Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[Ninot]

These threads are awesome, and when I have free time, I just read and read and read.

But wow, I wish they could be condensed. They are SO great.

[Aukland123]

Tommy how do you use slaving in the early game, you mentioned above you use it to salve for your first worker.

And im sure you use it when you are in danger, but are there any other occasions like in C3C it was often used to rush a granary as you would quickly make up the growth as a result.

Would you for example salve to get a massive stack of Axes? I found this is only useful when you have a high food and low shields in city, would you agree?

I have been told the way to salve is to wait until 1 turn left, then full sheilds rollover, or do you slave as soon as you can?

[Hermann the Lombard]

Aukland: I've also seen the suggestion to pop rush (slave) using two pop points at once to get twice the benefit in hammers in one shot without incurring a longer duration of unhappiness, rather than doing two rushes of one point each getting the same number of hammers but with twice the duration of unhappiness.

Ninot: It would be great to have the thread condensed. Care to do it?

[tommynt]

if u poprush or produce is mainly a question of your land

if u have lots of food and grow every turn or very 2nd - sure poprush like crazzy - espacially in these 1 or 2 food res rest mainly huts ciites poprush is only way to get good production.

and yes i rush espacially early as i usually try to have good prducion by working my land after

and sure as soon as u hit unhappy popele just poprush em away - no use to have this red dudes in yoiur city

[enderw]

My MP strategy

you can't trust your neighbors, but you can convince them to bug someone else.

For example, I usually ignore early religions, but my tech goals are roughly Pottery then Bronze working then CS the Machinery. If I can't get copper or iron, I give in and research archery. But post 2 or 3 archers or axemen (or spearmen if near mongols, early rushers usually won't pick egypt or persia) in your boarder cities. Not a horde, but enough to convince the rusher that there is esier prey.

Then what happens. I switch to buear. Build an academy in my cap. and start cranking infrastructure (forges are great for war or wonders). By the time the rusher has taken or nearly taken the other poor sap with his pants down, I have macemen and crossbowmen. (if near mongols I make pikemen more of a priority).

Now I attack the rusher in the back, and he will sue for peace (or quit the game) after I crush a stack or two and take a few cities. The player he was crushing originally will LOVE me so I have no war worries there and I can go on playing my builder game.

I'm not usually a war monger. but one time ai Built a city 2 squares away from my only source of copper. My neighbors the Germans built a city one square away clearly trying to steal my copper. So I pop/chopped about 6 chariots and took his city (it had 2 warriors and one archer) He then started swearig at me (What did he expect if he tris to steal my resources, I had even had a warrior fortified on the copper to keep an eye on it). Anyway turned out that he only had one warrior in Berlin, so I took that too. I mean even a peaceful player can only take so much blatant neglect of defense before going on a kiling spree.

The point is you don't need a huge defense, just a defense that makes one of yoru neighbors an easy target. That buys enough time to blow by the conqueror tech wise so you get such good battle odds that his hordes don't bother you. What makes this even better is China's chokonus as you don't need to get to construction to get a stack killer. I love it when rampaging romans invade china with a Strack of doom of praets and 6 or 7 choks take it out.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard


Ninot: It would be great to have the thread condensed. Care to do it?

actually being worked on by other members

please be patient

[Hermann the Lombard]

Patience? What is "patience"? We know nothing of patience!

I've done that sort of condensation, and I know it takes a LOT of effort. My thanks to those who do so.

[Ellestar]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Finally, given that militarism has a MUCH greater weight in game score than any other component, you don't have to be a good builder at all in MP. All you have to know how to do is rush.

Militarism? You mean, land? In MP? Hmm where you saw such games where it's so important

Anyway, to rephrase you, all you have to know is how to defend from rush. Of course, if you're playing only with/against the players who don't know how to defend from rush then it will be all about rush. IMHO it's obvious. But thats why there is a ladder here. Some players do know how to defend against rush.

Originally posted by Velociryx
From my experience (especially true on Pangea maps, but in general true for MP as a whole), your two nearest rivals can almost always be undone before you GET to Catapults--thus, one of the importances of the beeline to bronze, am I correct?

Thankfully, from my previous experience with other games, i knew from the very start that it's absolutely pointless to play non-ladder games. Now i see what i was right. Where you find players who reliably die before catapults? And not one but TWO of them? In FFA as i understand?

Well, first rule of the online play is that if you want a good games then you should find players with which you can have a good games. Not too easy, maybe not too hard. It's like a difficulty setting in singleplayer.

Sure you can kill one if he doesn't have iron/bronze and you're very close and it's even better if he started with a scout and you had a warrior to chocke him at the very start. But other than that, it's hard to imagine something like that, especially in FFA and against 2 opponents.

Even then, once everyone starts getting them, either really BIG stacks, or highly fluid, spread-out forces will counter a catapult-heavy opponent, making it not all THAT hard to deal with (and this too, is where the rush comes into play, with the idea being to overrun the opposition before they have time to firmly entrench themselves.

Ok, maybe one elephant+one axeman combo. But it dies to cats on open anyway (you'll lose less production than the enemy). Everything else is relatively far away.

So having overrun 1-2 opponents pre-cat, you stand a reasonably good chanced at fighting an opponent who did not (or may well not have) had a similar opportunity, and thus, when you face him, you have a decidedly superior production pool (more cities and more land, aggregate).

Well, if you can overrun 1-2 opponents pre-cat then you should play with better opponents. No?
If you can do it then all game is pointless anyway.

No real reason why, with a bit of skill exploiting the combat engine, you couldn't bulldog your way over him (this would be true even if we assume an empire of similar size....catapults can be built by the attacker as well, and certainly do not make attack impossible in any case).

Yes but you're faster on your own roads (if someone don't have roads when cat stacks are moving then he should learn how to play). And only attackers do have a collateral damage. Even minor damage means that you have 66% chance to win. And this ratio is SIGNIFICANTLY worse if defender have a slight numbers advantage (if all is equal then defender should have more units because he has more time to produce units).
So, cat stack that attacks first wins 100% of the time. And cat stack on roads ALWAYS attacks first. So, defender always wins if all else is equal. And attacking cat stack kills any other stack of doom with any units (as it should).

Originally posted by couerdelion
Wouldn't these be captured by the first MP warrior to come wandering your way?

No. You have a vision because of your culture, your enemy has a vision of one square. Worker has 2 moves, warrior has one move. How exactly one warrior can catch a worker?
It becomes hard when enemy warrior is fortified on a forest between your city and your iron/bronze or something like that. Other than that, it shouldn't be a big problem.

Originally posted by Velociryx
In MP, from my experience, you can go a looooooong ways by mastering 1-2 of the basics, and letting the rest go (ie - learn how to optimize your city outputs, and learn how to maneuver and fight effectively with your troops--choke, rush, counter-punch, etc).

Aside from those to things, can you think of anything that's really critical to MP? I mean...anything that if you don't do, will cost you a game on a regular basis?

If you know this and enemy doesn't know this then sure it's enough to win in MP. It's the same as if you play against an AI without any advantages. Since AI doesn't manage economy well and it doesn't fight well, you can win 100% of the time against such an AI if you do it better. When you're facing an equally skilled opponent in MP, it's not true. So, a player with more diverse skills will win more on average.

Originally posted by Velociryx
Thus, in my opinion, it takes relatively FEWER (not less mind you, just fewer) skills to master MP than it does to master SP.

***

It does not, however, take a great NUMBER of skills to pull it off. Nor does it use more than 10-15% of the stuff that's built into the game engine as anything but window dressing (if those things put in an appearance at all).

Well, diplomacy is out in most games (though there are epic multiplayer games for it). But that's all. You'll not be able to name any more *things* that are significantly less important in multiplayer compared to singleplayer. And diplomacy isn't 85%-90% of the game.
Some strategies/tactics are out, but that's because MP is more competitive and so all non-competitive strategies are out (like 3 religions first etc.). Computer doesn't play good enough to punish you for wrong strategies.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Currently playing - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Get thee behind me, Satan! [Once I inevitably burn out on Civ 4, that's where I'll go; I really enjoyed Morrowind. After I burn out on that I may very well be back, as happened with Civ 3.]

[Addled Platypus]

just to wet everyones appetite

this is being converted to word

and will have a table of contents that is hyperlinked

this should work for most everyone

(back to work)

[Elledge]

As a relatively new ladder player (about a month of serious play) I'd like to reiterate what tommy, Ellestar, and other MP players in this thread are saying.

MP is not only about military. I suspect that the reason this is a popular idea is because when a SP player (who is used to being generally peaceful with AI until he wants to go to war) starts playing MP, the immediate reason he loses is insufficient early military.

However, that doesn't mean that MP is military-centric - it means that military is too often an afterthought in SP! I played SP up through emperor level or so, and my strategy was always outtech, outtech, outtech. I still play a stronger builder's game than anyone else I know. Because, guess what - when you're ahead in tech, military does itself. You can't lose when you're building cavalry and they're building longbows and maces.

(Now, don't come tell me that that falls apart at immortal and deity, because yes, I'm sure it does. But so does almost any strategy because the AI cheats so badly. The only way I've seen documented wins is by an absolute 100% early war campaign, usually with praetorians, on smaller maps. If I'm wrong, go to town.)

The thing is with singleplayer that works. You can go to war when you have the advantage and you are only very rarely forced into war at a disadvantage. That makes war fun and easy to win, and it also means that the SP game is not about the war; it's about getting the advantage.

Multiplayer is about both. I have a strong win record so far on ladder in both FFA scenarios and brutal team games, and 80% of my wins are games where I built a strong military presence, intimidated, fought (rarely eliminated - defense is strong) and defended against my neighbors, and MOST importantly outteched and outbuilt. The only difference here is that I had to stay honest and keep playing the military part of the game, even while I was building an empire.

But in a ladder cton, the player with the strongest military conquests only very rarely wins in my experience. The winner is usually the player who is the strongest builder and manages to also defend his large, well-cultured, happy, healthy, thriving empire successfully.

Now, if after this, your reaction is still "I like diplomacy and the game isn't the same without that," then OK. Stick to singleplayer, because that's a fair complaint. But I don't think that it's at all accurate to say that MP is military-centric. It only seems that way because military can be almost an afterthought in SP.

This is why almost everyone acknowledges that "for all practical purposes, there IS no late game in MP"....cos there's not.

Person who can chop the biggest army fastest, wins.

No real nod to cultural development. No real nod to religious development. Some crude nod to diplomacy ("you don't attack me, and I won't attack you!"), but that's about it. Everything else takes the back seat to combat.

That's not true. Rushes are generally successful only as a means of choking, and only if someone has significantly superior force, because (as I detail below) defense is a very easy job. The more time you're spending in someone else's territory, the more vulnerable you are. You should only be doing it when you are in a very strong position and you have particular tactical advantage to gain, like scouting or preventing a resource hookup temporarily.

This shades the whole of the game, and renders diplomacy all but a moot point. It renders nearly every builderish aspect of the game a moot point, as the overriding goal becomes a) security and b) force projection. Everything else is pushed aside in preference for these, and the person who can get a "lock" the fastest, will generally score a quick kill, netting more land and more cities, and thus, a comparative production advantage, which will be magnified by the NEXT kill, and so forth, until the win is achieved.

This is true in some sorts of FFA pangaea games, but in the majority of ladder games (although I personally am not a fan of this!) the game is 2-city elim; if a player loses 2 cities, even little size 1 cities or a size 4 city he just took, he is eliminated. That means that if you kill your neighbor and intend to take over his cities or expand into his land, you had better be really damn prepared, because suddenly you have a wider empire to defend and probably a neighbor on both sides eager to take you down. It helps halt the sort of steamroller effect that quick elimination brings.

Plus, a lot of posters here are either ignorant of the fact or ignoring the fact that defense in C4 has a lot of big advantages. Basically, the single advantage an attacker has is surprise. He knows where he's going, and he has the opportunity to choose wherever he likes to head off to. Note that with strong culture, sentries, and a good road network to move units around on, suddenly this advantage goes away.

The defender has multiple advantages. One is much faster movement on his home ground, which means he can -always- be the one to strike at the attacker's stack(s), if he so chooses, and he can almost always retreat his wounded units in luxury. Two is healing; the attacker can waste no time after the battle begins because the defender can retreat and quickly heal. The attacker might be able to achieve some healing with a large stack and a medic, but that's an awfully tough option when you move slow and there are catapults around.

Three is city defense; the attacker has a difficult time taking out a defended city without very excessive force or several turns worth of bombardment (and healing and reinforcement for the defender, which is usually fatal.) Four is knowledge of the terrain; a defender has omniscient view over the whole battlefield, knows exactly how long every reinforcement will take, knows exactly how many units he can slave and draft, knows exactly where his attackers can get to in how many turns, and knows exactly where every unit in his territory is.

Add these up and with equal forces an attacker will get slaughtered almost every time. Nobody is going to get eliminated unless either they are bad, very much caught by surprise, or so far behind in production or tech that they would probably lose anyway. Pillaging is often the same story; most of the useful things to pillage are on open ground, and every turn you spend pillaging, an opponent will spend picking away at your stack with the best units for the job and healing up.

This is not a rusher's game. It's a defender's game. You just need to know how to defend and how much you need to defend. In a lot of games I personally stand by the precept that I should build every single unit I need for the job and not a single one more. The trick is knowing how many units you need - that means really good recon and a lot of experience - and knowing what tools, tactics and techs you need to use them properly. If you can do that, and you can outbuild, you can't lose, because for every unit your opponent wastes or every extra one he builds, he isn't building a bank or a library or an extra worker.

One more bit before I'm done - one fellow above me suggested that the skillset for MP is only 10-15% as large as SP. I completely disagree as above. Religion, culture (which means defense and recon both, all at once!), civic choices, wonders (huge impact) all have a VERY strong presence at every level of multiplayer. I cannot think of one aspect of the game besides diplomacy that loses any importance. Feel free to correct me.

I'm worried that some people will discount multiplayer after getting killed quickly, and never realize how intricate and amazing the strategies can be. I'm not a huge fan of ladder gametypes myself, but tonight I played a 5v5 renaissance team game that was fun and absolutely amazingly played. My team lost a player early on - first 20 turns - to camel archers, war elephants, and macemen. We retaliated on the other side of the map and took out one city, but not enough to eliminate the fellow. Many turns later we led a fantastically awesome military campaign, three of us moving in coordination, with conquistadors and musketeers together in several stacks probably 30 squares back through enemy territory, fighting all the while, cutting off necessary roads, and bringing up grenadiers and catapults through a side road, and took out a back player. It was a long struggle uphill from there, but we took a tech advantage, defended against early cavalry, and ended up winning narrowly. After the game everyone agreed that it was a blast and beautifully played by both sides. It was the coolest thing I have seen in this game yet and was a beautiful display of skill, quick thinking, and strategy, and it's the sort of thing that could never have a match in singleplayer, where you are dealing with frankly rigid AI who can't respond to your movement properly, can't pursue a tech path to challenge your attack, can't defend well enough without having huge cheating-esque production advantages. It's a wonderful thing to be able to go up against a real peer in such an intricate and multi-faceted sort of game, where good games aren't decided until the very end and you never know how things are going to look ten turns from now.

I'm a builder at heart and a pacifist to the bone. My favorite gametype is everyone on their own large island with barbarians, free to expand and build and meet people later. I've played for months and I pride myself on my skill in the building and producing and teching game. And in my most honest opinion MP is a builder's game as well; you just need to be ready and able to defend your constructions and have the initiative to take military action even when you would rather huddle at home

[Elledge]

I intended to delete this post after merging it with the one above, but it tells me I'm not authorized. Mods feel free to clean up : - )

[monkspider]

Good post Elledge.

[Ellestar]

Originally posted by Elledge This is true in some sorts of FFA pangaea games, but in the majority of ladder games (although I personally am not a fan of this!) the game is 2-city elim; if a player loses 2 cities, even little size 1 cities or a size 4 city he just took, he is eliminated.

Actually, conquered cities don't count in that case. You'll be eliminated only if you lose 2 cities you settled.

[Elledge]

Fair enough - I actually didn't realize that because all the city elim games I've played have been on auto-city-razing.