Post here stuff about how to play multiplayer games

Advice, tricks, strategies and best practices about how to build a great empire.
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wieder
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Post here stuff about how to play multiplayer games

Post by wieder »

The advice can apply to any game or it can be about some specific game. If the advice is about some specific game, please mention that on the subject.
Corbeau
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Post by Corbeau »

I just copied my post from forum.freeciv.org.

But wouldn't it be better for the subforum to be called something like "strategies and discussion" where "strategy for beginners" would be only one topic?
wieder
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Post by wieder »

Yes, the name could be something else. I simply gave the forum some name that can be changed after some discussion about it.
Corbeau
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Post by Corbeau »

Yeah, I only just saw the discussion elsewhere. Good thing. Kudos.
Corbeau
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Post by Corbeau »

And, not that I believe that My Word Should Be Carved in Stone, but maybe make those two topics (intro and "tips for beginners") a sticky? :)
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Haldric
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Re: Post here stuff about how to play multiplayer games

Post by Haldric »

My thoughts on Suomipeli2023b, Royale ruleset

Island map, with a big island for every player and small islands here and there + two huge huge poles.

BEFORE THE GAME

Talk to other players in Discord, ask stuff, tell people stuff too if you think you know something. Try the test game (if available), and see how the game works with the certain ruleset and map settings. Do remember, the ruleset is NOT the same as it was in some other game, and the map is not the same either. You may be able to build on mountains (yes you can) unlike on some other rulesets.

THE VERY BEGINNING

1. In the beginning, do not place cities too quickly. You may end up with capital placed badly, which is expensive to fix and leads to too much corruption/waste too early. The capital should be in the center of your island. The islands are big, and the distance-related corruption/waste will get huge if capital is badly placed. The first city you build will be your capital and to move capital, you need 70 points of production (even though Palace counts as "a wonder", you can buy a production point with 2 gold in case of Palace, not 4 gold like with most wonders).

2. In the beginning, do consider between Tribal and Despotism. With Tribal you get 13 cities without angry extra citizens, with Despotism 10. This means you can grow cities to 3 only without angry citizens, if you have more than 10 or 13 cities. Tribal would be more flexible for fast city builders, it would give you more time to achieve Monarchy. Despotism is the default, but going Tribal takes 2 turns in anarchy, so you should make the decision on turn 1 as the first cities will not be producing much trade at size 1 (and many of them won't be even built yet). Don't switch later, you will lose too much trade.

3. Use Explorers to map the area, travel the coastline with them. Opposite directions of course. And try to fit as many cities as possible on your main island, don't try to "largepox" (largepoxing=building fewer cities which will grow very big later, giving later advantage under some settings). If you don't have a decent area mapped yet, build to extreme corners to be safe. Take a screenshot of your island and plan city and maybe road locations with Paint or any image editor. With city distance of 5 minimum, pay attention to the cities' locations.

4. Coastals are not as safe as land tiles without sea access, but you basically cannot win if you don't make coastal cities, because you lose the benefit of harbors and also you can't fit as many cities on your island. If you don't aim for victory, but just play for fun and want to farm and stay safe, then non-coastals make sense. You may live longer, but then again you cannot win the game this way.

5. When a city grows, you don't get to keep the extra food so if a city is about to grow with 1 food only needed, set it on production or trade instead of food, so that you get the 1 food you needed, as you will keep the extra trade/production.

6. If a city shrinks (due to settler being built), you get to keep the food left in granary AND the food gathered during turn change. This means a size 3 city with 10 food in granary which is gathering +2 food for next turn, would have 12 food next turn, so if you build settler at this point, the city automatically grows back to size 2 from size 1 after building settler, on the same turn, as cities grow from size 1 to size 2 at 12 food. You don't get to keep extra food after city growth still as explained before, so it makes more sense to build the settler at this point instead of gathering more food, which would waste some food. So if you had a size 3 city with 11 food instead, gathering +2 food for next turn, you would waste one food.

7. General rule, with high tech leak (200%), production might be better usually than trade. But not in the beginning maybe. You don't have marketplaces and you don't have libraries either so you get no major bonus to science or tax either. Go for either pyramids or monarchy with full science.

8. Decide between Monarchy and Pyramids. Pyramids you get faster, but they don't give all the advantages of Monarchy. You don't get 20 cities without angry citizens, or 10/10 base waste/corruption with pyramids, but you get rid of the primitive government penalty which is a huge advantage anyway. Then again, you can grab monarchy later and most likely those who go monarchy will still build pyramids just for the production boost later.

9. If you go for early Pyramids, there are two ways. A) CAPITAL WITH PYRAMIDS: research Pottery first and fast, start building Barracks to your capital right away when you get capital built, and when you get Pottery, switch to Granary and buy it right away with money. Use workers to enhance surrounding tiles of your capital. Then start building Hanging Gardens and set science to Mathematics. When you get Mathematics, switch Hanging Gardens to Pyramids and maybe disband your starting explorers in your capital to speed up building Pyramids; with 2 explorers you will only need 40 shields, as you get 30 shields total from the explorers. B) CITY NEAR CAPITAL WITH PYRAMIDS: don't get pottery, but build a non-coastal city close to capital and start building Palace there from the beginning. Then switch to Pyramids once Mathematics researched, this way you don't need to research Pottery and you may get faster pyramids. Otherwise, same applies (disbanding explorers maybe, improving land are around pyramid city) as with capital with pyramids.

10. If you don't go for early pyramids, but monarchy, keep science high, keep building more cities to keep cities small enough to not exceed size 4 (or size 3, if you build over 10/13 cities before monarchy), and aim for monarchy as fast as possible. Choose Ceremonial Burial as first science project. After getting any main science project done, grab free science (techleak) on your way to monarchy if it makes any sense to grab it. Pottery especially is good, but avoid especially Bronze Working because it cancels Hypogeum wonder, which you may be using. Do not misclick bronze working in this case. Only choose useful freebies, you can grab them later for free too.

11. You can build on mountain, tundra, desert and such 1 food tiles too, but build the last cities on those locations as those cities are slow to spawn new settlers. If you have to build on swamp or forest, use workers to irrigate the tile to grassland/plains asap, or beforehand

12. If you have two locations for a new city in the beginning, and they are otherwise equal, choose regular plains over regular grassland as despotism/tribalism penalty means plains gives you 2/2/1 as city tile, but grassland gives 2/1/1. If cities have just one plains/wheat/irrigation, desert/oasis/irrigation, jungle/fruit, tundra/game or LAKE/fish (NOT ocean/fish) as city tile, or near the city, they can have +3 food from the tile and grow noticeably faster, which is often appreciated in the beginning. Try to irrigate wheat and oasis tiles near cities fast. The actual city tiles count as irrigated tiles regarding food (you get no extra food from irrigating them) so building directly on wheat or oasis tiles makes the tile a +3 food tile right away.

13. If you want a mega city (capital/pyramid/colossus/copernicus wonder city or the like), build it close to river or lake so you can grow it to size 16 with a special river/lake aqueduct without researching construction. Getting construction will take time. For mega city players, despotism is better starting government than tribalism because of BIG capital gold bonus. Hal Saflieni Hypogeum wonder gives a good start for these cities (you get a celebrating city up to size 6, use 2 warriors to keep angry citizens content at size 6), if you're going for monarchy.

14. You need 2 turns of anarchy to switch to monarchy, so especially if you're very close to achieving monarchy, it makes sense to switch to anarchy before having monarchy fully researched, and use citizens as scientists during anarchy, to finish monarchy science project during anarchy/revolution. You can start a revolution and decide 2 turns later which government you choose, and thus you would have 2 turns to finish monarchy science project. Take citizens from the most corrupting/wasting cities, and from working the worst tiles (especially trade heavy, as you don't benefit from trade in anarchy but you still benefit from food and production), and assing them as citizen scientists. You get 2 per scientist, and so during 2 turns, with 10 cities, if you had one citizen scientist in each city, you would get 40 science done during 2 turns of anarchy.

15. Tribal Workers can be upgraded to Workers with money, and they get 50% more speed and working power. When Tribal Workers get two veteran levels, they can (for example) irrigate grassland/plains/desert using only one turn so it's often good idea to upgrade at 2 veteran levels.

16. You get upkeep-free tribal workers without a home city when the game starts; protect especially them from attacks and capturing. Workers on the coast can be captured directly from a boat, so avoid placing the zero-upkeep workers/tribal workers on the coast tiles once caravel ships have been researched. Use regular workers with a home city instead in dangerous locations, as you can always build more regular workers to replace lost ones, but you can't build zero-upkeep workers.
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Kroko24
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Re: Post here stuff about how to play multiplayer games

Post by Kroko24 »

"4. Coastals are not as safe as land tiles without sea access, but you basically cannot win if you don't make coastal cities, because you lose the benefit of harbors and also you can't fit as many cities on your island."

I don't think that the reason for lose would be less cities on island. It's hard to win without boats at island game, when you can't settle new islands for example. Although you could still win with the spaceship and with a great defence, attacking on your few cities on the small island can be easy. (Players often attack with a huge alliance towards launched spaceships)
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Haldric
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Re: Post here stuff about how to play multiplayer games

Post by Haldric »

Kroko24 wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2023 5:09 pm "4. Coastals are not as safe as land tiles without sea access, but you basically cannot win if you don't make coastal cities, because you lose the benefit of harbors and also you can't fit as many cities on your island."

I don't think that the reason for lose would be less cities on island. It's hard to win without boats at island game, when you can't settle new islands for example. Although you could still win with the spaceship and with a great defence, attacking on your few cities on the small island can be easy. (Players often attack with a huge alliance towards launched spaceships)
Alternative to settling small cities:
- 16 cities; republic/democracy maximum without extra unhappy citizens and very close to the maximum you can fit on the main island
- no need for many pirogues
- as you don't need to build far-located bad cities with high corruption and little land tiles and even them without road and irrigation, you can build marketplaces etc on main island
- marketplaces and 16 cities allow you to go republic with it being practical and have more trade than others with more cities, and huge gold as your cities are boosted with marketplaces.

However I don't recommend non-coastal based even then, because it won't most probably let you fit even those 16 cities. Only those who definitely don't want to win but maybe first timers who want to learn to play, and to farm in peace should even consider non-coastal based. Some players know from the beginning they can't win but they may want to survive as long as possible and in this case, non-coastal based is an option (you can still have some coastals, just build them on mountain or hill+river or such easy to defend city)

This won't win the game, winning the game generally requires you to be able to play and also have luck; get a neighbor who idles from turn 1, so close you can get there with a pirogue and grab Free Double Main Islands for yourself once map making is done
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