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Why I skip knights
A week or so ago, I made several posts about why I skip knights and head strait for Calvary. My opinion was challanged, which I respect totaly. But I feel that this is a valid strategy that is usful for the Roman player (IDK if this will work for anyone else, but if you want, give it a spin).
Btw, I think Strakorfsky would find this most interesting.
Okay, I took some time to lay out my style of ancient to medieval age warfare. This of course, applies only to Rome, but I guess you can do the same for the Greeks (I never played them so I wouldn’t really know). I laid it out into simple phases.
To refresh my strategy, I decided to play on a standard size map (something I never did before), just to make this a quick example and since that is the most common map size played. I had a 70% ocean continent, with defaults across. I turned off Barbarians to also make this quick and simple. I’m also setting the game to Regent (my level, still working on Monarch); with no re-spawn players (chasing a civ across the globe early in the game sucks).
Here are my phases. Try to keep up now.
Phase 1
Pant your city at once, and then build three warriors. The first will scout out the area, and if your lucky, you’ll be near or at the coastline, this will give you a better since of I direction. The last two will guard Rome while you then build the barracks. When your science adviser mentions that we need to study a tech, pull up the tech map and select Iron Works at once, and begin looking for areas of Iron. Hopefully you have scouted out enemy positions. Build archers about 5 archers then a settler for a new city, this next city will do the same as Rome, three warriors, and a barracks, then you can either build archers, workers, or settlers. Rome will constantly build archers. Having massed about 10 archers, you head for the nearest enemy city. Once you are at the border, trade whatever techs you can then declare war (don’t trade too early, you want them building Spearmen just yet) and kill them all. I suggest you raze at this time, for several reasons:
A: Corruption in despotism is bad
B: You don’t want to waste military units on garrison duty
C: Slave workers are better then none
D: Razing this early doesn’t hurt you, and any furious civ can be bought with either a tech or some gold
While all of this is happening, your warrior should have another civ. If you’re lucky, this civ is not that far away and this civ doesn’t have Spearmen just yet. Usually, only the former is true. If that’s the case, bring your archers back to disband them in the cities making legionary units (don’t forget to upgrade your warriors). Once you mass a large army of them (again, about 10), send them to the next civ and crush them.
Summery: Only build warriors to scout and defend, then archers. Once Spearmen come around, upgrade to legionary. Avoid any and all other units. You really need to scout more, build only one or two horsemen, but not in mass, you’re limited in cities that can produce, and you need legionary units. Do the math.
Phase 2
Once this second civ is crushed, you basicly guaranteed your domination for the continent, and it suggested your flood the map with settlers. If there is another civ that is not that advanced and easily crushed by this time, do so as well. Your empire should expand into the Middle Ages. Your legionary units will help defend against any knight attacks (the combat calculator over at CivFanatics shows that a Legionary can defend itself about 66% of the time). At this point, you want to skip knights and head for Military Tradition, to pick up the Cavalry, and if you want, Musketmen on the way. The goal here is to beat them to it, and have a very powerful army that could possibly win the game before getting too far into the industrial age.
If you really need to go on the advance and start a war, you’ll need to know the terrain, because your legionary units are the best things you’ve got, and all things considering, still pack a punch. To defend yourself against knight counterattacks, try to stay in jungles and hills and if you can, mountains, your legionary units will be invincible against knights. If you must, use forests. The river is a double edge sword. On the one hand, they help defend legionary units even on open terrain, but they can be murder for them when the legionary unit is attack, particularly if it’s a city. I only attacked at this point in time once, it was long, hard, and bloody, but I won. I suggest that you don’t though, but if you need to, these are the reasons you should:
A: Another civ declared war on you
B: You need a resource (Iron, Horse and Saltpeter are the three you need)
C: You are land locked and need a coastline (rare, but worth it)
Any other reason can wait.
Another issue is government, this I leave up to you. Personally, Republic works for me, but this only an opinion. I tried this once with Monarch, and several times still under despotism. Rome is not a religious civ, so be careful. Also, I suggest you buy some techs, so you don’t miss out on the Chapel, and Cathedral wonders at least.
Summery: Expand like crazy, all the while heading for Cavalry. Don’t go to war; let the war come to you.
Phase 3
You can build Calvary! Congratulations, you are now the most powerful military force of the world, now time to crank them out. There are several things you can do. Mass them all in one spot, or mass them in several locations. I suggest you find these locations, and get a worker to build a fort there for easy reference. Once you know you have enough (when to wake them up, it takes a while for the list to drop down for the “Wake All” command), go to war! Pikemen don’t stand a chance, even in 12+ cities. If any civ got hold of Mustketmen, then expect some losses, but not much.
You may notice, that you ran out of civs to kill on your continent, no matter, build about 4 to 6 galleons (or about 8 to 12 Caravels if you can’t wait), and load them up with Calvary units. I suggest you find a weak civ on the next continent, and take one of their port cities close to yours. Capture the city, and hold it, build culture improvements such as temples and libraries to ward off a flip (this is rare in this case for me). All the while, your entire nation is building Calvary units and shipping them to a port city where an empty ship is waiting. Don’t stop this shipment. Think of it as the Red Ball Express. Have a couple more port cities build transport ships for you as well. Capture a few more cities on the way, to give yourself a real foothold.
If you’re lucky, you just missed a civ building riflemen, if not, congratulations, you conquered the world!
If you’re not lucky, well, you sure are a big boy in this game. Riflemen really screw things up. The situation here would be the same back when you skipped knights and attacked with legionary units.
Summery: Fight hard and kill all at once.
Closing
As you can see, this is a valid strategy. One I hold dear. This can’t be applied to any other civ, because Rome’s UU has the defensiveness of a Pikeman. This lets you ride out this stage of the game, and lets you spend your time B-Lining to Calvary.
I hope this is of some help, and I would like constructive (
) feedback on this.
Btw, I think Strakorfsky would find this most interesting.
Okay, I took some time to lay out my style of ancient to medieval age warfare. This of course, applies only to Rome, but I guess you can do the same for the Greeks (I never played them so I wouldn’t really know). I laid it out into simple phases.
To refresh my strategy, I decided to play on a standard size map (something I never did before), just to make this a quick example and since that is the most common map size played. I had a 70% ocean continent, with defaults across. I turned off Barbarians to also make this quick and simple. I’m also setting the game to Regent (my level, still working on Monarch); with no re-spawn players (chasing a civ across the globe early in the game sucks).
Here are my phases. Try to keep up now.
Phase 1
Pant your city at once, and then build three warriors. The first will scout out the area, and if your lucky, you’ll be near or at the coastline, this will give you a better since of I direction. The last two will guard Rome while you then build the barracks. When your science adviser mentions that we need to study a tech, pull up the tech map and select Iron Works at once, and begin looking for areas of Iron. Hopefully you have scouted out enemy positions. Build archers about 5 archers then a settler for a new city, this next city will do the same as Rome, three warriors, and a barracks, then you can either build archers, workers, or settlers. Rome will constantly build archers. Having massed about 10 archers, you head for the nearest enemy city. Once you are at the border, trade whatever techs you can then declare war (don’t trade too early, you want them building Spearmen just yet) and kill them all. I suggest you raze at this time, for several reasons:
A: Corruption in despotism is bad
B: You don’t want to waste military units on garrison duty
C: Slave workers are better then none
D: Razing this early doesn’t hurt you, and any furious civ can be bought with either a tech or some gold
While all of this is happening, your warrior should have another civ. If you’re lucky, this civ is not that far away and this civ doesn’t have Spearmen just yet. Usually, only the former is true. If that’s the case, bring your archers back to disband them in the cities making legionary units (don’t forget to upgrade your warriors). Once you mass a large army of them (again, about 10), send them to the next civ and crush them.
Summery: Only build warriors to scout and defend, then archers. Once Spearmen come around, upgrade to legionary. Avoid any and all other units. You really need to scout more, build only one or two horsemen, but not in mass, you’re limited in cities that can produce, and you need legionary units. Do the math.
Phase 2
Once this second civ is crushed, you basicly guaranteed your domination for the continent, and it suggested your flood the map with settlers. If there is another civ that is not that advanced and easily crushed by this time, do so as well. Your empire should expand into the Middle Ages. Your legionary units will help defend against any knight attacks (the combat calculator over at CivFanatics shows that a Legionary can defend itself about 66% of the time). At this point, you want to skip knights and head for Military Tradition, to pick up the Cavalry, and if you want, Musketmen on the way. The goal here is to beat them to it, and have a very powerful army that could possibly win the game before getting too far into the industrial age.
If you really need to go on the advance and start a war, you’ll need to know the terrain, because your legionary units are the best things you’ve got, and all things considering, still pack a punch. To defend yourself against knight counterattacks, try to stay in jungles and hills and if you can, mountains, your legionary units will be invincible against knights. If you must, use forests. The river is a double edge sword. On the one hand, they help defend legionary units even on open terrain, but they can be murder for them when the legionary unit is attack, particularly if it’s a city. I only attacked at this point in time once, it was long, hard, and bloody, but I won. I suggest that you don’t though, but if you need to, these are the reasons you should:
A: Another civ declared war on you
B: You need a resource (Iron, Horse and Saltpeter are the three you need)
C: You are land locked and need a coastline (rare, but worth it)
Any other reason can wait.
Another issue is government, this I leave up to you. Personally, Republic works for me, but this only an opinion. I tried this once with Monarch, and several times still under despotism. Rome is not a religious civ, so be careful. Also, I suggest you buy some techs, so you don’t miss out on the Chapel, and Cathedral wonders at least.
Summery: Expand like crazy, all the while heading for Cavalry. Don’t go to war; let the war come to you.
Phase 3
You can build Calvary! Congratulations, you are now the most powerful military force of the world, now time to crank them out. There are several things you can do. Mass them all in one spot, or mass them in several locations. I suggest you find these locations, and get a worker to build a fort there for easy reference. Once you know you have enough (when to wake them up, it takes a while for the list to drop down for the “Wake All” command), go to war! Pikemen don’t stand a chance, even in 12+ cities. If any civ got hold of Mustketmen, then expect some losses, but not much.
You may notice, that you ran out of civs to kill on your continent, no matter, build about 4 to 6 galleons (or about 8 to 12 Caravels if you can’t wait), and load them up with Calvary units. I suggest you find a weak civ on the next continent, and take one of their port cities close to yours. Capture the city, and hold it, build culture improvements such as temples and libraries to ward off a flip (this is rare in this case for me). All the while, your entire nation is building Calvary units and shipping them to a port city where an empty ship is waiting. Don’t stop this shipment. Think of it as the Red Ball Express. Have a couple more port cities build transport ships for you as well. Capture a few more cities on the way, to give yourself a real foothold.
If you’re lucky, you just missed a civ building riflemen, if not, congratulations, you conquered the world!
If you’re not lucky, well, you sure are a big boy in this game. Riflemen really screw things up. The situation here would be the same back when you skipped knights and attacked with legionary units.
Summery: Fight hard and kill all at once.
Closing
As you can see, this is a valid strategy. One I hold dear. This can’t be applied to any other civ, because Rome’s UU has the defensiveness of a Pikeman. This lets you ride out this stage of the game, and lets you spend your time B-Lining to Calvary.
I hope this is of some help, and I would like constructive (
) feedback on this.
). This can save money to buy those wonder techs.
. But I look at the bright side, at least I can last that long to lose. 
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