Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[Drachasor]

Quite.

[madmario]

This is informal discourse, so it's all good. I'm an English teacher; I approve.

[Dog of Justice]

Idea for a Russian research strategy:

Precondition: Access to Horses and IVORY. This strategy loses its efficiency if you have to slog to Guilds in the middle. So it's definitely not going to apply to every game. But when it does apply, I suspect it is very powerful.

Start with CS beeline. When switching to Bureaucracy, pick up Caste System as well.

After generating the usual Great Scientist to supercharge capital research (since you're using Caste System, you can optionally use V3nom's idea of creating the Great Scientist somewhere other than the capital, if your capital really doesn't want to take anyone off the land), you will want to generate a Great MERCHANT at some point, and target the other GPP toward GPs that can be sacrificed toward your research beeline if you find research lagging behind production.

What is your beeline, and what are you producing? The "Russian" qualifier at the beginning should make it obvious: your ultimate goal is Military Tradition+Gunpowder. Your immediate goal is Construction, and then you are producing as many War Elephants as you possibly can. Your next goal is Education. Liberalism then isn't far behind, and you've been following a very focused path toward it so you're very likely to discover it first, ideally getting Military Tradition for free (by researching Nationalism and Music first), but if you're in a fairly close tech race go ahead and accept free Nationalism. Finish the job by researching Gunpowder.

Time things so that your Great Merchant is cashed in right about when you get Military Tradition+Gunpowder. Instantly upgrade a whole mess of War Elephants to Cossacks. Enter all-out war mode and wreck everyone that matters.

EDIT: Oops, just realized there was a separate thread discussing this. Should I delete this post?

[Velociryx]

I like it! Interesting how those Elephant riders learn to adapt to both the Russian Winter AND their smaller mounts!

Great thought!

As to the English debate...I'll leave that one alone and focus on strategy....others have already said pretty much everything I woulda anyways, and Alan's comments are proof positive that you can't please everybody all da time....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Psst...Oh Mods of the Civ IV Forums....might we swap this new strat thread out with yonder topped one that's now past 500 posts?

-=Vel=-

[Son of David]

I've tried playing on Monarch at least a dozen different times now and just been completely clobbered every single time.

Building is out on Monarch, so you have to build lots of troops. And yet the AI gets such large bonuses that you need about 8 axemen to take one city. By which time the other AIs are several techs, religions, and wonders ahead.

So then I tried getting elephants and catapults. Build up another army, and went for another opponent. Send my army off (in desperation, before the Egyptians get longbowmen from Feudalism) - guess what? Alexander pays me back for my last invasion.

It's bruising. I don't think I'll actually be able to beat this game on Monarch. Or maybe I have some kind of mental block: I tried playing a game on Prince the other day and got beaten by the space race.

Maybe it's time for me to stop having any pretensions to take this game seriously and just play on Noble, for the fun of it. Being beaten ALL the time isn't fun.


By the way, if building lots of units at the start really is the only way to win at higher levels, what fun is that? All those wonders, religions etc that you just can't get to. Any idea of recreating the cultural splendour of an ancient empire is out the window - unless I play a scenario. It's just build units, even more units, and then some more units: and rely completely on there being resources nearby.

[baboon]

You can build first and then beeline to Calvalry in the fastest way and then start your war. I think I'll try that anytime soon. The war has to be fast and furious.

[Dactyl]

Son of David,

You aren't being very specific about the strategies that you are using on Monarch. If it's taking stacks of 8 Axemen to take enemy cities, then you are doing something wrong. Either you're waiting too long to attack, or you're attacking the wrong cities. The capital and other well-developed cities may have lots of defenders but, early on, most of the cities of AI civs are only defended by two archers. Hence, they will almost always fall to a force of 5 archers unless they're on a hill.

I would also suggest that you read the rest of this thread, as well as reading the first Vel strategy thread. You should consider strategies like building settlers or workers first before you build anything else. Do you chop forests to hurry production of those early settlers? You need to be more specific about what you're doing.

[Son of David]

I've just finished another game on Monarch (which I lost, but it was still an entertaining four or five hours ).

I started alone on a continent. So the beginning was excruciating. Surrounded by jungles and barbs everywhere. First thing I did was build a settler. I tried researching the techs which give religion but was beaten to every single one.

300AD is when I first met other civs. Desperately behind on tech, but at about 1400 things start to turn as I concentrate on science, use serfdom for building improvements. Towards 1700, researching electricity, almost had radio, going for a space race or diplomatic victory. Catching up on techs, no. 1 for land size, land improved and cities healthy.

THEN Alexander lands some troops on my shore. I was kind of on borrowed time because I had to concentrate on building so much that I had hardly any army (and I suffered a devastating strike which knocked out half my units earlier).

So that was it really. If I built units, I would never have caught up on technology. And I was so behind on techs that my units would be so weak I'd need to build dozens. So I just concentrated on buildings, and ended up with Alexander razing half my empire.


Either I am hopeless or it was actually impossible to win, despite having the largest single continent all to myself.

[Arrian]

Sounds like pretty rough start... IMO a jungle-heavy start is the worst.

-Arrian

[Son of David]

It looks like this game has a very large amount of strategic mileage. If there isn't really a killer strategy any more, that's a good thing.

Trial and error.

[Xarathas]

Yeah.. Jungle Heavy and isolated start is pretty tough on the higher lvls.

Although I must say, it is still very possible to win on Monarch without the necessity to war.

Two of the wins on Monarch lvl for me came without much meaningful warfare. My first win ever on Monarch (a damn close one, by exactly 1 turn) came on an large inland sea map. I shared borders mostly with Catherine and Bismarck (both of which were my trusty allies from beginning to end), and minimally with Alexander. I was in exactly 2 wars that game, and neither were initiated by me. One was Alexander being his usual self. He initiated war on me, but my buddy Catherine took care of him for me (I didn't even have to ask!). Not that I'd have much problems to begin with, as my border with him was one whole city and easily defendable. Second war was with Qin Shi Huang.. who was across the sea from me. That was a completely meaningless war, as all it did was give us war weariness and there was hardly any real fighting going on. The AI (Bismarck, Qin, Saladin.. within 10 turns of each other) started the spaceship a good 20-30 turns before I did, but through some diplomacy and espionage, I ended up beating Saladin by 1 spaceship part.. 1 turn til completion (my spy was sitting on that city, watching the stasis chamber being re-built after my sabotage)... and I'm guessing Qin Shi Huang was about 2 parts away as he was the leader with 2 parts left to go until Saladin and I overtook him (love those spies).


Other win was more or less the same on a large Terra map. Except this time I had Isabella, Victoria, and Huayna Capac. I did initiate one war, but it was a very quick and short war. In the beginning I basically expanded to the max of 4 cities before I became confined. I then built 5 axemen, and took one of Huayna's city to my north. Made peace, and didn't have another war until Mao sneak attacked me during the colonial age and took one of my colonies on the new world. I took it back shortly after, and then made peace with him. That was also the last war I fought in that whole game... managed to get spaceship victory by a decent margin (closest being Gandhi with just casing and thrusters built). One thing worth metioning was that.. even though I founded both Confucianism and Christianity in this game, my state religion was Judaism until the very end. Why? Because Isabella was a Jew. She had a ridiculous amount of military from beginning to end, so instead of building and wasting resources to match her, I just stayed on her religion throughout the game and she never attacked me. I did build a decent sized garrison just so that I don't look too tempting, but I'm pretty sure the religion modifier was what saved me from going into an all out war with her.

I can't say the same on emperor though As my only win so far came from playing Incas on a somewhat crowded map (Incas on crowded maps = easy mode). I've been trying to play my normal setting (large maps, usually ~10 nations total) and not having much luck yet. Recent game is looking good, but only because I'm doing heavy duty warring.... compared to my builder starts, this is looking much better. Hopefully it'll be good enough to win

[Xarathas]

oh and speaking of bad starts.. it doesn't get much worse than this.

[Arrian]

Bah! You have fresh water!

Kinda looks like "So Very Cold"

-Arrian

[Xarathas]

Yup, with Alex and I left to frolick in the snow!

Then he looked at me funny so I axed him.

Unfortunately, all the other tropical kids beat me up