Strategy Factors

[ramses II.]

Which factors determine your strategy?
In my opinion, they are
- size of your island/continent
- map size
- shape of the world (huge continents/archipelago)
- ressources of your island/continent (terrain)
- early/late contact with AI civs
- start techs
- hut outcomes (gold, NONE UNITS, NONE settlers, techs)
- wonders that you can build/have built
- allies/enemies

Do you change your strategy often during the game?
Or is there a "general line" you follow?

Supposed you get monarchy/trade very early - which strategy would you follow?

[Scouse Gits]

Any set strategy is doomed to failure (OK against the AI just about anything 'works', but one must seek elegance). A successful strategy is a flexible strategy that may change form many times in a single game.
You seem to have identified the most salient factors, but IMO setting and achieving short term goals - much as we are forced to do in Succession Games is the most effective way.
Of course, all the above goes out the window in specialised tasks such as early landing, early conquest, OCC etc - but in all of these the Gods sometimes (often) conspire to give outright failure.

SG[1]

[rah]

Strats must be flexible, (less so against the AI). While no set battle plan survives the first battle there are just a few general rules of thumb that I use in the first couple of thousand years.
1. Monarchy as quickly as possible.
2. Expand explore, expand explore, expand explore.
3. Research Trade as early as possible.
4. If locked in by terrain or pinned in by opponents that can't be easily disposed of, Go to sea.
5. expand expand expand.

RAH
And did I forget to mention expanding

[Ming]

I have to agree with rah... In SP, it really doesn't matter what approach you use as long as you know the game.

In MP, there are some basic things I do, but the rest is really determined by the situation.

And yes... expand... expand... expand...
and explore... explore... explore

[La Fayette]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Ming
In SP, it really doesn't matter what approach you use as long as you know the game.
/QUOTE]
... but if you try early landing, I swear that the approach really needs to be sharpened
I think I am one of those who know the game, but I haven't yet managed to beat 1000AD .
... and solo beats 500AD whatever kind of map he plays

[rah]

Yes, the specialty games require fine tuning. But with the exception of the early conquest games, most of the specialty games don't focus on kicking the snot out of your opponents. Since I favor that aspect of the game, I'm not really big on the specialty games after I've tried them a few times. And even when I do try them, I just can't give up on Kicking some butt. It doesn't help my completion year.

RAH

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by rah
I just can't give up on Kicking some butt. RAH

Neither can I
That's why I have become some kind of scenario specialist
...still, reading solo or samson is pure delight, and I would love trodding on their footprints not too many centuries later

[La Fayette]

BTW ramses II,
I hope you read solo's '500AD' thread, because it is the best lesson in flexibility you can get for the time being.

[rah]

Of course, on some of the earlist "this or that" challanges, there is almost zero flexibility. If certain things don't/do happen, you have no chance to break the record and you might as well restart. But that is the nature of some records. Perfection is required after enough people have tried it and weeded out the simple stuff.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Map size is a factor. If I know I'm on a large map, I can expand and not worry about defence for a while. If I know it's a small map, more likely than not I'll be running into an AI before my fourth city is down.

I play gigamaps often. On a map 250 tiles wide, trading with the AI can be difficult or impossible - so I focus a lot on expansion and internal trade, and often go AC, just because the logistics of conquest are really tedious.

Not many of the other factors influence my strategy:

island size - maybe I go for mapmaking sooner, otherwise no effect;
huts- largely irrelevant;
start techs - seldom an issue on big maps;
Wonders - I seldom miss the ones I want;
etc.

My goals are much like everyone else's: emphasize science early using the tax sliders; follow DaveV's resource square usage scheme; get Monarchy/Trade/Philo/Mono ASAP; expand, expand, expand!

Keep cities small until HG.
Don't go to Republic before getting Mike's.
Don't go to Demo without Bach or Suffrage.

[rah]

AHhhhh your comment strikes to the core of the difference between SP and MP.
In SP it's about when you get the wonder.
In MP it's about having to succeed without it more often then you get it.
And choosing just which one of the happy wonders you can reasonably expect to build.
You have to have a number of strats that work for whatever combo of wonders you get. It helps keep the game fresh since you can't always use the exact same roadmap every game..

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

You make it sound as if SP is no fun, rah

[rah]

I wouldn't go that far. Some of the challanges and scenarios are still fun. I actually played an SP game the other night when all my MP regulars didn't show. (I did however play it as 2x to try some things out.) Upon review of the game, I played so carelessly that I would have been stomped by even average human opponents. But all the AI's were eliminated just after 400 AD.

The ease that you can win in a normal random SP game does take a bit of the luster out of our great game. Anyone that reads the great posts here and take them to heart should have no problem winning after a few tries. If it wasn't for MP and all the fantastic people at this site, I'm sure I would have moved on to other games. (like I did prior to finding CIV I)

SP is still fun, but not as much as it used to be.

RAH

But yes, I'm a little jadded from the great competition that I routinely get in MP.

[Ming]

Well... after 1,000's of games of SP... no, it really isn't anymore. The challanges added some life into it (who ever thought you could win with one city or by never leaving depotism or by never building a city) but even they got old after many tries.

MP stays fresh because you have to deal with what you are dealt with, other humans act differently all the time instead of the same ole you get from the AI, and you can't count on getting a single wonder. And it is really nice to face an opponent that understands the concept of war... not just "let's keep spitting out a single unit every turn and watch him die against a solid defensive position"

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I guess I view CivII as less of a game and more of a simulation... even if the AI has been vanquished, trying to come up with the perfect trade strategy is fun for me, or seeing how quickly I can double or triple my population with celebrations and rush-bought aqueducts/sewers.

I expect you guys have played a lot more than me, so that may be old hat to you. I probably play no more than a dozen complete CivII games a year - so that would be less than 200 total (I played a lot more when I first got it), so it's still fun and I still get some challenge from the AI... for a little while at least