EXP - What's the secret?

[couerdelion]

I’ve noticed that the AI is very good at expansion with the EXP civic. My problem is I don’t quite understand how they do this. Putting aside the worker bonus, I’m trying to work out the subtle nuance about playing with the EXP trait. I think I understand the CRE, CHA and SPI subtleties (or some of them) and probably also PHI, ORG and IND. AGG has a natural strategy to play off but this is hardly subtle and I’m yet to work out the special secret of FIN that has been eluding me recently.

With Exp, though, I’m missing something. Health is rarely a problem in most games anyway so the Exp civ really runs into happiness barriers. Now I suppose that the AI doesn’t really have these barriers. It least they are not noticeable when their bonuses are high. But why do EXP civs seem to expand so rapidly.

[Blake]

Well, exp has three main advantages:

1) Cheaper Workers.
2) Cheaper Granaries.
3) The ability to chop with abandon. (because you need not worry about health)

The biggest one is possibly the combination of cheaper workers and more chopping (the AI will chop more with exp since it takes health cap into consideration). Since the AI loves granaries (often as the first build), that's also 30h saved, which definitely doesn't hurt.

[LzPrst]

pop-rushing. with granaries in all cities this is quite effective.

[couerdelion]

But I'm looking at Warlords leaders like Mehmed who seem to be particularly good at expanding early and becoming locally dominant. So the cheap workers can't be a reason for the rate of expansion. Also, I don't know what priority the Warlords AI gave to Granaries.

I've often found the granary to be a mized blessing in the early game. I've also found my Exp leaders had an almost unerring ability to start near corn, wheat and rice but have little or no access to any pre-Calendar happies.

Often, the only really effective way round this is through Drama and using library specialists to slow growth. But this can slow both expansion and military building which are very important early game priorities.

It could, of course, purely be about the starting position. Left to his own devices, I've seen Hannibal also being a very strong AI.

[Blake]

Mehmed combines expansionist with +2 happiness from his UB which comes on Mathematics which is a critical tech for chopping... it's too nice . He also has an above average personality, the AI personality counts for a lot.

[Blake]

Btw for happiness, if you see you have few happiness resources...
Just go to Monarchy via Priesthood, if you have oodles of food and little happiness, the temples will be a fair whip since you can 3-pop whip them with ~20 carryover - despite the high cost of the temple, it doesn't really cost that much when "building" it out of very cheap population.
Once you have Monarchy just train rubbish units as required, HRule solves, 3 units per city is enough in most cases.
+1 Religion, +1 Temple, +3 HRule, that's plenty of extra happiness.

(And do pick a state religion for the extra happy, belligerent AI's will probably leave you alone since you're training lots of units for HRule happiness, if they don't leave you alone... you have lots of units).

Getting the happiness sorted is important, because there are few things as good for the economy as doubling your population (Twice as much stuff what's not to like?)... so getting that base of +4-+5 happy asap, it's important, if you have enough happy resources, have fun pursuing other techs, if you don't, Religion and Monarchy.

[couerdelion]

I forgot the UB. That is a very nice one. And early(ish) too.

[Nugog]

Re: EXP - What's the secret?

Originally posted by couerdelion
AGG has a natural strategy to play off but this is hardly subtle

[trev]

The worker bonus is a major headstart though if people use a worker first strategy and have Agriculture or Animal Husbandry tech early. The quicker access to food bonuses gives an enormous headstart to your empires growth.

[Arrian]

Mehmed One of my favorite leaders/civs. Great UB, decent UU, good traits. +2 health, +2 happy = some big cities.

The basic expansion plan with an EXP civ, so far as I can tell:

BW & Pottery. Chop granaries, whip other stuff as needed. BOOM.

-Arrian

[couerdelion]

I’m still finding the whole EXP expansion thing to be very lethargic. With corn, gold and copper, you’d have thought it quite trivial an exercise in getting a granary and churning out new cities. But I don’t seem to have cracked it and found myself very quickly surrounded by barb cities before any serious numbers of cities have been built.

By contrast, the AI has quite happily got something in the region of 6 cities each without breaking into a sweat.

Confused

[Arrian]

You play on Emperor, right?

-Arrian

[downtoearth]

I like Blake's answer.

[couerdelion]

Emperor,yes

Two barb cities and two self-built cities now and for some reason I've breaking even at 50% tech despite having three precious metal tiles. OK, three cities have barely started to get moving so all the weight of commerce is being carried by those tiles. Add to that, a decent axeman force is costing a little to run.

The relative position is 7th out of 7 in food, production and gold. As those other cities develop, and with Calendar (for the three dyes in the capital), things should get that little bit easier but you can understand that I am not happy being last in everthing bar life expectancy.

[khearn]

Originally posted by couerdelion

The relative position is 7th out of 7 in food, production and gold. As those other cities develop, and with Calendar (for the three dyes in the capital), things should get that little bit easier but you can understand that I am not happy being last in everthing bar life expectancy.

If you're last in everything else, I wouldn't count on having a very long life expectancy, either.

BTW, anyone know how the Life Expectancy and Approval Rate demographics are calculated?

Keith