Non-Rexing

[Theseus]

Geography.

[Jon Shafer]

Hehe.

Irrigated grass and flood plains and mined mountains.

[Aeson]

I have no idea what you are referencing Theseus. It may be my vision is clouded by the absolute horror I feel from seeing someone in Feudalism, researching Democracy themselves as a Scientific civ, Governors on, with what appears to be automated Workers...

[Jon Shafer]

And further expansion means the Palace is fully centralized for that large mass of land.

[Theseus]

Aeson, I am... wounded.

Given the crap starting terrain, I selected certain towns to become cities, kept the rest at 6 pop or below, and mined just about everything. The Workers are on mountains 'cause that's all that really needs development right now. I'm researching Demo for trading purposes.

Just to be clear: The point I'm trying to make is that I left the eastern and northern reaches of the continent un-settled in the early game... I'd rather take my time and build a strong core, especially given my rather challenged home terrain, and then evolve towards a Pillar strength (in this case MedInfs). My only significant miltary action thus far has been to trim the English; next up comes the three *weak* Persian cities to my east, then an attack directly into the Byzantine heartland. Evertthing to the east and north is just noise!

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Theseus
Aeson, I am... wounded.

Given the crap starting terrain, I selected certain towns to become cities, kept the rest at 6 pop or below, and mined just about everything.

sounds familiar...

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Theseus
Evertthing to the east and north is just noise!

I guess with the severely weakened English and the "filler" cities planted by the Persians and Byzantines to the east and north far from their cores which will have high corruption and little productivity, it will be hard for them to defend when you come to invade. With a tight core these will be reasonably productive for you. You've also got some pretty good defensible terrain in your heartland.

[Donegeal]

Feudalism has it place. And The higher levels is where I think it is. No need to worry to much about hapiness because of lots of MP and limited city size (keep most size 6). MASSIVE unit support. Just war for land, techs and resources.

[Aeson]

No offense intended Theseus (well maybe a little )... I just can't help growing all my cities to size 12, and so Feudalism never works for me. Also, how would I know what automated Workers look like?

The AI has an annoying habit of defending all their cities (outside the capitol) equally, and far flung cities can actually get more units if there is 'cultural pressure'. The AI seems to try to keep enough units in a city so it won't flip. While you could use this setup to your advantage, having to guard on more than one front does negate a lot of that.

The main reason I would never advocate restricting your expansion though is the scarcity of resources. If you don't get lucky, using Archers to take a Pike defended city to get Iron/Horses/Saltpeter you could have peacefully claimed through expansion is going to be very inefficient.

That said, you don't need a very large empire to win, and it looks like you have the game well in hand. 'Small empire' games can be very quick and fun to play (OCC being the most extreme game of this type).

[Harovan]

Clever. Let the AI waste pop and time to settle, choose a government with a high unit allowance and then take the useless cities, who can't have built much defenders yet. The only downside is, that the AI places cities lousy.

Re automated workers... may be I'm wrong, but doesn't the AI typically use exactly 2 (not 1, not 3 or more) workers for the long-time jobs like mining mountains and clearing jungle? If I remember this right, the workers don't seem to be automated.

[Dominae]

With Feudalism, is it not to your advantage to have a lot of (small) cities? If so, why let the AI take the land that could be filled with what amounts to free upkeep?

[Jon Shafer]

Yeah, I was first going to say "Feudalism buildup" but that seemed too obvious an answer. No offense, but frankly, from the looks of things going the Feudalism route could have been done better with more cities.

[Goethe80]

I suppose he could always annex the weaker cities for 'instant' unit support. I do notice a stack to the NE (musket with lots of units underneath) and another one in the city of Paegam, so I'm assuming that he's attacking NE shortly.

[vmxa1]

I cracked up reading Aeson mention of automated workers as figured he was pulling your leg. As he said, how would one know if a worker was automated, unless they could click on it or watch it move around.

[Jon Shafer]

Automated Workers = irrigate every grass tile.

Quite easy to pick up on, actually.