Gettin' Your Palace On

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

So, I finally decided to try out a strategy that's probably old hat to most of you warmongers out there.

I had a great "homeland" for my civ but knew I was going to be doing a LOT of conquering. So, I built my Forbidden Palace in Lyons (playing as the French, bien sur) and waited to relocate my palace later.

Well, just my luck, after conquering England, Spain, Scandanavia, Arabia, Germany and parts of Russia, I had STILL produced NO Great Leaders. And I have Sun Tzu's. I've hardly had a break from war, and yet no great leaders.

So I decided to just suck it up and start building my palace where I want it, smack in the middle of my continent (Mecca).

So how many turns is it going to take me? 1000!

In case I don't get a great leader soon - I have terrible luck producing the damn things - is there any way I can speed my palace growth? Or will only a great leader do the job?

Help!

[Konquest02]

Try rushing a courthouse and get the city in WLTKD, either by entertainers or the luxury slider (which can be a rather costly operation). That way, you might get your palace up in ~100 turns. Good luck though!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

It is concievable, then? "1000" doesn't mean "You just can't build this unless you rush-build it, period"?

[Arrian]

1000 means your palace now costs 1000 shields. The larger your empire gets, the more expensive your palace is (it starts at two or three hundred shields, IIRC). 1000 is the upper limit, I think.

My advice on leaders is this: don't rush the war. Take your time. Kill every AI unit you see, preferably with elite units. Use your elites in as many battles as possible. If you have to delay an attack to heal your elites so they can take part, delay the battle. I sometimes gamble with them (this obviously contradicts my advice to be careful with them, and is a case-by-case judgement call) - if I have, say, a 3hp elite knight healing up in a city, and an AI archer comes my way, I may just pop out and try nailing the archer with my elite knight, figuring that 3hp of knight outta kill 3-4hp of archer on defense.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, after I take out Russia, there'll be only 2 civs left on my continent - the Ottomans and the Celts, both 5 or 6 techs behind the industrial age (I rock the party, now the most advanced power in the world building ToE).

I was going to let them live, as taking them out WILL be a hassle - both are behind, and settled in, huge mountain/hill ranges, and the Celts, agressive little buggers, have a huge force of vet/elite knights. The Ottomans too have impressive defenses...

...so maybe I'll do a meat-grinder war to smash the Ottomans (and accelerate it before they get to use Sipahi) and than an endless meat-grinder against the Celts (who have many sources of iron).

That will give me UP and, most likely, a leader.

If I don't get a leader from all that, Arrian, I'm going to ask God himself to give me your luck for at least one game, you with your 9 leaders and all.

[Worthingtons]

What's the Profile of this City?
if it's built up with the Terrain very much Improved then I'm stuck.

If Not i would do the folllowing.

Rush a Courthouse on the 2nd turn (disband a few useless units and then hit the rush button). If Factory is available do the same - Get the City Producing lot's even if you do have lots of corruption, then I'd mine every single tile and overload this City with Workers - 10-20 workers dependant upon the size already. You can pack the City with Entertainers and make sure you utilise every single productive tile. When the City starves down send in more workers.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I might do a little of both... this is the first game where I've gone to war and not stopped, and not bothered buying temples (for the most part) or upgrading my defenders (still all musketeers or pikemen/spearmen!), so I have about 4000 gold save up, with about 150 coming in per turn. Enough to rush courthouse, factory, etc., and still have money to upgrade my defenders to infantry at some point.

Still, I'd rather build the damn thing now and quadruple (or whatever) my income per turn!

[Arrian]

Yep, long meatgrinder war sounds good, for the purpose of leader generation (bad otherwise). How many elite units do you have?

Make sure you cut their resources. Siphai BAD!

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

[Emperor Palpatine voice]
The Ottomans will build no Sipahi.

I have probably about 30~40 cavs, with about 6~10 of them being elite.

[Arrian]

With 6-10 Elite Cavalry, getting a leader shouldn't be too hard, given time. Patience, grasshopper

Do not use those Cavs against "hard targets." Use them to destroy the Ottoman troops that leave their cities. Bombard first, if you can (have artillery?).

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

No artillery yet. I don't have a very good rail system, so I've just been cranking out the cavs. The toughest thing I've come up against are veteran musketmen fortified in size 12 cities. Big whoop.

On the other hand, more than once I've lost full-HP elite cavs to full-HP spearmen regulars defended in towns... where's the justice in that?

[Arrian]

I've lost cav to spears too. It happens. Sometimes a 2.5 can beat a 6. You just gotta roll with it.

I typically lead with my veteran troops and finish wounded defenders with elites. If I get down to spearmen, though, I would do what you did: just attack with an elite, figuring it ought to win. If if dies, believe me, I have VERY strong words for my pixels! (DAMNIT! You SUCK! Why do I pay you guys! You DESERVED to die! etc.)

Get yourself Replaceable Parts, both for that rail system and the artillery, not to mention infantry, which makes your troops totally impervious to non-Sipahi counterattack.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

As long as you want your palace on the same continent as the forbidden palace, one possibility is to move it a little bit at a time. Find a highly productive city with, say, 50% or so corruption with courthouse, police station if available, and WLT?D, and build your palace there. Then when it's finished, cities farther away will be low enough corruption that you can move it again. That would still be a long, slow process, but it should be a whole lot less than a thousand turns. And along the way, cities in between the FP and the eventual palace location would get a period of low corruption to build up.

I've never actually used that technique thus far, but I keep it in my bag of tricks just in case it might come in handy sometime.

Nathan

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, I finally got a leader beating off the Russians, so I rushed my palace.

But before hand, I had built a courthouse, which knocked the price down from 1000 turns to 132! Quite a significant advancement!

The "palace skipping" trick sounds good... I'm going to keep that in mind, for the future...

OT, as for those Ottomans, well, I have 100+ cavs, most elite or veteran, but the Ottomans have about 20 cities, many sources of saltpeter, and their entire empire is heavily mountainous. The Celts to the south would be easier, but still a pill. I'm building artillery now... I wanted to bring in screenshot but couldn't figure out how to capture one... I might try a MGW (meat grinder war) but I'm a democracy currently, which might be a problem... still, I want the UP in effect, dammit...

[Arrian]

Oh, NO MEATGRINDER WARS AS A DEMOCRACY!

Monarchy is excellent for MGWs, Democracy is better suited for quick, decisive wars.

You've gotten your leader, so the whole purpose behind the MGW is irrelevant. Now you should only fight if it provides you with an advantage (productive cities, close enough to your Palace? Luxuries?). Those civs *may* be worth more alive than dead, if you can sell them luxuries for GPT.

-Arrian