All Leaders Challenge Pre-Game Show:
Game #7 - Germany/Frederick

http://www.civfanatics.net/~civrules/Article/Leaders/FredrickSM.jpg

That was a very nice week "off". Time to get going again. In the next ALC game, I'll be playing as Frederick II the Great (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II_of_Prussia), leader of Germany. (Well, technically, Prussia, but hey, whatever...) This thread is to discuss, before the game, how to best exploit that particular leader's characteristics.

The fact sheet:

Traits: Creative and Philosophical
Starting Techs: Hunting and Mining
Unique Unit: Panzer (Replaces Tank; Strength: 28, Movement: 2, Cost: 180, Unique Abilities: +50% versus armoured units)

I was tempted to do another poll to determine the leader, as I did for France, but I went the autocratic route and chose Freddy. He seems like the less popular of the two, though I could be wrong about that. Regardless, his traits often come up as two of the weakest available (though lots of players like them nonetheless), and the previous two ALC games featured Bismarck's traits: Louis (Industrious) and Victoria (Expansive). Granted, Louis was Creative as well, but that is usually regarded as a much weaker trait than Industrious. And I haven't played as a Philosophical leader since Mao. So of the two leaders, Freddy struck me as the greater (and more refreshing) challenge. As with Nappy, I will try to come back and play as the "skipped" leaders later on.

(Sidebar: I'm keeping all the game settings unchanged--Prince level, continents map, normal speed, etc. I've won all the ALCs thus far, thanks to the group mind, and was tempted to change things, but decided against it. Instead, besides exploiting the leader's unique characteristics, what I also want to focus on is winning earlier and more handily for a better end score. The Hatty game set a high-water mark of 44777. I'd like to beat that. If it means attempting some different strategies, such as streamlined tech paths or whatever, so much the better.)

Frederick is Creative, which everyone agrees is great in the early game but not very useful later on. So the early game is when it should be exploited. Spamming settlers for a land grab seems like the best way. I usually build 3-5 cities then go warring--I'm thinking 6-9 might be in order this time, regardless of what happens to the research rate. Should I even forgo city defenders at first, until barbs become a threat? I don't want to be afraid to try something risky.

Creative also makes theatres and colosseums faster to build. The theatres are handy, I find, colosseums less so. Theatres help with cities' happiness cap. They also contribute culture and add to border expansion and cultural pressure on nearby tiles and cities. And of course, once you build 6 of them you can build the Globe Theatre. I may therefore research Drama earlier than I usually do. Colosseums I only tend to build where I have to, in cities with constant happiness issues. Even then, I prefer more broadly-beneficial solutions like spreading religions.

Philosophical generates Great People faster. In the Mao game, I almost wound up exploiting this trait by accident. I'd like to be more calculating with it this time. As in the Mao game, I'd like to allocate wonders to cities based upon their GP generation. I'd like to build the Parthenon to add to the GP generation, and I'm hoping for stone to make a run for the Pyramids, which I haven't built in the ALCs since Mao. Since Freddy is not Industrious, I'd especially like to target the GE-generating wonders in one city to see how many of them we can produce. And if GPs are a goal, I may try to build Stonehenge even though I'm creative--mainly for the GPs. +3 culture in the early game would also assist with an early land-grab.

In fact, a land-grab would play into this, giving me more cities to choose from for wonder-building and GP generation, while others can focus on building military, settlers, workers, and so on.

Philosophical also makes Universities a faster build. So a race to Liberalism--picking up Education along the way--makes even more sense than usual.

On top of that, should we attempt more of a specialist economy this time? More specialists also equal more GPs. The only issue is that Freddy is not Financial, and I could see the economy suffering. A surfeit of Great Merchants just won't make up for that.

An early war of opportunity is always a good idea, but I'm thinking that, if conditions lend themselves to it, I should throttle back the aggression in this game. Partly so I can run Pacifism to further exploit Philosophical and Great People, partly because the German Unique Unit shows up so darn late. Panzers are available with Industrialism, which is also the tech that gives America its UU, the Navy SEAL--also roundly criticized as coming too late in the game. I might be looking at doing an early land-grab and Axe/Sword-powered war of conquest, settling back to gain a tech lead (helped by those cheap universities), bee-lining to Industrialism at an appropriate point, and then fighting a Panzer-powered late war if it suits my chosen victory condition.

Speaking of which, Diplomatic may be a good VC to pursue if I'm going to be peaceful for much of the game. The late Panzer war would, in that case, be fought to mainly (a) gain population for UN votes and (b) gain "mutual military struggle" points with an ally. An early pursuit of Liberalism and adoption of Free Religion may also make sense for this. But as usual, this depends very much on game conditions.

But let's flip back to the early game and talk about the starting techs. Well, ya gotta love Mining. It makes Bronze Working a quick tech to acquire, which I can use to chop and whip what I'll need for an early land grab. I can also look to snag copper for Axes to defend those early cities. Without an early UU requiring a different tech, researching BW first is a no-brainer.

Hunting is also nice to start with. My first city build (or two) can be a Scout. If I want to attempt an early land-grab, I'll need to explore the terrain. In addition, we saw in the Louis game how discovering the lay of the land as early as possible will go a long way towards determining the optimal victory condition to pursue. Popping as many huts as possible for what ever advantages they can bestow is also attractive. We can also cross our fingers and hope for a campable resource nearby. Failing that, we'll hope for cows, pigs, or sheep, since Hunting makes Animal Husbandry slightly cheaper.

So I look forward to everyone's thoughts on playing as Frederick.

One other thing: my refreshing break from the ALCs has resulted in my decision to relax a little. You may find me taking a little more time between posting each round, and I may keep taking longer breaks between the remaining ALC games. So please be patient. It just gives us more time to discuss strategy!

if i were you i would go for culture since he's my fav leader for it.
good luck.

Digging for synergies....

In my mind, the big tech for Philosophical is not Education, but Literature. Score the library, with all the yummy GP points, plus epic. The pre-req for Literature is Polytheism, which offers up the Parthenon. And both of those are Marble wonders. So if you can secure it, Masonry comes into play and wouldn't you know, Mining is the pre-req.

OK, first weird trick: Masonry + Mathmatics yields Construction, which gets you the cheap colisseum, and catapults, and war pants, which goes really well with hunting if you can secure Ivory early, which requires Hunting. Bingo.

Cheap Theaters gets you the Globe that much faster, which means you can get a whiptastic Globe + Heroic Epic up in a hurry if you go that direction.

Shorter term, Libraries are a big deal (because the science specialists are pulling double GP points), so a quick run to Writing makes a bunch of sense (and is on the beeline). The fast way is directly from hunting to Animal Loving to Writing, though you can save a touch of time if you pick off agriculture first.

Now if you go scout first (a strategy I like, since scouts lose their hut advantage quickly) then you've bought yourself a bit of time. Bronze Working right away doesn't do you any good, because you aren't going to use slavery right away, nor are you going to build axemen until you first kick out a worker. So you've room to slip in an extra tech. Another worker tech? maybe, but those have no leverage either.

My take on it might be this: what's the build after the worker going to be? If you are going for a land grab, you'll want to be chopping out a settler. But if you try to build the settler at the same time, that's going to stunt your growth. So maybe you build on one channel while you grow, and chop on the other. What's the build? If you are going to be sending out an early settler, you need military. You could go with warriors, of course - but you've got research time, and hunting is already in the bag, so maybe you grab archery before BW, so that you can train an archer while you chop the settler.

An alternative is to allow yourself to be lucky with bronzeworking. If copper appears in the fat cross, switch your research to wheel immediately; the worker mines the copper while Wheel finishes, then builds the road. In the mean time, you toss some turns into a barracks, or maybe a settler (sure, it stunts your growth a little, but you'll be axing and chopping soon). If copper isn't immediately available, turn towards Archery.

An interesting question in my mind, assuming you are making a run towards literature, is when to grab for Mysticism. Poly you postpone as long as you can, but Mysticism you may want to grab early, to score the cheap obelisks in each city - upping the culture of your land grab, or to pick off the henge for the priest points, and it's another Masonry pre-req.

If you want to exploit the panzer, then you're pretty much looking at conquest, domination, or space race as your victory condition. It does come late, but it's a truly awe-inspiring unit. If I understand the combat calculations correctly, panzer vs. tank goes at 28 vs. 18.67 which basically means dead tank.

Theoretically you could go for a late game, specialist-based cultural victory, but I don't think that would really utilize the panzer. It would get you to the late game, but you'd still be trying to play a peaceful, defensive type of game. If you really want to take advantage of the unit, a late game war is a must.

In a different thread, we had talked about the merchant city -- Wall Street plus Caste System to run as many merchants as possible with any Great Merchants merged back in to generate more cash and more food. That's a strategy that really works best in a long game where the city has time to develop properly. This might be the time to try it.

Another "exotic" strategy to consider is the Oracle -> Pyramids slingshot being discussed in the threads below.

Detailed analysis: # of specialist cities needed per era (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=177506)
Open competition: Earliest pyramids using philosophical civ and no stone (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=178113)

Without any food-oriented technology to start out with, Frederick probably isn't the ideal leader for that approach, but it's really possible with any Philosophical leader, especially if you don't consider the 1000BC time cutoff to be necessary (it probably isn't on Prince). It's at least something to think about, especially since you said you want to think about going for the Pyramids and/or a specialist economy.

FWIW, i think most people seem to agree that not being Financial isn't a disadvantage for a specialist economy. In fact, it's a requirement. If you are Financial, then cottages are far better. If you aren't, then you're sacrificing less by not building as many cottages.

My guess is that if you do any or all of these, you probably won't achieve your goal of an especially early victory with an unusually high score. These will be new techniques that you probably just won't pull off with the perfection necessary for that kind of win. On the other hand, if you're looking for a "different" sort of game, then that might be exactly the way to do it.

How much use of the Panzer do you expect to make and still challenge your score as Hatty? Your chances of besting your score are maximized if you take advantage of the philosophical and cultural traits rather than capitalizing on the unique unit, especially given the Panzer's arrival time. I think planning for as early a cultural victory as possible may be the way to go for optimum score.

Philosophical should help you generate GP from buildings+specialists. It might be worth thinking about cutting down on your wonder-building tendencies; if you're going for initial rex to make use of creative then you'll be building settlers and archers instead of early wonders. I'd still go for Oracle and think about most useful slingshot. Other wonders you could capture later if they're on your continent.
Philosophical and pacifism should really help GP production even without parthenon so could look into philosophy slingshot. Not being spiritual obviously means you have to plan your civic changes a bit more carefully.
Its also worth considering that you don't really need an early UU to go on an early rampage. So maybe go for early rex followed by military build up and rampage to get a hunk of territory; a benefit of creative is that you can raze and build and get borders re-established quickly. Earlier victory requires earlier domination of your home continent.

If I can humbly throw my hat into the ring, I would strongly advise going for the Metal Casting/GE slingshot referenced in Dr. Jiggle's post. Once you have the Oracle done in 1880 BC or earlier, you can decide what to do as your own leanings dictate. The main options will be: #1) Complete Pyramids, #2) Rush Machinery and fight your first war with Crossbows, or #3) Use Prophet + Engineer to rush Civil Service and Machinery and fight your first war with Macemen by 500 BC (or second, if you can fight a war as soon as Xbows are out as well). I think it would be a treat for those of us fooling around with these openings to have a comparison game to look at, and it would also serve as a guideline for players who have been reading those related threads to see it in practice, which will help them try it themselves or decide if it's the kind of game they want to play.

Under this plan, you'll be facilitating a domination/conquest win, which should be fine if you're after a quick game and therefore high score. The reduced tech costs (compared to Monarch) and Frederick's Creative trait will certainly pay off in trying this strategy. With Creative, you have more flexibility in your city placement, and his Mining gives that first Worker something to do while you finish off either Agriculture or Animal Husbandry as the map dictates. We could probably tell you from the opening screenshot the exact year you'll have the GE handy. The downside is you'll probably feel quite nervous having next to no military for the first 2500 years, but the gloves will come off quite quickly.

I agree with those who vote for going for the build we're working on. You might not be able to pull oracle + pyramids off with frederick, but I would definitely love to see a game where you try and ensure pyramids and run a specialist economy.

From there, you can use the specialist economy to go for a domination.

I agree with others who say that if you're not gonna play an aggressive game, then you're not going to leverage the panzer.

So, I would use philosophical and creative in aggressive ways instead of the more intuitive cultural victory.

Philosophical is huge for a specialist economy with pyramids (see the cited threads).

Creative is a respectable warmongerers trait, and a decent domination trait since it helps cover land area a bit faster. Plus, as I've learned recently, with 20% culture slider, cheap theatre, and cheap coliseum, you can get 5 extra happy faces, which means more population, which is also necessary for domination victory.

In short, I definitely think domination victory would make for the best synergy, and I would encourage running a specialist econ with pyramids.

Either trying a new, different strategy or going for a big end score works for me. If they're mutually exclusive, that's just the way of it.

It's unseasonably warm here today and I just can't focus on those articles. I'll have to look at them if and when it cools off around here.

Either trying a new, different strategy or going for a big end score works for me. If they're mutually exclusive, that's just the way of it.
What were saying is they aren't. You can try a plan that has some risks to it like you expressed interest in, and its a plan to give a fast, and therefore high-scoring win.


It's unseasonably warm here today and I just can't focus on those articles. I'll have to look at them if and when it cools off around here.
I just saw you have yourself labeled as 'Pacific Northwest'. I'm in Seattle and in total agreement as regards the current heat wave.

What were saying is they aren't. You can try a plan that has some risks to it like you expressed interest in, and its a plan to give a fast, and therefore high-scoring win.

I think I'm the one who implied that they might be incompatible goals. My point was that although this is theoretically a plan that can result in a very quick, high scoring win, in practice it will be something new for Sisiutil, so he's liable to make a few mistakes here and there and maybe not execute it in the perfectly efficient manner that would lead to that high score.

Seeing as I recently voted the Panzer as one of the worst UUs in the game, relying on them at all seems like a bad idea, whether you're shooting for Conquest or not. A "real" Diplomacy win seems a good option-- you won't found any of the early religions (Philosophy seems likely, though), and you could play religious diplomacy to leverage the Hindu vs Buddhist conflict into some bonus points. An early Space Ship (1900? Before?) would also be a challenge, and with the GL and all those Great Scientists, the tech tree can get short real fast.

All this depends on your neighbors, of course. Whenever I play a peaceful leader like Frederick, I always seem to draw one of the loonies as a neighbor. Izzy might not be so bad- she won't challenge you for the UN vote, most likely- but Monty, Napoleon or Tokugawa could derail a peaceful game quickly. If you're thinking about planning ahead, coming up with "good neighbor" and "bad neighbor" tracks might be one way to go.

Voice of Unreason, how does the Globe + Heroic Epic work? It seems like the two work to cross purposes-- one makes hammers more efficient, while one turns population into hammers without cost. Does the HE supplement the down time when you can't whip units? Or do you use it to whip buildings so the city can concentrate on units? I'm sure it works, but I can't see it clearly at this moment.

Sisiutil, I'm pleasantly surprised you only took a week off. Take your time; you've earned it. Looking forward to the game.

Bonus like the HE apply to whipped Hammers

ie 1 pop can buy 60 hammers worth of units in an HE city.

i have to agree with hermit on this issue, your traits lead you to early landgrab, and a specialist based econ. running at 0% science and using the cheap theaters to manage war weariness.
go on the path agriculture, animal husbandry, writing.

do not forget to get pottery before you spit out the oracle.. as it is a pre-req for metal casting.

while you are building the oracle see if you can research through iron working, once the oracle pops rush a forge by a combination of whipping and chopping. your first 2 GP will be a prophet and an engineer. if you can use them for techs (you will have researched masonry for the pyramids so unfortunately you cant pop the prophet for civil service) you can atleast use the engineer to build the pyramids for free, or if you miss them (god forbid) you can use it to pop machinery. (later use another GE to build the great library for free if you can time it right)

drop libraries in your cities and use specialists rather than research.

the one point where I differ a bit from futurehermit is do drop a few cottages at one location, preferably the capitol so you get the commerce magnification when you switch to beurocracy.

assuming you do get the pyramids, you can switch to representation and caste system to set up an entirely specialist based econ.

i guess the big difference long term would be to decide which gp's to really focus on. the city with the oracle will always have the taint of great prophets.. but you could drop a few temples in there or the ankor wat wonder to use a few priests to get a prophet when you need to.

the engineer city can always be switched back to scientists, but either one is fine as far as producing gps.

though a pile of great scientists does have its advantages.. so does setting academies in a few cities incase you switch to cottages midgame in them.
(or use multiple scientists)

you could follow jiggle's merchant path, and create a long term exponential cash source. this would let you use the sliders despite maintanance costs, as a high end commerce city can produce upwards of 500gpt lategame.

and of cource you could artist bomb and try to rush your way to that 50k in 3 cities goal.. I havent been able to pull it off yet but I'd like to see it if you decide not to warmonger.

either way, if you miss the pyramids for one reason or another, you pop for machinery, and go take the pyramids from whoever built them.. then resume on the strat

I will definately be following this thread, I assume you are one of the most experienced players here in the forum, and I am definately looking to see if you choose to apply this strat so we can all see its merits and deficiencies as a game unfolds

best of luck

NaZ

I'd say Archery first if you want the land grab. Then Bronze working, because you will need to know where the copper is. Third you look at worker techs like Agriculture, Pottery and Animal Husbandry to garner the resources. Don't dawdle about CoL either. A fast Land grab means Higher maintainance...

I'd call Oracle and Pyramids the only massively useful wonders. If you can get them and exploit them, Stonehenge, Parthenon and Great Lighthouse would be nice, but not game breaking. By the time you get Literature, the Great Library should be easy to get. Collossus, Chichen Itza and Hanging Gardens are nice, but not mandatory.

Diplomatically, find someone and suck up to them hardcore. Izzy would be easy for this, all you need to do is open your borders and switch to her religion. From there, make friends. When they want to fight, get some of the target's land for your self. You need to really suck up if you want support in UN votes at the end of the game...

lol I've seen you War in all of your ALC games I'd Like to See if you could play a Prince game on 'Alway Peace' mode or play a game where you can't declare war and that you can only go to war if the opposing AI Declares 1st. lol

I'd say Archery first if you want the land grab. Then Bronze working, because you will need to know where the copper is.

I had thought that at first, but ultimately talked myself out of it. Can you convince me back? The basis of my thinking was that if you find copper at your capital then Archery becomes a lot less urgent - you'd rather have The Wheel, say, to get the copper hooked up.

Put another way, if you are landgrabbing, and have copper locally, are you building Archers or Axes during the initial expansion phase? If the answer is archers, then Archery totally makes sense to me. If the answer is axes, I think you can wait for the copper reveal.

But I'm happy to listen to evidence that I'm off base.

Thanks Krikkitone, I knew there was something missing. May have to shoot for that in my next game.

If you're going to run a specialist based economy, and rely on specialists for science, use your philosophical trait to get your universities built quickly and get Oxford built in your science city. I actually really like the philosphical trait...

Consider combining Oxford and Nat'l Epic in a high-food city, run lots of scientists, and join the many great scientists into this city as super-specialists. Add representation, and you can have a mighty science city...

It's still too hot to focus. Ugh. I'll have to read through those threads when I'm in my air-conditioned office tomorrow. Ahhhh...I feel cooler just thinking about it.

I like the idea of early Pyramids (stone or not), Representation, specialist economy. Kinda different. Keep in mind this is Normal rather than Epic or Marathon, though.

I can see I'll have to play v-e-e-e-e-e-ry slowly in the opening rounds. I'll need guidance from those of you who have pulled this off.

I always play on normal these days, so no worries. I have a pretty good build for getting pyramids w/out industrial and w/out stone.

And, feel free to read my newest thread (Detailed analysis part II) in addition to the ones mentioned. I've got the latest numbers in there.

I had figured that Archery is quicker to research than Bronze Working, and Archers are cheaper to build than Axemen. As such, I was considering delaying Bronze working until I had a rudementary economy rolling. We don't want an early fight if we can avoid it. We'll see what kind of luck we have though. Cyrus and Ceaser have been jerks in prior attempts, and one game marred by power outage saw Monty as my next door neighbour...

I would love you to see a specialist economy with Frederick. I just lost a game running that but that was mostly of my crummy start with very little resources and no religion untill 400 AD or so (never took that long). My capital was running 5-7 specialist without problems though. I never had so many GP ever in a game. But sadly I was lacking in this specialist economy strategy and I lost the tech race :( I hope you can do better.

In my game I missed out on the pyramids but did get the oracle (metal casting for Colussus and 4 coastal cties) and stonehenge. Also missed out on the GL on 1 turn, grrrr. Also on the sistine chapel by 3 turns. Terribly dissapointed of course but hung in there but to no avail.

I had figured that Archery is quicker to research than Bronze Working, and Archers are cheaper to build than Axemen. As such, I was considering delaying Bronze working until I had a rudementary economy rolling.

If you aren't going to build axes as escorts, I think Archery while training a scout then BW while training a worker makes a lot of sense.

In my game I missed out on the pyramids

This is your problem. If you don't get the pyramids, a cottage econ is superior.

Why?

With representation, each scientist gives you 6 beakers/turn. A scientist requires you to work a food tile to support it, so it's 6 beakers/2 pop. Two cottages give 2 coin and grow to 4 coin in a reasonable amount of time. At 100% science this is 4 beakers/2 pop. So, cottages don't become superior until size 4, which takes quite a long time, especially in a newly captured city.

Without representation, a scientist only gives 3 beakers/turn, and 2 cottages are superior at size 2 (4 b/turn @ 100% science), which takes far less time to develop.

Now, of course this assumes you're running @ 100% science, which is not always possible due to maintenance cutting into your $ flow (another benefit of the specialist approach).

Also, cottages on a river are not a better argument for a cottage econ, because a farm on a river also gets that +1 commerce, which gets put towards maintenance costs in the specialist econ.

I haven't ever played Frederick but the AI always seems to do well with him. He's usually one of the largest and most advanced civs in my games. He can also be a tough political rival. He will bribe your friends to turn them against you if you don't beat him to the punch.

Choices, choices...

Higher score = Earlier victory [but] Using Panzer = playing long enough to get the unit = lower score. :)
Go for multiple wonders = GE or stone/marble

Ah, I see pyramid/representation as your preferred direction. That will be fun to watch. I haven't built pyramids since I moved to Monarch (different focus), though I have stolen it early enough to get a new government civic.

I agree with those who said to totally drop the Panzer idea and focus on finishing the game earlier. For the Panzer to have any benefits it would have to fight against tanks. Now why on Sid's Terra would you want to go to war with someone who already has tanks? :) I'm sure there will be easier targets out there.

Anyway, I'd love to see that specialist with representation strat done. Can't wait for this to start.

Doesn't the panzer do well against anything other than tanks? I mean it does have +4 strength over a regular tank...

Hmm, I'm pretty sure it has the same strength, though I might be wrong.

---

I just checked the Units tab on this site and it lists it at 28 strength, the same as the tank. Was it modified at some point?

Well, judging from this:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/leader_picker.html

It says tank has base strength of 24 and panzer has 28.

If that's incorrect, my apologies, that's where I was getting the numbers from.

Yeah, it's wrong. Someone should tell them. :) The tank most certainly has 28, I thought maybe the Panzer went up to 32 in one of the patches and I missed it.

The only way I'd see a real use for the Panzer would be a late start (I've always started at 4000BC, so it's just speculation) and then you could end up needing to fight equally strong AIs in the modern era.

Well, judging from this:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/leader_picker.html

It says tank has base strength of 24 and panzer has 28.

If that's incorrect, my apologies, that's where I was getting the numbers from.

Looks like a bug in the leader picker. When in doubt, go to the XML ... Civ4UnitInfos.xml lists both tanks and panzers as 28. So does the manual.

Nonetheless, I'm not sure that matters as far as your question goes. "Doesn't the panzer do well against anything other than tanks?" Yes. With a strength of 28 and +50% vs. armored, it does well against pretty much everything except mechanized infantry and gunships. Even modern armor are hardly better than a 50/50 battle against a panzer.

Dr Elmer Jiggle, the thing is, you'd rather not fight mechanized infantry and tanks, so that makes the whole +50% vs. armored bonus pretty useless, right? And at 28 strength, yeah, it can do well against earlier units, but it would be the same as the usual tank. What I'm trying to say with all this is that waiting to use the Panzer won't give you some ground-shaking advantage.

I would have to concur on the use of the Panzer. It comes way too late in most games to be all that useful.

If you are going for a military victory, the game should be decided by the time you get to calvary.

Dr Elmer Jiggle, the thing is, you'd rather not fight mechanized infantry and tanks, so that makes the whole +50% vs. armored bonus pretty useless, right? And at 28 strength, yeah, it can do well against earlier units, but it would be the same as the usual tank. What I'm trying to say with all this is that waiting to use the Panzer won't give you some ground-shaking advantage.

Two things:

1) The advantage is that when you start the war and the enemy beelines to Industrialism to get tanks and gets them halfway through the assault, you don't need to go, "Oh, crap, I've lost my advantage." That +50% means you still have an overwhelming military lead until he discovers Rocketry and/or Robotics, which if he just got Industrialism should be a long way off. I'm not saying that you should plan to wait until they get Industrialism just so you can use your panzers, but you should plan to wait until you get it. Keep in mind that this will be a continents game, so conquest by maceman/knight may not be practical.

2) My impression of the ALC is that a big part of the point is to explore the things that make each leader different. If you just want a Philosophical/Creative leader with Hunting and Mining, then play Peter and build Stonehenge. If you play Frederick and try to win before you get panzers, then you've missed out on 1/3rd of what makes him Frederick.

You do have a very good point there about missing out on something, especially in the ALC context. I'm just not sure this strategy - waiting to get Panzers for a late war - is really worth much. Sometimes you just have to count your losses and move on. :sad: Ultimately, it's Sisiutil's decision anyway, let's see what he thinks. ;) For me, running a specialist economy is already a big change and it will be made possible by (most probably) forgetting about Stonehenge. Hence my (notice the personal opinion :D ) problem with the Peter analogy.

The Panzer is a very late unit and is pretty much impossible to bee-line. By the time it shows up, at this level, I should be well on the way to a chosen victory condition. Yes, I want to exploit it, but I'm not going to sit back and base my approach to the game upon it.

What I expect will happen is we'll be well into the game with a victory path and strategy chosen when we get close to Industrialism, as usual. How relevant the unit will be to that strategy will determine how much I prioritize and use it.

In a way, the Panzer is similar to the mid-game UUs like the Cossack and the Redcoat. You play most of the game without them and make do with the vanilla units available at the time. The difference is, with Russia or England I usually expect a big mid-game war once I get the UU, and therefore plan for it. Panzers, like SEALs, come so late that it's tough to plan an overall game strategy around them.

Thus, I think the wait-and-see approach will work best.

The main thing I think panzers influence (if you choose to use them) is your choice of victory condition. That's the point I made originally, and I think it somehow got twisted into a recommendation that you sit back and do nothing until the end of the game just so you can kill a few tanks with a panzer.

My real point was simply that diplomatic and cultural victories probably don't lend themselves to use of the panzer, since you're probably hoping for a fairly peaceful industrial era. Space race could, though a war at that stage of the game might prove to be a distraction from your primary goal. Domination might or might not, depending largely on the size of your initial continent (if your continent is big enough, then you might be able to dominate before the panzer becomes necessary). Conquest, on the other hand, I think is likely to require panzers for the final assault.

If you have a choice between 1700ad victory and panzers then choose 1700ad victory. Otherwise its worth thinking about leveraging panzers.

Well, don't WAIT to war until panzers, lol, or you'll be peaceful the whole game.

But, DO plan on making use of them if you can. And planning of using them means planning on an aggressive game: domination/conquest. Sure, if you can win prior to their appearance, then that's fine. But, if you can't, then you can certainly make use of them when they appear.

I'm not saying base your strategy around using them, but I am saying base your strategy around the possibility of using them at some point in the game.

And basing on the spirit of these threads, I would say you want to try and make use of everything the leader has available.

So, with creative + philosophical, you could easily say cultural victory (and you should, probably, if you get an isolated start). However, with a specialist econ you can also use creative aggressively and go for a domination victory, which I think is a good plan considering the fact that you have the panzer for use late game. Hunting-Mining makes for a pretty nice aggressive start: bronze-anhusb. Gives you chop- and pop-rushing and also reveals both early military resources. Follow this up with the wheel-ag-pottery (for granaries), secure a military resource, and away you go.

heres another thought for the specialist based econ.

this leader is kinda suited to generate a culture based victory. while it is a good idea generally to go 100% specialists if you are focusing on a conquest victory.. if you want to stay peaceful you could try this as an alternative.

DO go for pyramids.. weather you are using the oracle to go for metal casting and using a GE to build them.. or just produce them outright.

DO switch to civil service and representation as soon as possible.
then later try to run: representation, free speech, caste system, mercantilism, pacifism.

DO try to get the parthenon and switch to pacificm resulting in 250% gp production.

if you can, wipe out an agressive neighbor. make sure it helps you buddy up to a few other neighbors.. and gives you enough room for 8-12 cities.

the big debate at that point would be if you really do need to run specialists to be your only source of science.

I would suggest cottaging up anyway, as you will still be able to generate a decent # of beakers, and you wont be working on conquering the world if you go for a culture victory.

my thought would be though.. assign your capitol 2 scientists from the library.. and use your first GS to put an academy there.. and if you generate a couple more, so much the better.. also put the great library there. if you want additional scientists just adjust the # of specialists out there so it can finish its gp pool to go get another academy.

there is a study on the forum showing that it is nearly impossible for extra cities to produce great people if a single city is a gp farm so we need to consider this carefully.

if you want to go for a culture victory.. under representation artists produce 4 culture and 4 beakers.. (4 beakers and 6!!! culture if you have the sistene chapel)

not quite as good as a scientist but still good.
and can still be magnified by science buildings.
science buildings also have a good synergy, as they all put out culture.. every bit helps.

set yourself up 3 "gp farms" while odds are the # of gp's produced will balance out, theres no harm in running that many specialists anyway. use the creative trait to build theaters and colloseums everywhere.

(run scientists in other cities.. no more than a couple each, to supplement science output)

run nothing but artists in those 3 cities. while not producing as much science as they could, over the centuries that culture will certainly pile up. particularly if you use part of your slider to increase culture output.
obviously use the great artists for the 4000 culture.. that cant be made up by assigning the guy as a super specialist by the end of the game.

also follow the usual culture path, getting multiple religions and building the +50% culture religious buildings in those 3 cities.

I think the net result would be a decent commerce output, enabling you to trade for happiness resources as well as upgrading troops etc.

a decent science output between the slider and the specialists
(I would shoot for something like 40% science 30% culture.. higher on both if you can manage upkeep)

a HUGE culture output WAY early in the game. if you have the right civics you could be producing tons and tons of culture. perhaps you will even flip some of your neighbors cities.. if so all the better!! (particularly if you make a close to border city one of the culture centers and keep it heavily garrisoned)

heck I may even try this myself :D well we'll see how viable after warlords is out.

my apologies that my thoughts are a little scattered, but hopefully you get the gist of the suggested strat. I guess the biggest point here is that with a bit of commerce emphasis, you could use artists instead of scientists and still produce a decent research rate WHILE you are bombing your neighbors with culture.. also w/o sacrificing your military abilities.

hermit and jiggle, care to weigh in?

best of luck sisuitil!

NaZ

Creative and Philosophical: The traits have some synergy, but much of the potential benefit is situational at best in my opinion.

Creative is a warmonger's trait, both early and mid-game prior to Universal Suffrage, if one heads in the direction of the latter. The best part of it is the ability to found cities with resources in the expanded cross and wait for them to come in relatively quickly. Another use is the ability to either grab territory from a non-creative civ's city and the ability to better fight cultural border intrusion.

Philosophical is a nice trait that can be used either in a GP farm or for tactical advantages. I like using it in a true CS Slingshot by chopping out a library in one city while the other builds the Oracle, then assign two science specialists to produce a GP Scientist before the Oracle city produces a GP Prophet, with the result being an Academy founded in the capitol and bureaucracy as the civic.

Together? Hmmm . . . that one I'd have to think about a little. Philosophical can also be used to burn GPs for technology, to move ahead of the AI or produce a large tech advantage. If that advantage leads to a major military tech early enough, then you've got the makings of a war of opportunity.

Otherwise . . . these are situational traits and you'll just have to see what the game presents.

I had suggested Archery and Archers early on because you want a land grab, but don't want to be caught with your pants down. Further, I've been noticing myself denied key resources (one game I had to build Horse archers to finish off Rome when niether of us had metal. He had Iron in his area and Copper just out of it, but I was keeping him choked out). Archers make such games at least salvageable. I think I need to Cottage spam until I can build the farms to sustain a specialist economy though. Science can tank otherwise...

The game thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4313999) is now underway, with the starting position posted. Go to it, gang!

The game thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4313999) is now underway, with the starting position posted. Go to it, gang!

sorry, I'm late for the pre game show, but i thought you were tanning somewhere in the bahamas...;)

Too late, i know but i still think the traits are warmonger's traits, starting techs also are warmonger friendly :
- creative let the borders expand without any work
- philosophical makes the specialist strategy more worthwhile
- you start with mining!

My advice is to go straight for domination = war all the time + aggressive settling.
You need to rush to drama then music (don't let a free GA go away ;) ) to use the cheap theatres with a high culture slider to fight war weariness.
Don't be afraid of a high culture slider, since you'll be running a specialist economy (needing caste system? at some point, you'll have libraries everywhere you want scientists and markets everywhere you want merchants. Later in the game you may need to switch back to caste system then to cottages).
You need the pyramids. Building them is cool, taking them by force is better. But continents = high risk that the pyramids are out of reach. Better building them at a high cost than letting them go = chop everything in sight, whip hard, ...