Small Is Beautiful Strat

[bulldog]

I definitely agree with the original posting that small is beautiful. Most of my games, I don't try to conquer the world. I enjoy the diplomacy (which is why this aspect of the game is my absolute no. 1 desire for XP2) and creating a powerful prosperous civilization. Yes I want to be big, but not necessarily so big that I have to manage 50+ cities. Also, its great trying to play the puppet master to ensure that weak civs survive and large civs get brought into line. I'm enjoy warfare, but only when it is to achieve a specific strategic aim (and being the biggest isn't necessarily sufficient justification).

[jshelr]

Thanks for responses guys. Sorry to be absent. Company sent me on the road for a few days. Damn inconvenient.

Anyway, in answer:

"Could you elaborate about the benefits of establishing embassies early? I usually don't want to spend the money, and wait until I want a specific alliance before even considering one."

Txurce, I agree. What I mean is that you have to have writing as a means to establish the embassy or you might get double teamed. So, writing is a very useful war tech. Although the earlier responses are relevant, I'm also generally too cheap to buy one until I have to or am curious about who is fighting whom.

Oalf

"I saw this thread and found the strategy worth a try. However, it took six attempts before I even got a map where the terrain made such city placement structure possible. And that was on standard pangea."

I think you're going to be a hard sell. But, giving it a try, the terrain should not be an issue. Almost all terrain will net you at least two squares that are good and three that can be made good in each 9 square city. Nothing else counts much in the early going. So, unless your map is all desert, you should be able to make a block of cities immediately around your capital that are low corruption and, after your workers get done, good enough for ancient era unit building. You have to use your imagination when stuck on a peninsula or with your back to the sea, etc. Don't get hung up on the ideal symmetry story. The message is to pack them close and get the productive tiles improved quickly.

I'm shocked, shocked that you can't get up an running before pikemen unless you're playing on Deity. In fact, what I like about Small Is Beautiful, is that you get your military ready early enough not to run into a strong AI defense. Are you building culture or getting distracted by other goals? Are you improving the key squares of land sufficiently to make the cities productive?

Thesues has got my attitude spot on. "This is just one more extension of the group of early warmonger strats, including oscillation, the Archer Rush, the Sword Rush, etc." Perhaps, "refusal to REX" beyond the 9 city level, even if there is land available, because I prefer the package of results from an early war, would make the motivation clear.

I'm interested in Bulldog's and Turxce's responses indicating that Small is ok even without war. You would have to refocus on some building, which I generally don't, but maybe you could win without combat. Small Is Beautiful is definitely helped by the impact of corruption on bigger civs.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by jshelr


I'm shocked, shocked that you can't get up an running before pikemen unless you're playing on Deity. In fact, what I like about Small Is Beautiful, is that you get your military ready early enough not to run into a strong AI defense. Are you building culture or getting distracted by other goals? Are you improving the key squares of land sufficiently to make the cities productive?

I have tried this strategy twice since you posted it (plus a few trials on maps where I was stuck between crappy terrain and the sea). First time, I got a pretty good start and could begin to conquer the world in quite early. I had more workers than I could use and finally added them to cities to save money and only used slave labour. However, I screwed up my diplomacy and about 8 civs turned against me. Game over.

Second time, the AI civs had more land mass than me and could research faster. They also had better contact with each other and could trade tech. I did not build more improvements than a temple and barracks in each city. I was also delayed by barbarians.

The SiB strat certainly works for some players, but it does not fit my playing style very well.

[jshelr]

Olaf -- down with Temples!!

Depending on your civ, building those Temples may have been the enitire problem. A Temple could take up the time necessary to build several swords or horses, even for a religious civ and particularly for the others. The SiB strat is does not require any early culture building to make your city borders shift out. So, take the number of Temples you built, multiply by the number of military units per Temple that you could have built, and imagine that resulting stack headed for a neighboring civ. It makes all the difference.

[Theseus]

In 1337's first challenge, on deity, I controlled a peninsula chokepoint that gave me room for a whopping 8 towns using 3-4 spacing.

Luckily though, I had 2 luxuries.

Settlers, Workers, Barracks, and Warriors (and saving up a LOT of gold) were all that were necessary...

[FattyLumpkin]

Number of AI?

Hi All. Consider me a total new guy...cause I am

Using this strat how many AI cutures are you starting with, on what size map, and do you randomize the enemy AI?

Thanks!

[Sheik]

I like this idea and am doing something similar in the game I am playing now. I am also probably going to get Sun Tzu's. Good thread!

[ikilledmybroker]

OK, I follow the rasoning. I set up 9 cities, go out and kick @ss..... are you saying NOT to build many more cities (Except relocating the palace) ? Just sit there with 9 cities? or expand later?

[Theseus]

Nice handle... I feel the same.

Naw, the whole idea is to kick royal butt early, as efficiently as possible... but then, expand like a Russian athlete on steroids, both capturing and settling. Depending on map size, I typically like to end up with an empire around 125-150% of OCN.

[jshelr]

Iamabroker responds to Ikilledmybroker

"OK, I follow the rasoning. I set up 9 cities, go out and kick @ss..... are you saying NOT to build many more cities (Except relocating the palace) ? Just sit there with 9 cities? or expand later?"

Expand later. Kick ass first.

Earlier

"Using this strat how many AI cutures are you starting with, on what size map, and do you randomize the enemy AI?"

This typically requires large continents or pangea and works in my experience on small or standard maps. However, while I'm much too lazy to operate on the huge or large maps, if you add the suggested number of civs to those maps I would emphatically suggest that you still stop building your initial cities at 9. The land-per-civ seems to stay about the same. (Is true??? Someone problably actually knows this.) Even fewer cities is always much better than getting overextended early. You want lots of vet swordmen and horsemen, not fringe cities or marginally helpful culture buildings.

[Objectivist]

Going small is definatly a viable strategy early on. My favorite strategy, in the early game, is to found a few productive cities and then proceed to make barracks and pump warriors. Since I usually play a scientific civ, Iron working is the first tech I reasearch, and I have the slider bar set to 10% funding for science, and 90% for revenue. By the time Iron Working is reasearched I have enough warriors to upgrade to a substansial swordsman force. If I dont have a source of Iron by this time I have Iron working early enough to know where a source of Iron can be secured through founding a city. Either way, you can secure an early empire through this method.

[Zero]

I am currently playing a REX strategy, but my traditional strategy has always been to build are ultra powerful core from beginning and treat captured or expanded cities as shells. In fact I treat them as totally different civs. I always try to give each core cities 21 space, and have best terrain as possible, but try not to move original capitol if not neccesary. usually my core is built in a web fashion style. this was before civ III, so FP is not taken into consideration, and captio is in the middle

Capitol = C
City = X
later cities = Y
soft shells = Z

i create an top outer layer
X X
X C


Then after some improvement (usually, granary and temple) later bottom layer is added

X X Y
X C Y
Y Y Y

this way core is always square and end results in capitol in middle

if needed soft shell (wat i call mediocre core/shell hybrid cities) is added.

Z Z Z Z Z
Z X X Y Z
Z X C Y Z
Z Y Y Y Z
Z Z Z Z Z

i always spiral my building order, starting with city left of capitol...
softshells usually dont have 21 tiles since making square this big would be quite hard... even if i could, sometimes i choose not to make it look like core too much.

everything else i treat it as a colony w/ building ability.

[Zero]

Attacking My own strategy > How to defeat core building players
This is bit off topic but hopefully, you'll find this helpful when playing PTW. Ai really cant handle core build players but humans are different story. Me and my friends love building core empires, so we had alot of experience trying to kill each others empire in Civ II MP edition.

core players rely on two things. Production capability of core, tug-of-war and road networks. I personally like to rush build units at colony using treasury generated form the core or pump units from core and transport them using good road networks. Usually it will take alot of effort to make a pillage attempt to deny mobility, but you can cut resources away from core which can be very effective if the core itself does not possess the resource on its tile. This will disrupt production
when attacking core, capitol is usually the most strongest city and even if it isnt its a good idea to topple it for loss of capitol creates huge corruption problem for ur enemy. since shells of the empire is small cities, players are usually unwilling to fight hard for every each of them and rely on cities fallin in hands back and forth to protect core. even though most enemy units are positioned at outerskirt of empire, the large size allows you to penetrate in fast and reach the core if you launch fast and good surprise attack. It is best to spearhead in the corner like as it is highlighted since that reduces amount of reinforcement coming from other core cities.

Z Z Z Z Z
Z X X Y Z
Z X C Y Z
Z Y Y Y Z
Z Z Z Z Z

Starve the city so if they capture again(which is likely cause your fighting on home grounds), it is significantly reduced and will be less productive. Starving also controlls riots and you should rely on rush building every turn to resupply invaluable units as well as old fashioned reinforcement.

Mobility becomes a huge key to military victory agst human players

[jshelr]

Calc II

You are in the same spirit as SIB. Only the core really counts. As you know, in actual practice, you often don't have room or time to add the next layer of cities -- which you don't need anyway. Building more settlers and defenders means fewer horses and swords. Not a good tradeoff for the warmonger.