Here you can discuss about strategy.

Your contribution is appreciated here: http://wikirhye.wikidot.com/strategy-guides

I figured that the best use of my 1000th post (:dance:) would be to start this thread off :cool:

Here is a mostly completed guide for Russia based on the experiences of my last two games on Emperor level as that country. I figure though that it should only work better for the other levels since they are easier. :p I've also chosen to not give them a strength rating (as was the custom for RoX guides) since I don't feel that I've played enough games yet to accurately assess that value.
Now without further adieu I present:


The Russians
By Gunner

So you want to rule the vast land of Russia – to follow in the footsteps of, and possibly even surpass, the likes of Ivan, Peter, Catherine, and Stalin? It will not be an easy task to guide Russia to greatness, and certainly not one for the weak. The rewards for your diligence and leadership will, however, be considerable. Russia has huge amounts of potential, and it should easy be able to ascend to supremacy if lead correctly.

The first thing you must learn is that the strength of your country lays in its land, the earth it will be built upon and achieve greatness on. It contains abundant resources which will allow your nation to grow, prosper, and eventually turn into an unstoppable war machine. For this reason it is key that you take an aggressive expansion policy early on to insure that the Germans and others do not claim the land that is right fully yours. Send at least two, preferably three, of your starting settlers west to take that land before it is taken by another. You can worry about expanding to the east later, but since you will not have any real competitor for that land it will not need to be with nearly as much urgency.

The only luxury resources available to you will be furs and then later on gems (there are some gems on the coast northwest of Moscow, its a good idea to build a city there just to get them.) To compensate for the relative lack of happiness that your cities will probably be experiencing because of this its a good idea to stay with Hereditary Rule for a while and use large numbers of cheap troops to garrison your big cities and keep them happy. Also don't forget that the market provides +1 happiness with furs and the forge provides +1 happiness with gems.

Another thing to keep in mind in the early game is that you will probably be receiving a visit from a group of barbarian horse archers from the east at some point, so be sure to keep a few troops in that area (preferably spearmen) to defend. You will also throughout the entire game need to be ready to deal with attacks made against you by the AI, especially since the AI in RFC is more aggressive. Obviously the Germans will be a threat due to their inherent aggressivness and their close proximity to your borders. Be vigilant against the threats which are not quite as obvious also, such as the Mongols and the Arabians. In one of my games I had the Arabians attack me with hordes of camel archers, taking 3 cities from me and nearly taking Moscow. Things would have been much easier if I had positioned a few troops on my southern border.

While Russia is blessed with great levels of production and growth, it main weakness lays in its poor capacity for commerce and trade. If you do not adopt the proper measures to counter this then you will find yourself falling behind in the technological race and with empty coffers, regardless of what type of strategy you pursue to victory. To that end, it is essential that you develop your county’s infrastructure with an emphasis on commerce and research. Do this by building cottages frequently and early, as they will be your tool to reach commercial parity with others. You must also focus on building libraries in all of your cities both for the technological benefits as well as the culture they provide. Finally, and most importantly, be very aggressive and active in the game of tech trading.

Tech trading is an important element for any civ in Rhye’s and Fall of Civilization, but for Russia it is absolutely essential. No matter what you do, your country will not be able to compete technologically in the early game if you primarily rely on your own research and engage in only the occasional tech trade. Once you fall out of the technological race it is very difficult to catch up, so it is essential that you make an effort to not fall behind early on. Make it a habit to check your foreign advisor’s technologies screen every turn or two to spot a potential trade. Sell techs for gold to civs that are far behind you, and try to buy, trade, and research techs that some of the top techers do not have. It will be difficult to keep up, but remember that if you have been properly developing your infrastructure (with many cottages and libraries) then things should gradually become easier.

Once your economy is in decent shape then you are presented with 2 main options. The first is to continue peacefully developing your nation. You can also start sending settlers out east to colonize the vast stretches of open land there. Try to build enough courthouses for the Forbidden Palace quickly since you will start paying extravagent maitinence fees once you start expanding. Given time you should come to dominate due to your sheer size.

The other option is to go on the warpath. Russia’s excellent production abilities make it very suited for building and maintaining a large army. You should be able to out produce any opponent you face and win in a war of attrition if necessary. Try and choose a weak country as your first victim, who this will be depends on each game’s situation. The wealth and resources provided by the conquest of another county’s heartland should add to your strength allowing you to take on a tougher opponent next time.

One final thing I would like to mention is Russia’s excellent unique unit, the Cossack. It is substantially more powerful than the default cavalry unit, with 3 extra strength points and a +50% bonus versus other mounted units. If you had already been following a military strategy it should give your efforts a great boost and maybe allow you to take a crack at that other superpower that you had been weary of facing before. If not, then the arrival of the Cossack would mark a great time for you to start some aggressive expansion. It would simply be a shame to waste such a great unit by not conquering someone with it. Additionally, if your game has not turned out as well as you had hoped and you find yourself lagging behind, then the Cossack is the opportunity you need to catch up.

Now go forth and bring Mother Russia to its rightful place of greatness. Its great capacity for production and expansion along with your skillful leadership should allow you to overcome early technological and commercial challenges and carry on to victory.

Sooooo, any feedback?

This is what you wanted us to do Rhye, right? Write up nation specific strategy guides like for RoX

It is very good! Perhaps it is a little more poetic than practical, but it is a very interesting read! Mayhaps I´ll post some suggestions I made in the Pax Romana thread here, but I was hoping that people gave some opinions on them before posting here...

Thanks Elhoim :)

I've gone back and added more stuff into it drawing from experiences in my most recent game. Hopefully its a bit more practical now :p

aye, I want something like the RoX ones.

So, your is good except from being too long and for not mentioning the UP.
If you can fix these things I will start posting ;)

Don't worry about the rating, I'll just post the stars from in-game

So, your is good except from being too long and for not mentioning the UP.
If you can fix these things I will start posting ;)
Hmm, too long and not mentioning something, seems like a bit of a contradiction to me :D

I'll see what I can do ;)

Edit: How long do you want it exactly. I saw that most of the guides for RoX were around 4/3 pages. Would it be alright if I got this one down to 3/2 with mentioning the UP?

Suggestions for Russia thingy:

Mention the massive grasslands, which make PERFECT cottage spams.

Mention the UP, which allows you to builder turtle with spear based units.

Russia should be the richest power in the game, bar none. You have tons of acreage of grassland covered with forest meaning you can cottage spam while chop rushing markets, libs, and courthouses. How tight is that? Very tight.

St. Petes, Minsk, and the Crimea make excellent primary city locations, which you can use as your first three cottage spams. They have enough prod to pump out units at a respectable rate, and all three will grow really big.

Keep pushing east, and feel free to gank China and Mongolia, as both countries usu. have an issue with teching. China is a ***** to take down, what with its hordes of infantry, but if you use enough arty (or wait til tanks and planes) you can squish them into the dirt. Remember that cottages are your lifeblood. If you want, call them mirs and feel even more like a Rusky.

Recommendation: Play as Greece to start your game, build up a big army, build a city up in the Crimea, and put the army there. Works as a great jump start for your Russian empire, as it will flip to you, and you can then use it to annex a nearly empty Greece. I discovered this by accident, and found it to be handy.

Not bad after half a bottle of JD, eh?

To add to the russian guide:

Mention the importance of the spiral minaret, as the money it brings is often huge, and can save your research capabilities.

I have played about 6 games now as the japanese on emperor and I got to say its VERY hard. Only one game I have managed to be one of the top three through the game, which is the game im currently playing but havent finished yet.

First off you start on an island so no need to worry about for barbarian attacks. The first tech I go for is sailing, then alphabet. Build a galley and make contact with the indians. If a religion have spread to one of your cities do NOT convert. You need to stay freindly with asoka so you can get a open border agreement. Then you do the same thing with cyrus. You then want to make contact with Egypt and begin to trade your techs with them.Then you can travel with your galley through the seuzcanal if the egyptians have planted a city there to make contact with the european civs later.

The reason for this is that you dont want to piss off the chinese by trading with the indians, an early war with china must be avoided . And you dont want to trade with the chinese because remember this, China is your number one enemy and you dont want to share your reaserch with them.

I have found two very specific areas were you should place your first two cities. the first is two squares down from the starting position. The second is two sqaures two the right were eventually the copper resource will be. You only need those two cities on your main land to begin with. Then try early on to build two cities on the continent. One in korea, two sqaures above the rice field which will become a commerce city. Then a city a little to north of korea, left-down from the deer.

I usually try to grab the hanging gardens and great library, then i try to get a great engineer before i build the national epic in the city with the great library and begin to pump out scientists. You wont be able to build this wonders in every game, remember this is on emperor.

Focuse your reaserch on civil service and machinery so you can build samurais. Then simply build a massive army of these and some catapults, you also need a lot of galleys to transport your troops. Its very good to stay friend with the chinese until the mongols appear. Then you have the same religion and so so you ask the chinese to declare war on gengis and asoka. This shouldnt be a problem if you have traded your techs wisely so you have a lot of techs to offer the chinese. Then as the chinese are busy with their wars you simply wait a few turns for their troops to leave their country before you begin the massive invasion.

China is still pretty though to conquer despite they are at war with to others. Since thier cities are very culturally developed you have to conquer all of their cities on the mainland otherwise they will just flip back after or during the war. A good idea is to destroy their vulnarable horse resource since they like building horse archers which will become knights as soon as the reach guilds, and you really dont want to fight against knights. The resource is located west of beijing near the coast. Then they have a copper recource near macao and a iron resource east of beijing and if this to are destroyed they wont have much to set against you.

Once the chinese is conquered you have atleast 5 very good cities and two state religions, taoism and confusianism, and if your lucky they have a shrine also. And from here its up to you what to do but conquering the chinese when you are japan is in my opinion the single best thing you can do and it will keep you among the most powerful civs scorewise througout the game.

Egypt

The game as Egypt is tough on all levels. The first 50 turns of the game we are completely alone, as the Barbarians trap us in Egypt. After this turn other civilizations like Persia, Rome and Greece will rise very soon and they are advanced to us. Rome and Greece are also hostile towards us and we also have to deal with numerious Barbarians , who will treaten our homelands. The Sea Peoples, who are appearing from 1200 BC till 100 AD will roam the Eastern Mediterranian Sea and try to destroy our Fishing Fleets and our navy. After 200 AD (turn 130) Hordes of Bedouin Camel Archers and Horse Archers will set pace to our lands coming from the west. These attacks continue until 900 AD and its gets only worse when some guys called Arabs will decide to found Makkah as their capital, Islam as their religion and an army of Camel Archers as their basic arguments.
We can not avoid the Arabian Onslaught in 630 AD, as Egypt is an integrative part of the Islamic world and Kairo was THE center of science in the whole umma.

All in all to be frank Egypt in RFC is not meant to survive. But we can change that :)
It is a challenge, but it is possible. The key is to use our Unique Powers and Unique Units to best effect. Our Unique Power is that we start the game as a civilization and so we have Slavery and Hereditary Rule from the first turn enabled. That means we can whip and keep our people quiet with military presence. So we need big cities, which are growing fast .. we will found them.

But in order to do this every single step in the first turns is critical. We have plan exactly every single turn and every single decision. We have to know when to built what and on which place and when to research what. For this purpose I wrote this guide, which will make us survive all this dangers and lays the foundation for the middle game.

So we start our game as Hatchepsut, Pharao of Egypt and on level Emperor.

The start : Our starting technologies are Agriculture and Wheel. Our starting units are one settler and one warrior.
There are only 2 other civilizations : Chinese and Indian. They start with the same units. The Chinese have Mining and Agriculture, the Indians have Agriculture and Mysticism. Our first target is to outperform these competitors and to secure our Homelands.

1st turn : We start the game with one settler and one warrior. At first we do not found our capital instantly. We move to the sea. So go 1-1 (numpad) with the settler. Our warrior will explore the surroundings. So move him to the north east.
2nd turn : We will found our capital, but we do not use the tile which is highlighted. Instead we use the tile left to it. The highlighted tile is better, but we need to think ahead and later we will built Sin, which needs the critical two tiles that we now spare for it. In this case Sin will become very productive instead of being a mere placeholder and border defense.
So we move our settler 1 (numpad) and found the city. The name is Xou – I change the name now normally. We start to build warrior and research Fishing.
Our start unit warrior moves on until he reaches Sinai. There we can already see the borders of Yerushalem and inside are lots of units (7), especially 3 archers .. we are trapped for now.

3rd till 5th turn : we move our settler along the eastern coast to the south.

6th turn : Our cultural borders increase, which is important as now the tile with the wheat can be harvested.

10th turn : Our warrior now reached a lake in the Highlands of Ethiopia. He will have an encounter with an animal. We should survive this. In anyway at this lake, we have to turn west again.
Our warrior needs to roam around the later position of Niwt-Rst to keep the area free of predatory animals.

12th turn : We researched Fishing. Now we instantly change the production in our city to Work Boat. There are two rounds left for warrior, we will finish later. In the research we now go for Pottery. We need the granary and even more important the cottages.

14th turn : Our city grow to size 2, so we can rush the work boat.

15th turn : Our work boat moves to the fish tile and we start production of a worker. Our warrior moves westwards and discovers Elephants, that will be important later.

16th turn : The Nets are in place. Our exploring warrior should soon encounter another animal . Our city is now growing (producing worker) with 5 spare food. That is not bad :)

24th turn : The worker is finished we move him to our to wheat field and start farm next turn. In the city we can continue warrior.

25th turn : Our first warrior is produced, we start another one.

27th turn : We finished Pottery. We research Mysticism.

30th turn : The city grew to 2. We emphasize on growth (food), so make sure the buttons are activated and the wheat field is harvested. Our roaming warrior is cleaning the Nile Region from animals – this important for our later city.

33rd turn : Our Worker finished the farm. Don’t build a road. Our city will grow to 3 soon. So now move the farmer to the flood plains field south of the farm. There you start a cottage.

35th turn : Our city is 3 now, so we switch to settler.

39th turn : We finished Mysticism, so we go for Masonry.

41st turn : In our city we can now rush the settler. There is one warrior in our city. We send him the tile left of the incense, he will protect the settler, when he arrives on this tile. Our roaming warrior keeps on cleaning the area, too.

42rd turn : We finished our settler, so now we send him to the tile left of the incense. In the city we continue our warrior.

43rd turn : The now 3rd Warrior is finished, we start the 4th one. Our worker finished cottage, we move him to the flood plains tile north of our later city Niwt-Rst

44th turn : we found Niwt-Rst, our second city ! We already have one warrior together with the settler, so the city is protected. We start to produce worker in the queue. The worker on the northern tile starts a cottage.

46th turn : The 4th warrior is finished in our capital and the city reaches 3, so we start settler.

51st turn : Only two turns until masonry and the Greeks arrived so we need to check our results so far …

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/51388/egypt51-small.jpg

Egypt 2 - the next 40 turns

Turn 52 : Only turn until Masonry so at the end of the turn, we give the move order to our worker. He will move to the stone tile.

Turn 53 : Masonry is researched at last. We start to discover Animal Husbandery. Our worker will arrive on the stone tile and starts to build the so important quarry for our later Stonehenge.

Turn 55 : Finally we finished our second settler in our capital. This settler moves to Sinai (the desert hill tile, which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranian Sea).

Turn 57 : In Niwt-Rst we finished our worker and we instantly move him to the stone tile. In the meanwhile we start Pyramids in Niwt-Rst.
Turn 58 : We can found Sin .. it will be become the gate to conquer Yerushalem later. In the production queue we decide for barracks.

Turn 60 : Our workers finished the quarry and we can move them to the marble tile. We also can move our roaming start warrior to Sin.

Turn 64 : We can rush Stonehenge in our capital and this is not too early. Stonehenge is an important part of our strategy as it saves us the obelisks either in Niwt-Rst as in Sin, which we need to reach the Copper and Horse Resources later.

Turn 65 : What a moment … our first world wonder and suddenly the world gets centered and we feel so small …

Turn 66 : Our workers finished the next quarry, which will make a production hub out of Sin. We let them start a road on the tile right of the marble.

Turn 67 : At least we discovered Animal Husbandery and we can start Mining. Horses pop up just between Niwt-Rst and Sin, but it will take a few turns, before the culture of this cities is strong enough to cover the tile.

Turn 69 : The workers finished the road and they move now to the tile with the horses.

Turn 70 : The workers start another road.

Turn 72 : The next road is finished and a short check tells us that the culture ratio is on 8 of 10 in both cities. That means we have two turns left and we should use them. There is still an unfinished cottage north of Niwt-Rst. (From turn 52, just north of Niwt-Rst). We move there now and order cottage.

Turn 73 : Mining is researched and we start Bronze Working. But there is more .. the next cottage is finished and it looks nice. We move our one worker who is free back on the horse tile as in next turn the culture borders will increase. His colleague will follow him next turn , too.

Turn 78 : There it is, our first pasture. Soon we can start to produce our War Chariots. The target is now to build an army of War Chariots to conquer Yerushalem and therefore to gain our religion : Judaism …
The now free worker will go to the desert hill tile right (east) of the horse pasture. His colleague will follow him next turn and they will build there our first mine. In the meanwhile we make sure that Niwt-Rst is using the Horse Tile, as we still want to let Sin grow a little more.

Turn 80 : Our capital is ready for army building. The barracks are finished and we start our first War Chariot.

Turn 81 : The Persians enter the game. Now the time to conquer our part of the Middle East is running out … but we are prepared and our targets are clear.

In the comparison we would see that we already catched up with the Indians in Infrastructure and City Size, but we are far behind the Chinese as they have simply too fertile areas in their homelands. We can’t help it.

But the odds are changing now in our favor. Thanks to our Unique Unit the War Chariot, we will be able to make some strategically important acquisitions and also to fill our treasury. The whole game long we will depend on deficit spending for research so just get as much gold as possible.

In the Persians we will find a very reliable and strong ally, so please by no means attack them, but just the opposite, make sure that they take Hattusa, as they will defend this town perfectly against the Greeks, who would otherwise treaten us. (Btw a strong (and non-islamic) Persia is also the best guarantee for a weak Arabia … and that is our only chance)
But all this will happen later.


Turn 83 : What a feeling. Our first Chariots rolls on the streets of our Capital. We leave it there for a while, as it keeps the citizen happy. As we maybe can notice our capital is getting quite big already (and as a side notice, the first cottage that we built long ago became a village in the meanwhile )

Our workers finished the mine, so we make sure that Sin is harvesting the mine now. The workers will build a road and btw. Sin finished the barracks, so also there we can start a War Chariot.

Turn 85 : The Romans founded their capital .. they will give us more than one headache later, but for now they are still weak and friendly.

Turn 86 : We researched Bronze Working and .. what a nice surprise .. our already built mine is exactly on a copper resource. (This is certainly a little cheating, but Egypt is really too hard, so I have too use my experience in order to plan ahead), besides the workers also finished the road exactly in this moment, so we can move them one tile north of the horses and to build a cottage there.

In the research we go for Sailing and in Niwt-Rst we shift from the Horse Pasture tile to a flood plains tile as we want to grow to 4 soon.

Turn 90 : We can rush the Pyramids in Niwt-Rst as the city size is big enough and the production is also advanced enough.
In the meanwhile we can already send one Chariot from our Capital to Sin and we can also let one of the Chariots in Sin do some reconnaissance nearby Yerushalem and Susa.

Turn 91 : The next world wonder is finished .. and everything in the first 100 turns
And as cool as it is to have the Pyramids at exactly in the right place and nearly the right time (just 1000 years difference ) we even really need them.

An immediate positive effect like with Stonehenge is unfortunately not there as we do not plan to change our government in near future. But more important is that the culture of Niwt-Rst is now growing with 7 point per turn. So we can be sure that we reach the elephants resource in time. The elephants not only provide happiness, but (after we have researched Construction) the elephant resource will supply us with War Elephants … War Elephants are our most important offensive weapon against the fanatic Arabians so plan ahead. Of all the dangers that we will face during the centuries the Arabians will prove to be the biggest one … sounds a little actual, doesn’t it …

At this point the guide will finish, because now you have everything in your hands.
But I wrote general strategic hints and suggestion in the next chapter.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/51388/egypt91-small.jpg

Egypt 3 - the next X turns

Actually you can start to conquer the first cities. At first you go for Sur, because your units need experience to overcome the 3 archers in Yerushalem. At the same time, you may assault Iquy.

By turn 102 you are able to have Sur, Yerushalem and Iquy in your hands.
Sur is not meant to grow anymore, but from the start it will only produce settlers, but this it will do perfectly.

After we will have researched Sailing, we will need Hunting, we will need Writing etc.

Sailing enables us to create our navy. We need at least 4 galleys in place, which are protecting our fishing boats next to our capital and later next to Yerushalem. Yerushalem is of course very important for us. As soon as it got conquered Judaism will spread in our lands. Our first Great Person is very likely a Prophet thanks to Stonehenge :) So we also get the Temple of Solomon early. Altogether Yerushalem is meant to be one of my three cities for cultural victory, especially now with the new rule for the resurrection of dead civilizations.

Hunting is necessary to create Spearmen. Spearmen will be the backbone of our army, as they are the only ones, who will (behind the thick city walls) protect us against Camel Archers.
The interesting thing is that we basically just need to fortify Yerushalem and Iquy, because neither Sur, nor Sin or any other city get touched except one or two times.

It also should be possible to agree on Open Borders either with Persia as with India early and we can send one Chariot till China, because the Chinese are really very good trading partners. Just trade everything with them.

In general warfare we need a little luck, because the Greeks and the Romans are now most likely to be busy with themselves, but after some while they both will come for us. So you should hope that Persia is in War with Greece at this time, because it will really boost our relations with Persia and the Greeks are exhausting themselves in fighting the land army of Persia, so that we just have to protect the sea.
(Hattusa needs to be Persian, you remember)

Iquy is strategically quite important for us, because it will be our outpost against the masses of Bedouin Camel Archers who will come later. Normally they would go for our capital, but in this case we can direct them to Iquy. What we need in Iquy is a permament presence of 4 Spearmen and a Wall, as soon as the raids are starting. Do not waste time! Also the Romans will attack exactly at this points … so either maintain the best relationship possible or equip Iquy with at least 2 Axemen.

The benefit of fortifying Iquy is that only very few units will come for our capital, so that most of the time nobody is disturbing (razing) this very important area.
Keep Iquy!

It is quite possible to get the Great Lighthouse until turn 110 – 115. Try it, actually I really like the effect and .. the Lighthouse would stand at the same place where Alexandria is supposed to be.
The Great Library on the other hands is quite impossible , simply because we do not get Literature early enough.

Do not forget to send your units into Mercenary Service as soon as you do not need them. This can often really increase your finances.

Last but not least we have to settle. The Maghreb is not the best place for settling (because it is simply to dangerous). But .. the Eastern African Coast is our natural habit. Settle the whole eastern coast until South Africa, because only there you will find Iron.. and on the way downwards you will stumble over 2 Gems, 1 Silver, 1 Gold, 2 Sugar, 1 Copper Resource next to more Horses, Cows, Incense, Elephants, Crabs, Fishes and more. (not to mention … attention : spoiler … coal :) ) The area is worth every effort.

… I normally develop this starting position into a Cultural Victory or Diplomatic Victory, but maybe you can do even more :)


I wish you much luck and much success ..


Best regards
Rudi

Would it be possible to post an image showing where you settled your cities? I sort of have an idea, but it'd be nice to understand how it all fits together visually.

Would it be possible to post an image showing where you settled your cities? I sort of have an idea, but it'd be nice to understand how it all fits together visually.
Can you clarify? ;)

What I mean is a screenshot showing egypt at some point during your game...

So the guide is completed so far. If somebody has remarks, comments or needs more clarification then please do not hesitate to ask me anything. I may also give detailed plans, how to to settle Africa etc.

Edit : 31.10.2006

Actually I just downloaded 1.42 and so I had to decide to completely rework my Egypt Guide. The actual guide is definitivly a guide for long term epic play, as it makes maximum use of the Egypt in a long-term way, that means you can get really big and rich cities in Egypt to keep up with the other civs in End Game, but it is not maximizing the first 140 turns.. in version 1.42 everything gets different, as we go now for the Historical Victory.
So expect a completely new guide within 2 weeks and this time no Stonehenge, but Pyramids in the desert nearby Giza, Lighthouse in Alexandria and Great Library hopefully in Alexandria ... that will sooo cool !!!

Time to get started on my favorite Rhye civilization: Britain.

Name: Britain

Special power: Royal navy; every naval unit starts with Drill I and Drill II.

Historical victory objectives:

1. Be first to circumnavigate the globe.

2. Colonize American east coast, South Africa,and Australia by 1700 AD (by the way, you only need to colonize a bit of each area, not all).

3.Be first to enter the industrial and modern eras.

Guide:
So, you wish to play Britannia, and create an empire upon which the sun never sets? Then follow these pearls of wisdom in your quest.
Now, when you start off, you have a large pile of settlers, longbowmen and workers, as well as some galleys. You also have a catapult in antartica, for some bizarre reason, disband that. Build London in the start tile, then build according to the following plan (keep in mind that inverness is a barb city that will flip within a few turns):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/49904/Britainrhye.JPG

Leave Ireland until last.

I would advise that after you get a few basic buildings up and running, you turn Inverness into a military base, as it has some good production and food tiles. Manchester should be used for building ships alot.
After improving most of Britain, it's quite good to colonize Scandinavia, as there are good resources there. The Germans might declare war on you for grabbing 'their area', but since you're on an island, they usually can't do any damage.

The best way to play England is the way it was in real life: get a good navy, and colonize the good bits! Why settle for grassland when you could have pigs and sheep as well? You can and should colonize America, and stick some defensive units there to resist the coming of the Americans (it is possible, as long you defend and don't attack). You should also make a run for optics and quickly build 3-4 caravels to cicrumnavigate the globe and to explore the world. This way, if you get into the unfortunate (and extremely unlikely) situation of having little tech or maps, you can trade around for them.

Another great aspect of Britain is its ability for science. It is quite easy to get several great scientists, and you should use them to build academies in London, Inverness and Manchester.

As for foreign policy, it usually good to get friendly with the French, as this will not only ensure the safety of the British Isles, but also gain you a frienship with what will probably be your biggest tech rival in the game.

So basically, if you ever need help, then think what the real British empire would've done, and you'll probably win. (Just don't copy the charge of the light brigade... :p )

When I build my cities in England, I prefer to build England and Plymouth on England itself, skip Manchester and only build Dublin on Ireland, which can make use of all 3 fish resources. I usually send the leftover settler over to Scandinavia or occasionally to South Africa to get a head start on colonization. The problem with South Africa is that it's a huge drag on your economy at that point. Also, I find caste system to be absolutely crucial.

Rod: Thanks for the Egypt guide. Here are some questions for you:

Is Sin really necessary? (I like settling 1 north on desert, then Xou, then 2 south of the stone.)

How do you expand down the coast of Africa on Emperor without destroying your economy?

How do you keep Jerusalem from the Arabs? If they try to revolt to the Arabs, do you declare war? (I have had problems generating a prophet in the past, so losing Jerusalem actually improved my research.)

Hello Stile,

SIN
The question, whether founding Sin is a truly efficient strategy is not easy to answer, but there are a few strong points which are really favoring this decision :

1) Sin is the second best settling point in a diameter of up to 10 squares around our capital as long as we are regarding unsettled territory only.

2) Sin is the Suez-Channel, which will really help us in settling Africa. As all our ships normally protect our Fish Resources in the Mediterranian Sea, only from time to time we need to send one ship down south. In my scenario the majority of settlers comes from Sur - so whenever Sur is nearly finishing a settler I place a ship in Sin, then I load my settler and then we go south. In the beginning the infrastructure in Africa is weak. We simply need our few workers to improve our homelands. So there will not be any roads in Africa and then you can imagine that a ship is saving us lots of time.

3) Sin is the Suez channel which is linking your empire together. The majority of all our cities is located at the coast, so especially at the beginning the connection of our capital and the African towns is happening thanks to Sin.

4) Last but not least when it comes to war especially in the mid game the suez channel is giving you a lots of flexibility in moving your troops.
Your most likely opponents are India, Spain, Arabia and China (next to Greece and Rome). As you see these wars need troop concentrations on very opponent spots of the world, but these spots are connected by .. Sin

5) Sin is a unit production hub in my scenario. I would not know how I would produce my army of Spearmen etc. without Sin. In the midgame (thanks to the Harbour, the Great Lighthouse and its good productivitity) Sin also is likely to become the third best Research Center. After our capital (Xou) and Niwt-Rst.
This is because of the fact that the area around Yerushalem get raized veeery often. At first from the Barbs, then from Arabia etc. But the area west of Sin is save, so that Sin can grow better the most of the time. Only late Yerushalem can catch up and emerge as one of our commercial hubs.

6) Sin is THE border fortress which protects our homelands from any raiders from the east. I assure you, you do not want any roaming Camel Archers marching over your just fully grown villages and town in the Nile Area. It simply took too much time for them to grow.

AFRICA
The African Expansion is of course a matter of timing. But I assure you, you will not be able rush out Settlers very fast, too much other things need our attention.

In general Egypt's economy is based on deficit spending. So we need constant infusion of money by ...

- native villages
- mercenaries
- tech trading
- Great Merchants
- fake building wonders
- Resource trading

The point is that these things are not that difficult and except for a few dark ages, we can keep up our research and economy on a sufficient level.

It turned out that the best strategy for Egypt is the follower strategy. That means, you should not aim for technical leadership but be a mid level player and trade , trade, trade. So do not cripple your economy to gain the newest technology as soon as possible , but keep up with your opponents and research only what they do not have. Leave the newest techs to Persia.

Russia, Mali, India, Persia (for money), Germany and later America are our most important tech trading partners. Keep best relations with them and make sure that they do not get wiped out.
(if necessary 'buy' peace for them from their opponents)

YERUSHALEM
Yerushalem is tricky, of course I say NO, when these Arabs ask me to leave it. I mean I was paying for it with the blood of MY soldiers - i never would give it up.
Then the Arabs attack. Unfortunately the Rhye engine is presenting them units from the disputed areas every turn until around 900 AD, this makes things difficult.

The solution is .. 2 galleys. :)
The disputed area is not including Sin and not including the sea.
So I always keep only 2 units in Yerushalem (except for emergency), because then most likely no unit is changing sides.
The healing of units is happening only in Sin, so we always keep units loaded on galleys outside of Yerushalem to permanently restock our units in Yerushalem with freshly healed units and evacuate the injured units.

Thanks Rod. You make a convincing argument for Sin. I was mainly curious as to how strategically important the location was (later in the game on Emperor), since I typically locate my cities differently and use all the tiles.

I'm slowly incorporating your guide. Last night I tried Egypt again (v1.24), and used much of your tech path which served me well. A prophet spawned with about a 65% chance, and my money woes were over. Judaism was in over 15 cities and still spreading. In an attempt to please Greece I joined them against India. Persia seemed very happy with me. But then 2-3 turns before Arabia spawned Persia declared war on me from +8 relations. Fortunately I had about a dozen units between Sur and Jerusalem. But Cathage (Roman) had fallen to barbarians and 6 Camel Archers (3 slightly wounded) arrived at Xou simultaneously, plus 4 horse archers and 2 skirmishers in the south. I consolidated my forces in Jerusalem, ceding Sur to Persia militarily, when Arabia spawned. The first turn I lost several units including a C4 Axeman (yeah, I know, I promoted a variety of units, but all my specialty ones got killed) and my sole elephant in the area to Arabia's revolution. I lost my dye and ivory and with a loss of units fighting barbarians I had severe happiness problems. While I'm sure I can survive, let's just say the salad days are over and Jerusalem is sure to fall. Next up for me: Sin, galleys, and more effort to cultivate trading partners.

Interesting thoughts on Sin. I tried it to see what would happen. I settled sin, built a library to try to expand my borders, yet when Arabia spawned they flipped.

hello,

a flipping of Sin to Arabia had never happenend to me.

Did you found Sin on exactly that Desert Hill ?
Did you have Yershalem in your hands ?
Did they make this change in version 1.30 ? When I was playtesting it, i used RFC 1.24.

Great guide Rod! That makes one of the starting civs a whole lot easier to play.

Just wondering if anyone has any good guides for China or India? Especially China, as I always find myself going bankrupt, technologically backward and getting swarmed by barbs.

Someone posted a brief overview of a game as China a while back, but that's all I remember aside from that it wasn't in this thread.

Rob, I play Egypt alot myself, and with the newer versions, Sin seems to flip to Arabia... I'm not sure why on some games it does and some it doesn't though, more often than not, Arabia gets my Sin... Never for long though...

i must say, i started a game as germany and they are freakin weak...I started with 3 longbowmans and a few axemen, and I have France and Rome already disliking me. Rome declared war on me on like the 3rd turn, and sent in a huge army of pretorians and horse archers, i was wiped out quick.

Never give up, never surrender (quote from 'Galaxy Quest')

that means, do not be upset because you got wiped out in the first time.

I was replaying the first 50 turns with Egypt alltogether 8 times, before I had the satisfying results that you can see now in the guide.

If you want an easier game to get used to Rhye then I sincerely suggest you to start with Persia or Mongols. Their unique power is so strong and so much fun, that you get addicted to RFC in one hour :)

Germany isn't weak! I just played a game with them and quickly overan eastern France, Eastern Europe, Italy and Carthage. I might've won if I hadn't suddenly been attacked by the Russians and Arabians...

I agree, I've played as Germany a couple times and (BOTH times) when I spawned, Rome had already colapsed... It was a race between France and I to snatch up the reminance of Roman cities (which were PACKED with barbarian praetorians)... Anyway, (@BigK89m), I guess you just got unlucky...

This thread needs some more strat guides...

Ideas for countries that really need strat guides:
Arabia
Greece
Persia
Germany
America

These strike me as being particularly difficult to play (especially with Arabia's insanely difficult UHV).

I could write a bit about Arabia, though I've never attempted the UHV. I guess I will, right now.

persia is easy!

Its like two countries in one, persia and india, you get 3 holy city's a semi-continant nearly ever resaurce you need, I dont see the problem arabia and greace are hard though, I only played with america once and I had state property for it :)

germany doesnt seem to hard, if you are happy with the russians or wipe them out early on...

This isn't so mucha strategy guide as a few goals to aim for and a few tips on how to play with Arabia.

First off, playing as Arabia means being hated. All of the European civs will hate you, and the Eastern ones won't be all that firendly either. Your only potential friend is Mali, and that's only if they end up adopting Islam.

So first off, on your first turn don't switch civics, else you won't be able to switch to islam the next turn and thus, your UP won't be applied to the cities that flip to you. While we're on the topic, the Arabian UP is very useful for the warmonger, since it takes care of any cultural problems your captured cities might have.

Your only real good city on the Arabian Peninsula is Makkah. The rest of them are low on food and lower on production, so you'll want to be using those camel archers you started with straight away to get ahold of some better cities. If Persia collapsed, then you probably won't be getting much in the way of cities flipping to you, which is a double edged sword. IF the cities of Mesopotamia have been razed, then you can move in and build some better cities in their place. If this is the case, build Baghdad (on the plains tile on the side of the river, right next to all those flood plains). I find it makes the most use of the nearby resources, and if Parsa's been rased, then build Kirman (one tile below parsa's ruins).

But before you do any of this, your first order of business should be an invasion of Egypt. There are some good cities to be had there. The odds are fairly good that the Egyptians have passed on, and in that case your job will be easier. If you're lucky, then you'll be able to take a few wonders along with the Egyptian cities, like Stonehenge and The Pyramids and maybe a few more if you're even luckier.

Once you've taken Egypt, you might wanna take a break from expansion and give your economy some time to catch its breath. Consider putting some troops up for hire as mercs if you're running especially low. Keep most of your camel archers in Egypt, since you'll almost definitely be getting hit by waves of barb camel archers, and if you're careless you'll most definitely lose a city or even all of them.

Another thing to aim for is to get THE SPIRAL MINARET. This compliments your UP very nicely. Also, if you got lucky with a few wonders in Egypt, try to aim for a great prophet to further increase your profits, or, more likely, to help pull yourself out of the hole. You may start to lose your tech lead, but don't worry. Once you've established yourself, you can catch back up fairly early.

A few more things to consider doing:

Build a city on the choke point that leads to Russia: Preferably on the desert tile to get access to the oil that will be in the water later on. Thic city will help protect you from invasion from Russia so long as you keep it well guarded.

Try to get Turkey: For the same reasons as the former, the choke point can protect you against European invasion.

Expand into North Africa: Only do this once your economy is slightly more stable. There is iron there, a resource which you most likely lack (although there is some near Kirman/Parsa).

Build the Temple of Solomon: Only if you get a second great prophet. If you do happen to, send him to Jerusalem right away and get on that, and then spread Judaism to all of your cities. The extra cash definitely won't hurt.

Invade India: Again, only if your economy is stable. India is a pushover, though, so you won't meet much resistance if you choose to do this.

Also, you won't have any lack of oil, and can put a bit of a monopoly on it if you so choose. Spain and France will have some from South America, and England has some off of the coast, but a lot of the other civs of the game won't have any and oil is a prettttty valuable resource.

That's all i can think of right now, but if anything else comes to mind I might add some more.

persia is easy!

Its like two countries in one, persia and india, you get 3 holy city's a semi-continant nearly ever resaurce you need, I dont see the problem arabia and greace are hard though, I only played with america once and I had state property for it

Persia is not so fun, since your millennia old indian full developed cities will inevitably claim independence and you'll find immediately without the income of two shrine, without the Gp farm, the wonders and the forbidden palace...

Reading this thread really makes you appreciate how Rhye's mod has improved on the original game. I have no input to the strategies, but they make a great read.

there are some gems on the coast northwest of Moscow, its a good idea to build a city there just to get them.)

Nope, I can't find them...

Not much of a strategy guide, but I did managed to play a pretty decent game with the Greeks, albeit on the lowest difficulty setting. The biggest challenge, naturally, was holding on to my Mesopotamian conquests/settlements after Arabia spawned. Obviously the key was having enough Phalanxes ready, and enough production capacity to pump them out quickly, to beat back the initial onslaught of Camel Archers. Arabia's production capacity is poor, so if you can survive the initial onslaught, you can usually overwhelm them with numbers. After that, I had no major problems until the Persians declared their independance on me during the Modern Era. By the end of the game, I had taken over Rome, Germany, Russia, Persia, Arabia, India, and most of Egypt. I was about to take down France before the Persian revolt sidetracked me. None of these empires had collapsed of their own accord during my game.

In addition to the Pesian revolt, both Arabia and Russia revolted on me during the game. The Russian revolt was a little troublesome due to the 10%/turn attrition my forces took while in Russian territory, but fortunately I had stocked my former Russian cities with enough Cannon in anticipation of such an occurence to make subduing the rebels a little easier.

Nope, I can't find them...

The city built next to them is called Vorkuta, there's also copper nearby and it's on a river. I'ts kind of diagonal (up and right) from Moscow.

northwest of Moscow

I'ts kind of diagonal (up and right) from Moscow.

Right is east, here it's why I couldn't find them....

I am well confused, where is right not east?

I am well confused, where is right not east?

When you are looking south... ;)

but your not on the map, the map is pointing north, right? :S

Of course. I was only joking. ;)

northwest of Moscow

Quote:
I'ts kind of diagonal (up and right) from Moscow.

Right is east, here it's why I couldn't find them....

I am well confused, where is right not east?

Northwest and up and right are not the same....

it is in this context as the map north is also true north, and map north is always up on a map meaning east will always be right...

damn.

North west. Up and right

North west means up and left. I won't quote again...

I have played a game with egyptians, and I can assure the Yerushalayim and Sin issue are very important. In my case, I didn't rushed to South Africa for iron, but to Marocco. The result was not bad, but to the end of the game, I started to fade down as long as I had a lot of improductive terrain. I've finished in sixth position in points, though I was the only Civ in Africa, except for Malinese, which I just couldn't beat. How pitiful! But they've got infantries and cavalries, but me not.

Next time I'll try your way.

EDIT: some little more explanations (the other time I was in little rush). I was the first in culture, the first in gold, and the fourth in tech... But I think my problems came because improductive land = little population = little specialists = less technology = less production = less wonders. Anyway it was a weird game because the civ most advanced was England, who were researching Fascism in the end of the game. There was only 200 points of difference between Americans (who won by time) and me.

I think that if I playback since the Middle Age (because I was on the lead until XVIII century), I will be able to make something better.

My 2cents on Egypt:

I agree that the position is relatively weak for starting due to nothing but a few quarrys and lots of sick floodplains, but with the UU, the early culture victory of 500 is attainable.

Two things to consider: A warrior rush can succeed against the fertile crescent to the east due to the fact they don't have defenses, and the barbarian archer defenders aren't built immediately (at least on Viceroy). Use the conquered cities to build more warriors, never using them in stacks of less than three, and only pause the conquest for archers.
Building settlers is expensive and Egypt has an early time-crunch----therefore be happy with the barbarian cities (to that note, I settle the first city right where it starts as there's lots of production bonus in the quarries, and fish can be gotten from the fertile crescent/Arabia anyway.

No need to research Monotheism, even if you aren't the first to Polytheism. Chances are you'll capture the founding city if you don't found the religion yourself.

Go straight for Animal Husbandry, wheel, and then crank out chariots to capture the fertile crescent before worrying about any wonders.

Then when you've built the Pyramids, the free obelisks with about 7 cities captured (I forget the #) is a shoe-in for 500 culture.

Recommended: capture to Hatsusas (its a nice region) and Shusan. Surrender Shusan to Persia---better to be their buddy..
Make nice with Greece and Persia (shun India and anyone else they want---it's better that way), through religion and trade. Through that, you can safely build the wonders and prepare for a coming war with the Arabs (they want the whole fertile crescent for themselves---and they ain't gonna get it!); Spearman in abundance of course to counter the Camel archers (albeit imperfectly, but with level-ups they are effective).

In my trial game, Ur got sacked, and on balance that only made Babel an even better sit to develop. Urshalim was
a nice spot for the Lighthouse (palestine) but it's vulnerable to the Arabs camel rushes.

Overall strategy:
downplay the Nile production weakness by simply not producing settlers when barbarian cities can be captured (warrior rushes work, then build chariots to finish up once archers arrive). Build culture through the conquered cities, using the Pyramids this way, for extra economic culture Be influential friends with the neighbors to avoid costly wars (except the Arabs) ; Use this time to finish the wonders and win the Arch. Don't be extra generous in giving free techs to the upstarts until you seriously outpace them. The rest is easy---try to get the world to stay the same religion as you, and keep friendly with your immediate neighbors at the expense of farther countries---keep a tech lead and settle in the obvious unchallenged direction---South-East Africa (Though expanding towards Russia/Siberia is wide open after the barbarians rushes are done).

Final note (something that didn't dawn on me until late in my trial game, but should have): the flood-plains are now great places to put Towns! (you can't irrigate them and production ecomics there is limited, but they guarantee that you'll work them due to food value and it works out that if you won't produce there then might as well settle towns there)

Some civs are made for war some arn't, if I was playing as the turks or the mongols then they sound like solid tactics, however as egypt I think the builder option is more viable, it is possible to win the HV with just two cities and without attacking anybody.

Ahh, but what if someone attacks you?

you win before most civs spawn, and before greace or persia manage to get past jerusalem, all you have to do it but-lick Rome and Cathage...

In the game I played with with Egypt (btw: I have no saves, so it seems I will have to start from the beginning, what it's not bad, with all that feedback in mind) I was in war almost all the time, and only once I was the one which declared it.

At first, battling with barbs. Later on, I saw Yerushalayim very slightly defended (just two archers) so I took the initiative and made a blitzkrieg for it. Succesful, btw. But I didn't had a Great prophet all the game, so I wasn't able to build the Temple of solomon, or the Holy Building from hinduism (I founded it :) ). After that, the persians seemed to be so busy warrying with Indians that there was no counterattack, and peace was signed just about 10 turns later.

Just after that, barbs came along from Maghreb in hordes (about 20 camel archers). They caught me so defenseless that were able to raze two cities, one of them with the Great Lighthouse (a complete disaster, I don't know how I didn't quit in that moment).

So I repelled the invasion, and rebuilt the cities. And the arabs appeared. They wanted Yerushalayim. Obviously, my answer was 'NO'. War with arabs was not tought, but it took me a while to retake Yerushalayim, and a city they surprisingly take in south east Africa. I was really surprised. It was the first time that I've seen the AI to keep something more than a straightforward attack, specially the Arabs. But, finally, the colony and Yerushalayim were liberated. After that, I wanted revenge, so I went after Makkah, succesfully. Finally, the persians entered the war, and smashed the other arab cities, which were quite undeveloped.

But this was not the end. When I was about to settle in the area or Northwest africa that there's an iron resource, I saw a spanish city! I prepared the invasion, but they declared war on me first, and also Germany, and England. It was really hard to defend against the "crusade", but France helped a lot, declaring war on the Spanish (I think that because of some colony affairs in South America). Finally I razed the spanish colony, settle there, and got my Iron!! It was about the start of the XIX century.

Problems came again, when my iron colony revolted, and changed to Spanish. I was thinking in attack again, but English, which at all this time I was still in war, bribed the Malinese to attack me... I barely could contain them. I headed towards Timbuktu directly, and when my attacking army was completely destroyed, I sueded them for peace, which they accepted. Also the English. It was 2030. No time to win...

Conclusion: many times, in RFC, keep a defined strategy can be very very hard. I wanted a peaceful game, and my target was for a culture victory. My first capital (I moved towards south some time later in the game) reached legendary culture, it's true. But it was the only city which wasn't occuppied with military affairs.

So far only on Viceroy.

Capital becomes Commerce City. Great Merchant factory so to say.

Athenai: Workboat-Workboat-Settler-Colossos

Research Masonry-writing-Alphabet...

Chariot straight to Niniveh(for Stone+Copper...). Build/Rush obelisk. Makes a good Science city but cottages hard to defend against later raids.

Niniveh: Obelisk-Warrior-Great Lib

Worker builds road via byzantion to hattusas. To connect stone.

1 Warrior patrols the forests in Thracia for Barbarians

1 Warrior for hut popping (Eurasia is quite big)

Phalanges to Hattusas(Production worker). Promote City raider. Raid the fertile crescent. Babel first for 2 Workers or Sur for XP.

Hattusas: Stonehenge(Pop'n Chop),


1st Settler founds Byzantion

Byzantion: Workboat-Warrior-Warrior

2nd Settler goes to North West (Fresh Water, Sea, Copper, Hill) to found Artist factory.

Don't remember the name:confused: : Parthenon(chop/rush)

The Tower (+100% GPP) gets build there too

Build Phalanges+Elephants(if you get them) to the East and Axes to the west.

Research Caravels (don't need open borders) and sail the seas. Try to keep open Borders with Egypt or Arabia, other wise you should better capture the Suez. Since you should have enough troups amassed by that time.

Don't move away too much from research path, I easily got beaten to that. May not work on Monarch. Stonehenge and GLib are very likely not yours.

You can also try the (pyramids+)forge for Great engineer production, Stonehenge might help here too.

P.S.: Stonehenge and Pyramids changed their specials:crazyeye: . Didn't recognize that with Egypt earlier, since I built both :lol: .

Here's a guide I posted in another thread:
It is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo easy to defeat Rome with Carthage. I choose Carthage for this reason 'cause once you have the Italian penensula, you automatically become a world superpower.

Here's some tipes (not specifically to you Hitti, just here for everyone)

First thing to do is to Unload your spawned Settler and send it west of your capital to later found a city. You can even set it to start build a wonder for future use or for future income if someone else finishes it before.

Next is to position your troops for the future invasion. Unload your two archers on the southern tip of the peninsula near the Roman spawn (yes both of them because your African cities won't have any threat until the Camel Archers spawn). Now before you end your turn, you can set your capital to work on anything you want (possibly another wonder) and change your civics (preferably just 2 for just 1 turn of anarchy).

Now you will recieve the message that the Romans have spawned and even though you might want to attack right then, you have to wait. Putting your Unique Power to use, you will have to buy your first mercenary. By then their should be a couple of good choices such as an axeman, a skirmisher or a war chariot. If you don't want to put too much strain on your economy, adjust your science output to 0%. Load your Numidian Calvary and your mercenary into your galleys and then you play the waiting game. What your waiting for is for Rome to start sending their Praetorians northward to their new city. If you time it right you can grab their worker as well. When there is only archers guarding Rome, send your fleet northward and land on the tile to the north of Rome (so you won't have to cross its river). Your archers are also stationed to the south. Your mercenary should be able to take out one of their archers while it may take both Numidian Calvary to finish the last one.

With Rome in your hands, your job isn't over. Heal your mercenary in the newly capture city. While you hold down the resistance, you should also purchase another mercenary. Again, there should be another good mercenary unit for hire. When purchased, it should arrive in Rome (I don't know if this is random or not). Send off your new army while holding down Rome with your archers. If you're short of men you can send an archer as well. The last city probably will have 1 or 2 archers with at most 1 Praetorian (I don't know where the Romans send the rest of their Praetorians; probably exploring or died battling the Gauls) It might take you two turns at the most, but the city should fall.

After the Romans are destroyed, disband your mercenaries; they will be straining on your economy about now. Finally, establish a city on the southern end of the peninsula before it gets consumed by the Greek culture. At this point, you can take your empire in any direction you want. You can become a peaceful wonder-grabber or a warmonger (conquering Greece, Babylonians and Egyptians should be quite easy with more Numidian Calvary and mercenaries). In the end, its a fun game after you've dealt with those pesky Romans.

Anyway, just wanted to give my tips. I should be able to get an Ottoman stradegy guide once I've had more games with them.

When I build my cities in England, I prefer to build England and Plymouth on England itself, skip Manchester and only build Dublin on Ireland, which can make use of all 3 fish resources. I usually send the leftover settler over to Scandinavia or occasionally to South Africa to get a head start on colonization. The problem with South Africa is that it's a huge drag on your economy at that point.England is one of the easier civs to play. Inverness and Manchester are production powerhouses (so don't skip that site) and all cities generate plenty of commerce. You'll want to build libraries everywhere and hire plenty of scientists. Soon you will be far ahead in tech.

I use my settlers to found Manchester, Plymouth and... Aarhus (west side of Jutland south of the pigs). With your production and research capacity you should be able to take a big chunk of Europe with Maces and Cats. Colonization overseas can come after you've already carved out a massive homeland. Aarhus is a pretty good site in its own, too. Copenhagen looks better because of the cows but the Germans will grab them (make them pay!) and Aarhus is superior in other respects.

Dublin and Oslo come next about the same time. The former is simply a good site. The latter gets the silver - two luxes with forges, which are easy to get. Just kill three or four people. Which speaking of...

Also, I find caste system to be absolutely crucial.Why? :confused: Slavery is far better in any game. And with the huge food surpluses you have everywhere, it is especially true when playing the English in RFC. Whip out libraries, forges. military and everything else. In general, you should follow the same sequence in every city except maybe Plymouth.

1. whip something expensive
2. grow back to the happy limit while building units.
3. hire scientists and engineers. Maybe build a settler or worker.
4. when unhappiness has worn off go back step 1.

Revolt immediately to HR and slavery so that you don't waste time in anarchy after the new cities are built (this is a general principle of RFC - your first action should be to set your civics). Later, after Christianity spreads to your lands, add Vassalage and Theocracy and get ready to kick some German butt. :D

Edit on the :whipped:
Whip out work boats in Manchester and Plymouth the second you can. London and Aarhus get libraries, although it will take them some time to get up to size. Get a granary in Inverness. Then start right in on cats in preparation for the war (it has a barracks). When you get back up to size, get a library.

The general whip order for new cities should be granary-library-barracks (if appropriate) -forge-market. The library may be built first if border expansion is important, as in Aarhus.

China can be an easy civ to play as long as you know your history (or foresight of planned events).

The main points:

1. Expand carefully - Expanding south of the capital too fast to fill in the mainland can make your research drop to 0% fast. Go after calendar fast to develop your lux resources.

2. BARBS! - Expect swordsmen from Tibet and horse archers from the north. Position your units accordingly. Have backup units ready to go. Once Tibet is conquered the raids will stop. The jungles in the south will block most unit movement, including Indian and Barbs.

3. Chokepoints - Use them. The barbs of Tibet can be stopped (temporally) by using a few axmen with woodsmen promotion in the wooded valley east of Tibet. Keep a medic in the group also. This should buy you some time to build a force strong enough to take Tibet, if you choose.

4. Japan - Keep an eye on him. He will declare war. Be ready for a landing of 4 units in Korea.

5. Resources - The copper in the south can be hard to hook up with in time. It may be faster to get the research for the iron near Beijing. Get Axmen and Spearman fast. Archers and warriors will not cut it for what will soon come.

6. THE KESHIK - The Mongols should be feared. Their mounted units can run through your foot units with impunity. Your best bet is to sweet talk India for one of their elephants. The War Elephant is the best answer to the Mongolian threat, but the Mongols will still be faster than you so you will need to be ready. The Mongols will declare war. Plan to deny them their horse resource.

If you live past the Mongolian war you should be strong enough to finish out the rest of the game.

Why? :confused: Slavery is far better in any game. And with the huge food surpluses you have everywhere, it is especially true when playing the English in RFC. Whip out libraries, forges. military and everything else. In general, you should follow the same sequence in every city except maybe Plymouth.

With Caste System, you can get scientists in cities that grow fast, but don't have such great production (Dublin is the prime example of this). Dublin always winds up having around 8 scientists early game for me, and usally before it could ever have managed to push out a library, and the problem with using slavery to get the library is that i doesn't provide the ability to hire as many scientists, and also decreases the population and makes the city unhappy for a while, and with how fast dublin grows, that can be a pretty big problem.

With Caste System, you can get scientists in cities that grow fast, but don't have such great production (Dublin is the prime example of this). Dublin always winds up having around 8 scientists early game for me, and usally before it could ever have managed to push out a library, and the problem with using slavery to get the library is that i doesn't provide the ability to hire as many scientists, and also decreases the population and makes the city unhappy for a while, and with how fast dublin grows, that can be a pretty big problem.Part of your problem is that you skip the Manchester site. Not only does that lose production in England, it means that Dublin gets four big food tiles instead of three. I'm playing a game right now.

Dublin was found in 1100AD. As I speak in 1340AD, it has a granary, library, forge, lighthouse and temple. It is starting work on its university. Right now, it is only running one specialists but that will change soon.

Then there's the opportunity cost for what happens in other cities. Aarhus has a barracks, granary, lighthouse, forge, library, university, market and temple. Can you imagine how long it would take to build this stuff in such a poor production site without the whip? The hardest part was getting the initial library to bring in the fish. The work boat came from London. The rest just came by itself.

Inverness has a barracks, granary, library, forge, lighthouse, university, market and The Spiral Minaret (popped a GE :D ). I just whipped its amphitheatre. Even so, it is running three specialists and actually spends most of its time training soldiers to beat up the continentals.

Speaking of which... Germany is dead and France is reduced to one city. Spain and Rome are next in line. The continent should be mine by 1450AD. With a core like that and some whipped courthouses, the national objective is easy to reach.

I too would really like to know how to achieve the UHV's for the following civ's:

Persia
Arabia
America
Mali
Rome

I've played Persia, and that goal of 20% of world territory by 650AD or whatever is impossible. The upkeep costs alone will cripple your economy before you even get to 10%, and the Satrapy power is virtually useless.

I tried America, and foolishly wasted my resources on a war with the Aztecs when I should have targeted European Nations. But when it says "no European Cities in American continent in 1900 AD" does that mean North AND South America and the Carribean Islands? Because that sounds like a tall order to me.

Having just read a previous post about a Greece-to-Russia strategy, I came up with an idea about playing Arabia just now: start as Persia, focus primarily on building a massive state of the art army, conquer India, attack and weaken Greece (MAYBE), conquer Mesopotamia and Jerusalem, and just before the Arabs arrive, put ALL your units in Jerusalem and the Mesopotamian cities and take control of the Arabs. Then as the Arabs you can conquer Persia and Egypt easily, and move on to Europe. Would that work?

I haven't tried Mali yet, but the idea of having to amass 20000 gold in that short period of time seems too difficult for me to even consider trying. I suppose you would need to :

set research at 0%
choose gold optimising civics
set cities on gold maximisation mode?
build/spam cottages, markets, grocers, and banks if availiable
only use merchant specialists
go for great merchants and use them to create trade routes?
hire out heaps of mercenaries?

I played as Rome and thought I had fufilled the first two historical victory conditions but apparently I hadn't. I had all my >= size 5 cities connected to Rome with Barracks, Amphitheatre and Aqueduct in each, the Colissuem wonder in Rome for good measure, and I had cities in Carthaginian, French, English, Spanish, Greek, Jewish, Turkish, and Egyptian lands. So why didn't I satisfy the first two UHV conditions?

I don't think that a strategy that relies on using another civilization first is as much a strategy as an exploit.

I don't think that a strategy that relies on using another civilization first is as much a strategy as an exploit.

So???

At least it's thinking outside the box.

So I tried the Persia-Arabia strategy/exploit (you say tomato....) last night, and I haven't finished yet but so far it looks promising. I still have no idea how you are supposed to control 20% of the world's landmass as Persia by 600AD, but as Persia I built a heap of wonders, 1 holy shrine, was far ahead in tech., and conquered India and Greece with a large and diversified military force. A turn before Arabia is born, I moved most of my units into the soon-to-be Arab cities, pillage most of my own (Persia's) strategic military resources, and when the Arab cities flip they have a massive army at there disposal. When this occurs, I promptly upgrade all horse archers to Camel Archers, attack the near-empty Persian cities and I soon had the entire Persian empire from Greece to India under my (Arab) control.

Then the Romans declared war, I managed to conquer them (they collapsed after I took Rome) with my massive (mostly formerly Persian) army which I had concentrated in Greece, and now the year is about 900CE and I am just starting to invade France. I got a second shrine with a Great Prohpet from Perspepolis (the Persian wonder building spree, remember?) and should be able to get that third shrine before 1300AD with another Great Prophet. So if I keep on my toes, an Arab victory might be possible after all (although my research is really suffering at the moment due to upkeep costs).

This approach might also make an American UHV more obtainable: start as England, colonise and really build up the Eastern US, and build a massive land army as well as plently of transport and combat ships. Then you move as many of these units into the soon-to-be US cities around 1700CE as possible(especially the sea units) and when the cities flip to America, you (as the Americans) now have a massive army in order to drive the Europeans from the New World quickly and possibly attack the Aztecs. I'll have to try this one out.

The Aztecs

The unique power of the Aztecs is slavery. So never think of a training a worker. You will get plenty simply by taking out the barbs, never mind whatever civs you might have to fight. In fact, you won't know what to do with them all. For much of the game, you will find that about the best project is building long roads to future cities.

Basic strategy

The Aztecs start out with a huge continent all to themselves, just waiting to be filled out. The downside, of course, is that they are backwards and vulnerable to the superior knowledge and weaponry of the Europeans. As the Aztec civ awakes, the Europeans are able to cross the ocean to make contact but cannot yet colonise the continent. Your objective is to use that contact to not just come abreast but to leap ahead in technology while simultaneously taking all that glorious empty land.

Played properly, you should be able to deny the entire continent to the Europeans while simultaneously beating them in the Liberalism race. In fact, you should not just get to the Industrial Era in the required time-frame for the UHV but get there first.

The starting location is magnificent. Two Corn, several hills and a Dye. Production power. Commerce power. And food to back it up. If there ever was a location which cried for Bureaucracy, this is it. A couple of your towns, including the capital, will need Sailing to get Lighthouses but you won't go far wrong if you go straight for The Money instead of satisfying these needs. The bottom line is that the research path must be either Sailing-CS or CS straightaway.

There is a second reason to go for CS too. The AI likes the top and bottom research paths. If you go for the middle one, you are likely to garner monopoly techs which you can trade for several on the other paths.

Finally, if there wasn't enough reason already, CS gets you halfway to Maces - and Maces are the great equalizers which give you the capability to defend yourself from European incursions. To the point that the hardest part of your UHV may be to find Europeans to enslave. Well... you can find them in Europe :mischief:

In this regard, continue in the same direction through the tech tree with PP, Paper, Education, etc. More trade-bait. You should be need able to get everything else you need through trade. The only thing you should keep an eye out for is the key military techs: Machinery, Optics, and Astronomy. Machinery gets your maces. Optics gives you contacts. Especially make sure to get to that Great African Tech Whore. You and he will make fine music together. You need Astronomy mainly for protection from barb galleys. It’s not time to invade Europe. Yet … Machinery should be easy to trade for. Optics, and especially Astronomy, will be harder. If you can’t get to Astronomy on time, make sure to have several caravels ready on both coasts.

When you get to Liberalism, you can take any path you choose. I personally like to go for rifling to prepare for the next great challenge… the arrival of the Americans.

OK. ‘Nuff long-range stuff. Let’s get back to opening moves.

Settle to the northeast. Switch civics immediately before secondary cities are impacted. HR and slavery are tough to beat, and only cost one turn, so go for it. However, T... whatever its name, should not be whipped. The location is powerful and, under Bureaucracy, the capital should be big so let it grow. At most take the occasional settler off it. Don’t hesitate with whip elsewhere though. I like to settle the other two cities to the north just above the Spices and to the Northwest, just east of the clams. The northern city should get a whipped library. The Northwestern one gets a work boat and a library, both whipped.

Send all the Jaguars south-east. There are a couple of Mayan cities which are well worth taking. Don’t be afraid of the poor odds. The game has been rigged and you will win! This seems to be a general characteristic of late RFC starts. The first three or four attacks are 100% sure to succeed. Tikal will eventually turn into a nice city. Chichen Itza will always be poor but, with a lighthouse and library, it will certainly pay for itself. Build the workboat out of the capital. It will take too long to build at Chicken.

If you have good success, you can move on to the Incas. Their city of Quito is well worth having. Grab it and they will be trapped on the coast forever. Just raze the next city down the coast (I forget its name) so that you get the corn. Stop there. The others will alway be small and a drain on your economy. If you tackle the Inca, the only thing which can go wrong is that they get mercenaries. War elephants, in particular, are extremely dangerous because they can enter the jungle. So be careful about the Mercenary situation. You might even hire them yourself for denial purposes.

Further expansion

Don’t go much further into South America than Caracas (at least not in the second phase). It's too far away and, in any case, you should be concentrating on claiming the US. Getting iron or copper is especially important to be able to build those maces. There is copper in the desert to the north, but it’s a terrible location. Seattle also has some and it’s a nice spot. Still, you should be building towards the Europeans, not away from them. Chicago is an absolutely magnificent location and there is iron just to the east. Reach for it. So New Orleans should be your next city after the initial five or six. It has some nice food. Then comes Chicago. This location should contain your FP. It is nice and central to your American core, if slightly north, and will be a powerhouse. Charleston, New York and Sydney to the east. St. Louis, Winnipeg and Sudbury to the west and north.

Then sit back and wait for the arrival of the Europeans. Or take the game to them if you prefer. Just remember to be ready for the Americans. Cannons and rifles in New York and Chicago (which can use them for happy issues if you still have them) will make sure that they get a fine welcome.

***India!***

Yes, I know the Unique Historical Victory is very non-historical and I know the Unique Unit is next to useless, but come on, India can be fun! Even though I think the UHV of having to found 5 religions should REALLY be changed, it is possible to win a UHV with India on Monarch on a semi-consistant basis...

When you found Delhi, you should immediatly send your first warrior on a scouting mission. His goals should be: #1, get a visual on the place where the the two rivers meet SW of Delhi; and #2, make his way toward Europe.

Delhi should build another warrior. This will be the extent of your military.

Before you hit the end turn button, don't forget to set your research path. Make a beeline straight for Monotheism. If you don't go for Monotheism, Judaism will be founded in the Middle East, right away wasting a religion toward your goal...

Once your second warrior is finished, start working on Stonehenge. You NEED Stonehenge to win!

Once Delhi's population hits 2, take a break on Stonehenge to rush out a settler... Build a city right above that precious little marble site. Your new city, Thandigarh, or something like that... (It starts with a 'T,' that's all I know...) T city should produce a warrior, JUST IN CASE one of those barbarian warriors from up north come wandering down... T city should also produce a Fast Worker.

Make sure that once Delhi has finished the T-city's settler, it goes back to Stonehenge, btw...

Have your worker throw a quarry on the pile of marble...

T-city should then begin producing The Parthenon.

You now have two cities producing wonders, Stonhenge in Delhi and The Parthenon in T-city... I hope you like the End Turn button...

Oh wait, I forgot about the warrior. If he hasn't been picked off by a bear yet, he should be ready to make contact with the Greeks, and, more importantly, the Romans. This is your first warriors soul purpose in life. Don't waste him on a goody hut ambush...

Right about now, you should be founding Judaism in T-City. Your next tech, should be Priesthood. In some games, I've seen China or Greece get this first if you spend time dicking around with something as unimportant as agriculture or the wheel... If someone else founds Hinduism or Buddism, you should just give up, you suck.

Once you have priesthood, and the Buddism founding in T-city, change T-city from the Parthenon to The Oracle! (We'll come back to the Parthenon later.) Put your research now into Meditation to snatch up Hinduism. Now you need writting.

Is Delhi getting close to finishing Stonehenge yet? Whenever that happens, make sure you switch your religious civic to PASSIVISM. (Oh yeah, I said it.) Passivism sucks for everyone else, but it a requirement for India. It's great not having any anarchy, switch all you want, but keep passivism. While your at it, go into Delhi's city manager and turn on the "Great People" focus. See where I'm going with this? Delhi is yours to do what you want with it... Build monuments or reserve settlers (my personal favorite) but DO NOT build up your military. Passivism on the religious civic will kill you... Also, don't found any new cities, yet, as the strain on your economy will choke your research.

T-city's culture should be looking pretty good now with 3 founding religions in it. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, if China founds Confusism or Taoism, don't sweat it, we're not worried about those...

Sometime soon, if it hasn't already happened, Persia will spawn. You MUST kiss Persia's ass. Get open borders. They want you to declare war on the Greeks? Do it. They want money you don't have? Give it. Persia can rip through your two warrior world in a second... Babylonia is another problem. A couple of my games, they brought over stacks of their UU (the bowmen) and made me wish I was playing a Babylon game... It wouldn't hurt to kiss their ass too, but if Babylon and Persia go to war, back Persia, they are a GREAT buffer.

Do you know what else is a great buffer? JUNGLE. China wants to throw down with you, let'em. They won't be able to come at you with anything except scouts. ONCE, China led a massive one catapult assult around the mountains against my T-City. I'm not kidding you, one catapult... They were taken out by the barbs, no surprise there...

ANYWAY, MAKE SURE that you don't finish the Oracle before you finish researching writting!!! If it's close, switch back to the Parthenon for a little bit. Once you have writting, finish the Oracle. Of look, Theology!

Now you have FOUR religions, Judaism, Buddism, Hinduism, and Christianity. And Christianity comes with a missionary! You have two options here: #1, send the missionary to Delhi and make your state religion Christianity or #2, send the missionary to Persia's Parsa and STILL make your religion Christianity, but now you have another thing in common with your master Persia. Here's how I decide: If Persia and I are good (i.e., I've "helped" them out by declaring war on someone they didn't like) I'll give the missionary to Delhi. Christianity can spread fine on it's own. If Persia isn't good with me though, I NEED them to be my friend, so I will send the missionary there and watch them convert. The only flaw here is if Persia ALREADY got Judaism... They won't go for Christianity... Tough call then...

Anyway, once the Oracle has been built, it's time to focus on the LAST religion left... Islam... It's IMPOSSIBLE to research Devine Right before the Arabs spawn, I don't care what you say. I've tried it every way I can think of, so unless your a Viceroy playing wimp, it can't happen. This is where the Stonehenge and the Oracle (with their Great Prophet spawning) and the Passivism (with it's Great People Boost) and the Great People focus in Delhi, AND the Parthenon you are about to build (with IT'S great people boost) REALLY come into play... NOW do you see where I am going?

RESEARCH: You now need Monarchy. Make sure you get it before your first Great Prophet is born. It may seem like a waste of Prophets when you have Four founding religions in one city, but it has to be done for the UHV. You will use TWO prophets to found Devine Right. If you don't have Monarchy when one of the prophets is born, he will want to research CODE OF LAWS. (I figure this is a hold over from when Confussism was founded with code of laws...) If you have Monarchy, he will put his research toward Devine Right. Your goal is to have TWO great prophets spawn before Arabia spawns but AFTER you secure Monarchy.

Remember your (probably) long dead first warrior? It's nice to know Greece and Rome now because they've probably made their way to Alphabet and you can trade some techs to fill out your tech tree... Finally getting to put that Fast Warrior to work. Oh yeah, wake his ass up!

Once the Parthenon is done in T-city, start building Archers (if you can), if not, ANYTHING to boost the defenses there. (Warriors probably won't cut it, which is why you needed to meet Rome and Greece with their rushes to Alphabet...) Horse Archers are on there way for T-City. 4-6 Archers should stem the tide... Walls don't hurt either. Stay on focus though, stop building military units if your Monarchy research is really starting to dwindle... (remember, you're a passivist...) Try to avoid using Slavery (if you were able to trade something for Bronze working) unless you're in a real pinch, since this will hurt your last goal, being first in pop...

Once your people have spawned and you managed to get Devine Right, you can take a breath, you've passed the hardest goal! Say hello to that Triumphal Arch!

Take your cities off the Great People focus, switch to a more military friendly religious civic, and start sending out/building settlers! Colonize every inch of land in India. Put your cities on FULL GROWTH. Is Persia still around? If not, (or if they are REALLY weak) go after them! Take all the barb cities you can! Take the Persian cities if you can... Yeah, you've kissed their ass long enough, and by now, they should be looking pretty weak to you... You don't have a lot of time, 1200AD is coming up quick. Since your probably don't have Calendar, keep an eye on what Civs are spawning, this tells you how close you are getting to the end of your game.

Your biggest rival in Population is typically Japan at this point. They have nice fat untouched cities on an island with nothing better to do but grow. This late in the game, having spent all your time with just two cities, you can't outgrow anyone. You need to think about taking cities by force. I can usually do it with a galley and some swordmen in South East Asia, but I most recently did it by capturing Persia's remaining three cities. If China collapsed, go after their cities! Don't take the lone catapult route around the mountains though, you're smarter than that, you build a galley. This is where you start being happy about having a FAST worker as your UU...

IT'll be close, it's always close... But you can do it. 1200AD rolls around and you get that victory message, it'll be worth it. Add a India Historical Victory on Monarch to your hall of fame. :)

Seems you worked out Indian UHV quite well, but I'd still argue to build Multan instead of the "T-City". Just south of the peaks and north of the swamps. It seals the subcontinent to the East against any invasion (most probably barbarian). There is one passage left in the mountains. But you can defend it easilywith a fortified unit in the wood next to it or on the hill outside, if you require cutting it.

Multan works just as well, but I've found that it "provokes" Persia a little too much... If you follow my strategy, most (if not all 5) of the religions are founded in your second city (which seems silly because Delhi is left with nothing...)... The culture from the second city will push against Persia either way you do it, but with my T-city, you still allow Persia a little room and the barbarians will go after it constantly, with no holes in your defense once the culture from the religions spread. Having that T-city tucked into the mountains there, with walls and archers, will keep the barbarians at bay indefinatly... :)

Little question on the Arabian onslaught on the Holy Land cities (the ones you all refuse to give up hehe....

When the Arabs declare on you and you start losing units...

1) What are the best units to fend the camels off?
2) Is there a radius for the deserter effect? Would placing units onto galleys off the coast of Jerusalem prevent those units from deserting?

1. Tanks.
2. From my experience it does, but just to be more careful you may want to spend one turn moving the galley away from Jerusalem.

Phalanxes eat 'em for lunch. A couple of decent properly-promoted spears should do quite well too.

1.) Spears do pretty well, Pikemen better. Promote the spears up a few stars and you'll be fine.

2.) I think the new civ spawn diserter effect goes on for like 10 turns...

May somebody make guide for English? I never was so good to make historical objectives, especcialy second one.

There is a guide for English already, though it's a pretty old one.

Main points in achieving the goals:

1) Build London, Plymouth, Manchester and city in Ireland or South Africa. With luck you get religion in the first few turns, and with more luck it is the same that Spanish have.
2) 2 cities in South Africa, 3 cities in USA, and 2 or 3 cities in Australia. If you transport one of your first settlers to South Africa, the goal is a lot easier. In England build two settlers to be transported to USA and one/two to be transported in Australia. 2 in USA will both build a city, and one of those will build later a settler and found a new city. In Australia the same trick. In South Africa one city, which will later build a settler.
3)Make friends with others. Mali is a good friend, rich and advanced. And have a big navy to repel enemy invasions if you have big enemies.
4)Trade techs for money. That way you gain money to keep your research up in order to research Industrial Age techs.
5)Circumnavigation is easy, just build two caravels and let one to go westwards, one eastwards.

Hitti-Litti: Thanks, but..I logically put first settlers to Australia and Asia..is Asia as part Euroasia or you forget on it? Maybe is problem there.
However, I also want build cities which will never fall to American hands.
Have your cities garisson? How many?

I often have no war with European countries, they are peacful to me..

And these cities which you mentioned are for all time in British isles (Manchester, London, Plymouth, Dublin), or in future you should build for example Edinburgh?

Thanks for help.

My cities in US have garrison, about 2-4 units. They beat barbs easily.

Asia a part of Eurasia? What are you talking about? Have I missed a goal change of English UHV?

You hadnt told about settling Asia in previous post...

So the UHV needs settling in Asia too. Hmm... Do you need to found cities there or capture? If capture, then I think cavalry-rush to India would be appropriate. If settle, then maybe India needs to be crushed and re-settled...

So the UHV needs settling in Asia too. Hmm... Do you need to found cities there or capture? If capture, then I think cavalry-rush to India would be appropriate. If settle, then maybe India needs to be crushed and re-settled...
Hey I dont know, so I ask:D

There's a thread showing the areas that need to be settled for every continent, and while I can't find it out of hand, Asia is not considered to be part of Europe, to make Eurasia. two different continents. Also, I'd say that you probably have to settle the cities, not just take 'em.

Then beelining to chemistry or my favorite, military tradition, could be useful in resettling China or India.

My ideas about 1)India: Crush border cities, capture Delhi(most cultural and populous) city, work on food tiles, spawn settlers. 2)China: Raze southern cities, but not northern cities, they will flip to Independent Cities. Take Beijing or Hangzhou, work on food and spawn settlers.

Actually, I'm mid-way through an English UHV (the first time I've ever seriously attempted a UHV!) and I'm going to win, I was first into Industrial, so I'm just waiting for the Modern Era to roll around. Anyways, for goal number 2, I just razed and re-settled Singapore (from the Indians, and I razed it just to be safe) and then founded two un-scripted cities in Russia (one on that peninsual near Japan with the whales nearby, and one near the gems in northern Russia), achieved goal number 2 and then promptly erased them with the world builder.

@ NitroJay. About the Indians. Great analysis, dood!

You are absolutely right about which five religions are required to consistently meet the Indian UHV. Attempting to steal Confucianism or Taoism is far too iffy. You are also spot on the money when you say that the first priority is Judaism and that the only way to grab Islam is to do it with a couple of GPs.

I'd like to suggest a refinement of your methods, one which I think does a better job of meeting the secondary goals - protection from the Persians and growth to becoming the largest civ in 1200AD.

To start with, Stonehenge is NOT necessary. By skipping it, you can grow faster to reach the 1200AD target with ease. Furthermore, you can train defenders to keep the AI off your back. Maybe even whomp a bit of Persian ass.

You are absolutely right that the initial research order has to be Masonry- Polytheism- Monotheism- Meditation. Thereafter, though, it is no longer essential to maniacally pursue religion. You have won the initial race and it is appropriate to mix in other useful techs after this. After refining your method, I continue from here with The Wheel-Priesthood-Bronze Working- Writing- Agriculture- Animal Husbandry- Monarchy. IOW, mix in worker techs. I hope be able to trade for Iron Working, since we have the metal. I will research it myself if I have to. We have iron. With a couple of spears and axes, the game is in the bag.

The build order in the capital should be warrior- warrior- settler- worker- something- something- Oracle. My choice for "something- something" is settler- barracks. A third city doesn't add much to your research effort but it is a source of defenders and, in the long run, of people for your growth target.

T-city (I agree with the location) starts immediately on the Parthenon from day one. Once in wonder-building mode, both cities should emphasize production as much as possible. When you have The Wheel, join the capital to bring the marble over. Not to mention religion. When you get Bronze Working, chop and whip both cities silly. After they have completed their wonders, both cities should build a temple and hire a priest. That will get out two GPs, one from each city, before the Arabs appear.

Advantages:
1) the wonder-building era is over sooner and the growth phase can begin sooner.
2) you can build soldiers without worrying about what will happen to your economy.

Disadvantages:
Not much but the sequence is tight. You need to get the Oracle and Temple built in Delhi ASAP. Otherwise the Arabs will appear before your second GP.

Pittfalls:
1) While it is possible to research Alpha before Divine Right, this is a mistake because your GPs will want to lightbulb Literature.
2) Divine Right is 2 GPs plus a bit. The sequence is tight. You'll want the bit before the second GP.

You hadnt told about settling Asia in previous post...

If you don't want to have trouble, send three settlers and half a dozen military with them to Kamshatka, build the three cities there just before 1700, so you delay the cost as far as you can since those cities will cost you a lot du to the distnace from London. But make sure you galleon get there on time ;)
Australia (again you'll need 8 turns for your galley to get there) and S Africa are easier (no other civs or flip problems) and more productive (the area is muccccccccccccccccccccccccch nicer: gems, sugar, etc). Settling the Americas is very easy, you need 1/2 turns to get there and there is enough space in Quebec and around the Hudson bay.

Or you can found much beter colonies in asia such as Singapore, Hong Kong,
and Calcutta, razing the surounding cities with redcoats before 1700 is not very hard to do, and much more fun.

That was my original plan, but I was extremely pressed for time. I managed to achieve goal number two with like 5 turns to spare.

@ Abegweit:

You know, your plan sounds like it would work much better... I have a long flight to LA and back tonight, I'm going to give it a shot... The only thing there that I'm a little iffy about is the GP production... Even without having the passifist civic they still come out in time? Hmm... I'll give it a shot...

@ Abegweit:

You know, your plan sounds like it would work much better...It's not my plan; it's yours. :lol: I just took what you suggested and made some little modifications. You did the hard work.

I have a long flight to LA and back tonight, I'm going to give it a shot...Merry Christmas!

The only thing there that I'm a little iffy about is the GP production... Even without having the passifist civic they still come out in time? Hmm... I'll give it a shot...The priest is sufficient to make up for it. I typically get the second one in the early 500s AD. It actually makes little difference which city finishes first. The one that does can concentrate on growing the civ. There is one advantage in finishing T-town first. Delhi is guaranteed to get a GP while T-town may get a GA. The Artist will want to light bulb Lit if you research/trade for Alpha. Priests don't care about such things, so you can get this very useful tech.

The only thing is that you need to get a bit of self-research on DR. IIRC, each GP is worth about 1026 and DR costs 2368 so the diff is roughly 316. I'm sure you knew that though.

Ok I made it!
Firstly, I settled British isles. Porstmouth, Manchester and London. Inverness was traded from Vikings, so I got large boost and used last settler in Limerick. After it I decided boost economy and grown and link direct scientific development to Galleons. Built 2 caravels to reach first goal. I reached galleons relatively after my workers build all improvements which I could. So I built 3 settlers and 6 longbowmen. Settled South Africa with two and Australia with one and also sent orkers there. After my galleons were back, I built same number and settled Australia with another, one in Falkland Isles and one in Canada. Most developed cities in South Africa, Australia and this one city in Canada built settler by their own. Now I got Redcoats so I send galleons to strenghtened defend and started large building redcoats and settler to large reach - Asia. But it was about 1600 when I found that I will not be able to build 3 settlers in time. So I loaded one settler, 8 redcoats and 3 cavalries and captured One independant city(former Persia), And 3 neutral or barbarian cities in Indochina, only settler settled Singapore and I grabed second goal, ithout founding 2 cities in Asia, only captured another 3! Nice surprise!
In the future I continued in settling. To time when I won (about 1870) I settled more cities in South Africa, Australia and Canada, lost this one city mentioned before to Persian revolution, vassalized peacfully Arabia and Mali, by culture captured American Chicago and by congresses got two In cities from eastern India. In south Africa I captured one native city too. My defensive pacts were randomly by time with Egypt and America, but with large number of redcoats I had only one war thanks bug "nice to meet you, lets go war" with Japan. I was giving also presents when someone asked.

You need to be the one to found the cities, I ended up razing all of India and dropped 3 setttlers there and it worked.

You need to be the one to found the cities, I ended up razing all of India and dropped 3 setttlers there and it worked.

I took over the Barbarian and Independent cities and still won - only founded Singapore myself. The other 2 were Pagan and Angkor.

I took over the Barbarian and Independent cities and still won - only founded Singapore myself. The other 2 were Pagan and Angkor.

That's right. I took over Pagan, Macau, and Angkor and still achieved the historical victory, despite not "founding" cities in Asia myself.

Im playing with the romans and most of the European Civs spawned already.

They seem to have a couple of advanced techs will they soon lag behind the tech tree or will they have a consistent flow of more technological techs?

Also the Greeks are Pleased with me so are the French somewhat.

My real question is that im planing to attack the Egiyptians.I have 3 Armies each of 3 Pateroians well promoted 1 catapult to reduce any city defences and 2 spearmen to attack any mounted units

I already know I can count on the Greeks to help me out if needed but,every 2 turns I seem to be getting barb horse archers and cammel archers. Should I hunt down the city that they come from in southern africa or just go with my campaign againt Egypt?

Chances are the Europeans will do a good job of keeping up the tech pace.. they are the way of the future, meant to supplant you. So keeping up/catching up may take a while, unless you can broker techs around.

North Africa is tough, because those barbarians don't
come from a city--they are just wild nomads and will keep on coming until a certain point. That certain point is approximately the year 900 A.D.. You can't do anything about it besides leaving good defense at home. So go with your campaign if you can, but keep well-fortified and promoted spearmen in Carthago. Best of luck turning the tide!

You should rush Egypt with the 3 or 4 praets you have left Immediatley after taking Carthage out, sometimes thats all you need to take Egypt out if your lucky, at the very least its enough to take Per-Wadjet before making peace.

Thanks Lord Apalon and Mercenary,

I have started and it is going quite well. The Capitale City is almost mine just a few more trns of cataputs and I can attack. As for the barbs they are not a problem anymore since I can now promote my spears to Pike men and since they were always defending against them they have good Promotions.

That brings me to my other question. I always keep the Capitals or any big city I capture, But for the rest should I raze them or keep them? This has always been a big question for me.

Whew! After about five tries, I finally achieved the Roman Historical Victory on Monarch, using today’s Warlords update. Here's my suggestions on how to accomplish it, based on how I did it.

First, the historical victory requirements:
1. By 450 A.D./Turn 143
450-turn 143—every city size 5 or more must be:
connected to the capital
have barracks
have an aqueduct
have an amphitheatre
2. By 450 A.D./Turn 143
Emulate the reaches of Rome's Western Empire: Three cities in France, two on west coast of northern Africa, two in Spain, one in England.
3. Before 1400 AD, no city lost to barbs


First turn:
I took the four Praets and put them all on the two galleys. I sent my archers down southeast to be picked up later. I sent my workers to minethe iron to the northeast. The galleys stop right outside of the borders of Carthage, and depending on their mood, you may be able to trade some techs with them. I set Rome to building a trireme-forge-barracks.

I set tech for agriculture, then monarchy, then mathematics, then construction, but since I was beaten to the Coliseum, this may not be the best tactic. My reasoning