Tweet
First off, a big thank you to all the contributors to Apolyton strategy whose ideas I have shamelessly stolen in trying to win with the English on Deity. Vel, Aeson, Arrian, Theseus and many others - I take my hat off to you all. Three cheers!
I thought that it would be worth reporting on my current game-in-progress, for which I have shamelessly leached ideas from the Strategy forum, to let you know how some of them are working out for the suicidally-weak English on the fiendishly difficult Deity setting.
Firstly, game setup. As suggested in the civ traits discussion, Huge map to make the most of expansionist (and, hopefully, the lower corruption from commercial). Pangaea. Only 7 enemy civs chosen from the least popular/powerful player civs, trying to restrict the number of religious ones in particular: Americans, Greeks, Russians, Zulu, Romans, Iroquois and French. Roaming barbarians only (perhaps I should have gone with raging).
Starting position: on a river, 1 cow on grassland, dyes in a nearby forest. Don't come much better.
Early game: a fairly standard explore-with-scouts and REX approach. I didn't try early rush strategies because on a large map it's a long way to your nearest opponent, so I'm erring on the side of builder. I am on the east coast (south-west, it turns out to be). A goody hut yielded a settler on the edge of 4 mountains containing gems, and York was born in 3850 AD.
I was pursuing a low-science, high cash strategy, running for Writing and Literacy at 40 turns per tech and getting other techs by purchase, trading and goody huts. N.B. milk expansionist Scouts for all they are worth, which is pretty much nothing after the ancient era.
First contact was with the Americans to the north-east. Here I have to report that early war really, really works. An elite warrior took down a stray American archer, becoming the 1st Light Irregulars, and a GL was born. Not trusting my chances of getting another for a bit I declined the opportunity to build the Pyramids with a heavy heart and built a 1-spearman army, aiming to bolster it with stronger defensive units later. One heavily-battered American archer learned that even small defensive armies pack an offensive punch and the Heroic Epic was underway in a coastal city on the 'safe' south coast.
As my archers and spearmen were heading north, the Americans sued for peace. We had tech parity so I demanded contact with other civs and thought I'd try it on by asking for a city, you know, just for a laugh. Instead of the expected "get knotted" message, the poor fools were prepared to offer me New York and Boston of their 6 cities. Boston was nothing special, but New York was on a river to the east of Washington, with hills, mountains and jungle to its east. And to the south-east was Philadelphia with its 4 or 5 Silks. Cue Wayne's World impersonations... she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine. The snowballing contact with other civs allowed the Iroquois to gouge me for Iron Working, revealing two sources near me. I also found horses on the way to America... My forces returned home, where I spent my hoarded cash on upgrades and embassies.
Note that the cash surplus from low-science was key to this strategy, and as I couldn't raise enough science to budge the 40 turns for Writing and Literacy I bit the bullet and made money fast, in true Usenet style.
I wasn't sure about going down the army/warmongering route - I was a Civ 2 builder, and quite a good one - but it paid off in the long run. I urge the unconverted to try it! I also tried and fell in love with the worker-purchase strategy. Population means expansion means power !
The only problems came when refusing extortion demands from the other side of the world led to, say, the perfidious French declaring war and annoying a key citizen in London.
I had less luck with the rolling-conflict and client-state approaches as my wars continued. There simply wasn't another opponent near enough for a series of quick wars: the Greeks with their tank-like Hoplites and Russians were far to the north, and the Zulu with their devilishly fast Impi to the east beyond the Americans. I rationalise it like this: whatever you build is an investment of resources, which needs to generate a return. The rate of return on a military which spends most of its time en route is low; hence the AI's REX tactics. The economics of Huge maps are quite different from smaller ones...
What did work well was a combination of contact-denial to slow down AI tech exchange (otherwise the Russians and Greeks would have run away, I fear) and the fostering of vicious wars between distant powers. This if you like was the upside of the worker-unhappiness problem: once I was at war with some distant civilization then gold, world maps, or a goody tech could all go to checking the AI's advance through fruitless warfare. (One slight drawback was that the Greeks wiped the floor with the advanced but Hopliteless Russians, leaving a small Wonder-rich core and becoming very powerful. Not what I expected. Worked well for other civs, though.)
There's a paradox here: warfare is productive for humans but not the AI. Why? Because we're better at stategy, I guess. We hoard our elites for GLs. We pick terrain better. We concentrate our forces. But I digress...
A second war with the Americans allowed the conquest of Detroit and the ceding of two more cities, for the cost of Boston destroyed. A second GL from my swordsmen was hoarded for the Great Library (my first wonder). The English civilization was small, spread out, culturally puny, with a small but threateningly-poised military. (All comments about relevance to real life to /dev/null please
)
And on that note, I'll leave the story for now. More if people are interested, or I'll shut up if not.
Bluesman
I thought that it would be worth reporting on my current game-in-progress, for which I have shamelessly leached ideas from the Strategy forum, to let you know how some of them are working out for the suicidally-weak English on the fiendishly difficult Deity setting.
Firstly, game setup. As suggested in the civ traits discussion, Huge map to make the most of expansionist (and, hopefully, the lower corruption from commercial). Pangaea. Only 7 enemy civs chosen from the least popular/powerful player civs, trying to restrict the number of religious ones in particular: Americans, Greeks, Russians, Zulu, Romans, Iroquois and French. Roaming barbarians only (perhaps I should have gone with raging).
Starting position: on a river, 1 cow on grassland, dyes in a nearby forest. Don't come much better.
Early game: a fairly standard explore-with-scouts and REX approach. I didn't try early rush strategies because on a large map it's a long way to your nearest opponent, so I'm erring on the side of builder. I am on the east coast (south-west, it turns out to be). A goody hut yielded a settler on the edge of 4 mountains containing gems, and York was born in 3850 AD.
I was pursuing a low-science, high cash strategy, running for Writing and Literacy at 40 turns per tech and getting other techs by purchase, trading and goody huts. N.B. milk expansionist Scouts for all they are worth, which is pretty much nothing after the ancient era.
First contact was with the Americans to the north-east. Here I have to report that early war really, really works. An elite warrior took down a stray American archer, becoming the 1st Light Irregulars, and a GL was born. Not trusting my chances of getting another for a bit I declined the opportunity to build the Pyramids with a heavy heart and built a 1-spearman army, aiming to bolster it with stronger defensive units later. One heavily-battered American archer learned that even small defensive armies pack an offensive punch and the Heroic Epic was underway in a coastal city on the 'safe' south coast.
As my archers and spearmen were heading north, the Americans sued for peace. We had tech parity so I demanded contact with other civs and thought I'd try it on by asking for a city, you know, just for a laugh. Instead of the expected "get knotted" message, the poor fools were prepared to offer me New York and Boston of their 6 cities. Boston was nothing special, but New York was on a river to the east of Washington, with hills, mountains and jungle to its east. And to the south-east was Philadelphia with its 4 or 5 Silks. Cue Wayne's World impersonations... she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine. The snowballing contact with other civs allowed the Iroquois to gouge me for Iron Working, revealing two sources near me. I also found horses on the way to America... My forces returned home, where I spent my hoarded cash on upgrades and embassies.
Note that the cash surplus from low-science was key to this strategy, and as I couldn't raise enough science to budge the 40 turns for Writing and Literacy I bit the bullet and made money fast, in true Usenet style.
I wasn't sure about going down the army/warmongering route - I was a Civ 2 builder, and quite a good one - but it paid off in the long run. I urge the unconverted to try it! I also tried and fell in love with the worker-purchase strategy. Population means expansion means power !
The only problems came when refusing extortion demands from the other side of the world led to, say, the perfidious French declaring war and annoying a key citizen in London.I had less luck with the rolling-conflict and client-state approaches as my wars continued. There simply wasn't another opponent near enough for a series of quick wars: the Greeks with their tank-like Hoplites and Russians were far to the north, and the Zulu with their devilishly fast Impi to the east beyond the Americans. I rationalise it like this: whatever you build is an investment of resources, which needs to generate a return. The rate of return on a military which spends most of its time en route is low; hence the AI's REX tactics. The economics of Huge maps are quite different from smaller ones...
What did work well was a combination of contact-denial to slow down AI tech exchange (otherwise the Russians and Greeks would have run away, I fear) and the fostering of vicious wars between distant powers. This if you like was the upside of the worker-unhappiness problem: once I was at war with some distant civilization then gold, world maps, or a goody tech could all go to checking the AI's advance through fruitless warfare. (One slight drawback was that the Greeks wiped the floor with the advanced but Hopliteless Russians, leaving a small Wonder-rich core and becoming very powerful. Not what I expected. Worked well for other civs, though.)
There's a paradox here: warfare is productive for humans but not the AI. Why? Because we're better at stategy, I guess. We hoard our elites for GLs. We pick terrain better. We concentrate our forces. But I digress...
A second war with the Americans allowed the conquest of Detroit and the ceding of two more cities, for the cost of Boston destroyed. A second GL from my swordsmen was hoarded for the Great Library (my first wonder). The English civilization was small, spread out, culturally puny, with a small but threateningly-poised military. (All comments about relevance to real life to /dev/null please
)And on that note, I'll leave the story for now. More if people are interested, or I'll shut up if not.
Bluesman
. 
) And much more importantly, cashing in as much as possible. My nation of shopkeepers was going to be going in for marketplaces in a heavy way...
Comment