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A very good description of the REX strategy and hopefully someone besides the elite of Civ 3/Apolyton is reading about it and learning something. My only criticism of the Essay is that map size is a critical variable and is not part of the discussion. The essay descibes REX as I suspect it pertains to standard maps and with diminishing relevance for smaller and larger maps. Tiny maps and a reasonable number of civs won't have such a long REX and war is likely to be more important than expansion earlier. I play huge or larger maps and do use the REX approach. I would note the following differences between ultra huge map REX and standard REX.
1. The expansion stage will go on much longer.
2. You are likely to have two or more cities (more if you pop a settler) before you even find another civ, so initial build diection will always be something of a guess.
3. You can have less concentration on defensive units since the opponents don't know where you are either. This is especially true if you are Commercial and won't have to worry about barbarians for awhile.
4. Early offensive units are a waste of time if the next civ is 30+ tiles away and you are playing at a high level (by the time your archers get there, they will be cannon fodder, an anachronistic mixed metaphor, but you get the meaning). Warfare earlier than knights will be ineffective, as noted by Arrian.
5. You will be expandimg for a long time (frequently into the ADs) and will require a lot or workers to do so efficiently. Build roads ahead of time towards the key points for future cities - luxury & strategic resources, choke points, etc.
6. Resources are spread very thinly on very large maps so building towards them is critical.
7. A seaside city is a much lower priority since each land mass is much larger, allowing land only expansion for a long time. The AI never builds the required improvement to allow sea trade until very late; seas are also very large and almost certainly uncrossable until half way through the game. So there are few early benefits to having an early coastal city. I only build an early coastal city if it can act as a settler/worker or unit factory until becoming a port city when that becomes useful. If one is playing Archipelago, ignore this advice and get a coastal city ASAP (not that this will be difficult).
8. On Emperor, one can outexpand the AIs with two settler factories; on Deity one needs three+.
9. Because the size of the map gives so much more time before any meaningful contact (i.e. a border) with other civs, my second city will be a settler factory, even if my first also is. Two out of my first three will be settler factories, the other a unit factory. My first five cities will have two settler factories, one worker factory and two cities churning out units.
10. These five cities are the core of my empire and will be as concentrated as possible while having the right bonus resources and production capabilities. Optimally they will be contiguous but getting the right early cities and backfilling later is more important. Further expansion will continue to add worker/settler and unit facory cities in balance plus all those other cities which are built for tactical or strategic reasons or are just plain great city sites.
11. A road network is absolutely critical to the formation and defense of a large empire - or attacking other empires. REX is the best expansion approach but on larger maps one is always balancing the strategic benefits of a city far from the expanding core vs the vulnerability of that city if it is 5 or 10 turns of movement beyond the borders of your empire.
12. Granaries are a very complex issue. There is a large opportunity cost in building them vs the obvious growth benefits once built. I almost never build early granaries in cities with lots of grasslands, sometimes in others. This works well for me because I 'cascade' settler production as each new city builds at least one settler - with some exceptions - so I want to start this cascade early and granaries would cause a significant starting lag. Given the time available on very large maps, this may be a non-optimum approach - would like to hear other views.
13. I agree with the Culture vs REX argument in the essay but moreso. A small culture-rich empire will be non-competitive on very large maps. First you will have very few resources (on huge, each 5 cities will on average give you one strategic or luxury resource, so to get a few luxuries and all the strategic resources requires a large empire). So REX it is.
14. In general, I agree with all the timing issues which are well-described in the essay. Build the first city ASAP, no later than 3900 BC and only delay that long if there is a super site nearby that will easily make up for the delay (a scout helps in this) and then time the building of the pop using units to match pop growth. On the right city sites, this only requires working the right tiles; otherwise production of other 'things' needs to be timed in.
15. Build as many scouts - or whatever you can use if not expansionist - since you have a lot of exploring to do and the more of the map you know, the better the REX tactics work.
REX does work on all map sizes but it needs some customization to fit map size. I hope that some of the preceding will be useful, if only as a source of errors for discussion and improvement.
1. The expansion stage will go on much longer.
2. You are likely to have two or more cities (more if you pop a settler) before you even find another civ, so initial build diection will always be something of a guess.
3. You can have less concentration on defensive units since the opponents don't know where you are either. This is especially true if you are Commercial and won't have to worry about barbarians for awhile.
4. Early offensive units are a waste of time if the next civ is 30+ tiles away and you are playing at a high level (by the time your archers get there, they will be cannon fodder, an anachronistic mixed metaphor, but you get the meaning). Warfare earlier than knights will be ineffective, as noted by Arrian.
5. You will be expandimg for a long time (frequently into the ADs) and will require a lot or workers to do so efficiently. Build roads ahead of time towards the key points for future cities - luxury & strategic resources, choke points, etc.
6. Resources are spread very thinly on very large maps so building towards them is critical.
7. A seaside city is a much lower priority since each land mass is much larger, allowing land only expansion for a long time. The AI never builds the required improvement to allow sea trade until very late; seas are also very large and almost certainly uncrossable until half way through the game. So there are few early benefits to having an early coastal city. I only build an early coastal city if it can act as a settler/worker or unit factory until becoming a port city when that becomes useful. If one is playing Archipelago, ignore this advice and get a coastal city ASAP (not that this will be difficult).
8. On Emperor, one can outexpand the AIs with two settler factories; on Deity one needs three+.
9. Because the size of the map gives so much more time before any meaningful contact (i.e. a border) with other civs, my second city will be a settler factory, even if my first also is. Two out of my first three will be settler factories, the other a unit factory. My first five cities will have two settler factories, one worker factory and two cities churning out units.
10. These five cities are the core of my empire and will be as concentrated as possible while having the right bonus resources and production capabilities. Optimally they will be contiguous but getting the right early cities and backfilling later is more important. Further expansion will continue to add worker/settler and unit facory cities in balance plus all those other cities which are built for tactical or strategic reasons or are just plain great city sites.
11. A road network is absolutely critical to the formation and defense of a large empire - or attacking other empires. REX is the best expansion approach but on larger maps one is always balancing the strategic benefits of a city far from the expanding core vs the vulnerability of that city if it is 5 or 10 turns of movement beyond the borders of your empire.
12. Granaries are a very complex issue. There is a large opportunity cost in building them vs the obvious growth benefits once built. I almost never build early granaries in cities with lots of grasslands, sometimes in others. This works well for me because I 'cascade' settler production as each new city builds at least one settler - with some exceptions - so I want to start this cascade early and granaries would cause a significant starting lag. Given the time available on very large maps, this may be a non-optimum approach - would like to hear other views.
13. I agree with the Culture vs REX argument in the essay but moreso. A small culture-rich empire will be non-competitive on very large maps. First you will have very few resources (on huge, each 5 cities will on average give you one strategic or luxury resource, so to get a few luxuries and all the strategic resources requires a large empire). So REX it is.
14. In general, I agree with all the timing issues which are well-described in the essay. Build the first city ASAP, no later than 3900 BC and only delay that long if there is a super site nearby that will easily make up for the delay (a scout helps in this) and then time the building of the pop using units to match pop growth. On the right city sites, this only requires working the right tiles; otherwise production of other 'things' needs to be timed in.
15. Build as many scouts - or whatever you can use if not expansionist - since you have a lot of exploring to do and the more of the map you know, the better the REX tactics work.
REX does work on all map sizes but it needs some customization to fit map size. I hope that some of the preceding will be useful, if only as a source of errors for discussion and improvement.
A shameless bump for one more try.
Get lost.
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