Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[Velociryx]

Quite right Dave....quite right! And for that reason, I choose to set these "training centers" up as temporary measures. I don't wanna conquer the world under Despotism...UGH....that would make the game too much like a slowed down, turn based Command and Conquer type game....but, in the face of overwhelming production advantages, I DO wanna be able to get myself up to critical mass without getting squashed, and the long-term plan is that when I am able to compete head to head via traditional means, the training camps will be unbuilt.

But yep...I totally agree with that quote....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Arrian:

TOTAL agreement! The Iroquois/Persians would be HEINOUS menaces using this strat, and come to think of it, the Romans would be no slouches either, with their solid UU.

I also agree that the problem is MOSTLY centered on the sheer power of population sacrifice in Despotism/Communism, but some late game corruption tweaks (putting a corruption fighting element in, say, Police Stations) would prolly make Dem/Rep more "user friendly" and capable of supporting some sprawling empires of their own.

Also....one thing I was thinking about (for Civ4??), if you can get a great leader via combat, why can't the peaceful Civs get "Great Artists/Statesmen for having a HUGE culture?) They could only be used to rush wonders (cannot build armies with them), and if you have not had a golden age when you get one, the Artist/Statesman should automatically trigger it.

::shrug:: I guess that's not the sort of thing they can introduce in a patch, but it'd certainly rock!

-=Vel=-
PS: You're right....despite the added risk of the MPP, that's a HUGE "price difference." Certainly too big to ignore......:ondering that::
-V.

[Quurgoth]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Quurgoth - EXCELLENT approach! And 35+ cities on a standard map sounds like you're pretty much already doing the pseudo ICS approach! LOL....as it stands now, after fighting two wars back to back in my latest game, I still don't have that many! I will tho....I will....

-=Vel=-

I use my initial unit(s) to explore the map until I find the nearest other civs... then I build a city just outside the AI's culture range, camp a few units there, and make sure the AI doesn't get any warrior/settler pairs into the virgin territory between my capitol and the frontier. Unless, of course, I'm ready to go to war with them, and I have a couple/few units handy to take a new city...

This has led to some fairly large civs on the standard map, especially when I'm able to utilize choke points to maintain my grip on larger areas. The main bonus of my approach is that I can nearly ignore military development and focus on getting as much cash as possible through trades and city improvements. This makes rush-building for $$$ an easy proposition, and I wind up with well-developed culture fairly quickly, even in the farthest frontier areas.

The key has been, thus far, to go to war with only one enemy civ at a time early on, and to FREQUENTLY give things to the defeated civ after I've taken what I want and made peace. It takes awhile to go from furious to polite or gracious, but it's worth the effort later on.

[Velociryx]

Yep....I couldn't agree with you more about Gracious Civs! If they're researching along a different tech path than me, my gracious allies will often call me up and offer me the new tech for a song, even if it has a wonder associated with it!

I also tend to get REALLY favorable trade deals for luxury items from gracious civs!

Definitely worth the trouble and time to get them to that point! 'specially with those trade deals....even if they become "polite" later, you're still raking in that GREAT money from the trade deal!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

"I also agree that the problem is MOSTLY centered on the sheer power of population sacrifice in Despotism/Communism, but some late game corruption tweaks (putting a corruption fighting element in, say, Police Stations) would prolly make Dem/Rep more "user friendly" and capable of supporting some sprawling empires of their own."

The problem I see with late game corruption tweaks as a balance against despotic pop-rush is that a republican/democratic builder wouldn'd SURVIVE until the late game. Perhaps a cultural penalty to despotism, ala "mobilization" would help the early game balance? That encourages a switch to another form of govt.

I totally agree about the idea of high-culture civs spawning "Great Artists" or "Great Statesmen" or something along those lines. I also agree that it's surely a feature for CIV IV.

-Arrian

[Libertarian]

Wow, Vel. What a fantastic strategic resource you've shared with us! Thank you for all that effort.

One tiny nit. It's been my experience as the French that captured workers do not enjoy the premium industriousness of my own workers. In fact, I discard them when I capture them, either by adding them to a city, disbanding them, or just throwing them away.

[Velociryx]

Thanks man! Hmmm....and it seems like some conflicting reports re: captured workers and their effectiveness.

Someone care to run a few tests for us so we can verify one way or the other??

And....in the meantime, I've prepared a little sneak peek of the "Analysis of the Civs" article I'm putting together. Each of the sixteen Civs will get a similar treatment....lemme know what you think....

OoO

Note: It goes without saying that the Despotic Rush will win each and every game for you. Because of that, the strategies covered here may reference periods of Despotic Rushing, but do not revolve around the concept, in the hope of providing strategies that provide a more entertaining and enriching game experience. Sometimes, it’s more about the art than cold efficiency!

America (Industrious/Expansionist)
Starting Tech: Pottery/Masonry
Special Unit: F-15 (8/4/-, bomb: 4/6/2)
Jet Fighter with extra bombing range and rate of fire, plus radar (sees two tiles), and precision strike capability (not working pre-patch).

The Goods:
The advantage of Industrious workers is simply HUGE and cannot be understated (an advantage which carries through the entire game)! The production kick that all Industrious Civs get is a mid-late game advantage, which makes this group quite interesting in that it’s abilities are evenly split between early and mid-late, with a late game UU (that will be awesome as soon as we get the patch!). Simply put, with a new advantage waiting for them at the dawn of every era they enter into, this Civ is amazingly balanced. Early on, they can rely on their fast, diligent workers to lay the foundations of an Empire, while their starting scout gets a much faster than the norm picture of just what the surroundings look like (meaning that settlers will be assured of heading off toward the choicest terrain first!), and of course, there’s the advantage of being the first to get at those goody huts, and the Expansionist perk of having only good stuff in them! Also, their 2-move Explorer makes it much more likely that the Americans will be firmly in the driver’s seat, diplomatically.

By the middle game, with all their cities up and running good, the industrial “shield bonus” will kick in, doing at least a little bit to offset physical production lost to corruption, and making to speedier builds in general, and by the late game, they get an awesome unit to throw into the mix! That’s a pretty tough act to follow.

Strategies From One End of the Spectrum to the Other:

General: An interesting dilemma is presented to the Expansionist Civ off the cuff. Use Pottery to build Granaries and help speed expansion, or save the time spent doing that, hoping to snag the Pyramids first, thanks to where you begin on the tech tree?

To answer that question, you need to determine how important REX is to your overall expansion (and your level of play is also an enormous factor). If you’re playing Emperor or above, then you must carefully consider whether you can afford to pop-rush the Granary to completion. You can if either of the following conditions are true:

You have three garrisons
Two garrisons and a Luxury tile inside your borders

Temples cannot be factored into the equation for two reasons. First, in the very early game, you simply lack the tech to build them, and second, REX is about speed. Since you’re not a religious civ, you cannot afford the time it would take to build said temple! That would work against your expansionist strategy and weaken your position!

So….consider your level of play and your garrison/luxury situation carefully, and decide based on that, and your overall plan for the game.

Rivers: Are, of course, important to everyone, but especially important to Commercial and Industrious Civs. Why? Because your bonus production kicks in at size seven, and rivers mean one less bit of infrastructure you have to build in order to grow beyond size six! Keep that in mind when planning your Civ-Layout! If you get more production than your rivals AND have to build less infrastructure, you can all but guarantee that you’ll be consistently ahead of the pack!

Pure Builder: Played this way, you want to focus on finding the very choicest in city sites, regardless of how far apart they might be. Let your Industrious workers build road out to city sites to speed the settlers on their way. Once in control of the best resources that the continent has to offer, you can set yourself up nicely in the trade business, swapping out your surplus luxury items and strategic resources for techs and money. Under this approach, don’t be shy about swapping world maps! You want to find as many people as you can and trade with them all (and to that end, when you get a spare worker or two, in addition to building roads to city sites, start building toward rival Civ capitols too….trade routes = money in your pocket and techs learned!

One of the implications of this too, is that, all this map-swapping is an open invitation for your rivals to come along and plant cheesy cities in among your borders, and if that happens, let them do it! When you’re not building settlers and workers, you’ll be building Temples and Libraries, so while the culture game isn’t necessarily your strongest suit, you’ll not be a slouch in that department either. So…let the AI build a city or two for you and absorb it, selectively rushing cultural improvements near the interloper till you simply overwhelm him. Also, since roads, and a city’s connection to its capitol are a part of the equation, if your rival DOES build a road to connect his interloping city to his capitol, part of that road will, no doubt, run through “no man’s land,” which means you can send a unit out to pillage the road, severing the tie, and making the city that much more likely to defect. (and note that you can do this without affecting your relations with the civ in question!) Good use for all those “spare” warriors you’ll have milling about after you map the continent! GREAT use for your starting scout, assuming something doesn’t kill him off!

The essence of your game will revolve around wheeling and dealing with the AI, using your generous quantities of luxury and strategic resources to keep your rivals not only happy, but also dependent on you.

Tech-wise: Skip Monarchy and beeline for Republic once you’ve got all the early game infrastructure techs in hand, and the techs for whatever wonders you’re interested in. This will enable you to peacefully trade and research, while your industrial bonuses enable you to complete peacetime infrastructure like nobody’s business, freeing your cities up to begin cranking out troops (your “big stick” should anyone try to rain on your parade).

Pure Momentum: Simply put, your speed at scouting out the map is very nearly unmatched. Of the potentially 15 rival civs you face, only 5 others can keep pace with your explorations in the early game (it would be four, but the Aztecs can keep up, thanks to their UU). Meaning that fully 2/3’s of the Civs out there are proceeding at a snail’s pace when it comes to mapping out the world around them.

Find them first, find all the critical resources you need to make their life a living hell, deny them those resources by settling first, and then smash them hard.

If you’re playing to this style, then you want to do a complete about-face where maps are concerned. If another Civ has your map information, that’s as good as an open invitation to attack. If the bad guys know where your cities are, they can reach out and touch you, so keep them in the dark as much as possible, while taking advantage of your fast-moving explorer to find out where everything important is in their empire. And don’t wait until you have completely mapped out their Empire before you start building your attack force! As soon as you see borders, start churning out troops at your first possible opportunity! The faster you can get an early game battle group together (6 units or so), the faster you can begin subjugating his cities!

Tech-Wise: Beeline for Monarchy but stay in Despotism while fighting early battles to keep the advantage of pop-rushing your best troops. Once you have handed your early foe a punishing defeat, you’ll be able to switch to Monarchy, get out from under research-killing corruption, and still maintain your large standing army for free!

Drawbacks: On small maps, or high-water maps, the Americans will be penalized because many of their native advantages are nullified by these map settings (can be used in hot seat game—if such things are introduced in a patch—for handicapping). Also, they get no breaks whatsoever where cultural improvements are concerned, having to pay full price for temples, libraries, and their ilk. This means fans of America looking for a cultural win will face more of a challenge game. Finally, their starting techs do not lend themselves to rapid government switches OR to the swift location of critical early game resources, making early game contact and critical tech trades all the more important.

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....good points, brother Arrian....tho I suspect that even the most diehard "Republican-Minded" Builders will have made some pretty hefty use of the Despotic Whip to speed their initial infrastructure in place.

If I'm playing an MP game, and am in a position of relative isolation that facilitates easy defense (island, peninsula), I'd be inclined to run periods of Republicanism/Dem for the research kick, with an eye toward switching back to Despotism/Communism if I saw trouble on the horizon.....I guess you could say that my finger would be on that proveribial trigger....there's no way I'd even *attempt* to fight a human player while running Republic, and definitely not Dem!

But now that I think about that....Police Stations probably come too late in any case to really make the difference that'd be needed to offset Despotism's current dominance. As it stands now, I could see running Despotism without interruption till Communism, and then switching right into it!
Ohhhh! And I *like* the notion of applying a cultural penalty! Although....that would make using pop-sacrifices to rush in early temples (something done waaaaay often in history) work against itself....still....on the surface of it, I'm inclined to say it'd be excellent as a partial balancer!

-=Vel=-

[eMarkM]

On Too Powerful Pop Rushing

I thought a lot of pop rushing would cause unhappiness later on. Doesn't all that slaughter add up? I use it, but not as a crutch because I thought unhappiness would be an issue. Is the effect on happiness negligible? Has anyone tried to quantify this? Obviously when you're killing off all your citizens there's no happiness problem

Maybe that would be a way to deal w/ it. Just make unhappiness obscenely horrible at some point--whatever the government. I haven't noticed real ill effects from it. Though I suppose that would just encourage people to stay pop killing despots all the time. Maybe it should make corruption even worse. Would that put an end to abuse.

e

[Velociryx]

The real problem with Pop-Rushing is that it provides a predictable, static result.

I think the easiest solution would be two-fold

First, introduce diminishing returns.

1st rush - max of 40 shields
2nd - max of 30
3rd - max of 20
4th - max fo 10
5th - max of 5
6th + - No gain or 1 Gain

Second, introduce a randomizing factor in the specific amount of gain you get back from pop rushing. After all, the guys holding the whips can't watch the workers 24/7, and when the cat's away....

Thus, the actual RANGE for the first rush would be defined at the lower limit by the second

1st Rush: 30-40 shields
2nd Rush: 20-30 shields
And so on, until it simply no longer "paid" to do it.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Vel,

I'm not saying I don't use the whip. I do. I use it for temples and libraries. After that, I'm going republic. In one game (only one) I stayed in despotism long enough that I whipped out a few cathedrals, too (captured cities... size 6 ->size 3 with a cathedral, it was beautiful). That was my Iroquois mounted warrior rush game (and when I say rush, I do NOT mean I used the whip for the units... I built them).

I'm saying there should probably be more of a limit on just how much whipping you can do. Your military buildup, unless I'm misreading, was largely based upon whipping those "training camps" into pumping out swordsmen. As it stands now, so far as I can figure, the negative effect of forced labor on the city's mood lasts 20 turns. But, if the city is size 1 or 2, it's pretty damn easy to control it as a despot (either garrison 1/2 units or have a lux resource or two). Only once thus far have I had civil disorder in a city that was even PARTIALLY attributable to my use of the whip (50% it's just too crowded, 50% we cannot forget the cruel oppression...). And that was right when I switched over to republic, and thus lost the garrison unit's power of "persuasion." It could use some tweaking, though I think only on the higher difficulty levels. If people want to use the whip like crazy on chieftan, so be it, it's chieftan.

EDIT: I just saw the post you got in before mine. Good idea... I like diminshing returns. Better than cities revolting - that way, it just doesn't work anymore. Even if the shield value remains static (probably easier to do the mod that way), it still works. 40, 30, 20, 10, nada. Maybe a reset after each 20 turn period (say you pop rush a temple - you get 40 shields out of the pop point, right? Well, if you WAIT 20 turns and rush again, you'd get the full bonus. If you're an impatient sob, you get 30. But eventually, the effects drop off and you can do it again). This way, millenia later, you can do some whipping under communism and you aren't penalized for stuff you did in 2000bc.

On corruption: I've said before that I hope they tweak corruption in such a way that the overall corruption rate caused by # of cities stays the same or even maybe increases, but the distance-to-capital corruption should be reduced with the advent of certain technology or city improvements. The # of cities corruption, if they tweak it so that it effects your core cities more, may hamper a despot rush. Thus, if you have tons of cities & "training camps" your capitol could get up into the 50% corruption range (under despotism, early on this is). That might just hurt ya.

Anyway, I think I should probably start playing on the higher levels (I'll start Monarch tonight) so that I've got a better idea of the problems and solutions... maybe there is another way.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Yep....I think we cross posted again btw! LOL...and the more I've been thinking about it, the more convinced I am that it is genuinely broken....know what you mean tho about the beauty of pop rushing cathedrals. Sac half the population in a size six city, and the survivors are just insanely happy....

As to the "Pairing" thing, you're exactly right. I was whipping those swordsmen out like there was no tomorow, and you're right....absolutely no downside to it, as far as I can see. I essentially had my own little captive breeding farms to pump out swordsmen for me.

Cruel and tyrranical to be sure (especially with no discernable downside), but so far, stackin' those cities deep has been the best-working idea I've had to offset the AI's production edge. My first game, using "traditional means" I got utterly SPANKED by the Emperor-Level AI...which got me thinking about why....which led to...this....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

::nodding:: completely agree about the "reset" feature! And, that would certainly add in a VERY strategic element to it! *When* and *How* to Pop-Rush for maximum effect.

As it stands now, the answer is: as soon as the base grows to size two.....not very strategic....

But yes! If that's a moddable attribute, we could fix that ourselves! (Anybody know??)

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Starvation

Along the same lines, I agressively starve captured cities in order to reduce them to size 1 (or thereabouts). This, coupled with rush-built culture-producing improvements, prevents them from revolting back to their prior owner (9x out of 10). That 1 remaining citizen is happy as a clam. The rest of my enlightened democracy has absolutely no problem with this starvation tactic. Hell, they don't even get pissed if you starve THEM, let alone foreign nationals. This has been true of all of the CIV games to date. What if you actually had to feed your people (starvation = unhappiness) instead of starving cities back down to controllable sizes? The twisted logic never really bothered me until we started discussing the poprush. Of course, when conquering, you would simply make sure to bombard every target city to size 1 first so that you wouldn't have to starve it, but at least that requires more effort.

-Arrian

[absimiliard]

I can attest that there is definite happiness effects beyond just 20 turns. It looks to me like you add the turns up for EACH rush & you have unhappiness for that long.

My example was a magnificent game I had as the Indians. I had a city pop-rushing Settlers constantly, it had 3 cows on floodplains & just was impossible to keep from growing too fast. Even with rushing Settlers it was almost too much. Anyways, that city was still unhappy when I won by launching my spaceship. Nearly two-thousand years of stable Republican & Democratic government and the city still required entertainers to deal w. it's unhappiness. Clearly they remembered my cruelty thousands of years later!

What it really means is that there's no such thing as a short-term opportunity cost for rushing. If you rush, you are paying the long-term cost, always. No reason not to rush mind you, just a good reason not to rush too many things. Nowday's I'm rushing Temples & Libraries and normally not rushing much at all beyond that.