Millennia is the only strategy game that really puts me in difficulty

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Even though I've tried lowering the difficulty levels, I still have great difficulty and can never get past the iron age! I start my game and create lots of armies near my city, quickly expand with the colonist and convert the vassal into a city.

I repeat the operation of creating many soldiers in this new city too. Having created a very large army, being positive with wealth, I created the city guards in advance precisely to avoid unrest in the city in the future. I fill all the slots in both cities and I consider myself calm about the riots! Two of my neighbors declare hostility to me and one of them declares war on me, he approaches with his army, I repel it but another even bigger one arrives and I repel that too, in the meantime many barbarians spawn near the city, I repel everyone.

Another large army of the enemy arrives again, I send what remains of my units, a group is defeated, I send the other armies and repel the group but another one arrives, while I am busy with them, many other barbarians spawn. I have to decide, either I continue to repel the army or I leave it alone and dedicate myself to the barbarians. I decided to leave the barbarians alone, but in the meantime they plundered the improvements and I soon went into deficit. I try to fix the improvements but they are immediately destroyed. The deficit is inevitable.

The deficit continues and all the armies and city guards are "dismissed" so as not to exceed the costs. I try to regenerate the city guards since the cities are exploding, but it's too late now. The cities rebel and become independent. Ever since I bought Millennia, this cycle keeps repeating and I lose all the cities. I have never and I repeat never managed to go beyond the Iron Age/Plaga. What am I doing wrong? If I start the game again I will definitely do it again if I don't make a mistake for the seventh time

[The Former]

I've never felt like choke points are so crucial. I'd have been crushed by the AI a few times already if not for the fact that I rolled a map that basically gave me a big swathe of land between mountain ranges to call my own. Because Persia was only able to invade through one city, my heavy fortification of that city kept the rest of my empire safe in the face of overwhelming numbers and elite troops.

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by Ärlig, Paradoxriddaren:

I've never felt like choke points are so crucial. I'd have been crushed by the AI a few times already if not for the fact that I rolled a map that basically gave me a big swathe of land between mountain ranges to call my own. Because Persia was only able to invade through one city, my heavy fortification of that city kept the rest of my empire safe in the face of overwhelming numbers and elite troops.

Ok but I don't understand what this has to do with my point?

[The Former]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Originally posted by Ärlig, Paradoxriddaren:

I've never felt like choke points are so crucial. I'd have been crushed by the AI a few times already if not for the fact that I rolled a map that basically gave me a big swathe of land between mountain ranges to call my own. Because Persia was only able to invade through one city, my heavy fortification of that city kept the rest of my empire safe in the face of overwhelming numbers and elite troops.

Ok but I don't understand what this has to do with my point?

Because this game for me, too, is one of the few 4X's that puts me in difficulty. :) If not for being able to funnel the AI into a choke point I'd have been wiped out long ago. I guess what I'm saying is, look for such places to fortify and try to force the AI to attack you there.

[Adriano Ruggieri]

well it's not simple, consider that a lot also depends on how the map is generated. Probably the only strategy is to lower the difficulty level even further and never found any city other than the capital in order to have all the units in a single city so if they declare war on you you will already have all the units stopped in place , because if you already move them to another city you'll be in trouble. I don't know if it's a balance problem or if it's me who doesn't understand anything. One thing is certain, there is no notification that warns you if the units are "dismissed" in the event of a deficit

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by Ärlig, Paradoxriddaren:

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Ok but I don't understand what this has to do with my point?

Because this game for me, too, is one of the few 4X's that puts me in difficulty. :) If not for being able to funnel the AI into a choke point I'd have been wiped out long ago. I guess what I'm saying is, look for such places to fortify and try to force the AI to attack you there.

Be careful, with this I don't mean that I don't want to have the ability to adapt, it's just that it bothers me that 7 different games have started again and I'm still active at the usual point! It seems that this situation is inevitable, so as a result it seems to be "scripted". I hope this is not the case and it is all due to chance, but if this were the case it would be too serious a flaw, because it means that you are less "free" to approach the game As you wish

[taomastercu]

What map size do you use? How many AI? Do you often settle cities near the AI? Do you often have troops on their borders?

Can you screenshot a game for us so we can look at it and figure out what is happening?

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by taomastercu:

What map size do you use? How many AI? Do you often settle cities near the AI? Do you often have troops on their borders?

Can you screenshot a game for us so we can look at it and figure out what is happening?

Since I've been playing it I've been using the medium map and 7 or 8 civilizations. I never find cities in their vicinity, but I often have explorers near their cities, but I need them to know the map. If I sent a screenshot I doubt you would understand anything

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Originally posted by taomastercu:

What map size do you use? How many AI? Do you often settle cities near the AI? Do you often have troops on their borders?

Can you screenshot a game for us so we can look at it and figure out what is happening?

Since I've been playing it I've been using the medium map and 7 or 8 civilizations. I never find cities in their vicinity, but I often have explorers near their cities, but I need them to know the map. If I sent a screenshot I doubt you would understand anything

We could at least see if you had proper army size and culture/knowledge production for the turn count.

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by taomastercu:

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Since I've been playing it I've been using the medium map and 7 or 8 civilizations. I never find cities in their vicinity, but I often have explorers near their cities, but I need them to know the map. If I sent a screenshot I doubt you would understand anything

We could at least see if you had proper army size and culture/knowledge production for the turn count.

This is true, but it is now completely useless because I no longer have an army or a city. But if you could have done it, what would you have seen and what would you have understood? I didn't quite understand what you meant

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by taomastercu:

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Since I've been playing it I've been using the medium map and 7 or 8 civilizations. I never find cities in their vicinity, but I often have explorers near their cities, but I need them to know the map. If I sent a screenshot I doubt you would understand anything

We could at least see if you had proper army size and culture/knowledge production for the turn count.

I think I had good scores and all adequate for the number of rounds. In about 78 turns I had 2 cities and many very large armies, from the moment I entered the Iron Age what was written in the first post happened (which is what always happens to me in every new game)

[Formoriec]

Medium map. 8 master AI.
Free maintenance raiders spam. Razed half of the minor settlements to get +2 pops in the Capitall. Defeated Grece, Japan and Germany before the end of the heroes age.
Now I am the only one Civ on the continent with 15 vassals and huge free spaces. Main Capital is 13 pops and can produce any unit in one turn.

Basically it is GG.
Now I can go to shogun Ideal an face roll second continent as soon as I will get to next age...
(Because shogun+samurai stack can one shot end game even huge robots, without speaking about middle age ♥♥♥♥)

[Adriano Ruggieri]

Originally posted by Formoriec:

Medium map. 8 master AI.
Free maintenance raiders spam. Razed half of the minor settlements to get +2 pops in the Capitall. Defeated Grece, Japan and Germany before the end of the heroes age.
Now I am the only one Civ on the continent with 15 vassals and huge free spaces. Main Capital is 13 pops and can produce any unit in one turn.

Basically it is GG.
Now I can go to shogun Ideal an face roll second continent as soon as I will get to next age...
(Because shogun+samurai stack can one shot end game even huge robots, without speaking about middle age ♥♥♥♥)

what does "basically it's GG" mean?

[The Former]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Originally posted by Ärlig, Paradoxriddaren:

Because this game for me, too, is one of the few 4X's that puts me in difficulty. :) If not for being able to funnel the AI into a choke point I'd have been wiped out long ago. I guess what I'm saying is, look for such places to fortify and try to force the AI to attack you there.

Be careful, with this I don't mean that I don't want to have the ability to adapt, it's just that it bothers me that 7 different games have started again and I'm still active at the usual point! It seems that this situation is inevitable, so as a result it seems to be "scripted". I hope this is not the case and it is all due to chance, but if this were the case it would be too serious a flaw, because it means that you are less "free" to approach the game As you wish

Fair enough. And don't get me wrong, it's certainly possible to do it other ways. Forgive me if my advice is unwelcome, I think our language barrier might be causing us to misunderstand eachother a bit.

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Originally posted by Formoriec:

Medium map. 8 master AI.
Free maintenance raiders spam. Razed half of the minor settlements to get +2 pops in the Capitall. Defeated Grece, Japan and Germany before the end of the heroes age.
Now I am the only one Civ on the continent with 15 vassals and huge free spaces. Main Capital is 13 pops and can produce any unit in one turn.

Basically it is GG.
Now I can go to shogun Ideal an face roll second continent as soon as I will get to next age...
(Because shogun+samurai stack can one shot end game even huge robots, without speaking about middle age ♥♥♥♥)

what does "basically it's GG" mean?

It's shorthand for "good game". It's a slang for saying "The game is over." Basically, if "it's GG", it means the game is pretty much already over.

[Exemplar]

are you making leaders of the current era for positive combat modifiers? you can send current era line and ranged at a seemingly less value army, but if they have a leader and you do not, you're going to take heavy losses.

maybe go warriors for a game. try to stock up on military points and pick maintenance free spartans first (they're expensive for the era). when you get the ability to make more spartans that is a culture power so you'll be sacrificing probably an early town or eureka, but... 2 armies with leader II, 2 spartans and an archer are very powerful. not saying do that every game of course, but to get it out of your system once lol. have a couple more armies for batting cleanup and holding claimed ground, but those can be spears and archers

[TwoTonTuna]

Originally posted by Adriano Ruggieri:

Even though I've tried lowering the difficulty levels, I still have great difficulty and can never get past the iron age! I start my game and create lots of armies near my city, quickly expand with the colonist and convert the vassal into a city.

That there's your first mistake.

Played on t1, t2, and t3 difficulty. Here's my experience: expanding/invading too quickly will cost you more than you earn. Vassals don't give a lot of rewards until you invest heavily in them, and the chaos you get from invading will often spawn a lot of hostile armies that scale depending on the number of regions/vassals you own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O27T59SAS3E
^if you want to play aggressive, this video might help you balance conquest vs chaos. it taught me a lot about basic economics in this game, which can carry over to peaceful/semi-peaceful playstyles.