The Power of Iron

[LzPrst]

Reading Dom's brilliant take on GA's (that I've had some experience with myself) I decided to share another experience I have had using a different non-mainstream strategy. Though highly unlikely as good or effective, it has a certain charm.

NOTE: This strategy is possibly not the most effective use of land, nor is it applicable on bad terrain. I did it purely as an experiment and that it worked I find extremely surprising. I played Napoleon and therefore I'm gonna call it


Forgeron de France

Here is the basic outline. Screw cottages. That's right, forget about them. They won't be needed. The grand plan is to go for the highest possible hammer production you can get and pump it into your research when not needed for other things. You're basing your cities on large food production and workshops. This does have certain requirements.

1. One really really good city site. (In my game Paris had 2 Fish, 3 Clams and 1 Corn!!)
2. Grassland/Jungle/Floodplain dominated terrain.
3. At least 1 (preferably 2) food resource (sugar etc works also) in each city.

There are certain technologies that are very important. Alphabet is the most important since it is what will allow you to build Research. Then just go for things that will improve your production, Metal Casting, Code of Laws (+1 workshop with CasteSystem) Machinery, Guilds, Chemistry, etc etc.

Base yourself on farms and mines, then workshops. Forges and such are a must. Windmills for cities with little food.

Your technology will suffer, you cant run it on producing research alone (but quite close), you need to have 1 city to balance this out. Probably your capital. Or another city with abnormally high food production. Here you will have specialists, scientists mainly. LOTS of them. And when you get a GP (Great Scientist), put him to work in the city. After a while it adds up... (I have 6 or so and the GL).

The way it works is that your far superior production will allow you to build units, improvements and wonders far faster than any of your opponents, giving you a head in everything except science. which you will produce by converting hammers. try specializing as well, some cities produce science, a few others will produce wealth. dont build banks or groceries in science cities etc. Early on this strategy relies on some poprushing to get going, then when caste system becomes available go for it.

Midgame head for chemistry and then communism. You want state property to boost you even further. On a river this will give you more food freeing up more workers for more workshops (that now produce more food) and specialists. Then Biology to get your farms going, giving you more land to convert to workshops. I am currently running Representation, Beureaucracy, Emancipation, State Property and Free Religion.

this has worked for my game (so far I'm in the industrial age). I am still ahead technologically and productively, the inca's are close in tech, but weaker on production, though they are about twice as big (leading AI). and I have not built a single cottage during the entire game... and if there's a war.... I'm gonna have a lot more troops. I hope....

I'm gonna experiment with this a little more and type up a more detailed guide, but basically, against all sense, this seems to work.


(Prince level, big and small, standard size)

[Dominae]

Interesting. I've tried Cottage spam before, but never no Cottages. How do you pay for Maintenance costs? As Ragnar I assume you're working a fair number of coastal tiles. Do you have a Shrine?

[jkp1187]

Just curious -- why Free Religion? Wouldn't it synergize better with this strategy to go for Pacifism?

[Rockoon]

In my experience, a "full blown" specialist empire can and often should compete with the slider at 0% - this leaves money for the slider which makes more people and as a consequence, you can run more specialists who then generate more and

In a production empire, such as described by the OP, you are again not really tied to the slider. You will fall behind in techs later in the game because dont get as many multipliers as , but you can support a truely massive army with all your extra and might even get away with demanding many techs and even more from the opposition.

I havent tried a production empire myself (might just do that) but generally in the modern era a super science specialist city can easily generate 750 per turn all by itself, so this should still be competitive in that era.

[Kinjiru]

Originally posted by Rockoon
In my experience, a "full blown" specialist empire can and often should compete with the slider at 0% - this leaves money for the slider which makes more people and as a consequence, you can run more specialists who then generate more and

In a production empire, such as described by the OP, you are again not really tied to the slider. You will fall behind in techs later in the game because dont get as many multipliers as , but you can support a truely massive army with all your extra and might even get away with demanding many techs and even more from the opposition.

I havent tried a production empire myself (might just do that) but generally in the modern era a super science specialist city can easily generate 750 per turn all by itself, so this should still be competitive in that era.

Admit it, you made that post just to use all those icons...

[Blaupanzer]

My pattern prior to Warlords was to go mostly in this direction, building cottages only in flood plains. I also lost most games as my teching fell behind in the Middle Ages, my army became obsolete, and I had no way to pay for subsequent military unit upgrades. A huge obsolete army is a joke in the modern era, where blitz-enhanced tanks take them down 2 per turn with little recovery time. Also, the number of units bankrupt the economy with their per unit costs. For early wars, the strategy seems to work well, but you need to dominate/conquer prior to the gunpowder era.

[Pinchak]

If i get a philo leader I usually forgo cottages in lieu of farms and mines, except in the capital.

With bureaucracy you will want to get gold bonus buildings anyway, so cottage the capital.

People get hung up on the thought that the capital has to have alot of specialists for a GP strat to work. The capital only has to act as a house for GP.

I also agree with the poster above concerning pacifism over free religion. State property would also be questionable depending on map size.

[Rockoon]

Originally posted by Pinchak
People get hung up on the thought that the capital has to have alot of specialists for a GP strat to work. The capital only has to act as a house for GP.

I agree completely. My GP generating cities usualy have 3 or more big squares and they are usualy the only squares that get worked. The specialists produce the necessary

I also agree with the poster above concerning pacifism over free religion. State property would also be questionable depending on map size.

As far as free religion, I am almost positive that the 10% bonus wont apply to invested in producing research. I know for certain that bonuses from building do not apply.

I'd suggest theocracy as the endgame religious civic.

[LzPrst]

The reason for running Free Religion was not the 10% bonuses (not sure if it applies either, I have to check that out), but because I had severe happiness issues, especially in the capital (size 25 since renaissance times) after I went away from Hereditary Rule. 4 religions + 4 temples helped. And I had very few luxuries. I used Pacifism for very long, but after a while it became expensive maintenance-wise and happiness-wise.

The game ended with me launching a spaceship unfortunately the same turn Hyana Capac won a cultural victory interestingly enough, I was with that strategy in the tech lead the whole game despite the incas having a vastly superior gold production pretty much the entire game (from spy Graphs). However, I had vastly superior production to him the whole game.


Anyway, I tried the strategy out again. This time with Frederick to get the Philosophical advantage, cause I realized that what the empire in fact was running on was as mentioned by others, specialists. What I found was that it is an extremely effective and highly flexible playstyle. For a long time I kept in the lead or equal to the leaders in tech. But due to my pathetically small starting area, shared with the gippo's (egyptians) who were culturesneaking land and eventually a city, I was pretty much doomed to obscurity since I had nowhere to expand to. And since the gippo's where so friendly I didnt feel like wiping them out (and I had no iron or copper either . After the gip's cultureflipped one of my cities I decided to teach them a lesson. Mind you, I had been running an empire pretty much without ANY defence. 1 archer in every city until feudalism. and I just upgraded a few of them after that. Gearing my production-strong empire for war was a pleasure. (having the pyramids Police state also helped) I threw together a few trebuchets, teched up to Grenadiers, built a ton of them in practically no time and smashed the egyptians like a ripe tomato being tread on by an elephant. Now of course other civs that are several times as large have surpassed me, but the gippo's who had roughly the same land as I were barely able to keep up with me technologically and not at all militarily due to my vast advantage in production.


Conclusion. This works. Heighten your tech rate by having cities build wealth. heighten your science further by having your cities produce research, crush your enemies by fielding a vast army quickly. And keep those specialists flowing, they're great. I recommend it to be tested. In fact for me it has possibly become the strategy of choice from now on, cause I am usually inept at keeping a military due to production, this makes me a happy panda

[Blake]

In many ways the production vector is the most important.

You can get by on minimal research, like if another player has much better research than you, they probably invest a lot of that into getting new buildings and stuff to further enhance their research.

If you as an "Iron" player focus EXCLUSIVELY on military techs, since you don't build a whole lot of buildings (thus don't research the techs for them), you can probably keep up with the builder in terms of MILITARY techs, sure you're 8 techs behind, but you have the same military technology.

But because you have 3x the production, when you invade them they can't possibly fight it off, and they die. You prevail.

One of the great things about this is, when you capture cities you get gold. You use that gold to fund research. Furthermore against the AI you can pointy-stick techs out of them.

So in many ways maximizing the power of your military is win-win.

Using the name "Iron" is quite good. I used to have a strategy I called "Iron Domination", this is because of the tech/unit path:
Iron Working (Swords), Machinery (Crossbows), Guilds (Knights), Steel (Cannons). All of those units require Iron to train. Also not coincidently it's the path which upgrades workshops. Research the Iron line of techs and you have masses of production and great military.
Other noteworthy techs along the path include Construction (Catapults) and Feudalism (Vassalage) (you don't need Civil Service)

The reason for the name Iron Domination, is that I'd constantly be waging wars. The first victim taken out with Swords, then Crossbows come along, then Knights and finally the mop up is with Steel. Such a game typically ends with Cannons as the most advanced unit. You may be able to switch to State Property before the end of the game, but it probably wont make a difference.

Organized Leaders are brilliant for this kind of play (mainly for cheap courthouses). Here's basically what I'd rate the traits as:

Good Traits (in order):
Organized (cheap courthouses!)
Charismatic (the iron units are a mixed bag)
Aggressive (cheap barracks, better swords and spears)
Expansionist (cheap granaries, you'll clearcut forests so no forest health)
Imperialistic (you do lots of fighting)
Industrious (Wonders can be quite useful [also for refunds] and cheap forges are nice - don't underestimate cheap national wonders)
Philosophical (4 specialists don't cost much to run and generate a lot of GP's)

Bad Traits:
Spiritual (You'll run the same civics all game)
Financial (You want to minimize commerce plots)
Protective (Archery units are not a big part of Iron Domination)

[Rockoon]

Originally posted by LzPrst
The reason for running Free Religion was not the 10% bonuses (not sure if it applies either, I have to check that out), but because I had severe happiness issues, especially in the capital (size 25 since renaissance times) after I went away from Hereditary Rule. 4 religions + 4 temples helped. And I had very few luxuries. I used Pacifism for very long, but after a while it became expensive maintenance-wise and happiness-wise.

You should not be having happiness issues! You are not very dependent on the slider, so move it down and move up the sider for your happy faces. Most of your science in generated by and so don't feel guilty with the science slider at 0%

(also, you should not really have culture issues either.. since your slider is converting a lot of your to it)

There are some threads on that "other" site about a specialist economy (SE), and many comparisons between the SE and the cottage economy (CE)

The general conclusion is that early game the SE is more powerfull that a CE but generally falls behind around the time of educuation and doesnt really get back up to speed until biology

[Palpster]

I reckon you WILL have happiness and culture issues since you can move the culture slider up and down all you want, without the commerce from your non-existent cottages it wouldn't make all that much of a difference.

[Rockoon]

Originally posted by Palpster
I reckon you WILL have happiness and culture issues since you can move the culture slider up and down all you want, without the commerce from your non-existent cottages it wouldn't make all that much of a difference.

doesnt generate faces.

It is the % set on the slider that generates faces, so even with zero in a city, you can still get far more faces than you actualy need. Theaters themselves give +1 face for each 10% on the slider.

No, happyness is not an issue with an specialist economy (SE.) Never was. It is an issue with a cottage economy (CE) and always has been and I think your CE experience is clouding your judgement here.

A CE needs food, happyness resources, and religions to grow big cities. An SE needs food, food, and food.

Google is your friend if you are new to the idea of an SE:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=civ4+specialist+economy+cottage+economy&btnG=Search