Multiplayer Strategy Guide 2nd Version

PrinceBolkonsky · April 17, 2007, 12:39

I agree with Birdman but with the following caveat: I do not build these city walls unless I absolutely have to. Early in the game when Slavery is a danger, city walls are sometimes the best choice on the frontier when the slaver nation is in close proximity but I always regret every city wall I build. At this early point in the game the time taken away from building up your population and the support cost of the city walls dampens progress within my nation. For every city wall built I could build an aqueduct or most of a granary. At a support cost of 3 in the early game if I have built city walls universally not only have I delayed other more important building progects but I am taking a chunk of change out of my per turn revenues early in the game. The best way to deal with slavers is to spot them with your own specialists and either boot them out or kill them. My favorite is to capture them and put them to work in my own mines thereby covering my costs for going out and having track them down in the first place!

Also, if you are mass settling as you should be, then your outer cities (at least) will only spend a small amount of time with a population higher than one during the early slaver period. A slaver can't hurt you when you are only a one. If you haven't built a granery yet in a city close to a slaver nation you can generally control the amount of time this city spends at 2 population often cutting it to 1 or 2 turns. Just make sure you have a unit to accompany your new settler or they are easy pickings. Building a couple of Warriors or Phalanx to protect the city and its progeny is cheaper, more versitile and dampens science output and growth less than building a city wall. Besides as soon as you build a city wall you are going to start to feel like you have to protect that city and things spiral from there. If you don't have to protect that city don't get sucked in. And if it is only a 1 city producing a settler if is easy to pick up and run. Just disband leave an unimportant location you may avoid a war when you can't afford one or at least choose where you will fight it.

Later in the game I build city walls for exactly the purpose that The Birdman suggests. By the Renaisance the cost of a City wall in both construction time and upkeep is far more negligable. They can be built fairly quickly and even their 'rush buy' a fairly affordable.

PrinceBolkonsky · April 17, 2007, 14:01

Over on 'P BLAB' I have started talking about Wonders and thier impact on strategy as well as the dynamics they create within a game.

I have noticed within my limited experiance that the current status quo of not allowing humans to build wonders has some counter intuitive results. As human players can capture wonders it makes their impact even more unpredictable and potencially more harmful to game balance. I believe there are a small number of Wonders that brake the game by giving too great a benefit for too long a time to the player that controls it. But there are many more wonders that add interesting dynamics to especially the late game. As most games between humans will have arrived at a point where the AI players are completely dominated by the human players by the Modern period players can pretty much control whether a Wonder ever gets built. I think this is too bad in the later game as some of the later wonders are very interesting and under the current conventions are more of a crap shoot whether their involvement ever comes to fruition.

What do more experianced players think about this?

TheBirdMan · May 29, 2007, 07:50

Remember the dirty work of a spy often is successful when the target city is unhappy (value 71-72 or lower).

A little help from a cleric (soothsay) does help

- just remember this have to be done in the same turn as the soothsay only lasts for 1 turn (soothsay first, then use the spy for whatever purpose).

shek · December 3, 2009, 01:55

Very informative thread...
will give it a try

JohnGalt137 · May 30, 2010, 20:41

Based on some PBEM games I'm playing, I've noticed that the abolitionists are pretty strong, if you can find a city full of slaves with a relatively small garrison. The cost to start a revolution is far, far smaller than with the spy. Of course when you get low on gold their slave stealing is still pretty effective. They seem underused. But, maybe I don't know.

JohnGalt137 · June 29, 2010, 16:30

One thing I don't see mentioned here, but that the good players seem to talk about on some older threads (one of you go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong) but pikemen make better front-liners than musketeers. Musketeers often take twice as long to build than pikeman. But only a little stronger.

JohnGalt137 · June 30, 2010, 17:50

Does anyone know what the optimum placement of citizens in science cities is?

quinns · July 1, 2010, 14:00

Originally Posted by JohnGalt137

Does anyone know what the optimum placement of citizens in science cities is?

I don't know the "optimum". But I believe it depends on the current level of development of the city, and the population. What I do is put the citizens on production to build academy, publishing house, university -- maybe even rush buy a couple of the buildings -- then, after those are built, make all the citizens (except for a couple of farmers, just enough to feed the rest) scientists.

quinns · July 1, 2010, 14:04

Originally Posted by JohnGalt137

One thing I don't see mentioned here, but that the good players seem to talk about on some older threads (one of you go ahead and correct me if I'm wrong) but pikemen make better front-liners than musketeers. Musketeers often take twice as long to build than pikeman. But only a little stronger.

My preference is pikemen backed by cannons. I never use musketeers. I think the pikeman/cannon stack is the best pre-modern bang-for-the-buck.

ricketyclik · July 1, 2010, 18:08

Originally Posted by quinns

My preference is pikemen backed by cannons. I never use musketeers. I think the pikeman/cannon stack is the best pre-modern bang-for-the-buck.

I used to think that until quite recently, now I wonder about musketeers - they're much better than cannons when they move to the front to replace the felled pikemen.

quinns · July 2, 2010, 14:20

Good point, Rickety -- But I can build two pikemen for the price of one musketeer... That's 6 offense and 6 defense as compared to 4-4 for the same price. Granted you get get the longrange 4 from the musketeer as opposed to zero for the pike. But I bet that a 5 pike/4 cannon stack (cost 3510 production) is almost an even match for a 9 musketeer stack (cost 5400 production). The initial long range blast from the pike/cannon stack is 24 (= 4 x 6) whereas the initial longrange blast from the musketeer stack is 16 (= 4 x 4). The following rounds may make up for, or even exceed, that initial bonus but I'm not sure. It would be interesting to test!

JohnGalt137 · July 2, 2010, 15:19

I think he's arguing that the best stack is 5 pike 2 musk, 2 cannon. I'm inclined to agree.

JohnGalt137 · July 2, 2010, 15:29

The cost is about the same as the 5 pike 4 cannon stack.

4 cannons do 40 * 6/9 damage to the pikes, killing 2 and 2/3rds of them. The musket plus cannon stack deals 20 * 4/7 + 20 * 6/9 damage, killing 2 and 1/2 of them. The front rows then duke it out with on average 1 pike being left on the cannon side with about 2 hp left. The stacks reorganize with the cannon stack containing 2 cannons in back, and 2 cannons and a pretty dead pike in front. The musket stack has 2 muskets in front and 2 cannons in back. The two cannons in back fire 20 * 6/10 dealing 12 damage to the muskets killing one and wounding another. The cannons in back of the musket stack waste the first cannon I think killing the pike and the second cannon deals 10 * 6/8 damage to the other cannon leaving it with 2.5 health.

The front stacks then fight the cannon with 2.5 health does an average of 1.25 damage before it dies leaving our musket with 6.75 health. The next cannon does 5 damage to the musket leaving it with 1.25 health. The stacks reorganize.

The cannon stack has 1 cannon in back and one in front, the musket stack has a mostly dead musket and 1 cannon in front and one in back. From here the average winner is trivial.

quinns · July 2, 2010, 16:59

So who wins??!!

JohnGalt137 · July 2, 2010, 20:47

Well I think its the 2 musket stack.

JohnGalt137 · July 2, 2010, 20:57

I ran like 5 or 6 tests, it wasn't enough to get anything conclusive. The randomness involved in the combat dominates. Its really hard to tell which is best.

JohnGalt137 · July 3, 2010, 14:47

I was looking through some earlier posts on the challenge forum. They seem to sound like you can use multiple clerics to reduce the happiness of a city by a lot.

Is this true, I thought multiple soothsays didn't stack. Do they?

JohnGalt137 · July 12, 2010, 02:18

Anyone know what good modern unit stacks are. I didn't notice it mentioned on this thread but on one of the previous challenge ladder threads Blackice and Mathemagician argued that tanks were vastly inferior to marine+fighter stacks.
Blackice argued that marines+fighters are approximately as powerful in the modern age as pikeman/SOL stacks are in the renaissance age.
I know that space planes are really important, and that marines work really well with them. What about other modern units? How do Fascists stack up? What do you build in the genetic age? How do you keep the space plane era from ending the game?

By this I mean, that games with...say...nukes legal, end the game once one or both players get nukes. The game will be pretty decisively decided after those players start using nukes because science dies. Do games extend past the space plane era, what are the important genetic age units/advances?