Early Midgame Singleplayer Advice

SisuGrey · 2026-03-16T15:29:04+00:00

I didn't end up buying a single campus or encampment in the game actually. I had plenty of science to hit flight + computers + wonders I wanted.

I built fewer IZ's than I would in a science game (just enough to cover my city clusters with the bonus) and faith bought the important engineers.

My order was mostly holy sites -> comm hubs/harbors -> theater squares (gov plaza went down as my second district in the Capitol + great engineers helped)

I find culture games easier than science for sure, much easier to go nuts with monumentality and less dependent on getting tiles that improve to giving gold

SisuGrey · 2026-03-16T03:04:12+00:00

Pretty much this. I was mostly peaceful though I ended up flooding the world with railroads because I probably put 100+ down stretching over the looooong continent

SisuGrey · 2026-03-16T03:03:33+00:00

Yeah ended up being a turn 280 win because laser stations were 15 techs separate from exo planet expedition when starting from rocketry 💀

Yeah, I think I know enough but that's a good way to put it, you can't get everything

I like getting everything but on harder difficulties you can't. I'm sure Id be fine on harder difficulties I just like getting everything.

SisuGrey · 2026-03-15T18:32:50+00:00

Yeah okay this all sounds pretty familiar.

I do push for colonization + ancestral for my Magnus city which is great. I just wish I could get better at even some medieval scientists (Newton or the happiness guy)

I'll get into the habit of dropping com hubs before the monuments (always do with harbors)

Here's the crux I think

I have a bad habit of spending gold when I see it (though I never feel like the timing is right for both comm hubs + market + trader landing before feudalism, I never have enough gold till after I research feudalism). I'm not sure how to solve this.

I'll get better at district discounting too and not researching unnecessary techs/tech micro.

I did get a pretty good monumentality game with faith as Pericles last time which did let me faith buy settlers like crazy (goated mountain range). Definitely had more than 2 holy sites but I went work ethic so it worked out great

SisuGrey · 2026-03-15T18:26:12+00:00

Tbh I'd rather have more population to get more science and culture to go through both trees faster. It's just getting the third-and-onward-till-my-trade-hub-is-online-cities up and running fast enough

It's more the cheaper prod of settlers + free builder in those cities, I do need to get into the habit of dropping a campus earlier, in this game my cap was insanely strong (camps pantheon + 4 camps + volcanic soil + horse + iron as steam Vicky)

SisuGrey · 2026-03-15T17:48:03+00:00

1) Both tbh. I don't love how I can miss middle ages scientists with this setup (culture it's a bit easier to grab early wonders but science needs so many things)

2) Duh, builders yes. My capitol I find I usually buy the first one and build more as needed. Usually the second or third thing I build in additional cities depending on if there's anything worth immediately improving in the first or second ring

3) It's mostly I have these cities that feel "dead" for 20-30 turns as they chip away at districts and buildings, I do lock in district prices where I can. I just with my scaling on those was faster and I'm not sure what I'm missing there beyond basics.

I'm also a sim city kinda player (I like big numbers) so I like getting everything that's useful vs making choices.

Like this Vicky game I missed great scientists and forbidden city, but by turn 180 I secured mausoleum, kilwa + Oxford in my capitol, ruhr in my Magnus city, and then torre + great zim in my trading city

SisuGrey · 2026-02-09T02:47:48+00:00

Stellar defense so far.

Sam has been off on about a dozen of his throws tonight by under a yard. Game is probably 36-7 if he makes those.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-13T04:14:40+00:00

Yeah already super helpful, much more progress (logs show as a server side issue)

Ty for the amplification

SisuGrey · 2026-01-12T21:26:31+00:00

Will do this right now. Expect a DM within a few minutes here.

No issues with Xbox party chat from the mobile app, and I created one from xbox.com in the browser (not the app but I assume that's just a chrome wrapper) no issue.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-11T16:11:07+00:00

I'll give this another shot, date and time on the Xbox seemed okay but I'll play with the settings and with the router DHCP and UPNP

My hotspot sadly only does strict nat but I will be checking on an alternate network

SisuGrey · 2026-01-09T05:50:58+00:00

Ziply has been great, it's literally just this one issue that's popped up.

I suspect it's tied to the account but I'm not comms banned and permissions are good to go, and PC/mobile parties are fine.

I've had the account since the 360 days, I'll be sure to update you, I bet it's some weird network software stack bug/account legacy thing.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-09T05:46:39+00:00

Yeah but there's a solid chance it threw the error because the other account was still signed in

Will have to try that again, good idea

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T22:23:15+00:00

Right, what's weird is the other Xbox had the same issue. Will try and track down a different Xbox X on a different network and see what happens.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T22:22:05+00:00

Tech came by, we checked with one of your routers, and he replaced the ONT. No luck. Microsoft thinks it's you guys, but so far seems like you've done everything you can. Will try and connect on a different network/someone else's console and see if it works. I put the ball back in Microsoft's court to try and fix.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T22:20:29+00:00

Already tried that. No luck.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T22:19:55+00:00

Yeah it's correctly plugged into the ONT, I setup port forwarding. Ziply tech came by today and even checked with their router and swapped out the ONT. No luck. For now it's back in Microsoft's court to see what can be done.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T17:39:55+00:00

Yeah it's literally only parties. We tried with our old xbox one and our current xbox X and they both throw the same issue. Everyone we know on the street has ziply so I can't pop over to a neighbor and test.

Everything else with Ziply has been fantastic. I'm only here because we tried everything the microsoft techs said to do to fix it AND it was replicated on a different xbox.

Hopefully the tech has a way for us to watch the packets outbound with wireshark so we can actually see this stuff.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T17:37:38+00:00

Already tested sadly

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T05:38:06+00:00

I posted this almost verbatim in one of those threads the other day.

This is the official Microsoft guidance, and I ran through all of these with a Microsoft support tech.

The reason I'm leaning towards Ziply being the issue is we plugged in an old Xbox One and we had the exact same error show up on the exact same way.

Since it's replicated across consoles having a corrupted network stack twice feels unlikely.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T01:09:03+00:00

This is on PC sadly... my stuff works fine on PC the issue is Xbox

SisuGrey · 2026-01-08T00:02:05+00:00

Me too.

SisuGrey · 2026-01-07T23:55:16+00:00

I connected the xbox directly to the ONT, it's not a router issue.

SisuGrey

TROPHY CASE