Late Early-Game and Early Mid-Game Strategies

[TheProvost]

For the record, I’ve been playing on Emperor, small Pangaea maps, as I find it’s a good balance of challenge without too much intensely irritating cheese from the AI.

Anyway: I’ve been using a lot of the strategies posted here in a variety of experimental games, and I’ve gotten comfortable running a CS Slingshot while try to grab the Pyramids, or scoping out land for the creation of an early GPP powerhouse. I love setting up a nice empire with a few beautifully positioned core cities that can act as the centre of a glorious and aesthetically pleasing civilization. My problem comes after these initial achievements. My early mid-game sags horribly. I have no idea what to research or what to aim for. I usually end up bee-lining for rifling while the AI churn out wonders (wonders that *I* want for my beautiful cities ). If I try to compete with them for wonders, I find that by the time I’m closing on rifling they’ve beaten me too it, or have such obscenely large defences and empires that even Lizzy’s Redcoats are under intense pressure to do any real damage. And if I hit rifling my empire has spent so much time ‘ticking over’, doing little other than producing generic city improvements and such that I’ve no real edge and the AI can still put up a horrific fight.

My usual strategy is to go either for a CS Slingshot and then race for macemen and start knocking apart the nearest opponent, or to push hard for a handful of vital early wonders while bulking up a early-game military (based heavily on Vel’s ‘Imperial’ strategy – which I love). Both of these work well for me, and I have a great time doing it. The problem comes immediately after I hit Machinery. I’m not sure what to do next. Do I back fill the techs I bypass or ransom them from the AI I’m clobbering? Do I bee-line for Education or Rifling? Or something else entirely? And while all this is going on, how to I compete with the inevitable builder AI who is off on some beautiful corner of the map making wonders and churning out GPs? Not to mention how awkward it is to run a cool specialization strategy like Pacifism when I’ve got a war to finish off and a group of increasingly powerful AIs to watch. It’s not that I slip behind and can’t win – far from it, I can usually pull off a respectable win – but my empire just feels so… cobbled together by the time I’m deep into the mid-game.

Okay, so that’s a bit rambling. Basically, I’d love to hear any specific strategies for what you all like to focus on *after* you’ve pulled off a powerful opening play.

[make]

Originally posted by TheProvost
Do I bee-line for Education or Rifling? Or something else entirely?

As always, it depends.
I say, dont rush to education, especially not if you are financial. Thats because you want all cities to build cheap banks before universities. So chances are that by the time you get education, no cities are done building basic infrastructure and banks anyway, so its better to research something more usefull.
If you are philosofical, it might be different. I havent played philo alot.

Unless you can build redcoats or cossack, I think beelining for grenadiers and cannons is much better than for cavalry or riflemen.

Grenadiers take out riflemen upon attacking and have no natural counter until infantry. They have problems standing up to cavalry though, so keep pikemen and / or warelephants around until you get riflemen or cavalry.

[uberfish]

Since you are playing Elizabeth, I would advise making a beeline to education and liberalism ASAP after machinery, and using the cheap Universities and free tech from Liberalism to springboard you towards democracy, rifling, physics or whatever your main midgame goal happens to be. Playing this style you want to try and trade for techs like feudalism, engineering and guilds if practical.