Vel's Strategy Thread

[ktbutts]

I think the locust strat (nice name by the way) will only be good in SP.

In MP, there are two good strategies.

The classic dagger strategy would still be effective. You can build barracks and warriors (or Que-chas) to take the new underdefended cities and the workers.

Also, if most players are beelining to Bronze working, there is a great opportunity to take all three early religions.

Essentially, it think the Locust might just be a builder version of the dagger.

[Velociryx]

Clearly more testing is in order. Right now, my impression is that the gains from deforestation are too generous, because an early game beeline to bronze seems to be the tech branch of choice, and for good reason (hard to argue with the production advantages).

It's too early to tell for certain, and I'm hopeful that we'll begin to see other strats that develop in tandem with this one, that can hold thier own.

Right now, I'm seeing Industrious/Expansive and Locust as being mighty hard to beat....cos lets face it, if you start next to that guy, founding those three religions isn't gonna help you much when your last city falls to the Locust hordes....

-=Vel=-

[Jcg316]

With chops you can get out two workers a settler and 8 warriors from one city in 36,37ish turns. Add a barracks in there and you could probably get six in 40 turns or a few archers and a couple warriors with the archery tech.

I'm guessing for MP, for the method to be as effective as it can, it will need a fair bit of refinement to address more facets of the game. It doesn't really have to be maximized for ctiies, workers, or any one thing. Hopefully it is balanced overall as the game moves along. I'm just worried it for it to start being more balanced it will have to get into the mid-game with sizeable cities.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Clearly more testing is in order. Right now, my impression is that the gains from deforestation are too generous, because an early game beeline to bronze seems to be the tech branch of choice, and for good reason (hard to argue with the production advantages).

It's too early to tell for certain, and I'm hopeful that we'll begin to see other strats that develop in tandem with this one, that can hold thier own.

Right now, I'm seeing Industrious/Expansive and Locust as being mighty hard to beat....cos lets face it, if you start next to that guy, founding those three religions isn't gonna help you much when your last city falls to the Locust hordes....

-=Vel=-

I would agree with everything but the traits you propose.

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....Fried, you've been playing longer than most of the rest of us here....if you agree with the overall assessment (notwithstanding my trait selections), my next question is....if that's the case....if the forest chopping bonues seem to be so generous as to automatically focus all early game attention on this particular beeline in preference for anything else, does that not seem to "break" the early game somewhat? I mean, if a beeline for bronze is the right answer every time, then the other early game "interesting choices" are....somewhat less interesting, yes?

Again, I'm still very much feeling my way, and I'm certainly jonsing to get home and do some more testing, but having heard that you agree with the overall assessment, I'm inching toward finding the early game a bit too strongly focused toward one particular branch of the tech tree.

-=Vel=-

[TheQat]

Is there a general consensus that founding multiple very early religions is not worth the risk in a risk vs. long-term benefit assessment? Spreading a religion vastly can be really good for one's bank account later in the game, and it seems to me like the logical option as opposed to Locusting.

However, I've only been playing on Noble and I would never have thought of Locust on my own, so I want to hear from the more experienced out there: why do the early foundings seem to be discounted out of hand? Is it simply because, as someone said, the religions won't do you much good if you get attacked?

[Fried-Psitalon]

Well, bear in mind that my play style and environment is different than most. If you play higher than noble (which is all I play when I'm practicing MP) or a game that goes significantly longer the first two or three eras, it can be a serious mistake to go into massive deforestation. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it would be near production-suicide by the late game.

I think that may be what needs to be taken into account here; if you hack everything down at the start, you may get a strong empire to begin with, but if so - you'd better win early, because as soon as lumbermills and railroads appear, your production is going to flag tremendously compared to a player who has saved his forests and is now pulling 3 production per tile per turn from 10 tiles.

The player who referred to the move as the "Dagger" of builders is correct - you'll even feel the sting from this move as early as the medieval era, towards the end of a MP game.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Extra thought - there's something to be said for this strategy as well...

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.

Mowing down your forests early with the Oracle-based strategy is a bad move, for obvious reasons. You can usually sneak a settler out early with this strategy, but those forests need to stay intact.

[Jcg316]

Mining

Phi/Cre Fred
Phi/Exp Peter
Phi/Fin Liz
Phi/Org Mao
Spi/Fin Musa
Spi/Ind Gman -Fast Worker
Spi/Org Asoka
Exp/Fin Victoria
Exp/Ind Bis
Exp/Org Julius
Ind/Fin Qin
Cre/Fin Cat

Other
Agg/Fin Capac -Quechua
Agg/Spi Monty -Jaguar

Here's the mining options and a couple that could do well with unit chops.

[ducki]

I've only read half of the first page, but wanted to comment on the debate over Settler First vs. Wait for Growth.

1) I almost always have a +3 food tile to start. At least 1. That throws all the calculations based on +2 food off.
2) Shields are stored.

#2 is the big one I felt was being missed, though #1 is important.
On Storing shields, let's say you don't want (can't believe they were called this) useless extra units (remember in C3, Exploration was extremely important, I feel it is so in C4 too, but it's up to you), then start building something that will take longer than your first population growth.
Say you're lucky and have Floodplains(+3f+1c, right?), you grow in, what, 7 turns instead of 10?
Start building anything with a 10turn build time or more - barracks, obelisk, a wonder, _anything_.
The turn you grow to pop 2, switch to a settler. When you finish the settler, switch back and use those shields you stored. You may not gain anything in terms of speed to founding the second town, but I think Shield Storage is a very important tool that noone's mentioned using(well, not in the first 20-30 posts).

It's the middle ground between First Turn Settler and Build Units to waste time until pop growth.

Also, there are so many variables, I don't think there can ever be a definitive statement that Settler First is better or worse. Even Vel noted in his original post, multiple times, every game is very dependent on it's own context. What terrain do you have nearby? What resources/bonuses? How close are your neighbors? What mapsize/difficulty? What starting techs do you have? What is your overall strategy(warmonger, builder, diplomat) and how does it affect your priorities?

There is no real answer other than It Depends on everything else.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that a grassland/plains with no bonuses/resources would play out very differently than a multiple floodplains and a wheat/corn start, and what about starts with really high production yield but low growth? Maybe you start the granary, pop a worker to build a farm, switch to settler, then back to granary, etc.

Too many variables, IMO. You must adapt to each situation.


Anyway, I rambled. Discuss the usage of shield storage with regards to First Turn Settler vs Pop2-3 Settler strats.

[shennessy]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
The player who referred to the move as the "Dagger" of builders is correct - you'll even feel the sting from this move as early as the medieval era, towards the end of a MP game.

Just wanted to back this up with my first solo real game experience and a warning.

I didnt use the locust strat, but I did make a bunch of workers and because I am new and wanted to experience a full game as fast as possible I put them all on full auto. Once the workers hooked up all resources they get down to the chopping stage. It was good while it lasted, but I noticed after 20 or so turns the cities I used to depend on for good production now had really really bad production. The auto workers deforested pretty much my whole country because of the amount of workers I had and because I didnt have the lumber mill tech. This production stall made me use workshops (had to turn on workers dont modify old) and I also (after a long wait for the right techs) switched my civ to towns get +1 hammer. This helped but I swear my game stalled for about 500 years (my dark ages I suppose). I also have health problems in all my cities and need to invest in all of the +health buildings. The only thing that saved me was my very large country bouders that contain many resources.

[Jcg316]

I've been saying health this whole thread but it can be avoided well enough, by just not clearing everything. Three tile away forests aren't needed unless you're putting a city there. Even 25-20 hammer forests are always good to clear off tundra regions. If I put a city there it would just be to fill out the six building requirement, or a 6,9 for cathedrals. For the main cities, especially specialist cities, forests are crucial for a long, long stretch after guilds.

There are enough ways around it and you can usually spare one close, which will get the worker close enough to move to a forest at three wiles away after chopping that one. Four tile ones only lose five which is still great production. Testing late health will take going much deeper into games and what I've seen late in games I've played has shown it certainly could be a large impact.

What I wonder though is if the hammers, some of them anyways, would be more valuable saved for certain military units. You may wind up hitting a happiness cap anyways and can build extra settlers easier with food surplus and hammers from the land. While the military units are much cheaper, swordsmen at 40 to 100 for a settler for example. If you are going to hit a growth cap it might be more advantagous to be able to four, five quick swordsmen or quickly add 3,4 catapults to an army after getting the right tech. One forest nearly pays for that era's top military. Using just a few outer forests or excess forests 4th and 6th and the like you they might have more impact using less of them. Might be that 20s and 25s later on military units are about the same effect as 30s on settlers/workers. There are jsut about always a bunch of them that won't be picked up by any city.

[Velociryx]

I've been extolling the virtues of health too (first post!).

The thing I'm seeing here tho...the trend is that early chopping to get those initial cities out (3-4) is so overwhelming an advantage that all the other branches of the tech tree wither by comparison.

Even if that's all the chopping you ever did, I've not seen an alternate strat crop up here that can touch it.

Settler first will get you a second city as fast as worker first, but if you want to keep expanding fast after that, then worker/chop is THE way to do so, and since getting those initial cities founded fast is so important to long term growth, I have my doubts that another ancient-era starting strat will wind up being able to compare, and if that's the case, then that's a pity, because it essentially straight-jackets you along one path in the ancient era.

We'll see tho.

-=Vel=-

[Jcg316]

Oh, and (C) starting with pop increase;
With two 3f tiles and another 3ty, about as ideal as you can get without corn on a floodplain, takes 8 turns for the first growth 6 more for the second.

After those 14 turns, 6ty (12-6 from pop) its 17 for a settler and 10 turns for a worker

For 41 turns, 1 more than starting with the settler with a warrior (or close) but the second city starts around turn 33, instead of 27 defeating the point of the early settler. Certainly not bad though, but not common to start with two 3 food tiles, often won't have one. Will finish the warrior and have another building but will be far slower to developing the other city and/or improving the capitol. Just not enough gain from additional pop, only 1 extra net yield.

In floodplains though or with an oasis it can work great for early defense, switching to tiles with hammers a few turns to finish the warrior before starting the settler/worker. Certainly can't count on the start locations though.

From the start of the second page, the others are listed in that post as well. All seem slow though compared to chops.

[Alexfrog]

Originally posted by Martinus

Actually I disagree that this is ICS - the settler first is REX (Rapid Early Expansion). It would be ICS if you could just go with this strategy ad infinitum, and this is not the case, since sooner or later (likely sooner) you will hit the hard ceiling of city maintenance costs, with each next city forcing you to take another 10% or 20% from science and put it into gold, just to meet up your expenses. Eventually you will end up much behind and an easy picking for your neighbours.

Yes.

This is not INFINITE city sprawl. It is quite finite. It involves making 2 to 3 quick settlers and then stop producing settlers for a while so oyur economy can grow to support more expansion.


To do this, with chopping, you only have to chop about 4-5 forests. Its not like you are clear cutting your entire region. Mines are a good way to replace the production loss from not having forests. And forests regrow if you leave some space for them.

And also, you can chop stuff someone further away from your city for 25 production instead of 30, if you need to leave forests at home. Its only a 1 turn difference.