Early Wonders Overrated

[Yosho]

(shrug) It's all about timing. I've been able take a nice amount of land from anohter civ and THEN build the gardens (like I said, the AI does not seem to even try to build the gardens until he already has an aquaduct, so it's easy). The primary thing the gardens do is to take hammers from your capitial city, and use them to dramatically accelerate the expansion of border cities, saving you at least 15-20 turns in every one of those cities, helping you get your courthouses and libraries online that much faster and increasing the hammer and commerce production of those cities. As I don't like to start another war until I have the cities I took in my last war producing some kind of profit for me, that 15-20 turn jump in all of my new border cities seems like enough reason to build the gardens.

[Aginor]

My philosophy on warmongering is a bit different.

In short, until Longbowmen show up in force, I go all out on the offensive. Once all potential targets have Feudalism, I back off until I've got my Cavalry to dig them out, and go all-out on the offensive until Domination is achieved. Capped cities in the last round build culture improvements for obvious reasons.

Are you razing or keeping captured cities? I can see the Gardens if you're putting cities to the sword. Not so sure that I see it if you're keeping the cities.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Aginor
My philosophy on warmongering is a bit different.

In short, until Longbowmen show up in force, I go all out on the offensive. Once all potential targets have Feudalism, I back off until I've got my Cavalry to dig them out, and go all-out on the offensive until Domination is achieved. Capped cities in the last round build culture improvements for obvious reasons.

But if you grow that fast and that constantly, and have an army that large, dosn't it kill your research, especally if you're not taking breaks in the war to build up your infastructure and economy?

I'm just wondering, because I have not been able to make that kind of "constant war" stratagy work in this game as well as it does in older civ games...

Are you razing or keeping captured cities? I can see the Gardens if you're putting cities to the sword. Not so sure that I see it if you're keeping the cities.

(shrug) If I'm completly wiping someone off the map, I usually raze at least some of their cities.

[Velociryx]

Unless my cultural borders will cover over the land in questioin, I tend to keep most cities I conquer, for denial purposes if nothing else.

The AI expands like freakin' Kudzu, and if you leave them even one average tile, they'll plop a cheese ball city on it, so I like to lock as much land down as possible, but then, I'm a control freak like that....

-=Vel=-

[khearn]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Unless my cultural borders will cover over the land in questioin, I tend to keep most cities I conquer, for denial purposes if nothing else.

The AI expands like freakin' Kudzu, and if you leave them even one average tile, they'll plop a cheese ball city on it, so I like to lock as much land down as possible, but then, I'm a control freak like that....

-=Vel=-

But if an AI wants to plop down a cheeseball city in a lousy location, why not let them? It costs them the production to build a settler and a couple of escort units, and raises their maintenance cost, for a city that will probably never be worth anything. (and may end up getting culture flipped).

The only real downside I see to you is that it may cause a close border diplomatic negative. I guess there is the danger of a culture bomb as well.

On the other hand, I also have that gut reaction that I want to keep the AIs out of "my territory". I seldom raze a city, unless it is in a really bad location.

[Aginor]

Kudzu is right on the money. Leave one piece of earth unscorched and another bloody weed springs back up. If the city location is behind my lines and utterly, horrifically, terrifyingly bad, I may consider razing it. However, as a rule I like to control space. Since I'm not a culture fanatic (I like my Theatres, but that's about the only concession I will make) the only way to control space, particularly on the borders, is to capture and hold cities. Razing even a bad city location near the border is likely to cost me 10 or more tiles, and unless I feel I can quickly backfill space within my own (new) borders, I generally leave the city standing.

How do I manage my economy? Had a discussion with one of my grad school classmates on philosophical differences here that clarified my thinking somewhat.

I view my empire this way: the core generally is where I generate my commerce, with hammer cities where there are significant hills or special resources. Since I need Towns for when Free Speech comes online, I need to get those Cottages up early, so they get spammed up like mad, and the hills near my commerce cities get mined so that I can actually build city improvements as needed. (Though the most basic infrastructure improvements such as Granaries and Libraries are likely to get poprushed, particularly if I have food specials. I have a particularly obnoxious Emperor game going right now where Rome has two Fish and a bunch of Floodplains in the city radius, and I just keep growing Rome to size 6 or so and killing off 3 citizens for buildings and Settlers every ten turns.)

Now, a half dozen cities with spammed Cottages and a coastal city or two hardly meets the needs of my treasury in the short run, but it doesn't really matter. I fully expect to run a massive deficit for quite some time after I'm done conquering; I'm used to it by now.

The cities I conquer in the first wave tend to get turned into Hammer producers. This way I've got a buffer zone between my commerce and the other side's pillagers in the event that I fail to properly see a sneak attack coming. Generally at the end of the first wave of expansion (call it 400-600 AD once Feudalism hits everywhere) I'm bleeding cash like mad (50-70/turn is not uncommon at 60-70% research), but I've got a big fat treasury to buy 40-50 turns of research from all the conquering.

Diplomacy is a GREAT way to address the rate of commerce bleeding. See, with all that dirt you've conquered, you've got multiple iterations of numerous resources. Trade for the ones you haven't got, and you should still have several additional copies of resources left over. Trade *these* for all the gold per turn your remaining rivals can feed you. Basically this cripples their ability to upgrade their units and finances your research at the same time, and gives you a diplo bonus over time to boot. It's an excellent deal that you definitely should take advantage of.

Eventually you'll get your Granaries and Libraries up and can get to work on getting some Courthouses up to slow the flow of commerce loss. Typically at this point, the Forbidden Palace also goes up in a large city located in the direction I intend to expand into. I rarely get Versailles (Divine Right just isn't a priority for me), but on the strength of the core commerce and the additional support of coastal/commerce conquered cities, I should have a manageable economy and a decent tech lead. Unis go up ASAP to get Oxford to help with the tech situation.

Then it's just about converting the tech lead to the win, which is where Cavalry come in. Having grabbed a quarter to a fifth of the map, you've got the hammer lead, and it just becomes a question of converting on it by hitting your nearest neighbor without guns hard. Once his cities are fully yours, your hammer lead is overwhelming and there's no way anyone can outproduce you, which means that if you keep it to one war at a time victory is assured. Your trade relationships and the occasional tech bone as necessary easily buys enough time to run everyone over.

Haven't attempted Deity yet...but I imagine that this probably will struggle there due to the additional AI Settler and the consequent massive expansion of the AI early on. I suspect that better war planning than I typically engage in (which basically resembles that of gathering and unleashing a horde of Mongols on AI civs one by one, then just making up the battle plans turn by turn as I go) will be necessary to win at such a level.

[Jaguar]

The Oracle is very cheap for what it does.

A general rule for wonders is to avoid the obviously useless ones (Hagia Sophia comes to mind) and ones where you don't have the appropriate resource.

[JackRudd]

Eh, Hagia Sophia's not too bad. Particularly not given the Great Engineer points it produces.

[Jaguar]

Sure, I've built it, but its benefit goes obselete at the exact time it would become useful. If it worked for railroad building, I would build it more often.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The AI expands like freakin' Kudzu, and if you leave them even one average tile, they'll plop a cheese ball city on it, so I like to lock as much land down as possible, but then, I'm a control freak like that....

Indeed. It put a city behind my cultural border once, on the other side of my civ, directly away from his. It wasn't exactly a fantastic spot, either - I had taken those already. Needless to say it's mine after I was done.