Civ3 has helped my CtP2 gaming

[Cookie Monster]

Recently I started playing CtP2 again as part of a warm up to future tourneys here at 'Poly. I've realized that my play style has changed somewhat from when I last played CtP2 about a year ago. Civ3 has taught me that REX'ing and early wars are a must to survival in that game. I have employed those same tactics in my current game of CtP2 and am pleasantly surprised at my results.

Before I used to concentrate on building up 10 cities ASAP and building city improvements over military units in CtP2. Now I rapidly set up 5- 6 cities and public work 'em galore. I pop out military units and only build improvements in cities that would actually benefit from the improvement. I then find my nearest neighbor and start a war with him. After grabbing 1 or 2 of his cities I ask for peace, wait until I've consolidated and wage war again with someone else. So far things seem to be working better for me. Anyone else have experience with Civ3 and applied those experiences to CtP2?

[Hermann the Lombard]

Hmm...I was just thinking about Civ strategies applied to CTP2. Must be something in the water...

First of all, I think Civ strategies are more applicable to unmodded CTP2 (and the Apolyton Pack) than to Cradle or MedMod (and I haven't tried WAW or Martin's GoodMod), but that said...

In my current Cradle 1.32 game it turned out that I started on a moderately-small island with no other civs. Naturally, I researched and launched coracles rather earlier than usual...but how to develop the core of my civ? Well, I didn't have to compete for space or resources on the island, except competition among my own cities. I decided to go almost ICS-style, with only two tiles in between cities (and mostly with some expansion room at sea). This let me put a Central Reserve that could reach any adjacent city in one move (infantry on roads) and any city at all in two moves (or one with JavCav or chariots).

Now the island cities are cranking out units which my mighty coracles are ferrying to the mainland where I'm whacking on the Hexagonians. [This is called "biting the hand that feeds you."] I have seven cities on the island (with room for 3 or 4 more) and three former Hexagonian cities, bringing me to the city limits for Dynasty. (I expect to go a city or two over the limit; sorry Hex!)

Question: what sort of spacing are you using? REX style? That's a wider spacing than I'm using, but I don't think that expanding my borders is as important in Cradle as it is in Civ3 (no culture, for one thing, and the AI isn't as aggressive at filling in the blanks).

[Cookie Monster]

Hi there Hermann the Lombard:

Your city spacing sounds like it's tighter than mine. I tend to space my cities about 4 tiles apart. In Civ3 I space them at 3 tiles apart. My reasoning for CtP2 city spacing is to allow all the cities to grow without too too much overlap. Perhaps I should change my way of thinking but so far this has worked for me in CtP2 but not in Civ3.

Shipbuilding (coracle) usually is not too high a priority for me as I tend to play with landmass settings in the middle leaning towards continents. However, I agree with focusing on coracles esp. when you're on a smallish island.

Early war is a powerfull tool in CtP2 as well as in Civ3 IMO. Looks like other than city spacing our strats seem to be alike.

[Dinner]

My city spacing in CTP2 is ussually fairly tight with perhaphs four squares between cities so that I can maximize the number of cities resting on a given river and minimize the distance my armies need to travel for defense against invasion.

[Hermann the Lombard]

My normal city spacing is not this tight. Starting on the island made me want to get the most out of that island, so I basically only gave each city one ring to work with, so it will reach optimum production with population 8 or 9 (the extra as an entertainer since I'm over the city limit). Oh, I forgot to mention: this is the Birth of an Empire version limited to 600 turns, so I'm not concerned with the modern or future eras, when cities could get really large. Just a trivial detail, right?

Yeah, I normally want to give each city two rings to exploit, though I often (OK, darn near always) put my 2nd city exactly 3 tiles away, corner to corner, so that ancient infantry can get back and forth in one turn on a road. Once the civilization survives the barbarian phase, this becomes less important (as faster units become available).

As you probably know, REX uses a *much* wider spacing for land-grab purposes.

-- HtL (hoping that Vel joins us)

[Cookie Monster]

Ah yes surviving the pesky barbarian phase.

2 rings is a more accurate description of how I space cities too. Yes REX'ing spreads out even more and my current game has me experimenting with REX style city placement. I think this however somehow slowed down my initial progress but I am now rapidly catching up to the lead civ. If one does decide to REX in CtP2 than PW are very important, at least for the first 4 cities IMO.

[centrifuge]

Okay, I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is REX'ing?

[Maquiladora]

Rapid Early eXpansion.... i think.

edit: yep it is

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by centrifuge
Okay, I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is REX'ing?

Yep, as Maquiladora said, Rapid Early eXpansion, but as you might imagine there's a lot more to it than that. The spacing is significantly wider than some strategies, especially ICS, and it's very similar to the expansion strategy of the AI in Civ3 (relentless). The King of REX over in the Civ3 Forum used to be Lawrence of Arabia. You can also look in Vel's strategy threads, but those more or less assume you already know what REX is.

[centrifuge]

After I finished posting, I figured out what the EX stood for, but couldn't decide on the R. I'm quite sure that I've used the same tactics used with REX in some of my games of CTP2 and Civ3, just never gave it a name

[Dinner]

REX is almost vitial in Civ3 (especially since the AI REXes EVERY TIME) but in CTP2 REX is more of an option.