Warrior Gambit on Emperor or Diety

[Spaced Cowboy]

Can someone detail this for me.

I know the build would be warrior, warrior, settler, warrior, warrior then you need to keep one warrior on diety in this city to even keep it happy. Haven't played at diety yet; not ready to be that humbled.

RPM

[BillChin]

Warrior Gambit, at least the one I outlined in the April games thread, works best on Monarch level or below. On Emperor difficulty and above the free units that the AI gets make it much harder. The AI usually gets free spearmen very early. Sending warriors to attack spearmen is like trying to fill an inside straight in poker--a low percentage way to play the game. A regular warrior has about a 30% chance against a fortified spearman, with a 6% chance of promotion for the defender.

A variant of Warrior Gambit is to pick off early settlers if they only have a warrior escort. The odds of success are better, though the reward is less than storming the enemy capital. Capturing the early settler sets back the AI expansion several turns and the two workers help a lot with early expansion.

On Emperor difficulty a player is usually better off with a later attack such as a Swordsmen Conquest strategy. Swordsmen Conquest involves building 4 to 6 cities, and about ten swordsmen. The odds of success are above 99% with a stack of swordsmen. Another early option is to attack with a force of five archers and two warriors.

I have had little success on Deity level, so maybe someone who plays that level can chirp up. One strategy is to crank out archers and warriors and go at it. The build queue might be warrior, warrior, archer, archer. Building settlers is not part of this strategy until the enemy capital falls. Throw all the units on the offensive and move the luxury slider to boost happiness. Archers are essential for attacking spearmen. At some point pop rushing or building a barracks is an idea.

[DrSpike]

Attacking really early on deity is not advisable, as Bill said. You may take a city but the AI will attack you with freebies and you'll be in trouble.

Depending on map size build a few cities (for standard, 8 civs I'd go for 4 or 5), build barracks (v. important), then build up an army of whatever takes your fancy. By this time the AI will have expanded to a poor defensive position. For deity spaceship/diplo attempts the Egyptians are IMO a great choice with their characteristics and good early UU. For a domination/conquest game play someone militaristic with a good early UU. You will probably end up with an early golden age, but I think this is worthwhile on deity, since your early wars are so critical.