So I'm thinking about writing....

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Velociryx
There's a possible trick for AGG civs to pull here a bit later in the game. Chop a barracks into an unconnected city (new build or pillaged & conquered) and build a few medic-warriors, one for each stack you want to operate.

I like this trick, and would further suggest that it might be worth pillaging a road to isolate one of your cities (disconnect it from the copper) to do that same thing.

-=Vel=-

A specialist medical centre

You’re probably right Vel about the degree of differences in approach to specialisation though I think the example about not mining an iron tile because it is near a commerce city is the sort of gospel thing that would be spread about by some lunatic fringe group who only bring the game into disrepute.

On specifics, I don’t include barracks as a must build category. In fact, I build these quote sparingly – maybe in 50% of cities – but almost always in the second city. I tend to roughly equate a barracks as adding about 50% to the value of military unit builds. So a city will get its monies worth on a barracks if it builds 100 hammers worth of units (or 50 hammers for a non-AGG civ). I think military builds tend to follow Pareto’s law of CIVIV - the bit where 80% of work is done by 20% of cities so the lack of barracks everywhere is no great problem.

Even in the direst emergency you can still whip a unit without the 3 XP but, tbh, how often do you really have to do that anyway. In my last game I got one of my second/third tier cities to build a longbow for a new city that I had built within cultural borders. It was only when this was finished that I realised it did not have any experience but the city was so far within my borders that this was an insignificant loss.

Barracks, like extra units are really insurance costs that your civilisations pays to protect its assets (when they are not fighting abroad) while the benefit, after the first few barracks and units starts to reduce per extra unit of insurance. The cost can roughly be translated into lost beakers/gold/GPP that arise because of alternative tile selection or delayed buildings of more specialised science/gold multipliers. At a broadly theoretical level, you stop building those insurance units when the unit benefit is lower than the unit cost.

Going back to this other game of mine, I had my second city without a barracks and it had witnessed the Aztec invasion early in the game. Being a border holy city, four floodplains, river and gold, it stuck to building markets and monasteries (and missionaries) and farmed out the defensive duties to Heroic Epic city. Its garrison by late-mediaeval times stuck at about 6 units after I noticed a few Arabian catapults near the border.

[Velociryx]

Yep...the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the specialist medical center...

And no worries, when I write the guide, I'm gonna give a balanced view of specialization, degrees of it, and a more generalized approach. I'll keep the fringe hounds at bay...

-=Vel=-

[couerdelion]

Well I finally ran a game in which I actually managed to get copper – Genghis is hit quite badly if he doesn’t get this – I skipped on the Archery diversion to hurry quickly to Bronze-working purely to “rush-the-rush”. Could have been a little costly because warriors are vulnerable to animals so I’d argue the option is one that requires a little courage (or luck ). I certainly would not recommend this on Raging Barbs though.

I managed to get those Axemen out very quickly thanks to superior food in my capital combined with a generous 1/3/1 plains hill marble tile for my capital that positively spews out those “window” units.

Having finished the rush I find it a little of an anti-climax despite taking out Saladin who was quite a tough nut to crack with his protective trait and a holy city as a capital. I was actually a little lucky when I attacked his capital and had assumed it would be taken in the follow-up attack. As it was, I got 4 archers with just 7 axemen and lost three of those for a city site containing, fish, four crabs, fur and a religion. That’s 140 hammers well spent – if we include the cost of the Axeman lost while attacking his poor starving second city.

All in all, I’d say the strategy works very well even against protective nations who you might be tempted to leave for swords and catapults. Saladin lasted until 1150BC which is a pretty early finish to a start-game gambit.

[Cort Haus]

I understand the point about not eliminating rivals because of later uses. This is certainly important on continents, where destroying all neighbours early on will result in an isolated start, hampered by the war effort. On a Pangea you are not dependent on local tech trading partners.

However, attacking another rival instead to beat them back too is certainly a good reason for stopping at one or two cities.

At Prince level, the first target is probably more likely to have two cities at the time of an early rush, while at Monarch they are more likely to have three, from what I've seen with these tests. Also, if the second city is a compelling target (eg it has copper and you do not) there must be a strong case for taking that, too.

I just did a Chariot Rush where this happened. Interestingly, my initial settler moved a few turns inland from a no-food coastal site (best food tile grassland forest) to settle by sheep + floodplains on turn 4. At first I felt seriously behind, but I was soon getting Vic & Boney's third cities around my borders. So, not far to travel then.

The turn disadvantage of moving the settler inland seemed to an extent to be lessened by being closer to the enemy. So the assault can be delivered sooner, and the maint costs are lower if it works.

I had no Copper, but the second city founded on horses and I popped and chopped like crazy (those chariots are cheap compared to axes!) until my capital had a happy cap of one. If I popped again the city would have been unhappy at size one, with 46 turns of unhappiness ahead. The Combat 1 Chariots did better than I expected. Two of them were usually enough for an Archer - so like Axes but cheaper and faster. Because they approach the city quicker, there's less time to produce more defenders. The worry was that the second French city had copper, so I had to take that.

So I made peace with Boney (his third city is now the capital) and HBR has arrived. The question is, do I build Gers and maybe Keshiks, or just immediately add some axes to my force and go after Vicky asap?

I'm even wondering whether HBR should come straight after Pottery, seeing as I'm loathe to invest the time in building its fruits when the existing tools should suffice. I felt that getting Mysticism in there for Monuments was worthwhile. Border expansions were needed for the new cities' resources, and to defend a bit against a creative neighbour.

[Cort Haus]

- oh and I did a 'kick the doors in' assault rather than a worker-strike and subsequent build-up. This seems to make a lot of sense with Chariots, as they can't defend and choke as well, and have the extra move to surprise the opposition.

[Velociryx]

Wow CH! Sounds like a GREAT game!

At this point, I would say that the "rush" is clearly over....now, you're just addicted and building on the early success! (not that that's a bad thing, either!). And you bring to light one of the limitations of attempting to describe a general strategy in a guide.

When general strategy meets real world, strange things start to happen.

As it turns out, your rivals are close, and you've got a crack army...aside from tossing down some Gers for extra XP's, if your current bag of tricks is still getting the job done, then I don't know that I'd necessarily bother with more than a token Keshik or two, just to see how they perform. Stick with the tools that are working until you have reason to believe they'll begin to fail you.

As for me, I've been doing some additional testing too, and I'm happy to report that when I post the guide in progress this weekend (prolly sunday morning), we'll have LOTS of new material! It's 5500 words and climbing, thanks to all the good discussion here!)



-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

In Warlords, the captured worker can't move on the same turn, and it may be safer to keep him with the unit. In which case, that's not so different from capturing the worker inside the city, if he can't get home to do stuff anyway.

[Velociryx]

Depends on how close the rival is....if you're still in "the window" it's usually of minimal risk to trot him home (or homeward) without an escort....even if you lose him, you're not out any hammers, and if you need some terraforming work done, it can be well worth the risk--especially if there are more forests to chop at home!

-=Vel=-

[One_more_turn]

I would not cut Vicky any slack. If she's allowed to expand unhinged, she will be out of control quickly.

Attack with what you have, mess her up, weaken her badly, and finish the job with Keshiks.

[khumak]

I think the decision of whether to just cripple your neighbors or wipe them out entirely is dependent in large part on their aggressiveness. If I'm next to Ghandi, I want to make friends with him because I know he'll happily trade with me. If I'm next to that warmongering bastige Monty, he's going down. He's going to hate me no matter what I do so he needs to donate his cities to my cause.

[Cort Haus]

So I hit Vicky, raising Hastings & London, but holding York which was close to my capital and had Ivory. It 's tough to raise the only Holy City on the continent, but at the time the slider was on 0% Research with -2gpt.

In the end I did build 2 Gers and 2 Keshiks in my original cities, followed by two Chariots, while building barracks, 4 Axe and a Spear in the two conquered French cities. This lot was added to the bunch of remaining Chariots from the France campaign. I was able to take York (on a hill) the same turn of declaration with 2 Chariots to soften and 2 Keshiks to finish. The cheaper chariots make ideal softeners for the Keshiks, who are too damn expensive at 50h to sacrifice.

The fast movers were then able to destroy Hastings while the Axes/Spear stack lumbered towards London, where they were joined by 2 chariots for pillaging. At one point I drew everything back from London (it had six Archers and a chariot) when 4 Archers followed me. Great, a lure! So I killed those and returned to London with reinforcements - where I was just able to defeat it.

Then I built libs everywhere while working cottage tiles wherever possible and ran some scientists to get the tech moving again. I got Alphabet, and am heading for Literature for a stab at the GL and the Heroic Epic.

Of course, neither of my two victims wants to trade tech with me, and there's no-one else to trade with, so unless I can beat some tech out of them I'm going to need Optics to stay in the game.

Meanwhile, French culture is becoming a problem, and their new cities are eating Paris's tiles, so I'm going to have to hit the French again soon, hopefully getting some tech out of them. I'd also love a city on the old London site before they resettle that hill and I have to do it all again, but I expect I'm going to have to do just that.

[couerdelion]

Early chariot rush with Genghis.

I can see some merit in this strategy and tried out an alternative approach with Genghis which aims to hit earlier in the game. It would be a rather special variant of the Classic Rush since it relies on the IMP trait for an early settler and the AGG trait for getting the barracks quickly.

In simple terms the build plan rather anticipates founding on a plains hill. If you've got Ivory, Stone or Marble then that's even better and a neighbouring plains woodland hill makes this a very quick start. Of course, in playtesting the best I do is start with 5 hammers but that's enough to be getting on with. Generally speaking, I try to settle after two turns or less. Any more and you've got a lot of catching up. The other dilemma of moving from your starting position is that this almost always gives you a worse site to develop.

Hopefully you have animals near your alternative city site because the first tech to research is animal husbandry. Your gong to be founding your second city very early so want to know about horses. After this you're more likely to go for Mining and Bronzeworking to for the Pop'n'Chop

Build plan is simple. Throw out a scout to cover the neighbourhood and pop lots of huts. But don't get greedy. You want to have full knowledge of nearby terrain so you have more chance of finding nearby horses or, if you get unlucky, work out the best alternative site. There's no point planning to settle too far away because your settler is not going to have any fighters to protect him. Also your scouts are going to be the ones to keep the route to your new city clear of animals and with wolves and panthers, this might not be easy.

After the scout is finished, the settler comes. And with decent planning this should be well before 3000 AD.

In playtesting I find the tendency to pop scouts, one from the hut popped when founding Karakorum - so I skipped the first scout build and went straight to settler build. Whether it's just these games I still tend to pop units from huts like there's no tomorrow and these can certainly help clear fog for when the first settler moves out.

So far, it's never worked to well for me because the horses gamble is a bit too much like throwing the dice and hoping for a 5 or 6. Or maybe I'm just being a little unlucky. The closest horses I've found so far were about 10 tiles from the capital and bronze was no closer.

The obvious advantage here is that chariots will strike earlier in the game for three reasons

1) You hook up the resources sooner
2) Your second city joins in sooner
3) They take less time to get to your rival.

But despite the extra attrition from using weaker units, by getting the war finished sooner, and a shiny new city up and running much quicker there is a compelling reason to be a little more daring than the more "sedate" approach.

[Velociryx]

Absolutely agree. I would also say that the MOST compelling case for going this route would be when you start with Pigs, Cows, or Sheep visible in the game starting tiles.

Bronze still trumps Husbandry is most cases (opening up slavery and chop, plus the possibility of axes) whereas husbandry only opens up horses/chariots UNLESS you can immediately use the worker action that comes with it. If so, it delivers a one-two punch that compares favorably with the Bronze path. So if you have animals to put to pasture at start, Husbandry would be my default choice...otherwise, it's a crapshoot no matter what you pick. You may get horses, or you may not...you may get copper or you may not...anybody's guess.

In the absense of animals to put to pasture, the next thing I'd base my decision on then, would be the number of available forests. If I don't have many, then Bronze begins to lose at least some of its luster (although admittedly, the main power comes from slavery, and not chop...still, chop is a KILLER short term hammer burst when it comes to getting that initial force afield, and this--the presence or absence of ample forest tiles in the absence of critters to pasture--would be the variable I'd look to.

-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

Re: Early chariot rush with Genghis.

Originally posted by couerdelion
But despite the extra attrition from using weaker units, by getting the war finished sooner, and a shiny new city up and running much quicker there is a compelling reason to be a little more daring than the more "sedate" approach.

I tried this, and although I didn't get a plains hill in range of a food tile I pressed on. The final timeline for the first attack (with 8 chariots) turned out almost identical to my previous test where I archer-rushed with the 'sedate' approach, which was attack ~turn 63, take another city and make peace ~turn 75. So the extra hammer is essential.

I'm not too used to taking a plains hill tile to start with, as I usually prioritise food resources-in range and being adjacent to a river.

Interestingly, if the starting area looks a bit sparse for resources, there's more chance of Horses or Bronze showing up in the capital.

[uberfish]

I'm not really very impressed with the current 20-hammer-with-diminishing-distance-returns chop unless I have a huge amount of forest inside city radii. You need an extra worker to really make use of it, and that costs 60h so that's three chops before you break even. I would usually rather just have my workers build roads so that the rushing units arrive a couple of turns earlier and it's easier to clear barbarians.