Ramses II

[DirtyMartini]

Folks,

Started a couple of games last night with RamsesII, a leader I hadn't used before. I like the traits the UU and the UB. Seems he should be one of the strongest leaders in the early game. Here's the problem I run into:

Both the UU and the UB are very early and quickly obsolete, and they are in different arms of the tech tree. Obvious strategic priorities are --

1) AH, hook up horses, build war chariots. Nice and easy (in theory) since we start with wheel and agriculture.
2) Mysticism, build obelisk, assign priests for early GP and nice cash flow.
3) Following 2, you should be able to continue through the religious arm to found a religion in order to leverage that early GP fully and also throw down a religious wonder or two with the old industrious trait and go for more GPs to settle.

Here's the problem -- starting without Mysticism, it's hard to get a religion short of beelining Judaism, and that remains a crap shoot at best. You leave yourself with minimal worker techs and no defense, may need to detour to archery if no horses. Also, starting without mining, you're usually production poor initially, so you're tempted to detour to get Mining or even Bronzeworking for the chop.

Anyway, by the time you do all that, your UU is more or less obsolete and you may or may not have a religion of your own. Basically, it seems to me you can't really maximize the UU and UB both, and starting with Wheel and Ag argues for that early War Chariot rush more than going for a religous strat.

Anyone have any other thoughts on how to maximize the War Chariot, Obelisk/early GP and spiritual? Any thoughts welcome.

Obviously it depends on start/neighbors/etc. I usually play monarch epic continents or ice age wide continents.

[JackRudd]

Obelisk? You're Industrious - build spigging Stonehenge.

[SirIlya]

The beautiful thing about Ramses is that you can CS slingshot using great prophets and do so very fast/early in the game if you avoid Masonry until after the GP lightbulb(s).

[MasterDave]

If you do not want to try something risky like a CS slingshot, I would recomment an earlier oracle build in order to learn Code of Laws and found confuscianism. This also nets you 2 Great Prophet points and can be built very easily after your first worker and settler are out. All you need tech wise is Writing at the time of the Oracle's completion. Additionally, on Monarch level on a Medium world, I find that if you get Mysticism first and then Polytheism, you will found Hinduism about 60% of the time, especially if you have some commerce from a river or something.

I disagree that the War Chariot goes obsolete quickly. Chariots in general are incredibly cheap units, are fast, and are devastating against axemen, and (at 5 str) are excellent at softening up city defenders with their withdraw abilities. The couple of times I played Egypt against the AI, I found myself using War Chariots a lot right up until I started building Knights. The real danger is not getting a horse early in the game, but the same is true for Persia, Mongolia, and Carthage.

[Arrian]

The War Chariot is pretty powerful. You can easily prune an AI civ or two with them. Obviously spears stop them, but if you hit before copper/iron is hooked up or if you hit outlying settlements that aren't road connected yet, you can still do quite a bit of damage.

WCs also make you invulnerable to barbs (I play raging, so that matters to me).

Rameses II has become my favorite leader to play. Love the traits, love the UU. I don't really care for the UB, but that's small beans.

-Arrian

[Solver]

Ramesses is a great leader. Industrious means fast Wonders. Which plays very nicely with your UB. Get Stonehenge, particularly if you have Stone, then it's ultra-cheap. That's culture and GP points for you, with the Obelisk's benefit.

War Chariots are powerful. They own Axemen, so they stop Barbs completely - and they can also stop AIs. Flanking II War Chariots are great for softening cities up. They're not even obsolete that fast, I will certainly use Flanking II War Chariots even when I have Swordsmen to cheaply weaken tough defenders.

[Drefsab]

I think what we're saying is that the Egyptian UB is pretty much worthless. But that's okay because the same can be said for a lot of other civ's UBs.

[JackRudd]

The Egyptian UB is not worthless, but it has to be used actively. If all you're doing with your Obelisks is letting them sit there and generate culture, then yes, they may as well be Monuments. If, on the other hand, you're using them to run lots of Priest specialists and thereby generating Great Prophets (thus tying in nicely with the Great Prophet points from Stonehenge), you'll probably do very nicely out of them.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Solver
Ramesses is a great leader. Industrious means fast Wonders. Which plays very nicely with your UB. Get Stonehenge, particularly if you have Stone, then it's ultra-cheap. That's culture and GP points for you, with the Obelisk's benefit.

War Chariots are powerful. They own Axemen, so they stop Barbs completely - and they can also stop AIs. Flanking II War Chariots are great for softening cities up. They're not even obsolete that fast, I will certainly use Flanking II War Chariots even when I have Swordsmen to cheaply weaken tough defenders.

Frankly, I'll take my combat II war chariots over flanking II wc's. If I run into spears, it's time to make peace anyway. Otherwise, against archers or axes (or chariots), gimme the combat promos.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Been busy at work, and drafting additional notes for the strat guide, so I didn't see this right away, but Rameses has become one of my all time favorite leaders.

This has already been mentioned in pieces in previous posts, so some of this is perhaps a bit redundant, but I'll try to present it in a fresh way. Here's how I see Rameses.

As the OP indicated, he's primed for an ancient war. Starting with Agriculture and the Wheel just SCREAMS out for you to make Husbandry your first tech researched, and in fact, this is, more often than not, the approach I take with the civ. Unless there's a compelling reason not to, my first move is almost invariably worker first, and Husbandry as my first tech.

Once you know where the horses are (and assuming you have some in your zip code), you're basically set for the whole of the ancient era. If you need/want to make war, you've got that covered, or, if nobody else is around, then you have the perfect barb-busting unit.

Worst case, you find that you don't have horses, in which case you need to shift gears (and since you don't have mining at game start, archery becomes a good bit more attractive).

Regardless of the horse situation tho, my NEXT tech is almost always Mysticism. I'm not concerned about snagging an early religion, I just want StoneHenge. Why? Because then I get FREE access to my solid UB! (note that this is the only Civ that has a means of getting his UB for free).

But why the heck would I want my crap UB for free? It's just a monument rip off, right?

Not exactly.

True that it has a (relatively) short shelf life, but here's the thing: By completing StoneHenge (which I should have no problem doing, even if I found a second city first), I start generating G-Man points (Prophet), and I can enhance this by assigning Priest specialists (ability from my UB) VERY early on (in fact, with this Civ, I'm the first Civ on the map to be able to make use of specialists, and this means a VERY early first G-Man!).

My G-Man pool is pure and untainted, which means that I am guaranteed to get Prophets, and I can use these to get free techs. Now obviously I don't want to use it to get something lame like Priesthood, so if I get my first G-Man before I'm ready to use him for a free tech, I'll just hold onto him and start working on a second. Typically, what you want to do is continue moseying down the religious arm of the tree (tho if you didn't get horses, you MAY have to pause briefly to snag Archery for defense), then dash to writing while building the Oracle (more Prophet points). So long as you don't get (via hut) or research Masonry, you can use the handy-dandy G-man to snag Code of Laws (which makes for a faster CS Slingshot, since you don't have to research this beastly expensive tech), then let the Oracle complete and snag you Bureaucracy, and you're set for the rest of the game.

The IND trait works beautifully with the UB (since both provide you an easy way to generate G-Man points, and specifically early Prophet points), and the UU gives you the means to meet any of your near neighbors (or barbs) on more than equal terms.

Simply exquisite.

-=Vel=-

[Diadem]

What exactly is the deal with masonry? I assume you don't pick up masonry so that your G-man's wont research monotheism, allright. But monotheism is very cheap, you can just research that yourself and found a free religion, right?

Is there, by the way, a list of which techs each GP type gives?

[Arrian]

Because once you have monotheism, the great prophet will give you Theology*. Avoiding masonry is the only way to get your prophet to give you CoL/CS. And you really, really want Civil Service. CoL is nice (courthouses, Confucism), but secondary to getting super early Bureacracy.

I've never used a GP on CoL. I've done the CS slingshot without the Oracle (research CoL yourself and use a GP for most of Civil Service).

As for a list of the lightbulb preferences... I'd check CivFanatics if I were you. Somebody has probably done a chart.

-Arrian

* - as it turns out, playing Rameses last night, that's precisely what I used a great prophet for, founding Christianity in my Confu holy city and thus creating the wonderful double holy city. Yummy. It was actually my second GP. I sped that second GP along via use of an Obelisk (I had stonehenge ) in my Oracle city. My first had come from Thebes (stonehenge).

I did not choose to avoid Masonry in that game... my 2nd city had marble. I wanted to quarry it and double the speed of the Oracle. The saved turns were used building more war chariots... or the Great Wall (depends on how you look at it). On a higher diff, of course, research being a bit slower, I could see using the lightbulb...

[fed1943]

Yes, there is a chart (five charts,actually) in CivFanatics.

Best regards,

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by Velociryx

True that it has a (relatively) short shelf life, but here's the thing: By completing StoneHenge (which I should have no problem doing, even if I found a second city first), I start generating G-Man points (Prophet), and I can enhance this by assigning Priest specialists (ability from my UB) VERY early on (in fact, with this Civ, I'm the first Civ on the map to be able to make use of specialists, and this means a VERY early first G-Man!).

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat
WOW. I must REALLY SUCK at this game. Because I can't believe that nobody offered up the Obelisk as the best UB.

It gives you the immediate ability to assign TWO priest specialists, which gives you the QUICKEST route to GPP production.

But I still believe that CIV is a game that is based upon maximizng EARLY RETURNS. Because of that, the Obelisk wins my vote, because it gives the quickest path to GPP.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158111

Interesting to note Thedrin's response in that thread, although he admitted he hadn't played as Ramses II.

[Thedrin]

I have played as Hatshepsut a lot though I gave more prominence to some points than they deserved.

I think the CS slingshot will be safer with the Egyptians if you use the Oracle for code of laws and the first prophet to lightbulb the majority (not all) of civil service if the first prophet doesn't arrive early enough.