mmm2's quick guide for how to play the game

[wieder]

Here is one quick guide mmm2 wrote. It was written for LT34 but it's still quite relevant. The current games (and the future games after making this post) may have some buildings removed, some added or some other stuff affecting the gameplay. Those new features may allow new ways of doing stuff but this guide is still very good one. In addition to this take care of the defense and talk with other players. If you talk, they may not attack you that easily.


mmm2's guide:

spoiler alert: if you haven't had the time to run localhost test games like i have, you may want to follow this oversimplified guide, but otherwise it may be fun to follow your own steps....

spolier guide:
set tax to maximum until you have libraries in all cities (preferably universities too). in this ruleset science is very fast, and you should be able to get all the early techs with 80% or 70% tax ( I prefer republic because it gives slight advantage, and lets you max 80% instead of 70% for monarchy).
1: build pyramids
2: build hanging gardens (this will allow you to grow city 1 additional size without requiring martial law, temple, or entertainer)
3: build temples in all cities + temple of artmitis to double effect of temples
4: marketplaces ( in some cities you may even build marketplaces before temples if very fast production and low food)
5: court houses in most cities (maybe optionally in cities too close to palace)
6:banks (in some cities building banks before court houses if cities are really near palace)
7:caravans (rush build marco polo)
8.aquaducts, harbors in certain cities with fish/whales
9:stock exchange, and build michaelangelo's at same time)
10:build libraries, and start saving gold (you will want to wait until some player builds isaac newton, or build it yourself before max science)
10b: build universities to get key techs like refrigeration, railroad, etc. Think about setting back to max tax if you see Isaac Newton's isn't built.
11:build granary+supermarket (you may want to build granaries in some cities beforehand but probably not all until supermarkets)..
12: sewer systems
13: factories, powerplant
14: build tons units, wait for plastics to build mnfct plants... build other misc improvements like port facil, airports, barracks 3, etc...

some other notes:
** choose government according to your circumstance. If you are in peaceful area, republic + democracy are best choices, but for early action monarchy+communism are best choices.
** granary micromanagement: be sure to micromanage your surpluses, and shift resources between cities, so to avoid having situations arise such as being 39/40 in granary (for this case, be sure to set surplus to +1 food, and everything else to high production). Early in game shifting resources between cities is easy, but later in game, it can be very time consuming. However, you will lose tempo every turn if you do not micromanage, especially in early phase of game.
** once you have refrigeration it is great to have as many cities as possible having exactly 30 food surplus each turn, so city grows every turn. Try to use every single tile on island as quickly as possible to max out production and economy potential of island..
** rush building wonder: try to get your palace to produce 35+ production points very early in game, so you can produce marco polo's as fast as possible. It seems to work best to build it only from palace, but you may want to get help from a few other cities if they've finished building their improvements really fast, but in my tests, about 80-90% of marco polo's was built from production by palace, and slightly less from michaelanagelo's..
** if you are needing theology, be sure to save up production points to build js bachs.. js bachs will be needed to replace temple of artmetis when it expires from learning theology.
** if you are in battlefield setting, be sure to make your cities unbribable (the two ways are to build mausolos small wonder or switch to democracy).
**possibly best tip: try to get as many as possible top players on your team such as edrim, wieder, kryon, stratthinker. That way you will have greater chance to win, and be able to compare your progress to theirs by sharing vision, and ask for tips, etc.
**if you need fast defense, it's best to plan in advance and build barracks from city with +30 production, then you can produce 3 veteran warriors from that city each turn, and quickly fill your cities with defenders. next build leonardo's workshop, and get gunpowder (then all warriors will be upgraded to musketeers - a great deal because you only paid 10 shields instead of 40 shields for each unit). another great strategy is too accumulate veteran horses, and then upgrade them to cavalries, athough this is possibly bad because of the unit upkeep in gold/production shields) - generally it's best to keep unit upkeep as low as possible early in game...
** be confident in yourself even if you are underdog, and don't accept bitch-deals like being vassal.

Following these steps, it's typical to get all the essential improvements up to factories, power plants, and mnfct plants by around T110 to T125 (depending how much stuff you want to build in your cities.. after power plants, pace of building rapidly increases)....