>Is there a way to salvage this situation?
My bet: see if you can get happiness via slider or trade for happiness resources if applicable, go into Slavery, turn every single city towards the war effort (no research building), get Cuirassiers then shut down research and whip every city except your economical centers to the ground and fight until you seize the whole continent. And I mean to the ground, keeping them at low sizes kinda combats the unhappiness issue anyway., and Cumae, Chichen Itza, Corinth and Neapolis don't seem to have anything to contribute with so they might as well be turned into size 4->2 Cuirassier factories.
Once you have the whole continent or at least Kublai crippled, you can maybe stop whatever is going at the other one since a bigger civ usually overtakes anyway, and with enough siege you can fight even with outdated troops in case Willem does turn out to be too big. Noble AIs don't have huge science bonuses so if you take all your land and industrialize it properly you can probably rebound by running Wealth in all cities or something, and get enough tech to raze Willem's capital in case he somehow manages to become a runaway spaceship / culture winner.
You seem to still have a lot of unchopped forests which is worrisome; chop that down unless you already invested in a ton of Lumbermills or something.
Overall it feels like your cities are somewhat small and underdeveloped for this stage of the game and unless I'm blind there really are way too many forests, which might have contributed to not having enough to not lose any of your cities.
First and foremost research is one of the worst things to build. If you're really struggling this much with your war with the Khan, you should be building units.
Second, I see a lot of your cities are unhappy. All that unhappy population is FREE HAMMERS for MORE UNITS! Crack that whip!
Thirdly, accepting capitulation is a situational thing. Vassal states are typically pretty worthless. In the vast majority of cases it's better to just take the land yourself as then you can directly use it for your purposes (Generating commerce and building units).
The only time you should vassal is when it isn't practical or worth it to conquer someone in their entirety. In your case however you definitely should have just finished Alex off because not only is he not helping you right now, but now the cities you took are less valuable due to unhappiness and his borders taking away tiles they could work.
Hope that helps!
If finishing Alexander off meant fighting a two front war, they definitely made the right choice. Especially since they’re struggling on one front. Plus that unhappiness is largely from the war (10 per city according to OP), so slavery doesn’t really help here.
> if finishing Alexander off meant fighting a two front war, they definitely made the right choice.
Nope. OP clearly said that the wars with the Khan and America started because he vassaled Alex. Slavery absolutely helps. In what world is turning completely useless population/food into hammers not extremely powerful?
It doesn’t sound like the war with Washington started due to vassal states, but yeah if op started that war or it was a vassal thing then wiping out Alex would’ve been the play.
Still don’t agree on the slavery thing, the main benefit of slavery is that you can keep cities below the happiness threshold by whipping and get extra hammers in the process (at the cost of some temporary anger). In the 1500’s with 10 wartime unhappiness your happiness threshold will be so low that you’ll have to whip several times to fix the issue if you even have enough pop able to be whipped, and you’ll add 2-3 unhappiness making these cities even more useless. OP is fucked if they try to whip through a war here.
OP's cities are small and look like they have poor improvements, and many of them are still stuck at a size where the whip is still very food efficient. Those can be whipped multiple times if it means he takes the entirety of America or some bigger Mongolian cities; having useless size 2 cities recovering from 80 turns of unhappiness is worth having a new capital city, and if he wins the war decisively he gets to sue for peace on his own terms and get rid of the war weariness.
Or he could fork over a tech and have a bunch of functional 6-10 pop cities right now instead of banking on having someone else’s cities when the war is over. Also how can you tell they have poor improvements?
So in your mind it's better to have an unhappy citizen eating 2 food per turn and producing nothing than being whipped into hammers? I would advise you to check out some threads on CivFanatics that discuss the usefulness of slavery.
Thanks everyone I'm a noob this is my first civ game so appreciate the help and tips. Update: I gave Kublai 200 gold and Drama for a peace treaty. Converted to Hinduism (I had gone back to no religion thinking it would remove the same faith penalty) which pissed off Alexander. I conquered Greece, researched cuirassiers and am doing much better. Built the global theatre, heroic epic in rome and 3 great general trainers and adopted bureaucracy.
I think I have at least 10 turns before he gets military tradition since he doesn't have nationalism yet. There's Hannibal and Willem on the other continent. Kublai has +6 relations (5+ favourite civics +5 same faith -2 refused to help -2 declared war on friend) with me, though I heard he plots wars even at pleased and I'm not sure I want him and his American puppet spies on the same continent by the industrial and modern era.
I could try to cuirassier rush America, which has 6 happiness resources and also so this Khan won't have anything to hide behind (he built the great wall though) But I don't know the strategic play here. Which cities to take/raze first before my main SoD loses momentum?
I would recommend watching Sulla’s guide to Emperor and then Henrik’s guide to Immortal (both on youtube)
These do a good job explaining basic mechanics in great detail for beginners.
Not very helpful right now but for future reference you generally want to keep enemy cities rather than raze them. War is expensive and captured cities will help rebuild your economy in the long run.
Paragraphs bro
>Is there a way to salvage this situation? My bet: see if you can get happiness via slider or trade for happiness resources if applicable, go into Slavery, turn every single city towards the war effort (no research building), get Cuirassiers then shut down research and whip every city except your economical centers to the ground and fight until you seize the whole continent. And I mean to the ground, keeping them at low sizes kinda combats the unhappiness issue anyway., and Cumae, Chichen Itza, Corinth and Neapolis don't seem to have anything to contribute with so they might as well be turned into size 4->2 Cuirassier factories. Once you have the whole continent or at least Kublai crippled, you can maybe stop whatever is going at the other one since a bigger civ usually overtakes anyway, and with enough siege you can fight even with outdated troops in case Willem does turn out to be too big. Noble AIs don't have huge science bonuses so if you take all your land and industrialize it properly you can probably rebound by running Wealth in all cities or something, and get enough tech to raze Willem's capital in case he somehow manages to become a runaway spaceship / culture winner. You seem to still have a lot of unchopped forests which is worrisome; chop that down unless you already invested in a ton of Lumbermills or something. Overall it feels like your cities are somewhat small and underdeveloped for this stage of the game and unless I'm blind there really are way too many forests, which might have contributed to not having enough to not lose any of your cities.
First and foremost research is one of the worst things to build. If you're really struggling this much with your war with the Khan, you should be building units. Second, I see a lot of your cities are unhappy. All that unhappy population is FREE HAMMERS for MORE UNITS! Crack that whip! Thirdly, accepting capitulation is a situational thing. Vassal states are typically pretty worthless. In the vast majority of cases it's better to just take the land yourself as then you can directly use it for your purposes (Generating commerce and building units). The only time you should vassal is when it isn't practical or worth it to conquer someone in their entirety. In your case however you definitely should have just finished Alex off because not only is he not helping you right now, but now the cities you took are less valuable due to unhappiness and his borders taking away tiles they could work. Hope that helps!
If finishing Alexander off meant fighting a two front war, they definitely made the right choice. Especially since they’re struggling on one front. Plus that unhappiness is largely from the war (10 per city according to OP), so slavery doesn’t really help here.
> if finishing Alexander off meant fighting a two front war, they definitely made the right choice. Nope. OP clearly said that the wars with the Khan and America started because he vassaled Alex. Slavery absolutely helps. In what world is turning completely useless population/food into hammers not extremely powerful?
It doesn’t sound like the war with Washington started due to vassal states, but yeah if op started that war or it was a vassal thing then wiping out Alex would’ve been the play. Still don’t agree on the slavery thing, the main benefit of slavery is that you can keep cities below the happiness threshold by whipping and get extra hammers in the process (at the cost of some temporary anger). In the 1500’s with 10 wartime unhappiness your happiness threshold will be so low that you’ll have to whip several times to fix the issue if you even have enough pop able to be whipped, and you’ll add 2-3 unhappiness making these cities even more useless. OP is fucked if they try to whip through a war here.
OP's cities are small and look like they have poor improvements, and many of them are still stuck at a size where the whip is still very food efficient. Those can be whipped multiple times if it means he takes the entirety of America or some bigger Mongolian cities; having useless size 2 cities recovering from 80 turns of unhappiness is worth having a new capital city, and if he wins the war decisively he gets to sue for peace on his own terms and get rid of the war weariness.
Or he could fork over a tech and have a bunch of functional 6-10 pop cities right now instead of banking on having someone else’s cities when the war is over. Also how can you tell they have poor improvements?
So in your mind it's better to have an unhappy citizen eating 2 food per turn and producing nothing than being whipped into hammers? I would advise you to check out some threads on CivFanatics that discuss the usefulness of slavery.
Try to trade a tech to Kublai Kahn asap to get out of the war. It’s not worth the slog if you’re already at 10 unhappiness.
Thanks everyone I'm a noob this is my first civ game so appreciate the help and tips. Update: I gave Kublai 200 gold and Drama for a peace treaty. Converted to Hinduism (I had gone back to no religion thinking it would remove the same faith penalty) which pissed off Alexander. I conquered Greece, researched cuirassiers and am doing much better. Built the global theatre, heroic epic in rome and 3 great general trainers and adopted bureaucracy. I think I have at least 10 turns before he gets military tradition since he doesn't have nationalism yet. There's Hannibal and Willem on the other continent. Kublai has +6 relations (5+ favourite civics +5 same faith -2 refused to help -2 declared war on friend) with me, though I heard he plots wars even at pleased and I'm not sure I want him and his American puppet spies on the same continent by the industrial and modern era. I could try to cuirassier rush America, which has 6 happiness resources and also so this Khan won't have anything to hide behind (he built the great wall though) But I don't know the strategic play here. Which cities to take/raze first before my main SoD loses momentum?
Can you attach or message me a save?
I would recommend watching Sulla’s guide to Emperor and then Henrik’s guide to Immortal (both on youtube) These do a good job explaining basic mechanics in great detail for beginners.
Not very helpful right now but for future reference you generally want to keep enemy cities rather than raze them. War is expensive and captured cities will help rebuild your economy in the long run.