle Ages means a lot of paper making to get religious books out. * Always remember that there are ways to get units without production. 20 exploration points is a scout cavalry. 30-40 military is a line unit (warband/ pike). Culture bonuses can be a line and a ranged unit. In most games I don’t build units in Age I or II unless I’m in dire straits. * Someone asked about money making, and yeah - it can be tough early. Plan for towns and make sure you’re keeping your culture up for more towns (you can build them in vassals, and once you have enough region points/techs you can get multiple towns in the same region). If you don’t have immediate resources for money, and towns don’t seem like they’ll help much, consider going Early Seafarers- their third tier power reveals a water resource for +3 wealth that is loving everywhere, and that you can send utility boats to harvest if you don’t have any immediately next to you. And then Coastal towns’ level 2 bonus is even more money.
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Apr 2, 2024 22:58
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skeleton warrior posted:Age of Plague shouldn’t be that deadly to you to take that long to get through. Yes, it sucks that you lose 1/3rd of your pop and then have to play pixel hunt whack-a-mole, but because you get most of your knowledge from buildings you shouldn’t be taking a serious hit in researching out. No, I generally go from researching stuff at the most 10 or 100 turns to 60+ every time age of plagues hits. And this is having all the researching buildings and other stuff going on. The hit to research is absolutely massive.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:22
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I have been informed by a buddy who plays this game of the following: Spice merchants break the game's scaling completely, and let you do infinite city sprawl. Combined with feudal governments, it snaps the game in half. With the right build, you can reach 150+ vassals by turn 150 without ever having to fight a war, and as long as you keep the right kind of government, every 2 turns you can boost the population of every single one of them by 1, without any regard to other pop limits, outpacing all of the game's built in scaling limits by a ridiculous margin. e: He mentioned that the strongest opening he had by far was taking extra scout move speed and starting the game by making 2 scouts and researching scouting -> workers -> defense, focusing on shovels, keeping scouts alive and topped up, and keeping his other troops together to bash camps and eventually indie cities instead of splitting up to scout. The most busted early opening is raiding, but he avoids using it because it makes games very one note. Of all the means of getting more cities, conquering indies is the fastest because your means of gaining those cities don't go away once you have the city, and you can chain up. Keeping one pioneer + scout in front of your main stack to create a road between your current target and your next one greatly speeds things up, since the pioneer can just pack up and move on. e2: The full infinite city exploit requires age of exploration, since conquistadors can drop a pioneer in places your civilian units can't safely reach, and then you can make merchants there (not limited to fully owned cities like settlers are), and convert them into settlers right away, instead of having to drag a settler halfway across the map. my dad fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 00:04
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I’ve been experimenting with Naturalist, and while I’m not convinced it’s good, I’m a bit impressed by it. That one innovation that gives you treehouses, plus the spirit that gives improved foraging can mean an awful lot of ‘free’ production. It’s kind of interesting skipping the workers tech and having nothing for your rear end in a top hat neighbor of Russia to raze when they declare war on you yet again. I haven’t gotten to mid or later ages yet, but I’ll probably get further before restarting in my next game since I’m learning. Is there something I’m missing or do I need to unlock the entire infopedia from scratch in each game? I would really love to be able to look at the spirits of the next age or so, or figure out what art could do for me in the grand scheme of things.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:09
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I was looking at Spice Merchants, after what was mentioned about wealth earlier, I was able to fund a large enough army to not have the Americans bully me like the Russians were doing in my last game.
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Apr 3, 2024 03:32
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my dad posted:I have been informed by a buddy who plays this game of the following: I already responded to this in the other thread you posted this drek in. quote:
Also the "increase vassal population by 1" power is a Cultural power, which means you're just not going to be able to fire off every 2 turns, full stop. I'm running an extremely heavily culture-focused game right now and even with my capital pumping out 60+ cpt it still takes 3 turns to refill -- and that requires using the "increase city yields" culture power every other use. Zurai fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 03:36
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LordSloth posted:Is there something I’m missing or do I need to unlock the entire infopedia from scratch in each game? I would really love to be able to look at the spirits of the next age or so, or figure out what art could do for me in the grand scheme of things. Yes, unfortunately the Infopedia only shows stuff that has been available in your current game. It's one of my bigger gripes with the game, along with the way units stop moving every time they see a reveal a new unit or city, even if those units/cities are not in your path and are neutral or even allied. It makes exploration and long-distance movement, especially over water, an utter pain in the rear end.
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Apr 3, 2024 03:59
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Did you know the wiki is populated? https://millennia.paradoxwikis.com/Millennia_Wiki Not perfect but good enough to look up stuff.
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Apr 3, 2024 04:08
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LordSloth posted:Is there something I’m missing or do I need to unlock the entire infopedia from scratch in each game? I would really love to be able to look at the spirits of the next age or so, or figure out what art could do for me in the grand scheme of things. I think the game does that because due to the ages mechanic what you get could be very different each game.
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Apr 3, 2024 04:38
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Eschatos posted:Almost got myself stuck starting age of intolerance. It seems like that might be impossible to avoid if you start a religion while having a large population unless you have a colossal stockpile of build points. Luckily I learned that if the next age tech is already queued up already hitting the limit will not force switching ages. I had to vassalize my 2nd biggest city to avoid it, its really rough to get faith points early on. The whole religion system seemed pretty halfassed to me, theres no religion bonuses or anything, as far as I could tell I was just making things harder on myself by creating a religion Also I dont know if someone already mentioned this but on Age of Alchemy being bad without gold, I dont think you can actually just find gold in the map. You have to use a prospector using exploration xp and it will transform a hill tile into gold
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Apr 3, 2024 07:47
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babypolis posted:Also I dont know if someone already mentioned this but on Age of Alchemy being bad without gold, I dont think you can actually just find gold in the map. You have to use a prospector using exploration xp and it will transform a hill tile into gold I have seen native gold on the map, unless the AI is in the habit of burning prospectors on lovely tiles surrounded only by mountains and water.
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Apr 3, 2024 08:01
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There's definitely native gold. That said, spamming prospectors + alchemy synergy is legit, considering that prospectors start off pretty cheap and exploration points fall off value quickly (yes claim territory is good but the cost increase gets crazy fast).
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Apr 3, 2024 08:05
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babypolis posted:The whole religion system seemed pretty halfassed to me, theres no religion bonuses or anything, as far as I could tell I was just making things harder on myself by creating a religion While religions don't provide direct mechanical bonuses, having high levels of religion can skyrocket your Culture production. I find going Fundamentalism in the late game to be surprisingly powerful for tall empires. babypolis posted:Also I dont know if someone already mentioned this but on Age of Alchemy being bad without gold, I dont think you can actually just find gold in the map. You have to use a prospector using exploration xp and it will transform a hill tile into gold There is gold present on the map, it just seems extremely rare. As does sugar, surprisingly enough. I've tried several maps, and in all of them I have buckets of olives and meat, but very little sugar. In my latest map, for example, every other city had at least 1-2 Olive resources, but as far as I could tell there were a grand total of 2 Sugar resources on the Huge map.
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Apr 3, 2024 08:29
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