I've avoided Asoka thusfar in my civ career. I thought: "Kinda hard to be aggressive with her or Gandhi". I played around with peaceful strats with Gandhi.

But then I started thinking more about Asoka and here's the aggressive axerush I came up with...

Mining: Starting with mining allows you to go bronze first. Also build a worker first so they come out around the same time.

Spiritual: Having spiritual means that you save 1-2 turns of anarchy on the revolution to slavery.

Fast worker: Having a fast worker means that you save quite a few early, valuable worker turns. Instead of moving into a forest, waiting, then chopping, you move into a forest and start chopping. Do this 5+ times and that's 5+ very early worker turns that you're saving. Chop a second worker fairly early and this effect doubles.

What do these three things mean? You can axerush faster than any other civ (assuming copper nearby).

Don't worry about building a barracks (maybe in your capital), etc. Having axes out so much earlier means the ai (or better your human opponents in multiplayer :) won't be ready for you.

Organized and mysticism: Having organized of course means an indirect source of $$, which helps with the axes early on, and then cheaper courthouses once you make your way to COL. Mysticism means you can pop-rush obelisks in your new cities. Of course organized and mysticism together begs for a COL sling--which is how I would normally think of Asoka--but when you put spiritual-mining-fast worker together there is also the possibility of a lightning-fast axe-rush.

Now of course Gandhi has this too, but Gandhi I feel lacks any financial support for fast expansion through early warmongering. Thus I would prefer organized to industrious for this strat. I feel that industrious combined with mysticism begs too strongly for a religion-and-wonder strategy which then begs too strongly for a cultural victory...

I've tried this Asoka axe-rush out on emperor and multiplayer and it works great!

Thoughts?

Gandhi is not bad at this. Industrious means cheap forges. Combined with Mysticism as starting tech, why not aim for Oracle and grab Metal Casting? Build some forges and you are ready to pump out the scariest army you've ever seen come up in a flash that early, with rapid reinforcements. You can raze cities instead of taking a few extra (after you've captured the core of the enemy empire, that is) like Asoka.

non aggressive civ axe rush can never match aggressive civ rush.

Gandhi is not bad at this. Industrious means cheap forges. Combined with Mysticism as starting tech, why not aim for Oracle and grab Metal Casting? Build some forges and you are ready to pump out the scariest army you've ever seen come up in a flash that early, with rapid reinforcements. You can raze cities instead of taking a few extra (after you've captured the core of the enemy empire, that is) like Asoka.

this is a good point, but it comes later and in my limited experience thusfar *everyone* goes for oracle in multiplayer but fewer for pyramids (hehehe).

non aggressive civ axe rush can never match aggressive civ rush.

this is true, *except* when the non aggressive axerush comes *earlier* than an aggressive axerush.

Multiplayer may be a different story. But what I suggested works well on Emperor. I've witnessed the power of early forges with only two initial cities. My closest neighbour had 7-8 cities and lost them all in the first war.

Aggressive axe rush is indeed very difficult to stop and much easier to pull off. But not everybody likes Aggressive leaders. Fortunately.

I've avoided Asoka thusfar in my civ career. I thought: "Kinda hard to be aggressive with her or Gandhi".
Thoughts?


I avoid all the transgendered CIV leaders as well. Getting the Heisman from a hermaphroditic hindu isn't all that.

I think Asoka was quite certainly male as Hathesput was quite certainly female. The latter's gender is more in doubt, and AFAIK only because she wanted to be known as king in her capacity as ruler (ancient gender perceptions at work). And her statues do have feminine features.

His starting techs are good if you want to get a lot of religions. I tried yesterday on prince, and I got all of them (I did have gold in capital though).

I used Asoka a lot on Emperor doing the axe rush strategy. Pyramids are also very nice with Asoka, though I almost never built them (too busy axe rushing ;)). CoL is after BW the most important tech of the game for me, so cheap courthouses really help with my attackwaves. Fast Workers are great throughout the game (unless you've built any improvement available). Also when you get railroads, they're building them 33% faster.

To me Asoka is one of the strongest leaders available. Catherine is a lot easier to play though, great aggressive UU right around the time you should always have tech parity with the AI or better, creative for filling up your fat cross without cost, and financial. Playing Catherine takes up some less thinking.

Mansa suffers badly from the worthless UU.

^^would you go oracle for col or get it via math? if with oracle how did you find it affected your axe rush?

I almost never get Oracle on Emperor. Or even attempt it. If I have marble around and an abundance of forests I might give it a try if I'm sure I can chop it in a few turns. Far more often I'll go for stonehenge for some nice free culture and an early Great Prophet.

Piramids would be a great wonder to have while being Organized. I'd rather capture it though, 450 shields is 20.5 trees, never saw a city with that much woods around it ;)