Slingshot question

[Alkis2]

...but I have this

[Alkis2]

...and this. It's just before the space victory. From the replay you can get an idea how I played.

[Velociryx]

Cool deal. Will check it out when I get home again (tax season BLOWS)....

And hey...if you were able to keep the barbarians from the gates then I'd have to say VERY well played indeed!

-=Vel=-

[Alkis2]

Barbarians only to the right side. On the left side where I placed my second city I was too close to the AI to have barbs

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Alkis: Right...I was following the thread of the conversation correctly, but IMO, there's a bit of confusion to be found there.

Your contention is that early expansion trumps CS Slingshot and/or early G-Man generation, but this is the specific strat that (from my understanding) Lionheart concludes will be found wanting at Monarch or above (mostly due to Maintenance costs).

Now...everybody knows that I'm a big fan of early expansion, so I'm sorta surprised to be coming down on the OPPOSITE side of the debate here, but that's the lay of the land.

I regard early expansion as a means to an end. Specifically, early expansion is great if you mean to parlay its inherent production advantages into the creation of a war-machine. But you don't like wars, so that can't be your angle.

You LIKE peaceful building, which is why I'm puzzled by your stance....the horizontal land grab is the hallmark of a methodical conquerer (as opposed to a rusher, who typically runs the conquest from one, maybe two cities). But this isn't you....and yet, you shy away from the early benefits to be gleaned by G-Men and the Slingshot.

I guess I'm confused by your goals? Tell me more and I'll see if I can un-confuse me...

-=Vel=-

On maps that allow it, I combine a horizontal expansion strategy with a mostly peaceful building strategy on monarch, and it works for me. Let me put it this way: early economic development allows me to do fairly rapid peaceful horizontal expansion without falling behind in science. Over the long run, more early cities=more hammers=more money. More hammers means I can maintain a solid defensive army, fight minor wars, and sometimes even conquer small weak civs, while still using most of my hammers to build economic buildings in most of my cities.

The neat thing about Civ IV that I like as a builder is that by researching the right tech paths I can have pretty much all of my cities building economic buildings pretty much all of the time, if I have enough hammers to spare.

[Alkis2]

Yes, that's exactly what I am trying to do. I think the way you play is the sound way to open the game.

Strategies like the slingshot or other plans involving early wonders leave the player behind in development.

Can you tell us in detail how you play?

[couerdelion]

Try some different styles of play

I can draw on a little experience from Civ3 and recall that a perfectly viable strategy and middle levels was simply blown away by the AI at deity. Rapid expansion was actually viable there but even this was something that the AI would tend to win on. To win you had to concentrate on the things that it seemed possible to do better than the AI (eg worker farms, road spamming etc). To match the AI, I found that I had to play a very different game – although when translated down a notch – this game often seemed optimal strategy against the AI (except the buying techs strategy).

I have tended to concentrate on the economic strength aspect of the game relying on the minimum force needed to defend this and at Civ3 that minimum was low. With CivIV, they’ve definitely turned the heat up on the military threat side so my previous game style has had to adapt to take a slightly more cautious approach.

One thing I would encourage is to practice different game styles and also play post-slingshot. Each one will give you the chance to learn new situations and you can then practice how to play the game in each one (not just a rapid expansion then develop game). Financial and Philosophical traits work well with a peaceful development while Organised seems to be the best for those who expand through conquest with Aggressive an added bonus for pre-catapult conquest.

[Alkis2]

That's a nice idea courdelion. It would be good to have a thread on "What actually works" on the highest levels.

[couerdelion]

Sadly I'm not qualified to answer

Originally posted by Alkis2
That's a nice idea courdelion. It would be good to have a thread on "What actually works" on the highest levels.

Since I only play at Emperor I have yet to experience the awesome power of the AI at Deity level

But here's one guess for an early priority.

ACQUIRE COPPER!!!

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Alkis2
Yes, that's exactly what I am trying to do. I think the way you play is the sound way to open the game.

Strategies like the slingshot or other plans involving early wonders leave the player behind in development.

Can you tell us in detail how you play?

Sure. I've tried a bunch of different stratagies, but this is the one I use most often.

When I'm going for a peacefull-builder stratagy, the first thing I do is found one of the first two religions. The economic benifits are huge, and (on monarch, anyway; I have yet to try it on emperor) I can always manage to do it even if I start without mysticism. If you're playing a civ without mysticism, the key is to go for hinduism; AI civs that are trying for a religon always go for buddism first (which only makes sense, because meditiation is the more useful technology), which means that all the AI's with myst start researching meditation and you have time to research both myst and polythesim before they finish both meditiation and polythesim. You can get meditation later. Along with the economic bonuses, if you get one of the first two religions, it will tend to spread very far on its own, and you usually end up with at least one neighbor as a co-religionist and an ally without having to spend any hammers on missonaries in the early game.

After that, it varies. Always get archery fairly early, but otherwise, I focus on economic techs, like pottery, the wheel, sailing if I have a lot of costal cities, agraculture, ect. Bronze working is nice, slavery is great, but unless I'm trying for an early rush, bronze working can wait a little bit. Last game I haven't had copper at all, and I got by on just archers until I got iron working.

(shrug) The goal is to make a strong enough economy, early enough, to let me expand quickly. I'm willing to take some risks with very early millitary if it lets me get more cities up and going quickly; I have lost some games to barbarian invasion, but so long as you're careful with your archers and don't get terribly unlucky, you can usually get away with it. My early production tends to be a couple of warriors, a settler, a worker, and the rest a split between archers and more settlers. A barreks if I can squeeze one in, or possibly a granery if I've got a city with a lot of hammers and a lot of 2 food squares room in the city radius to expand into, but mostly I just build settlers and defense in all of my cities until I get libraries. By the time all the room is taken up, I usually have 5-8 cities. If it'll get me more land, or especally if it'll get me a resource, I don't mind starting cities on marginal terrain; they'll pay for themselves eventually. The only early wonder I ever build is the great lighthouse, and then only if I have mostly costal cities.