Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[Dominae]

A note on Fishing and Work Boats:

If you are lucky enough to start on the coast with Fishing and a seafood resource, you have one of the best starts on your hands. Just put you Laborer on the highest Hammer output tile and build that Work Boat ASAP. Your capital will grow extremely fast with that early 5-Food tile, or will produce a Worker almost as fast as a Worker-first start. You'll even get some extra Commerce to help research along!

While such starts do not happen very often, they're very strong. When I win the "seafood lottery", I'm happy to start with Fishing. I think this mitigates the "Fishing is sometimes useless factor" somewhat.

(By the way, those are some...LONG posts Vel! Did I forget to mention they're excellent too?)

[Dominae]

Re: Kublai.

It's important to know when to stop horizontal growth (either naturally or, more probably, via conquest). Kublai "feels" like Iroquois in Civ3, where you could just conquer everything with your uber-UU and super-size your territory with cheap Temples. But in CIV you need to stop before it's too late!

Most often I try to conquer one neighbor with Keshiks (doubling my number of cities in the process), then use my UU to harass another. The free border expansions ensure that I've got the tiles available for a strong economic mid to late-game.

This is in contrast to the "blob" strategy that could work, but would leave me in the poorhouse for ages. On Emperor and Immortal, distant neighbors not involved in war sometimes (often) make me regret it.

[Velociryx]

Hey Dominae, and thank ya! I agree re: the seafood specials and fishing...IF you get a coastal start, and IF you start with fishing, you're set for the whole rest of the game.

In my testing tho (ten game spread to see what sort of start I got), I found that only about 30% of the time was it useful. The other 70%, I'm saddled with a dead-weight tech I can't use. I'd much rather start with something else and make fishing my first tech to research IF I'm coastal....at least that way, I'd be more in control, and less at the mercy of the land lotto. Despite the occassional strong start with fishing, I think it is, on balance, among the weakest techs you can start with. Bleh.

And excellent points re: Kublai! Will update my sheets!

-=Vel=-

[Thoth]

Vel: phew, but those are a long couple of posts. Great overview, but I really have to disagree with you on Napoleon. I've had good results when playing him, mainly due to his flexibility. If you are warring, Agressive comes into it's own and if you persue Metal Casting early (via Farseer or a narrow beeline) you can get your forges up disgustingly early for a turbo-charged production game. I have found that an early focus on forges and infratstructure while heading for Gunpowder sets Napoleon up very nicely for a Musketeer rush in the Middle Ages without having to worry too much about the economic hit from doubling my empire size.

With a builder trait and a warmonger trait, Napoleon is perfectly suited to a hybrid style of play. You will rarely get the benifits of both traits at the same time, but you will always be gaining the benifit of one or the other.

Give Napoleon another try, focusing on getting your forges down ASAP, and head for gunpowder sooner rather than later. I think you'll find your views on Napy will change.

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Thoth! Yep...that was pretty much the way I played Poly....didn't like him much, I'm sorry to say....it felt like cheap forges were his only real draw, and that just wasn't enough for me....not when compared to all the really *cool* options available with other civs....he just felt....lacking somehow.

IMO, it woulda been much better to give him Financial, or even Expansive as a pairing with Aggressive....Industrious just....didn't get the job done for me. And he could benefit more from one of the aggression oriented techs too (hunting, mining)....just felt like a blah mixing to me, but hey, if you like him, that's all that matters! I'm glad he's got some fans!

-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

Napy, Poly?

Nah, I think Boney is the name we're looking for.

[Velociryx]

-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

An excellent read there, as always, Vel.

There are some assumptions, though, of the circumstances and playstyle. The main one being that the aim is to get out there and conquer. This is, it appears, almost mandatory on Monarch, but many players might not play that level much (for precisely that reason). It also assumes the presence of neighbours.

In the analysis of Egypt, for example, the suggestion is to research Husbandry, hook up some horses and pay someone a visit. Which horses? Which neighbours? Neither is a certainty. Many of my Monarch Continents starts have been isolated - where go-thump approaches are as useful as Fishing on an inland start.

On the musketeer ...

True, the UU isn't anything to write home about, and you should have your continent sewn up by the time you get to it

I haven't tried this civ, but neutering perhaps three or four civs by Gunpowder sounds like quite a specific early military focus to me for an IND civ who might want to be building wonders. Then again, I don't play epic, which might make a difference. Also, doesn't the Musketeer have a defensive strength - bop the intruder and jump into safety to heal?

[sabrewolf]

yet another great post!

i do disagree on some parts, but i guess that's normal.

for one, my coastal starts are more like 70% than 30%. that might be because i mostly play standard size continents or large archipelago. but even my few pangea experiences often start at one of the coasts (though sometimes near tundra).

next, i personally don't rate mining too high, except if i have lots of forests to chop. so far it has been seldom that copper was close to my starting location, unlike horses which seem to be more frequent. and while axemen are great for early city-busting, chariots and horsearchers are much quicker and withdraw if you chose the correct promotions. i tend to have >50% of my fastmovers with 2 flanking promotions which i use to "suicide" attack the city, thereby weakening the strongest defender while withdrawing around 30-50% of the time.
also, iron working is a damn expensive tech and i often feel like animal husbandry, pottery, etc is more important. iron also tends to land more often further than nearer. i guess i'm just not a "natural" warmonger.


a question on war weariness: i just cannot seem to cope with it very well. usually it's killing me so bad that i'll often take the first oportunity to make peace as soon as the enemy is ready to talk. how do you warmonger handle this issue? and here i'm speaking of prince level and mainly higher. a level where you can't just techwhore away and take 3 cities per turn...

[Velociryx]

Hey guys, and not to worry...those two posts were meant to be the beginning point, not the ending, so I expect as we continue to talk and kick ideas around, they'll undergo revisions. That's expected. Already there have been good notes re: Mongols, Eygpt, France, and others, and I'm paying attention! By the time we get geared up for Strat Thread III, we'll have all those additional notes rolled into the documents, so that we get a more complete picture of each civ out there.

That's the beauty of these kinds of forum discussions....it's not just one guy, one voice....it's a whole tapestry of thinking woven together into a cohesive whole...and three months from now, when a brand new player wanders this game, he'll have an awful lot of material to digest, all of which will help his game!

That's what we're here for. To help each other, sure, but also, to help newcomers who are struggling with various aspects. By helping them, we also sharpen our own skills and thinking. Good stuff!

-=Vel=-

EDIT: War Weariness....until jails, the only thing you can do is bulk up on cottages (raise coin to offset the losses by unhappy/protesting citizens) and keep the wars as short and sweet as possible. I seldom eat a civ in one bite anymore. Cutting them in half is usually my goal. That's enough to pull their teeth, and I can do it quickly enough so that it's not brutal on me at the end.

-v

[sabrewolf]

i totally agree: keep it short. but it doesn't really matter if you take them out completely, half or just a few cities. if you cannot talk peace for 8 to 10 turns, some of your cities can be starving -8 food or so per turn. then you cannot really work on too many cottages and need to focus on food tiles.

and even with higher taxes/culture, research will drop through the floor with 8 resistors... which is still less bad than starving cities...

[Cort Haus]

I agree Vel, these discussions are excellent. I'm looking forward to Blake coming down here and putting the boot into the Creative trait!

Malinese : I love these guys. FIN and SPI are 'always on, always useful' traits - and probably my two favourites. The synergy is in being able to both flip civics on and off as you need them, and being able to pay for the more expensive ones more easily. The defensive UU is resourceless, cheap, quick-to-research, and long lasting. It's nice for builders because you can quickly get the 'numbers up' to deter the leering glances from the AI.

Rome : What's a Praetorian? I'm so busy having fun building CCGs (Coastal Commerce Giants) with cheap granaries, courthouses, lighthouses and harbors, that I hardly notice the UU.

Bizzie : I haven't played him yet, but cheap Forges + cheap Granaries look like a combo worth focusing on.

[Krill]

I think the thing that strikes most about Bismark is this:

3 Forest Chops (or 3 pops) get you a Forge and Granary...Get the forge first, and you would actually get a few shields to spare for the next project.

Now, personally, Bismark is my favourite civ to play. He is an MFG powerhouse, but on certain types of maps, you can leverage that into alot of commerce. The Collosus, f'rinstance, comes with Metal casting, and requires a forge to build...so if you beeline to MC (you could do it via the Oracle, a la Farseer, but you can research there if you have to), and you get there around the same time as the other civs, then you not only get your forge online faster, because of the IND trait, you also build the Wonder faster, because of the IND trait. And with your cheap granaries, you are going to likely have a higher pop than any of the others, so you should be steaming along, very quickly.

The biggest problem I hav found with Bismark is that happiness generally styops you from growing vertically. Seeing how religion is not easy to get, and most happies require calender, which is normally of the beaten track (for me at least. I am starting to aim for it more now though), I find that the main 3 resources that help are gold, silver and gtems, and for each of these they give 2 happy faces with the forge. Nice, eh? And then EXP, which gives 2 health, helps over come the -1 health from the forge...

I just like the guy.

---

One other way of opening with Bismark that seems to work well is Scout>Warrior>Worker>Archer>Archer>[Then something else]

The archers can then go and choke a nearby civ, and you can beeline to bronzeworking while building a barracks, spew out a settler to go and claim some copper if there is any nearby while hoarding gold (and I also generaly have about 200 gold in the bank from huts), build some warriors and archers, connect the copper, upgrade the warriors, and go and conqueror that AI. Or human. (And I have done that with Fred as well, But I find Bismark is better at it.)

[Dominae]

Napoleon's strength is fielding a competitive Classical/Medieval army at a very low cost.

Cost reductions on Barracks and Forges means that every city can reasonably be outfitted to help the war effort. Cost reduction on Wonders is a nice builder fallback in case war is not on the horizon.

Classical/Medieval is a relatively expensive era for warmongering, as your economy is not quite in full gear yet and the techs are spread out over the tech tree. Napoleon can wait to grab all the key military techs and still have time to use them to great effect before Gunpowder comes around.

Napoleon thus loves Feudalism. With Vassalage his (melee) troops get two free Promotions on top of Combat I, providing a degree of customization that allow his troops to go head to head with those of any other civ, even UUs; Napoleon does not fear Prateorians.

That said, Napoleon really shines in Classical/Medieval era starts, and more in MP than SP; he does take time to get going on Ancient. I just love unleashing a set Woodmsan II Axemen on unsuspecting opponents!

[Velociryx]

That's an excellent point, Dominae....one that all the Industrious civs share....and it IS a good one (and I'll update my notes on France to reflect it!)...I just wonder if that's quite "enough" given some of the other civs and the vast synergy/opportunity they represent.

-=Vel=-
(back to the company)