Civ choice for the "builder"

[Harovan]

Aeson, your example is very impressive indeed. I just had a look at it, and was just curious about your military. I found it really amazing, that you have 7 horsemen and 3 swordsmen for an empire like this, not counting 24 settlers, 83 workers and 14 scouts, which seem to be military in the AI's eyes too. What did you fight your wars with? And you leave all your cities undefended. I never thought this was possible, at least not in these dimensions. Do you not get rushed or sneak attacked? Just curious...

[Aeson]

Well I had about 40 Warriors that I upgraded to Swordsmen for my very short war with the French. Then I disbanded them in Paris to build some improvements and save cash in a republic. It is a calculated risk to leave my borders undefended. I can easily produce 10-20 Horsemen on any given turn now, and the border cities are just corrupt anyways, not really worth much. If I saw the AI massing its troops along the border I would do the same. In my experience the AI declares war (in the early game) when it feels boxed in, and I haven't completely closed off their expansion routes. No one has declared war yet.

[Dominae]

Thanks again for an excellent explanation, this time of ICS. It's pretty much what I was referring to by Vel's "training camp" strategy (I don't know if the idea is his, just that that's where I heard of it first), but he used the "in-between" cities to crank out military units while the "normal" citie were pure builders. The ideas are very similar, in any case.

Final question (I hope!): could you explain this paragraph in greater detail?

Originally posted by Aeson
The difficult part is the Forbidden Palace. In my game I was able to build the FP close to my Capitol (took 25 turns to build), then jump the Palace to a more corrupt location. I waited too long to do this though, and missed my target city by about 12 spaces, but it was still a huge improvement in overall production. The key is to do the Palace jump early, when all other cities are still building Settlers. Once the FP is built, starve down the FP city and time the disbanding of your capitol for a turn where only your target city is size 3+. I tried my jump when my target city was 9, but it jumped to a size 4.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "jumping"...


Dominae

[Aeson]

When the AI captures your capitol city, or you intentionally disband it, the Palace is rebuilt instantly in one of your remaining cities.

A lot of the basic strategies discussed on these boards originated in Vel's threads. With each patch they take on a new twist, but are essentially the same thing. Taking some past ideas, I see a few good applications for this Huge map ICS Settler flood opening.

Combined with "Culture Bomb" ideas and using a Religious civ, it could turn into a very powerful "Borg" type of a strategy. Get a huge number of homogenous cities and then pop rush a Temple in each. The Temple only costs 1 population point for Religious civs, and would take care of the unhappiness from the rush. A cultural victory could come very early if it was done right. A Scientific civ could do this even better, given enough luxuries. With the Babylonians a Cultural victory could come before 1000AD.

On a Huge map, conquest usually takes a while. A 200 city setup in the early AD's, and pop rushing until the luxuries can't take it anymore, could build up an army large enough to do it in no time. Kind of a massive sell out for conquest, but building an army of 400 Horsemen in ~10 turns would be hillarious.

How about a Domination victory without ever going to war?

[Arrian]

Aeson,

Something tells me that the palace jump thing also depends on culture. Did that size four city have more culture than the size nine?

In other news...

I stuck with the Egyptians, and got myself a really, really nice starting spot (which I promptly saved in 4000bc). River, two game, two cows on plains. Directly north, another site on the same river w/a wheat on fp, wheat on grass, several hills, incense on one of them. To the south, same river, grassland cow & another game. Other good land relatively close, wines in easy reach.

I decided to play 50/50 builder/warmonger. I built happily along, totally cutting off the French to my south and Americans to my north and west. Oh, it appears that I DO have the buggy version of 1.17f, because I got an army from a hut. I could have been honorable about things and just disbanded it, but I figured the random number generator owed me one

India (N. of America) attacked America while I was building horsemen. Just as it appeared they were winning, I signed an alliance and struck from the south, taking most of the remaining cities, including Washington - which has the Pyramids. My golden age was triggered by the Hanging Gardens (I have nearly all the wonders, which pleases me to no end), and was relatively well-timed. I may have made an error, however. When I negotiated the alliance w/India, I got a worker out of the deal. I used said worker. War ends, everything's fine, or so it seems. Boston culture flips to me and maybe 10 turns later, the Indian horde (no joke, they had a LOT of units) struck. They may have attacked me anyway, but I'm thinking that the worker was a bad idea. It was all I could do to hold them off. India! The war dragged on in a bloody stalemate (I did get a leader, though, who eventually became Copernicus) until War Elephants started showing up. Then the AI did something rather devious, and IMHO, pretty damn smart. India threw some WE's at me, eventually killing a musketman and triggering their golden age. They then (same turn) induced my "gracious" southern neighbor to attack me, and then (same turn) called me up for a peace treaty. I had to take it... I couldn't reasonably expect to hold them both off. India's golden age occurred in peace.

France died, providing me with another leader, who became Bach eventually. Then, guess what? India hits me again. I was constantly at war. The things that saved my great republic were the Sistine, Bach, and a (very late) meeting with Rome, Russia and Persia, which allowed me to wrangle two more luxuries (adding to my three). Upon the advent of Cavalry and my most productive cities being done with wonder-building for a while, I finally destroyed India (not that it was quick). Very, very late in the war, I got my third leader, who became the forbidden palace in the rebuilt version of Delhi. I was able to sneak a city in on the other continent, between some formerly English towns, and grabbed 3 ivory. And that's where it stands now, in the early industrial age.

Sorry for the novel I guess I got into it last night. I was really scratching and clawing at times. Anyway, I still haven't pulled off a successful early conquest/get leader/build forbidden with the Egyptians. This time around I didn't really try for it. I was too busy building cities and wonders... I got sidetracked.

-Arrian

[rpodos]

Aeson: That is un-frigging-believable.

Arrian: I think some of the problems you've had with Egypt (not the GL thing) might be luck of the draw, based on the relative streength of neighboring civs. You're game from last night had no early threats, so you could do the horse rush, (and with fairly equal progress by your neighbors, it was probably fun, but the human wins). Put Egypt next to Persia, Greece, Rome, or the Iroqouis, and you're gonna have a much harder time.

Regarding GL creation, I'm getting suspicious. Does anybody know if there are any modifiers OTHER than the Heroic Epic? We know it's not being militaristic, but how about other stuff? Attack vs. defense? Last defender? Capitol city? Culturally linked? Relative strength of combatants? Hit points remaining? Also, has anyone seen a GL created when using an Army? Lastly, what's the interaction between the odds of upgrade and the odds of GL creation?

R

[Aeson]

If an elite unit wins a fight and creates a leader, you can reload and any elite which wins a fight on that same event (each hp in a battle is an event) will generate a leader. Doesn't matter if it's against a Warrior or Mech Infantry. Given the way Firaxis programmed everything else in the game (keeping it simple), I would guess that there isn't anything other than the RNG and the published 1/12th or 1/16th chance deciding whether a leader is created. It's just luck.

Arrian -

I checked out my saves, and I don't think culture is the deciding factor when determining where the Palace will end up. It could very well be one of the factors involved though. In my game, the size 4 city had 0 culture, while my target city had a Temple and a Library. Not sure how much Culture it had at the time of the jump, but the borders had expanded. It must take into account Citizens, Happiness, Culture, and Corruption; like the "top" cities listing? I went back and tried several different scenarios, mostly it seemed to want to jump to small productive cities instead of large corrupt ones. It even jumped to my FP city a couple times, while it was at size 2. I didn't know that the FP and Palace could be in the same city! I also had never seen the Palace jump to a size 2 city before.

[Arrian]

Aeson,

Yikes! That sounds kinda unpredictable. So apparently culture has nothing to do with it, as the city it jumped to had none.

rpodos,

Yeah, it is luck of the draw - that's the problem. You can't plan on luck. Militaristic civs get the promotion bonus, and you can, I think, plan on getting at least 1 leader from the total destruction of two civs.

My Egypt 50/50 game is nearly done, it's 1585 and I'm in the Modern Age, building Bombers to compliment my Tanks and Mech Infantry. I'm at peace, largely because I have been able to trade for the 3 luxuries I don't own pretty easily (3-4 of my luxuries plus 15-20 per turn for each lux from the AI. Sounds fair to me ). The AI, unfortunately, is much closer in tech than I had hoped... they had infantry before I had Tanks and are now 1 tech from Tanks. The funny part is that no one has Free Artistry. The AI normally goes for it and builds shake's, but everyone ignored it and followed me up the tech tree.

This clearly illustrates, by the way, how powerful an early, well-placed forbidden palace is. In my Japanese game, where I set up the forbidden in ancient times, I raced out to a huge tech lead, getting Tanks before they got infantry, and getting Modern Armor long before they got Tanks, let alone hit the Modern Age.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

doh, screwup.

[Shaka II]

I fall into the 50/50 builder/warmonger category, playing at emperor and standard map size, mostly continent, but some pangea. More or less as described by Dominae.

I have learned to play the Zulu's pretty well from Aeson. They do perfectly fine as a builder civ, after you have made a little elbow room for your self. As a 50/50 civ, they are great, and certainly go up from there as the warmonger ratio increases. My best score is still from Zulu in a 50/50 type game, with early expansion first half and peaceful building second half.

I haven't played the Egyptians since my first game, but I see from Dr. Spike, et al, that they can be quite the warmonger civ in addition to builder. An (A) for both types of play.

Arrian, I think you still underate the Babylonians as a warmonger or a 50/50 builder/warmonger civ. While it is certainly powerful to save the GA for later (like rpodos), I make it work pretty well in the early game to expand my area, get at least 1 or 2 GL's, sue for peace a few times, etc., and slowly phase into long term builder strategy. I would give them an A- for this kind of play. Ever do a bowman rush with the Assyrians in AOE1?

Greeks are not bad either. The extra money (commercial) and great UU make it possible to buy tech up until the time that the infrastructure is in place.

Persians, I have played a number of times, also are a very good 50/50 civ.

I certainly would be interested in hearing about peaceful builder stategies at emperor, but I like the 50/50 type play. It keeps things interesting. If you are a many wonder builder, then emperor is very hard, better to play on Monarch. I can usually only build 3 or 4 in a game, with maybe 1 or 2 being buily using GL's.

Aeson, I think you are playing mostly on larger maps where expansion characteristics are more important. Also, what about land types, pangea? How do these techniques work as well on standard size, continents, etc.. You have certainly opened up my eyes to the many other strategies possible. I may be ready for a larger map.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Shaka II

Arrian, I think you still underate the Babylonians as a warmonger or a 50/50 builder/warmonger civ. While it is certainly powerful to save the GA for later (like rpodos), I make it work pretty well in the early game to expand my area, get at least 1 or 2 GL's, sue for peace a few times, etc., and slowly phase into long term builder strategy.

--

If you are a many wonder builder, then emperor is very hard, better to play on Monarch. I can usually only build 3 or 4 in a game, with maybe 1 or 2 being buily using GL's.

As for underating the Babs, I suppose that's possible. It's just so easy to build with them... which makes them attractive to anyone who isn't 100% warmonger.

I am a wonder hog. This is why, for the time being at least, I have stuck to Monarch. There are several wonders I simply MUST have. I know it's silly, and the game can be won w/o it, but it's the one thing from CivII I simply cannot shake. Civ III, unlike CivII, doesn't really offer ways to play builder on Diety. Caravans, no science caps, dumber AI, and different corruption & combat models ensured you could outbuild the Civ II AI on Diety, and hold them off militarily with a few well-placed units, until you had spies and/or howitzers.

But anyway, I know less about warmongering than most of you, so your grades are probably better than mine. I'm just happy we got a discussion going... the strat forum has been pretty silent lately.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Over at CivFanatics, the GOTM for March was with the Americans on a Small/Archipelago map. It looked like 3 Billion/Cold/Wet settings, so food wasn't all that plentiful. The starting location was horrible, room for 3 - 4 productive cities on a peninsula, with a large span of hills and mountains blocking off the mainland. Expansionist wasn't very important, at least not for me. Some of the people were able to get a Settler from one of the huts, which would have been HUGE on this map. It also would have been possible to keep neighbors without Iron, another big help.

I used an ICS approach to city spacing, building on every bad terrain tile that had any food near it. This gave me 6 initial cities that were productive in an area that I would normally only build 1 or 2. Also, only about 10 of my cities (of ~100 by the end of the game) needed Hospitals and Mass Transits, which saved a lot of money for me to rush Marketplaces, Harbors and Aqueducts. Probably was the most important decision in the game. The way that the Industrial trait helped in that game got me to thinking of how to best apply it to Huge/Pangaea type "score" games.

[Arrian]

I look at that start spot and wonder who the sadist was that decided to use it for a GOTM. That's a good example of a game that lasts only long enough for me to hit ctrl+shift+q. Ugly, very ugly. I can see how an ICS building approach would help in that situation.

I think my builder side is the one that makes me so darn picky about starting spots. So many are terrible, particularly if you want to build things instead of breaking them.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Well, choosing Small/Archipelago/3 Billion/Cold/Wet would usually mean that no amount of Ctrl-Shift-Q would help much

And the people who make the GOTM maps also play them, so they can't look and see just how good or bad the starting position is. They just see the initial 25 tile area around the start, which in this case doesn't look too bad.

It was actually one of the most enjoyable games I've played of Civ 3. I don't think I'd like to play that way often though.

[Harovan]

Even with 1.17f it's still possible to outresearch the AI alone.

I wanted to test what was discussed in this thread, and started a 50/50 game today. Playing the Iroquois at Monarch level, I have chosen a standard pangaea map, but it made me one with continents. Oh well. I had the Aztecs and the Germans at my continent. I didn't want too much ICS, so I built my first 6-7 cities 3-apart, and then started to build the cities 5-apart, to grab some more land.

Soon after this, the Aztecs declared war, although they weren't yet boxed in. They didn't massively attack, but occasionally sent an Archer or a JW. I placed 2 swordsmen and 2 MW's in their direction, to kill the wandering JW's, and ignored the war. I built a dozen more MW's and attacked the Germans. I wiped all but one German cities out (a few size 2-3 I had luckily captured) and made a harsh peace treaty, thus catching up in tech.

Then I concentrated at the Aztecs. Meanwhile I switched to Monarchy. The German campaign gave me a GL and I used it to build my Forbidden Palace. I upgraded all my warrior city defenders to swordsmen and sent them to the Aztecs too, leaving my cities undefended. I did the same with the Aztect what I had done to the Germans, and since they hadn't anything to offer but 9 gold, I wiped them off completely. The Germans still had only 1 city, 0 gold and no tech advance. So I wiped them off too.

This left me alone at my continent. I just switched to republic. Since I had no city defenders, but a good economy, I left my army of 30 MW's alive. I built more cities and soon I had a network of 38 cities 3-4 apart. A GL the Aztec campaign gave me, I used to move my Palace to former Aztec territory. My P/FP were now optimal located. I concentrated building roads and made tons of cash. Discovered new techs every 6-8 turns. Soon entered the medieval era. At this point, only the Pyramids have been built. I started to build the Great Library in the FP city. But since I beelined for Navigation, I soon discovered Theology and going for Education, and switched from the Great Library to the Sistine. In all my cities, I built a Temple, Barracks, Library and Marketplace (in this order). Cathedrals I started only in a maximum range of 8-10 tiles from P/FP. I still wondered, why I did not receive messages about wonder completion.

Soon I discovered Navigation, and sent a scout in a caravel over the ocean. I found another continent with the Zulus, Romans, Egypts and Indians. The Chinese are still missing. I expected to be awfully back in tech, but... O wonder, I was at least 2-3 techs ahead! I traded Literature, the Republic and some gold for Feudalism, Engineering (out of my beeline). Soon after I leveled the AI's tech advance at a 3-behind level, and all 4 AI's with less than 100 Gold. I didn't even sell my World map yet. My lead is huge, already in the medieval age. I have a continent for me alone with the same size, like the 4 AI's have. I have at least as much cities as they have together.

After 1.17f, I never could make such a big tech lead so soon. I guess it's the result of lower city spacing (won't call it ICS because it isn't). Seems, the strategies discussed in this thread work great .

Thanks for your patience! Back to my game...