Devel's Workshop Idea Thread

[Silver14]

Warring With Warriors

I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with taking AI cities very early on starting with a stack of 4-5 warriors and expanding from there. As things progress very slowly in Marathon mode you can afford to explore awhile before settling in. I start with an aggressive Civ then proceed to wonder a bit until I encounter an enemy unit or city. If it’s a unit I head in the direction I found the unit in so that I might find where their capital is at. Barbarian animals are not a problem as they do not seem to spawn until after your settlers build a city.

Once I find enemy borders I settle in and build my first city nearby, preferably on a plains hill so that I get two productions and then set myself to work the most productive square available and proceed to churn out warriors. Aggressive trait gives the warriors a +10% combat advantage and is very valuable with this style of early warfare. Once I have at least 5 warriors I’ll head to the nearest AI capital and take it over. This early in the game usually the AI has two or three warriors as defense. As I have built my capital close to theirs it’s an instant second city without the pains of high maintenance due to distance. Also I prefer the Japanese as Tokugawa’s organized trait also helps to reduce the cost of capturing AI cities early on.

The screen shot below is from a recent game, where my wonderings led me to two AI capitals and I settled in between them on a plains/hills square and started working a stone square. Once I had the 5 warriors I took out the Mali as they were the greatest threat should they aquire archery and start building their UU Skirmishers. Once their only city was mine I worked them on a plains forested hills square to begin mass producing more warriors to help take out the Chinese. This gave their city no growth, which is slow anyway, but let me produce a warrior every 8 turns. I had around 8 warriors when I took the Chinese capital and captured a worker in the process. The Indians were a bit to the south and had founded Buddhism so I went for them next with around 10 warriors. By 2000 BC I had three out of six opponents dead, four cities, a religion and a mass of warriors.


Warring With Warriors

This was on Prince Difficulty. I tried this a few times on Monarch but the AI’s all get Archery quickly and it is harder to capture them. This strategy is devastating on Prince and lower on Marathon speed provided you can find an enemy AI on your landmass. The site where I built my capital isn’t that great, but that most starting locations are a plethora of resources the other three I captured will easily make up for it. Usually I am not the highest in tech for a bit but once my cities ramp up I quickly out stretch the other AI. I use the warriors to defend from barbs and set myself to get bronze so that I might take out any remaining AI’s. If their cities are far from my capital with no useful wonders their cities get razed from this point.

Tokugawa 4000BC Save

Tokugawa 2000BC Save

[Fosse]

[snafuc4]

"The worst start ever"

Resourses within your initial city start that i) take time to exploit, ii) need you to move 1 turn before gaining the 'sweet spot', or iii) you don't even know you have, so you move in the wrong direction

Racial problems - I don't know if it's been tied down yet as to whether each leader has a natural 'worst enemy', but try surrounding the above with the creative and/or aggressive leaders (MM, Alex, Napoleon, Catherine etc)

On a different note, a section on how you would play the same starts depending on game length (say normal up to marathon), taking into account the leader you started with (is there a way of retaining the same map but regenerating leaders, other than worldbuilder?)

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
but I wonder how you'd do with a start like this:

Difficult to say unless you post another pic showing what popped up once you founded the city, but on that start I'd go the naval/merchant route plus max hammers (BW first or after fishing for the chop routine): you have fish & clams within the city rad, plus you're on a river. Loadsa hills for production, so you should manage Lighthouse & possibly even Colossus. If you're playing Quin as opposed to Mao you should do reasonabley well here..

[uberfish]

Oh I like Fluke's start. My opening with that sort of start is build warrior/research fishing, build workboat/research bronzeworking, then the extra food kicks in spawning your worker quickly and you're in a flexible position to chop out whatever you need. (since stone was available here and there was more easily obtained health than happiness resources, I decided to open with a stonehenge/pyramid based strat and more horizontal growth.)

[Arrian]

Interesting stuff from Silver14. The opportunity cost of moving around a bit on marathon is clearly much lower than on normal speed...

-Arrian

[Hauptman]

One thing I did, and enjoyed, that rocketed me ahead of the competition, was a 2 "perfect" city start.

Any founded religion, becomes founded in your most recently aquired city. So knowing that, stopping at city 2 is required to get a couple religions in it. Then, by using preferably a philo leader to create a beaker city and a cash city to support the conquest of all neighbors to create an empire.

Running a good sized civ with profit at 100% research is something I'm sure alot of people would like to know how to do.

[Blake]

Any founded religion, becomes founded in your most recently aquired city. So knowing that, stopping at city 2 is required to get a couple religions in it. Then, by using preferably a philo leader to create a beaker city and a cash city to support the conquest of all neighbors to create an empire.

Indeed . I think the "Philo Slingshot" would work well for that. One interesting thing is that philo can be grabbed by a great scientist, it might be possible to use Oracle to grab CoL then pop a fast GS for Philo (obviously a phi leader is by far the best for this). With pacifism you then have +200% rate, and the 2 GPP from the oracle becomes 6. In short order you have a great prophet for the first shrine, if yu have food you can create a right heap of priests. And can build Angor Wok too.

[JackRudd]

I think I'm going to try a Great People Pump start.

[OzzyKP]

Perhaps something on getting a culture win.

[00h00m]

I would also vote for a city specialization workshop, or maybe even a workshop to focus on what improvements to put around a city at given points of the game ( amajor weak point in my game I think).

Thanks Vel for all the great posts!

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Perhaps something on getting a culture win.

IMHO culture wins are the most difficult victories to accomplish. If you're playing in a typical manner, you can choose domination, space race, or diplomatic domination (voting yourself a diplomatic victory because you have 60% of the world's population) at your discretion. A cultural victory, on the other hand, requires a completely different style of play well before the Modern era. I suspect most players out there have never completed a Cultural victory.

Artists GP's, which are near-useless in normal play, are highly useful for a Culture victory.

On the other hand, I don't know if it's really suitable for a workshop, because it's really a middle game strategy, and the level of detail in Workshops I and II is unsustainable.

I've done it once on Monarch. After reading a few threads on the subject, I realized the key to a Cultural victory wasn't the various cultural buildings, but late game commerce converted to Culture multiplied by Cathedrals and wonders. This means getting several religions, either by founding them or conquest, and far more Temples than you need for happiness.

In my case I had Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Islam, all of which I founded myself. Four Cathedrals gives you +200% culture. Free Speech gives you +100%, and a Broadcast Tower gives you +50%. From the Wonders,
Broadway, Hollywood, and Rock and Roll each give you +50%, and the Hermitage gives you +100%. Thus your weakest Culture city can get a total bonus of +450% or so, for a total multiplier of x5.5 commerce to Culture.

- Gus

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by 00h00m
I would also vote for a city specialization workshop, or maybe even a workshop to focus on what improvements to put around a city at given points of the game ( amajor weak point in my game I think).

Thanks Vel for all the great posts!

I'll echo you and also call for a city specialization workshop. That'd be great fun, IMO.

[OzzyKP]

I don't think the culture wins are all that difficult, you just need to be a concerted builder. I've had a few culture wins. But if as you say most people haven't done it, then a tutorial would be useful.

[lange17]

I'd like to vote for an "isolated start" workshop. I can't stand being stuck on my own island. I can't attack my neighbor to get some free cities and I can't trade with him to keep up in the tech race. If I rush to astronomy, it takes forever and I'm way behind everyone else by the time I get there. What can I do?