Empire Expansion

[Wise Ass]

Sorry I have been away since the turn chat and have not been able to find what was built after the second warrior. I think it is now time that we begin debating when to found our second city. We know war with the Austrians is coming and we need to be able to produce more units!

So the question is how many warriors will it take for us to be safe while we construct a settler?

[H Tower]

i think we need 3, especially since the austrians are so close

[Locutus]

Hmm, tough one. I'd say build a Settler after the second Warrior anyway, and after that start pumping out Warriors and (by then) Archers ASAP in both cities...

[Dinner]

I say we get at least four warriors together and then send them over to say hi to the Austrians. With a massed attack we'd have better then even odds of eliminating them from the game.

[H Tower]

as i understand it, the AI starts with 3 settlers, there is absolutely no way we could track down all of their cities in a short period of time. a campaign of that magnitude would drastically reduce our early growth, and make us weaker compared to the other AI nations out there. Expansion through peaceful means is a better strategy this early IMO

[Dinner]

I admite that nearly all of my experience is MP but in MP the AI gets the same amount of settlers as everyone else.

[Devil of Truth]

Nope. The AI definitely gets more settlers. It would be suicide massing against the Austrians right now. Maybe with Archers backing our Warriors – maybe – but not now.

1. Show the Austrians our best poker face.
2. Build one or two quick cities.
3. Defend cities (lightly – if need be).
4. Mass troops.
5. Walk over to the Austrians.
6. Have a blunt force trauma party.

[Locutus]

Yes, the AI should have somewhere between 2 and 5 cities by now (5 if it rush-bought some Settlers), but most likely closer to 5 than to 2.

We should be nice to them to get their maps. Then we should stay on friendly terms so they won't see us coming when we launch our invasion...

But an enemy so close-by is good news: rather than building cities of our own, we can simply focus on military building units (which is needed to fend of the Barbs as well) and conquer them. Their presence will probably also easy the pressure the Barbs can put on us.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Devil of Truth
1. Show the Austrians our best poker face.
2. Build one or two quick cities.
3. Defend cities (lightly – if need be).
4. Mass troops.
5. Walk over to the Austrians.
6. Have a blunt force trauma party.

That really is a long term investment.

Remember that the time to buid one single settler is the time to build almost 5 warriors (4,5 x prod)

Currently with a farmer in the city:

1 warrior - 6 turns
1 settler - 28 turns

They only have four warrior for about 3 cities so they sure our focused in grow and not military. So I believe we could have a surprise element by attacking them now. One more unit therefore a stack of 3 may be devasting to them.

So lets become a Military civilization!!!

[Maquiladora]

The trouble with conquering early AI cities is that they place them in such awkward positions, like too close together or near swamps. We're gonna need around 8 warriors to take one of their cities and theres no guarantee that we wont see them coming our way when we're marching forward.

So i "vote" for 2 more warriors then a settler and then hopefully we'll have ballistics.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
They only have four warrior for about 3 cities so they sure our focused in grow and not military. So I believe we could have a surprise element by attacking them now. One more unit therefore a stack of 3 may be devasting to them.

We currently have 1 Warrior. By the time we have 3, they'll have at least 6 cities and 8 units. We might be able to take one city but after that they'll start defending their cities better and/or launch a counter attack. We would be lucky to survive, let alone be able to take more cities...

The biggest problem right now is that we know nothing about them. We need to get their maps ASAP to determine what we're facing here...

[Martin Gühmann]

Well the GM1_DiffDB.txt says that the AI gets on impossible 4 extra units to its initila settler that would make 5 settlers and 4 cities (as we see one settler).

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The trouble with conquering early AI cities is that they place them in such awkward positions, like too close together or near swamps. We're gonna need around 8 warriors to take one of their cities and theres no guarantee that we wont see them coming our way when we're marching forward.

Actual you don't know how the AI spaces its cities there are two early expansion strategies in the game one for far city spacing and one for near city spacing, and there is difference between their MinSettleDistance. So the I can also build cities that are far away. And we know the personality type of the Austrians, so that we can find out their city spacing strategy.

-Martin

[child of Thor]

......edit......
check the refused our maps thread
things are hotting up!

[HuangShang]

3 warriors first

and child of Thor, i know

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

i'm backing locutus views presented above