Rapid Early expansion (REX) - An Essay

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I wrote an essay on REX like I promised. It took a while to post it because I wrote it, then went on vacation then forgot about it. I'm going to let you guys pick over it, and if you find anything wrong, then I can revise it. It would then be nice if a moderator could make an essay section and put essays like this and Catt's Fundamentals of Mobilization, so everyone can have a look whenever they want.

The essay has been moved to post 32 and 33 due to its length.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Hmm, 85 views, no responses, but my first 5 star thread in a while A shameless bump for one more try.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

Re: REX - An Essay

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Well, I can’t really think of a time when you wouldn’t want to REX. The only instance would be if you are stuck on an iceberg all alone, with raging barbarians, sixteen civs, on deity. Who would ever be crazy enough to do that?

Oh, Aeson...

Seriously, excellent informative essay. Deserves to be in the directory Theseus is doing.

[King of Rasslin]

It's good for the newbs of Civ 3, but I think it should be combined with one about ICS or city placement. Besides expanding, knowing how to place cities is also good.

[Arrian]

REX is very useful, whether you are a builder or warmonger. As a warmonger, I tend to build 8-10 cities (standard map) REX-style and then concentrate on building my attack force. The AI will remain in REX mode, building spearmen and settlers, while I pump out troops. I'm not worried about them beating me to certain city sites, as I will be conquering them shortly.

As a builder, I'd build more cities. Builders need to grab more land early, because they don't intend to pick a fight in order to expand (at least not for a while).

-Arrian

p.s. Good essay, btw!

[Objectivist]

Excellent post, I usually find that getting a granery between the founding of your second and third city can really help your rexing ability skyrocket on the higher levels of difficulty. Pottery is a starting tech for the expansionist civs, so if you dont start with it, it shouldnt be hard to trade for this tech.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Originally posted by Arrian
REX is very useful, whether you are a builder or warmonger. As a warmonger, I tend to build 8-10 cities (standard map) REX-style and then concentrate on building my attack force. The AI will remain in REX mode, building spearmen and settlers, while I pump out troops. I'm not worried about them beating me to certain city sites, as I will be conquering them shortly.

Good point, I'm going to add that.
In MP, a smart player will take advantage of this. If the humans start next to each other, you can almost be sure that one of them will try to cripple the REX by sending in some units and starting a war. However, if he fails, then he will be dead meat because he spent a whole lot of resources on the units. A smart REXer who beat the other players gambit will be able to take him out.
That is also another idea I am kicking around. People always complain about how the RNG gives them consistently poor results. However, I think that if your attack mechanics are fundamentally solid, no matter what the dice roll gives you, you can still win EVERY TIME. You might lose a few more units that what you expected, but the outcome would still be favorable to you. Anyhow, I digress

A question for Arrian
I know that you are the GL and Continent capture expert at poly. Which unit do you think most contribues to your success. In my games, I've used the archer rush to great succes and that ususally knocks out the nearest civ. After that I build up barracks and horsemen, then upgrade them to knights. However, by that time, the AI is so big (it has settled the land of the civ I destroyed) that my knights only manage to take about half of their empire before my advance loses steam. Cavalry can usually finish off that second civ, but then I still have 2 or more civs to go.
So, how do you do it?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Re: Re: REX - An Essay

Originally posted by Vlad Antlerkov
Seriously, excellent informative essay. Deserves to be in the directory Theseus is doing.

Thanks, but no essay is so good that it cannot be made better.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
A question for Arrian
I know that you are the GL and Continent capture expert at poly. Which unit do you think most contribues to your success. In my games, I've used the archer rush to great succes and that ususally knocks out the nearest civ. After that I build up barracks and horsemen, then upgrade them to knights. However, by that time, the AI is so big (it has settled the land of the civ I destroyed) that my knights only manage to take about half of their empire before my advance loses steam. Cavalry can usually finish off that second civ, but then I still have 2 or more civs to go.
So, how do you do it?

I'll take a shot...

It's not just one unit type, it's the series. Everytime you have relative strength at the unit level, use it... hard. So that means, have gold and a bunch of units pre-built for an immediate upgrade, so that you have relative strength in numbers as well.

Combine this with oscillating war, and between Og the Opportunistic Warrior (who wants a Tank instead of a piece of wood), Archers, Swordsmen, and Horsemen, you should be able to have damaged if not destroyed each of the civs within reach on your continent. The best civ for this, hands down, is China, as you start with Archers, get cheap barracks, can lay down a mean military road network, and then have a killer upgrade-to-UU... but you can really do it with any civ.

(Arrian typically plays Standard, Continents, so it's almost always the case for him... it also lets him slap the locals around without care for his rep, as he then pulls the Arrian Deception, and slaughters them all before the rest of the world finds out what a psychotic bastard he is!)

On Pangaeas and on Large / Huge maps, this may not be the case, but you just extend the oscillation to farther away civs with Knights and Cavs.

So that's part one, damage / destruction of the civs within reach.

Part two is a balanced approach to the production of your empire. You need to keep on pumping out units, preferably in waves. Just because you send out 20 vet Horsemen doesn't mean you shouldn't send out 20 more a bit later. In the meantime though, build critical early-ish improvements, such as Temples and Marketplaces.

Lastly, you want to be continually expanding your territory. There's little that pisses me off more than whittling down an AI civ only to see the others move in. Also, you can never have enough luxuries... MAKE THIS A PRIORITY! Capture the towns that make sense (2 pop, connected to your road network (luxuries, hopefully new ones as well!), not in too much danger of a flip), but also have Settlers and defenders waiting to move in when you choose to raze; I often have a couple of Settlers on hold in a forward town, just for this purpose... even if they don;t get used so, I'll have them join a captured town when it's safe.

The biggest difference between Arrian and I, I think, is in initial placement. During the early REX for 6-10 towns, I am happy to go 3- and even 2-tile, and am more opportunistic about making sure these are highly productive towns ASAP (btw, that's a comment I would make on your essay... I do NOT believe that anything before your tenth city should be on a bad site for either contiguous territory expansion or for future resources. I want all towns contributing growth and productivity immediately. I either backfill or capture down the road).

But that doesn't really impact how we deal with the AI civs. I think we are usually both at perpetual war, at least till the medieval era, when there's often a builder /settle-in period, before going intercontinental.

My sense is that we build more military units than many... for instance in the 1337 game (Deity, Tiny, supposed to be Pangaea), I was on a continent with 2 of the 3 AI civs, Egypt and Greece. I REXed to 8 towns, and by the time I got around to Greece to secure the continent, I had appr. 40 Legions in the attack force.

Anyway, overall, it's a combo of relative strength, oscillation, and GL hunting that works quite well.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Right. So you just wage war until your army loses strength, make a treaty, then twenty turns later after buiding up your army again, you start all over.
I'm going to try out your 'first ten cities in a good spot idea' It actually sounds promising. I'll run a few games tonight and check it out.

[Theseus]

LofA,

1. BTW, put this into the "must read" thread... great job!

2. It's not so much treaty, 20 off, war. That's just for one respective civ... who else is there to play with at any given time? And also, even for one civ, it's not so much when my military loses strength, as I'll keep reinforcing it... it's when I've achieved the objective(s): lebensraum, towns, crippling damage, resources, extortion... all the good things in life!

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Manipulating civs against each other will prolly work also, so they get hit from both sides at the same time. And then while you are at war, make peace with the civ and backstab your AI friend in the back.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Alright I ran the games and I came up with a couple of conclusions.
Making all of your cities in good location is better than putting them in crap locations. You get more money, production etc, and the only reason for putting them in crap locations is to hopefully get some resources. However, you can just as well conquer those cities in the wastelands and get the resource and save yourself two pop points. Here are the exemptions.
1. There is luxery/resources which you can see
2. You start in a jungle/desert/tundra and need to REX out
3. You start on a peninsula. The part you are on is good land, but to the north is nothing but desert. What to do? You can restart, or build your second city on the other side or you can build a string of cities to the other side
Ill add this stuff tomorrow. Thanks.

[Arrian]

LoA,

I typically only use an early warrior or archer strike (depending on what civ I'm playing) to cripple one neighbor... and I don't do it all the time. I aim to build a large attack force that will sweep the continent clean. I'm actually at peace for long periods of time. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, my mongol horde cuts loose.

Last night, for instance, I went back to Japan to see how things would go if I incorporated worker-buying. Unfortunately, I only got 1 worker out of the AI. That notwithstanding, I pre-build/upgraded an attack force of 30 horsemen and 12 swordsmen. I had about 11 cities, and built the Colossus. I forget the exact date, but my two neighbors (china/india) were nearing the end of ancient times. I unleashed my attack.... and discovered that the RNG was holding a serious grudge against me. After knocking China to three cities (captured Pyramids) and taking 1/3-1/2 of India (captured Great Library), I had 9 horsemen left. NINE! And I had been building reinforcements the whole time. I figure I lost roughly 30-35 horsemen. I watched several elite horsemen lose 5 consecutive rolls to regular spearmen. No GLs for me. My attack ran out of steam, and I called it a night.

Such are the pitfalls of my all-or-nothin' approach. Theseus' version of oscillating war is actually less risky, because he sets about "pruning" the AI very early on, hampering their development with very little investment. I go the other route... building up for a huge bloodbath, hoping all that fighting will result in several GLs. Last night it just didn't happen.

My city spacing is wider than Theseus', but I have definitely compromised a bit (each of my first four cities last night had overlap *gasp*).

My horseman rush (which was developed as a Monarch-level strat, keep in mind) will not achieve continental domination on large/huge maps. In fact, on standard maps with three or more neighboring civs, I usually end up using knight-level units to polish off my unfortunate neighbors. It all depends on how things shake out, and there's a lot of luck involved.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
Alright I ran the games and I came up with a couple of conclusions.

How did you run a game, let alone games in a matter of a few hours?