Playing against humans : a low profile strategy.

[DAVOUT]

We are engaged in a REX strategy. Basically the REX strategy was developed to fight the AI which had invented it. I don?t know if it can work against humans, but that cannot be excluded in some cases (when no other alternative is available for instance). But I think that we should look into some completely different strategy, just in case ?; hereunder I describe a strategy which could fit the particular situation we have.

Rexing will quickly put us in a highly visible rank amongst the civs, because we have a lot of room and some very good sites. We could appear soon as too strong to be let alone. The problem is : how build a productive core, then limit further development to what the others are doing in average, without loosing opportunities of a vast expansion ? The solution is in mobile storage of potential cities.
Once we have closed the southern part of the continent and connected some luxuries, we could continue to produce settlers, their escort, and many workers. A PMC (Potential Mobile City made of a settler, a spearman and several workers) would be put on the site intended to be settled, but the settling would be made only to catch up with the others civs, or if the site was threatened to be settled by others.
It should be considered that a PMC, particularly for a religious civ, is also an offensive tool : the capacity to settle on short notice a city with 6 pop near an enemy border city, and a temple pop rushed the following turn, could be of interest.

I appreciate how keeping a low profile can be frustrating, but doing otherwise would necessitate maintaining a big military, whereas the low profile is quite consistent with our diplomatic stance.

Comments and opinions appreciated.

[Nuclear Winter]

I believe that GOW, Neudem, Lux, will all be too worried trying to fight one another they wont even notice us...
and also, becoming a strong nation soon (and prooving to be a peacefull friend[we have the best diplomacy in the game]) could in fact give us more friends;;;

[Aidun]

The strategy I'm using to prevent the AI of building cities on good sites nearby my borders is to place several miltary units in rows before them or closing them in, to prevent them from settling on the site. The settler can't go past the row because it m=oves in the same direction.
This strategy costs however much militairy and could seem quite offensive to the other players (if they're human, the AI doesn't care).

Aidun

[Aidun]

Davout,

If I'm understanding you rightly, you mean to place some military units, a settler and a few workers on a certain site to be able to settle at any moment and build a large town in case one of the other teams wants to settle there too. Right? Good strategy, but doesn't the workers cost us an enormous amount shields that we could better use to build improvements or other settlers. We're throwing schields away by this. I think theis strategy can only work if we've more and larger cities.

Aidun

[DAVOUT]

Aidun,

The workers would not stay idle; there is plenty of work to do, the roads to begin with.
But the whole question is : when all others are extremely cautious, is it best for us to draw attention in becoming first too soon, as we have the ressources to become?
And this strategy would not be adverse to building improvments, it would just delay a bit the settling of cities.

Dont forget that the rex results in being overextended before the military is build. This is acceptable against the AI who is always doing things the same way; here we are playing against humans who are much more versatile.

Anyway some brainstorming cannot hurt.

[ruby_maser]

well, we certainly don't want an alliance or embargo against us. We either need to stay low-profile or make damn sure our diplomacy keeps the other nations too mired in distrust and war to notice our good fortune until it is too late.

I think one thing is clear, though. If our good fortune continues, we will not have to go looking for war-- it will find us. Fortunately, we have been blessed with good geographical barriers not only to growth in our direction but also to offensive wars against us.

If defensive wars are to be our fate, what are everyone's opinions of outposts, fortress, the great jungle to our north, the many rivers we can us as maginot lines, etc? Our military strategy should be second to none.

[Aidun]

I already replied to ET's posts in the 3250AD City Site Proposals thread that we could use the rivers as a kind of castle moat:

E_T, you have thought out the placement of the citysites very well, but shouldn't we make more use of the rivers? They give us a defencebonus when we place the cities at the "Madrid-side" of the river. We can use them as a kind of castle moat. I also think that we can make our cities harder to capture if we try to place them on hills as they also give a defencebonus. Placing the cities on strategic locations may give us a big advantage over our enemies, esp. GoW, when they might attack us.

Aidun

[Aidun]

BTW: comments were:

originally posted by pikesfan
We can’t put Pamplona on the Madrid side of its river for obvious reasons. If we put 4 Zaragoza on the Madrid side there would be way too much overlap with Madrid.

originally posted by Ninot
We can still use the defensive bonus while not having the city on the river.

but...that involves defending the ENTIRE length of the river.

Aidun

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by ruby_maser second to none.

Louis XIV motto (nec pluribus impar).

We should suggest one for our Dictator.

[Togas]

This is an excellent point. The other teams are watching the score and the F11 screen as much as we are. Everyone want to know who's winning, who's in the lead, etc, because everyone wants to BE that team on top.

Right now the teams are agressively REXing to beat their neighbors to the choice spots, but that won't last for long. We need to keep on top of who's on top. I feel we should agressively rush to key spots on our border and to link up luxuries, but after we may want to leave sites in our interior (that have no risk of being settled) until later and only settle them to "catch up" with the leading teams.

The idea of moving a settler, mil units, and a group of workers to a site near the enemy is a very compelling tactic that we should keep in our bag of tricks.

--Togas

[DAVOUT]

The best defense of cities is in the field, before the enemys reach the city. City placement must give priority to the production and seize opportunity of defence bonus only as a second priority. Defense is a major reason for buiding a dense roads net, which is not included in the score although it is extremely powerful.

[OliverFA]

It looks like a good strategy to me. As with every strategy it is not good to abuse, but still can be implemented at least to some degree. If we continue to be behind in score, then we don't have to worry. But if at some point we are catching the leader then this PMC would be a good idea. Just remember how paranoic we ourselves are about ND geting a second city before anyone else.

The only bad thing I can see to a proper use of this strategy is that we renounce to win by score, but this kind of victory looks very unlikely at this game.

Of course, we can forget about that and go for the highest score, but then we can count that allmost all the other teams will get mad at us for sure, and we would need a considerably higher diplomacy effort and military.

[Aidun]

Originally posted by Togas
The idea of moving a settler, mil units, and a group of workers to a site near the enemy is a very compelling tactic that we should keep in our bag of tricks.

--Togas

But keep in mind my lord, that founding new cities very near the enemy may also seem quite offensive or at least quite defiant to our opponents in this early stage of the game because each team still has so few cities. Especially settling near their capital might be seen as a lay-up to an attack. If we decide to build our cities near their capitol, that will need some explanation to our opponents. (sorry for the bad formulation).

Aidun Cian

[Aidun]

Originally posted by Aidun


But keep in mind my lord, that founding new cities very near the enemy may also seem quite offensive or at least quite defiant to our opponents in this early stage of the game because each team still has so few cities. Especially settling near their capital might be seen as a lay-up to an attack. If we decide to build our cities near their capitol, that will need some explanation to our opponents. (sorry for the bad formulation).

Aidun Cian

[Aidun]

wrong button...