Vel's Strategy Thread

[jones]

My biggest problem in multiplayer right now is logistics. People insist on playing at "Blazing" speed, which in normal terms is 30 sec per turn. As the game progresses more time is allowed per turn, up to 1:30 and more, but I haven't figured out the exact mechanics. It's simply not enough time when you can produce a lot of units.

When using my standard six city start, with 2-3 added later, I can focus 3-4 cities exclusively on military unit production without slowing down my economy and hence research. The only problem is getting them to the battle area in a timely manner

[binTravkin]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Synopsis of the early game tech tree

In studying the various methodologies for attacking the tech tree, I've come up with the following designations. These will be useful/helpful to me in terms of classifying where I am on the tech tree with regards to a particular civ, and what aims I hope to accomplish.

Locust & Variants
Bronzeworking beeline, takes you down the mining/masonry side of the tree. Some terraforming here (mine, chop), and the biggest of the early game wonders (pyramids, with their ability to enable all government civics).

Useful for players who want to utilize hyper-early chopping strats in varying degrees of the extreme (casual to rampant), necessary to at least partly explore this branch if you're gunning for the pyramids.

Gods be With You
Religious branch, stems from the common parent of Mysticism. Ancient era branch has THREE of the seven religions in the game, but absolutely no terraforming or combat stuff.

Religion, the cultural builds and options that being one of the "Founding Fathers" opens up are compelling indeed, and many players will be drawn down this path. It requires a rather different in-game mindset, as many of the things that are truisms for all other research branches are turned on their heads for this one.

Gives access to Org. Religious Civic, and its corresponding infrastructure bonus.

Davy Jones
The first choice for those found to be stuck on a small landmass, or crowded out of the best land on a large continent, and unable to fight it out. Collassus makes it a good choice for the finacially minded as well, but I'd imagine that most folks would give this a secondary priority.

Financier
Pottery beeline for early cottages and big financial windfalls.

Attacker's Toolkit
Archery and Horseback Riding....two dead end techs that warmongers will race to.

Jethro Tull
Covers all the basic terraforming techs before branching into any one area too deeply (agriculture, wheel, mining, hunting, husbandry)


Transitional Beelines (those that take you from the ancient age)

FarSeer
Combines the Locust and Religous goals, to end up with a good, quick shot at the Oracle, and use it to gain Metal Casting as your freebie tech (taking you out of the ancient age and giving you early forges for a big production spike).

Communication's Specialist
Beeline to Alphabet (and out of the ancient age) to enable tech trading and be in the driver's seat where that is concerned.

King and Country
The path to feudalism, and happiness control thru force of arms. Logical next step for early game warmongers.

Bean Counter
Alternate path for "communication's specialist" sees you leaving the ancient age pursuing math, and the financial windfalls it will bring (good choice for those pursuing the financier notions in the early game).

-=Vel=-

So, Vel, when can whe expect the first release of
Vel's Guide To cIV?

After using your SMACX one as a handbook in playing SMACX, I can't wait for this!

[Velociryx]

Hey all, and g'morning! Hmmm...not sure....first thing will be to just keep playing and making notes, coming here and talking about different ideas....see where it leads...

-=Vel=-

[proviisori]

Originally posted by Zaphod

I'm currently playing the Indians and I have found this to be true. I founded Hinduism, then moved quickly to bronze working and chopped down a number of forests to facilitate settler building. I had a nice empire of six ciites very quickly and was leading by over two hundred points through the Classical Era.

I also "love" the G-man. First: hinduism second: bronze working third: some food producing tech depending on your starting location

later: pyramids and the oracle! ...and then FORGES

Farseer strat if I understand correctly?!

I'm in builder/wonder heaven!

[Velociryx]

Tech Cost Comparisons for the beelines mentioned above:

Locust & Variants, puts the emphasis on getting to bronzeworking early. Key techs then, are mining and bronzeworking. (total cost = 170). If you have mining already, then you need only research one tech and it's cost is (120).

Chief Advantages: Early production boost by way of chop. Early access to Axemen and Spearmen (with Copper). Chop can be used to augment any of the other strategies, OR become a conquest strat in its own right (with copper, gain access to axemen/spears, and chop your way to a conquering army).

Chief Disadvantages: Cocaine effect...might not be able to stop chopping, which will kill your health and productivity as soon as rivals begin getting forges.

USE IN MODERATION!

Gods Be With You, puts the emphasis on being the founder of one or more early religions. Three in all down this path. To meet the requirements and try for all three, you'll need the following techs: Mysticism, Polytheism, Meditation, Monotheism, for a total cost of 350. If you already have Mysticism, then your cost drops to 300. If you want to forget Meditation (da Buddah), and go for the other two, cost drops further to 270. Finally, if you GET Hinduism and stop, your costs would only be 150 without mysticism/100 with it (making a quick grab for a religion a fairly cheap tech option, actually, but with the tradeoff that there might be other folks trying the same thing...risk!

Chief Advantages: Gold Windfall (over and above that which can be gained from cottages and other sources...which of course, can be added to full effect a bit later!), happiness effect, cultural effect equal to that which is gained by having the "creative" trait, ability to make the "organized religion" civic pay early dividends (25% reduction in the cost of building stuff (as opposed to units)), and the ability to see inside any city your religion spreads to. Taken as a package, the effects of founding a religion are compelling, and certainly worth a look!

Chief Disadvantages: There is NOTHING relating to terraforming or combat down the religious path. If you go this route, be prepared to sit around with warriors for longer than you'd otherwise have to.

Davy Jones
Only two techs here....Fishing and Sailing. 140 for them both, 100 for just sailing. Pretty quick to get in the water if you want/need to early.

Chief Advantages: TRAPPED! Lots of water specials nearby. A water approach can set you up nicely for a BIG commerce boon down the line.

Chief Disadvantages: almost entirely terrain dependant.

Financier
The path to early cottages is also only two techs long, either fishing/pottery (120), or wheel/pottery(140), with pottery itself being a relatively inexpensive (80) tech. Another one that wouldn't take very long to get up and running with.

Chief Advantages: MONEY! (especially if you're already Financial)

Chief Disadvantages: Somewhat slower on the uptake, where other terraforming options are concerned. Could (terrain being the key here) lead to slightly slower growth out the gate).

Attacker's Toolkit
Archery (needs hunting(40) and archery (60)
followed by Horseback riding (animal husbandry (100) and horseback riding (250)

makes this a fairly expensive path to take (450 without starting tech, 400 with it). Still, the ability to disrupt or outright conquer one or more civs in the early game is not without merits of its own.....

Chief Advantages: Abilty to pillage fledgling enemy empire, steal workers and pose a credible conquest threat. Don't need to complete this tree in order to do that, either...you could simply do it with archers.

Chief Disadvantages: If you begin to pursue this path and find out later that you're alone, you just fell markedly behind, and will find it tough going to make up ground. Likewise, unless there are NEAR enemy empires, then conquering a far flung city might not even be worthwhile, but you'll certainly terrorize the neighborhood!

Special Note: There are some (many) who will argue in favor of the archer as a defensive unit, and it does serve that role well, but it is also the cheapest unit you can get access to, after warrior, comes with no resource requirements, and has a nice ability....VERY handy, and a solid, reliable, ancient era attacker.

Jethro Tull
Focus on getting all early terraforming options nailed before working on other stuff (exact order to be determined by the prevailing terrain).

For this, you'll need Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Husbandry, Pottery (total cost of 340, less 40-60 if you start with one of the necessary techs).

Chief Advantages: Ability to fully and markedly improve the lands around your cities, which will foster rapid growth and good productivity.

Chief Disadvantages: While you're getting set up, other folks are off conquering, or founding religions, or....

Not a particularly glamerous area of the tech tree, and not one that you generally have to research in bulk, either. General recommendation is to plan ahead, grab what you need, when you need it, and then focus your efforts elsewhere.

More later...

-=Vel=-

[Harovan]

Don't forget to include Fishing in the Jethro Tull approach, if you have a resource in the water. If you do, it's even a priority technology, as building fishnets is a very effective way to get you food and more health: It is instantly done (no build time) and does not need a road. That the workboat is eaten up when you build it, is compensated by the fact that it is cheap and your city continues to grow while you build it (unlike the worker).

[Arrian]

You bunch of spammers!

I'm up through page 6, and I saw something from Fried I wanted to discuss:

Go straight for Priesthood, start Oracle, snag pottery and bronze working while Oracle is being completed, use Oracle to grab Metal Casting.

This strategy DOES expand considerably slower, but a capital full of forests and fueled by a forge at a very early level can explode with production as the game continues. I've used this strategy repeatedly to "come back" from being down early on.

This he calls "Farseer" I believe. I happened to use something very close to this in my latest game:

Terra, standard otherwise, Noble, Ghandi. Oh, and I did remove 1 of the AIs. I figured that it would be cramped in the "Old World" as it was, w/o a 7th civ!

Founded Buddism and ultimately also founded Taoism & Islam (much later, clearly). When I get the Oracle, I pretty much always pick Metal Casting... because it's typically the most expensive tech I can choose. I did so this time. Forges went up quickly. I had marble, which was nice (Parth, GL).

I tend to leave certain forest tiles alone and chop others:

1) Forest on Hill = TOAST. Mine it!
2) Forest on plains on river/lake = TOAST. Farm it!
3) Forest on grassland = KEEP. Mmm, lumbermill later.
4) Forest on plains w/o fresh water access = KEEP. Most likely won't work this tile for a good long while. Can decide what to do w/it later. If I *do* work it, it's for the production anyway, in which case I want the forest.

Anyway, I went for quality over quantity and went wonder-happy. There is limited space on the Old World on Terran maps anyway. I founded 5 cities - making me the smallest (by # of cities). It was Noble, so I was able to hold my own long enough to build up and get a tech lead (I used some GP on techs). I did get attacked and came quite close to losing my key #3 city... I think it came down to my beat up-spearman killing a beat-up chariot.

India (Ghandi, anyway) works well, I feel, for a "vertical growth" strategy. They get a wonder-building bonus and they can found early religion. Of course, that fast worker of theirs can also be key to a REX strategy. I just generally like Ghandi.

Anyway, so I had the lead. And then I got to optics & astronomy and it was all over. I had a blast exploring, conquering and settling the New World. I had to work a bit to conquer it, actually. I brought over macemen (4 initially, more later) + 2 catapults, and by the time I got to the 3rd Barb city (total of 4), they also had macemen. I eventually mopped up the last city w/riflemen. I managed near-total control of the New World. The AI got 2 cities down over there, on an island just off the southern coast - but I grabbed the one good spot on that island, so they're welcome to it.

A great engineer mostly rushed the Wonder that is like the FP (I forget the name) over there, and I used GE's (heh) for several other rush projects (Three Gorges being the final one - again, over there). I could lose my original 5 cities and most likely not skip a beat. Next: Ice Age

-Arrian, who will now read pages 7 and 8

[Arrian]

Vel,

I've something to add to this:

Davy Jones
The first choice for those found to be stuck on a small landmass, or crowded out of the best land on a large continent, and unable to fight it out. Collassus makes it a good choice for the finacially minded as well, but I'd imagine that most folks would give this a secondary priority.

This also opens up the Great Lighthouse, which is (IMO) a pretty strong little wonder: +1 trade route in each coastal city. EDIT: to leverage this properly, harbors are key (+50% trade route yield). I dunno about you, but I've found myself with a LOT of coastal cities in most of my games. It's a nice toy, that Lighthouse.

-Arrian

p.s. If you have some bronze, the Colossus is very cheap, too, so it's entirely possible you could nab the C and the Lighthouse in the same city for a LOT of Great Merchant points. I happened to muck that up in my last game - I built the Colossus in Delhi and never used it (I didn't work a water tile until the industrial era - there were better ones to work until then!).

[Arrian]

One advantage to getting bronzeworking early, beyond chopping, is finding out if you have copper - if you do, you can ignore archery for a while and build a few axemen instead. Sure, archery is cheap, but it's time I'd rather spend elsewhere. I'll pick it up in trade w/the AI.

-Arrian

[Krill]

Financier
The path to early cottages is also only two techs long, either fishing/pottery (120), or wheel/pottery(140), with pottery itself being a relatively inexpensive (80) tech. Another one that wouldn't take very long to get up and running with.

Nope. You Need Wheel and either Agriculture or fishing for pottery. Beaker cost is 180 for Fishing/Wheel/Pottery or 200 for Agriculture/Wheel Pottery

---

Gods Be With You, puts the emphasis on being the founder of one or more early religions. Three in all down this path. To meet the requirements and try for all three, you'll need the following techs: Mysticism, Polytheism, Meditation, Monotheism, for a total cost of 350. If you already have Mysticism, then your cost drops to 300. If you want to forget Meditation (da Buddah), and go for the other two, cost drops further to 270. Finally, if you GET Hinduism and stop, your costs would only be 150 without mysticism/100 with it (making a quick grab for a religion a fairly cheap tech option, actually, but with the tradeoff that there might be other folks trying the same thing...risk!

You need Masonary, and therefore mining to research monotheism. That increases the Beaker cost of these techs to 480 beakers...

[proviisori]

Originally posted by Arrian

This he calls "Farseer" I believe. I happened to use something very close to this in my latest game:

Terra, standard otherwise, Noble, Ghandi.

India (Ghandi, anyway) works well, I feel, for a "vertical growth" strategy. They get a wonder-building bonus and they can found early religion. Of course, that fast worker of theirs can also be key to a REX strategy. I just generally like Ghandi.

-Arrian, who will now read pages 7 and 8

Nice to see that others like G-man too. I have not tried to use "farseer" in MP game. The time for that is coming soon, I think.

Only modification I would make, in both SP and MP, is to keep at least average military strength. It should't be too difficult with forges.

[Arrian]

Not at all - especially if you have some copper for axemen. If not, you will have to invest in either Iron working for Swords or archery + HBR for horse archers (assuming you have horses).

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Thanks for the corrections....overslept this morning and was in a hurry to finish the post....didn't have time to be as thorough as I'd have liked to be....will add/correct when I get home tonight!

-=Vel=-

[Jcg316]

Gold Windfall (over and above that which can be gained from cottages and other sources...which of course, can be added to full effect a bit later!), happiness effect, cultural effect equal to that which is gained by having the "creative" trait, ability to make the "organized religion" civic pay early dividends (25% reduction in the cost of building stuff (as opposed to units)), and the ability to see inside any city your religion spreads to. Taken as a package, the effects of founding a religion are compelling, and certainly worth a look!

An all religions start is not even remotely what it is cracked up to be.

If a neighbor founds a religion you can easily get the happiness, cultural (of 1 per turn), and civics bonuses. When he tries hard to convert you it is just easier for you and he leaves you in prime position to have the oppurtunity to snatch up that holy city when you see just missionaries coming from them.

Anyone else going for the same start of possibly mysticism (if they are going for religions and not starting with mysticism) followed by meditation, polytheism, MASONRY, monotheism will have the same chance of you as getting them. Getting the first two when anyone else is going after them would be dumb luck. The same chance as you at one or taking the other one of med/poly. Plus, any player wanting multiple religions will go from med to priest towards theology or poly to masonry to mono after seeing the other branch has been founded. Anyone needing caste system may go to code of laws earlier than you have a chance to. Culture players may be going right after philosophy.

Anyone who spams cottages would have a vastly better chance at later religions. Three cottage'd cities with three Great Scientists will provide vastly more beakers than you can manage using Great Prophets at shrines to keep a tiny amount of beakers at 100% science. With cottages later you can't catch up and would need great scientists to match that many beakers. Earlier cottages can lead to giant tech leads.

There is absolutly no comparison between cottages and religious gold from shrines. One can let you have vastly larger amounts of beakers at 40-50% science rate and still vastly more gold at that rate. By the time you have three shrines built you will never catch up to someone with three cottage'd cities with labs. Once you get your cities fully improved they would not even come close to matching the three labs at a significantly lowered science rate. Seven shrines does not match three scientists and four merchants on expeditions, just sticking seven merchants into a city can do as much as shrines plus benefits from representation later or early with pyramids.

The ability of one player to border lock you and choose whether or not you can even use what you just worked so hard to get will happen sometimes. Any player going for fast military will crush you, and they would love to when they could wind up with multiple holy cities that may already have shrines.

With how badly returns will decrease as you fail umpteenth times to get even your own cities converted you are going to constantly fall further and further behind in production just for a fourth or fifth religion, let alone seventh.

Trying to get Great Propehts out will take some work as priests are not as easy to get compared to how a quick a caste system cottage start can get giant GPP numbers early.

One shrine can be a hugh benefit letting a confucian, caste system, labbed out science start fly past everyone for example. Returns on multiples decrease quickly, however.

A culture player can try to nab the Pyramids and use engineers to wonder whore and snatch up wonders left and right or a one religion Oracle start can try to jump past you to later things.

In singleplayer the difference with cottage spam and all religions will be a mid 1800s launch and tech advantaged military through the game compared to shrine gold and a mid to late 1900s launch if you manage to not waste extra great people on prophets.

An all religions start is pretty much the novelty its seems like compared to more specific starts that can fly through the tech tree or one that can grind its builder enemies into dust.

Not to mention that strategies in general will limit you from using the map as best you can anyways. No different than getting addicted to chops you may find yourself trying to do the strategy when it is a hinderance to you.

[Jcg316]

That's Academies, rather, instead of Labs.