The "Size-5" strategy

[Xin Yu]

Maybe you are talking about a 2 player game? That's different. 4-5 players with no alliance you won't be able to attack anybody.

[rah]

We play on small worlds with 4 players. If you find someone early (and on a small world you usually do) and you have one of the tech advantages windows (like poly before your opponent gets pikeman, or math well before you opponent gunpowder) the attacks will begin.

And on a small world in 2x, expansion is still king. And more important since land is at a premium. If you wait too long to expand, there will be no good land left to settle, except for dropping those cities in enemy territory on mountains to disrupt your neighbors. While those may be extra cities and really annoy people, they don't contribute much to your empire.

When you start that second session with your nice 8 perfectionist cities, you glance up and see that markusf will have 45 cities.

RAH

[Xin Yu]

In MP there's no definite strategy. If lucky, I can find some advance tribes early, which makes it pointless to produce settlers from the first two cities. Thus the first two cities only needs to build a coulpe of exploratory units. However if no advanced tribes can be found then I have to put down some cities of my own.

To carry out research of my own some of my cities must be of size 5; to build a wonder quickly I must have a city of size 4+. Of course those will be second to expansion. However if I have already expanded decently I'll definitely go for my research targets tech and wonders.

As of defense, a size 4-5 city can rush build barracks and units quickly. Thus, unless being caught in surprise, the production will guarantee survival.

A balanced expansion, researching, and wonder building is less risky than over expansion.

[Xin Yu]

OK. I tested size-5 strat 3 times (on small map, 4 civ, Deity, x1 move, x2 prod). Research path: Alpha, Cer, horse, CoL, Monarchy, bronze, writing, currency, trade. Keep on poping up huts and building settlers. Warriors for martial law whenever necessary. Since one of the cities had a food special it grew to size 4 quickly even when building settlers.

For size-5 strat one settler was added to a size 4 city (which had a food special) at around 3000BC and 4 scientists were hired from the city. The city was building a settler so it soon dropped to size 4. However scientists were still hired for the city after pop dropping. The city gave 16 science at size 5, 13 at size 4.

Result: Size-5 strat consistently beats ICS to Monarchy by one oedo cycle. The benifit gives size-5 strat a quick building rate to make up the loss of one settler. After Monarchy, size-5 strat keeps a 4-turn per tech research rate while ICS keeps an 8-turn research rate.