How to REX

[Xmudder]

In the game I am playing, I managed to overexpand to 15 cities fairly quickly, to the point I was at 50% science rate and had run out of space to expand into.

Oddly enough, I was still ahead in the tech race and was gaining new techs every 3 turns.

I then switched from Representation to Universal Sufferage, and my research tanked.

The secret to successful REXing is the Pyramids wonder and switching to representation. Each new city costs about 3 gold. Each specialist under representation produces 3 research. Further, the city AI values these +3 research specialists quite highly and made as many as 5 per (flood plain) city. Thats 5 new cities I can afford though dropping the tax rate to offset costs.

Anyway, I now have 3x as many cities as the AI and twice the tech, all though the wonder of Representation. I was making so much money I switched to Universal Sufferage and started buying improvements.

I presume this would work for ICS as well. Even a citizen (I think) produces 3 research, so spam a lot of little cities each with 8 workable tiles, ignore culture, and colonize the continent. If you fall behind financially, decrease research spending and promote specialists to compensate.

This was a boring game - unlike the other half dozen I previously played through the night. I think I'll skip Pyramids next time - it's too easy to win by switching to representation.

No problem with Barbarians, either. No empty space for them to spawn in. My best unit has 6XP - in previous games I had 3 with 10 and another half dozen with 8 or nine.

I wasn't able to expand this fast in Civ II or III.

Representation is overpowered, I'm afraid. Not to mention nonsensical.

Oh yeah, three of my cities are in Tundra and 1 is on Ice with only a whale and 4 beavers to keep it company.

It would be nice if beavers produced +1 food.

[Sabre2th]

What difficulty and map settings?

[Xmudder]

Originally posted by Sabre2th
What difficulty and map settings?

Noble Difficulty, Continents, large map. Playing as Ghandi / India.

[VetLegion]

Interesting post. I wonder if:

1) You can consistently do this (ie, no luck factor involved)
2) You can repeat it on higher difficulty

Keep us posted.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Reasons this worked:

1- You're playing on Noble difficulty. That's fairly low maintenance.

2- You were playing on a Large map; distance maintenance and number of cities maintenance doesn't really start cranking that early. If you'd kept it up your strategy would've staggered, quickly.

3- You had to build the most expensive early wonder in the game to get it to work. That's not a minor point of the strategy. An early war or a close neighbor would render such a wonder build foolish.

[Wolfgang76]

Normally I dont bother with replying on ICS and REXing but I have seen it to an extent be a viable strategy. No where near the extent it was on CIV I-3 but its still an option.

People on this board are always quick to answer that the Noble setting is what is causing this, but isnt Noble supposed to be the ballanced setting? That logic implies that ICS was only fixed by giving the AI more adavntages over the player using the higher levels.