This thread will attempt to provide strategy suggestions for Kuriotates in the early game. It is my opinion that this strategy should set Kuriotates up as a strong military civ in the beginning with an opportunity to switch to a builder/culture civ by turn 100. Here goes:

So you want to play Kuriotates?!! Fantastic choice! Sure, many may scoff at the civilization's inability to build more than 3 "cities" on a standard map, but with your strong start you should be able to steal a neighbor's ideal capitol, their luxury resources, and follow through with very large cultural boundaries that will leave you with plenty of land for cushion and your remaining opponents very little room to share.

Your scientific strategy is clear: rush to animal husbandry and then immediately to horseback riding. Yes, horseback riding. These 2 techs should take approximately 55-60 turns which may sound like a lot, but they fly by and should set you up for as the strongest civ by turn 100. Why? Because you started the game with by choosing the Aggressive trait and have been popping warriors (and maybe 1 scout) like crazy. Additionally, once you completed horseback riding you started popping centaurs like mad and sent them after nearby barbarians for several promotions. *Note that did not bother to waste turns building any settlers because you are destined to capture and rebuild a neighboring civ's ideally placed city.*

With 3-4 very mobile and moderately promoted Centaurs you are ready to go after that unfortunate nearby Civ. This should be cake unless you have a Defender nearby which could leave you in a stalemate of a war. Once you have captured their capitol (and razed any secondary cities - since you can't choose to make them settlements) and (hopefully) wiped them from the face of the earth, it should be about time to switch your adaptive trait to creative and go for Octopus Overlords. You should go for exploration (cause you know you need roads) first, then fishing/ancient chants, mysticism and finally Message from the Deep. You will be happy once you finally get there as your cities will no doubt need the happiness from the religion. Get those temples built quickly and if you can go for festivals to really get the culture growing. With luck you may even be able to convert opponent's nearby cities.

At this point your building strategy should kick into high gear - your 3 cities should be complete as you should have 1) your capitol, 2) dead civ's capitol, and 3) an ideally placed city you may have built/stole from barbs or dead civ. Get settlers out there to fill in the gaps with settlements and follow them up with zealots to pop them to 100 culture fast, if not 500. Get those workers built and mine/plantation your way to a postive income. Unless you are considering going for a cultural victory, consider switching to financial the next time your adaptive trait triggers - you'll need it to catch up in tech.

And that's a wicked game start!

Now, the risks:
1. You will have a hard time, most likely, getting any wonders built and you will be behind on some of the more common techs. This could hurt your GPP.
2. Unless you can get education somewhere in there your income will suffer UNLESS you do a good job raiding another civ, which could be a smart strategy.
3. Be careful about overexpansion - razing may be a better option (armageddon counter be damned).

In closing, I think this is a great alternative strategy to playing the Kuriotates - I'm not really sure if they are perceived to be a early game "bully" civ but with this strategy they certainly can be. Have fun!

Now this is a strategy that fits my playing style. I'm gonna give it a go when I play Kuriotates to win next game on my Win with all civs tour.

I will modify it as I go, and come back with comments when I'm done. :)

Now this is a strategy that fits my playing style. I'm gonna give it a go when I play Kuriotates to win next game on my Win with all civs tour.

I will modify it as I go, and come back with comments when I'm done. :)

:cringe: Remind me not to play MP against you any time soon.

Octopus Overlords seem to be a popular choice for Kuriotates - but I'm more fond of the Veil for them.

"Rush" for Arcane Lore, building 3 cities to 8-9 population and cottage heavy as you go. Once you've got Lore, drop onto Corruption (Sacrifice the Weak) and then Pact (Infernal Grimoire -> Strength of Will). If you built a few adepts early on, they should just about be ready to become Archmages by this point - Law III on each one and Unyielding Order all 3 cities. Rebuild all the cottages as farms - population growth indefinitely thanks to Sacrifice the Weak.

As you've picked up Scholarship en-route, you can wipe the tech-tree clean using Sage specialists. In my game, I was doing the future techs by Turn 420 - could have been a lot earlier if not for a mid-game war vs Basium/Tsunke and Hyborem.

Game ended as a cultural victory (I switched after cleaning the tree - 3 cities with 500-1000 culture per turn via bards/caste system) - all three cities over 60 population and the capital at 83. "Defensively" I was covered by Rosier/Mardero, a band of ritualists/inquistors and the Beasts of Agares (of course the best Veil "defence" is to go raze anything that looks threatening nearby). Once Eurabrates turned up things became trivial.

I tried your centaur rush thingy against the AI earlier on Emperor level. I had 3 centaurs with combat 4 and shock I by turn 75. I razed two Bannor expansion cities... and then found their capital (the city I actually wanted) full of fortified combat I hunters on a hill.

It didn't go very well after that ._.

as you crank up your difficulty your going to find out quickly that this plan is headed south.

try this ...
rush the lords, then get priesthood , then move to get severous and slavery.

this gets you drown very quick.

ohh , to recap the route better....
get mystasim asap , the reason is you want to start making great prophets basically at turn 1 if you could. also make as many warriors as you feel you humanly can. the good part is , once you get your first temple of the overlords you can baptise all these poor fools and have a very useful army.

I tried your centaur rush thingy against the AI earlier on Emperor level. I had 3 centaurs with combat 4 and shock I by turn 75. I razed two Bannor expansion cities... and then found their capital (the city I actually wanted) full of fortified combat I hunters on a hill.

It didn't go very well after that ._.

Yes promoted hunters fortified in a city are the banes of centaurs, but I can at least refer you to the thread in the other forum regarding hunters and the argument that they shouldn't be as effective at city defense as they are (they should be out of the city, hunting).

Perhaps this will be remedied, but even under the condition you describe you *can* keep the Bannor civ under your thumb - they will never be able to expand as your centaurs will beat the hunters out in the field and you can pillage/occupy their city tiles such that their capitol cannot grow and produce. At the very least you've marginilized a neighbor, gotten several promotions for your centaurs and have the opportunity to return once you have researched a more effective military tech. The result you have reached is not as ideal as I describe, and yes, higher difficulty settings will make this start less effective, but isn't that the case with everything on high settings - it requires more micromanagement and luck?

Yeah, I pillaged their gold mine and farms/cottages, but my problem there was that I still only had one city, low science income (no Education yet), and a happy cap of 4 in my capital. My other neighbors, meanwhile, were expanding and researching and I was bogged down fighting hunters on my western border.

It's probably preferrable if you only have one threatening neighbor, but multiple neighbors makes any military action less feasible, unless you can convince said neighbor to join decisively on your side. Then again, it could be argued that the effectiveness of this tactic is wholely based on most players' tendency (myself included) to neglect military early in the game. It's especially effective in FfH mostly because of the higher movement rates, meaning that you can get to your neighbors earlier and quicker.

On a related note, has it been considered to put Mobility I back to Exploration but keep Mobility II at Horseback Riding?

Ok I tried this strategy on Emperor (my first time on that difficulty), and one of my early Goodie Huts was a map, which showed Midgar in all its glory, with 3 Gold resources within the 3-radius border. And I decided that was to be my first target. First thing I built was a worker actually, took 15 turns on quick, built a farm on Corn, and switched to agriculture. Built a pasture on the cow, and then built a road to cassiel. I had to live with having a size 4 capital. Lucky enough for me, I had forested hills, so my production was decent.

Once I had 4 Centaurs, I had about 6 or so warriors at the front, all with Shock I, and most with Combat II or III. At the beginning I was nervous for Cassiels heroes, but they were all scouts, so they had nothing going for them.
At this point, Cassiel had 3 cities I could see, one newly planted on my road with one of his scout heroes in it and 2 warriors. I declared war, razed it, and began the short journey to his capital. In it, he had 3 warriors and a scout if IIRC, and although I lost one centaur at 95% odds, and later, one withdrew at 98% odds, I managed to take it. And it was right in time too, my research lvl was at 0% and my units had just gone into strike, but taking that city and razing the others cured it. I quickly razed his other city which had 2 warriors and a scout, and found his 4th city, which I razed after all my centaurs were healed up. Now that was that for Cassiel, but I needed a new target. Falamar was the only good option, but I didnt know what his capital looked like. All I saw was a border city which I wouldn't really want as 3rd city.

So I moved my centaurs to the border, and when I got there he had 1 Hunter and 2 archers in the city. I started hoarding centaurs, to a point where I felt like I had enough to sacrifice. I started the attack. Many Centaurs fell as planned, and the city was razed. I still had quite a few Centaurs left, and only 3 warriors, but I was worried it wasn't enough. Next couple of turns I got closer to his capital and saw the horror. 5 Archers and some Hunters. I started pillaging, and eventually my centaurs were picked of one after the other. I managed to pillage most of his resources, and cut of the capital from the rest of the cities. And I even managed to raze a godforsaken town in the back of his empire. But my army is scattered, decimated, and Falamar does not want peace.

I look for a place where I can plant my 3rd city, but I see no good options. The only half-decent place is where I razed Falamars first city. It would have had to do, but too late now.

I think I'm going to restart on a new map later, and see if I can get 2 capitals. I kinda know my time-limit now.

One of my biggest problems was that the 2nd adaptive change was on turn 82. I took Cassiels capital on turn 67. So my 2nd buildup of Centaurs was without aggressive trait.

rushing gets harder on emperor or above. if you want to rush you need city states - and apprenticeship is not bad either. Early centaurs all good but if you ruin your economy while conquering your neighbours it'll do you no good.
If you start out aggressive you can build shock-warriors (and/or train them on barbs to c3 shock2) and take out your neighbour with them alone.
actually i think properly promoted warriors are better against warriors then centaurs. those shine against bows later on - i don't see the point in rushing them, at least if you play against the stupid AI anyhow.

hey I am playing a game as this civ and I am wondering why the advice against overexpansion ... capturing enemy cities and making them settlements seems to be perfect plan to deny land to the AIs and settlements cost nothing in maintenance. So why build settlers later? This seems to be working for me right now on a large map on Prince level, I am dominating so far although I haven't won yet. I've picked the financial trait at least once and am actually in the tech lead and centaurs are doing a great job pillaging and harrassing opponents.

So why build settlers later? Cause starting locations gets boosts.

I'm not sure what that means but thanks anyway

In form of resources, terrain, etc.

I once noticed a start in the Tundra/Ice of the AI, and it was grassland/plains in the entire city square, and he had like 4 or 5 water resources.

The map will place your starting settler in an area with a good fat cross. So, other civs' starting spots will generally have valuable resources.

As far as costs go for overexpansion, someone had previously said that the settlements do cost, not per settlement on the city screen when you open it, but for your whole empire in that even empty cities cost based on numbers and distance from the capital. I have never checked to confirm this myself.

But the major benefit of the centaur is that it's a fast, strong early that gets defensive bonuses (and that's a huge bonus!), so it seems to me that it would be best to treat it like the Zulu impi (which was easily the best unit in vanilla) and use it for extensive pillaging and harassment from a base in the enemy forests/hills (and maybe use defensive terrain to race safely to strike at poorly-defended cities). Bleed them to death while your own forces build up, deny reinforcements to their capital, and then strike hard if you think you can, or just leave them dead in the water for now and go do the same with the next guy.

Another thought for Kuriotates in particular:
If you roam your starting settler a bit, you only lose a couple of turns and you can often find another very nice capital spot, and it's then unlikely that anyone else will be close enough to claim your original capital site before you, which can make a stellar rushed second city. Your capital can then also be close to an enemy capital that needs raiding, to help bring cheap aggressive shock warrior backup quickly to any attack.

I tried out the centaur rush strat yesterday. Great plains, standard size, quick, raging barbs, no tech trades, monarch difficulty. It worked like a charm in the first 100 turns. By turn ~50 I had 6-8 centaurs running around with combat III and IV and shock. I took out two civs entirely (claiming their capitals as my 2nd and 3rd city hubs). destroyed all but the capitol of the calabim (cap was on a hill with 60% cultural defense). By the end I had 8 combat V, shock, mobility, mobility II centaurs that (with sprint) could get from one end of my empire to the other in 2 turns (My empire stretched from top to bottom of the map.

The first city I took was the FoL holy city so I converted to that. But around turn 120 I decided to go for the AV science strat while I build up my ill-gotten empire. Unfortunately I neglected to continue to build up my military (while concentrating on getting arcane techs) and fought two costly wars with the hill barbarians, the cursed Doviello. Though, flavor-wise it made perfect sense for the hill people to periodically raid the sedentary plains empire.

Key strengths:
-Centaurs are amazingly fast shock troops in the early game. If you can get 6 of them out before the enemy gets past warriors, you can easy roll all your neighbors and rely on free workers from them.

-Centaurs speed + mobility I and II allow you to have a rapid-response unit of elite cavalry that can respond anywhere in your empire within 2-3 turns. This it the only way I survived the first Doviello onslaught.

-Centaurs provide good early income. Though my income was -10/turn, my centaurs were bringing in easily 50-60 gold per turn from capturing and raiding.

Key Weaknesses:
-Easy to forget that your uber centaurs quickly become outdated as the enemy gets axemen/hunters/archers though they are still good for raiding. Be sure to build up the conventional forces.

-Careful with your civics! I completely forgot I was running the default pacifism civic until I'd wasted almost 40 turns of negative income from paying for my large cavalry force.

-Don't waste time on silly side projects! I got an elven worker when I took my first city so I envisioned building ancient forests everywhere with elven farms and cottages. Stupidly I wasted a lot of time getting the priests of leaves, blooming, and building elven improvements. Stupid because (1) without the elven trait and woodsmen, ancient forests just provide a covered approach to your cities, (2) it is far too slow to use a single elven worker to build around all your cities, and (3) could have switched to AV for the science boost much earlier.


Overall it was a lot of fun. I think I may try it again while avoiding the above mistakes.

I've liked the flavor of the Centaur unit but up till last week I only used them as inter-empire defenders. I never viewed them as assault troops except for the rare times I mutated them. And even then they were just support troops. After reading this thread I decided to give this strat a whirl. And wow, it was fun and I was surprised at how well the Centaur Rush works. With their early strength, rapid movement and the withdraw ability they did a great job on offense.

I tried two Monarch games but between poor starts and swarms of Bears and Wolves I didn't get far. So I played two Prince games and the Centaur Rush worked so well that I never made it to the build stage and ended up conquering both worlds with Centaurs. Although at the very end I had some help with Lunatic Slaves and Saverous. But I could have done it with just Centaurs through the process of attrition. With pillaging an enemies lands and fortifieng on forests one can outproduce the enemy so that the worst case scenario of losing 2-4 Centaurs per enemy Archer on a hilled city is affordable. But my losses weren't near that bad on average.

In my games the AI capitals were not in ideal spots. I could have done far far better by placing my own cities. Particularly in relation to sprawling cities. I didn't find that "capital city = great city location". For me, some of the bonus of capturing cities was in the fact that I didn't have to take time building a settler, and that the cities were already populated and had some improvements in them. But most important was gaining a religion without having to take any research time to win the tech race for it. I could focus on infrastructure techs and let the AI found my religion of choice and then conquer the Holy City to be one of my City Hubs.

If I had lakes or coast in my start, but no other commerce source, then I would have considered learning Fishing as one of my first techs after HB. But as it was I had some commerce rich luxuries so after learning Horseback Riding I went for those techs first. In my first game it was Ivory and in my second it was Wine. I had to scout around for my settlement site and didn't settle until my second turn, but that was well worth it for the increased research rate that the extra commerce granted. The extra population from the Luxury resource was also reason enough to delay. So I went for the applicable techs and then learned Exploration first. Mining was also a priority. Then I went for Education, Writing and Trade. Education grants Apprenticeship and allows Cottages. If I was first to Writing I would have gained the Great Scientist for the free Academy which would have been a huge help. But I missed it which was fine since I went for Writing mainly so I could then research Trade. I wanted Trade so that I could conquer most of my enemies cities and then sue for peace and gain a bunch of techs. While battling the civ who founded Octopus Overlords I researched Fishing so that I could gain Message from the Deep without having to research it.

Once I conquered the OO city and adopted its religion, I dropped my other tech and began immediately on Mind Stapling. As soon as I learned it I adopted Slavery and began building Asylums. As I defeated units and enslaved them, I sent them to my cities to upgrade to Lunatics. Money was never a problem as I was constantly pillaging improvements and razing cities. Science was always at 100% and I was always in the red (-20 to -40 GPT). Yet I still had plenty of gold to upgrade my slaves. Slave generated Lunatics have great synergy with this Centaur Conquer Rush. You don't have to take time building them and you can acquire slaves quicker than you can build the Lunatics. When they are Enraged they gain an extra movement so with Mobilty1 they have a move of three and move as rapidly as Centaurs. Also when enraged they gain +40% str . And they can earn the City Raider promotion. If your conquering begins to bog down, these Lunatics will pick up the slack. I think Lunatic Slaves are an ideal follow up to the Centaur Rush.

Then after learning Mind Stapling I went for Archery and Stirrups so if things got real bad I could upgrade my Centaurs to Horse Archers. But this was not needed even though in both games my last enemy had hordes of promoted Archers in hilled cities. With Lunatics assisting my Centaurs I never needed the Horse Archers by the time I learned the tech. In my second game I went for Bronze Working and Warfare and then built the Form of the Titan so that the Lunatics I built would be upgraded with Mobility1 and City Raider1. Once again I could have conquered the world with just Centaurs and Lunatic Slaves. I even could have done it with just Centaur attrition warfare, but the Lunatics speed things up a bit. Saverous also got some action but not that much. I hardly built any improvements in my cities beyond Monuments. But in the second game I did take the time to build Forges to better arm the few Lunatics which I built. Mostly it was the Lunatic Slaves who softened up the cities, and then it was the Centaurs who crushed them under their hooves.


Ohh another aspect of this Centaur Rush with Lunatic Slaves backup... Raze all but the 2-3 cities you keep for your Hubs. Don't waste energy defending settlements cause you won't need any of the resources or mana. It'll just slow you down which could be costly as you might find yourself facing tougher units if you delay (But then Lunatic Slaves and Horse Archer upgrades will deal with that if your offensive begins to bog down). By razing all the cities you'll be raising the AC clock rapidly. But in my games it never got to the blight stage. But if it does, then you will have plenty of captured Slaves with which to rebuild your improvements.


Ooh something else... Elven Slaves can promote to Centaurs. The upgrade from Elven Slave to Centaur is very cheap. This is a great way to rapidly increase your Centaur Army. And with the right buildings I think some other races slaves also promote to certain units. And of course all slaves upgrade to Lunatics if you have OO as your religion and have an Asylum.

Has anyone had any luck with this strategy with Large/Epic games on Emperor difficulty?

After a few such games, I have found myself phasing out Centaurs in favour of ShockII warriors. They are faster to build, just as effective, and can later be promoted to Axemen with City Raider III and March.

Besides, researching Horseback Riding at the expense of other techs did not only damage my economy, but left me with a pathetic happy cap of 4 for much too long. By the time the military romp was over, I found myself hopelessly behind the Civs on the other continent, as well as the more distant Civs on your own continent.

BTW, I think your strategy should be adjusted to start with Raiders instead of Aggressive. Aggressive would be better suited for building better cannon-fodder armies. If your goal is to produce elite troops by farming Barbarians, Raiders would net you better XP in the long term. Besides, the secondary trait from Raiders (free commando promotion) would be more useful than the cheaper stables/shipyards from Aggressive.

On the higher dificulty levels, it doesn't work that well. By the time you can get cantaurs, the other civs are advanced enough to at least have some good defenders.

I've been playing Kuriotes (which is a civ I don't have a lot of experience with) lately at immortal, and have been running one city until I have enough to take a capital with axemen if I have gold near my start, or mages or orer priests if I don't. It is slow at the beginning with one city for a while, but seems to cause less problems in the long run.

I seem to have abysmal luck with starting resources when I try to start a game with the Kuriotates; I'll wind up with 2-3 cows/pigs/sheep and some grain, but no luxury or production bonuses even once they're revealed. This doesn't really make it any easier to get things off the ground.

Apart from that, which isn't entirely topical anyway, Raiders is definitely a better choice than Aggressive early on. I haven't been trying this strategy - I've been going for beefy scouts and hunters early - and you can end up with a handful of level 4+ scouts very quickly by switching to Raiders early. It should be as effective, if not more, with centaurs. Your defenders will promote quicker, too, which is hard to argue with. By the time the second Adaptive change pops up there shouldn't be as much free experience moving around in the form of barbs and animals, and if you're in a war, you'll have no trouble finding things to beat up.

Game ended as a cultural victory (I switched after cleaning the tree - 3 cities with 500-1000 culture per turn via bards/caste system) - all three cities over 60 population and the capital at 83.

Question: with only 3 cities (and a very large number of settlements), how do you obtain such high hapiness and health levels? I don't think there are even that many health and hapiness resources in this game, even with buildings and bonuses. 60 sounds awkwards to say the least: even in regular civ I have difficulty reaching over 35 health.

how do you obtain such high hapiness
Archmages + law 3

Thanks Chip56, forgot that (powerful) one, and I was even wondering whether law magics got shafted or something.

What about the health though?

Magic won't help you there, you'll have to rely on buildings and civics like you normally would. (Public healers is a must, switching to the Leaves and adopting Guardian of Nature helps a lot too. Leaves temples also boost health. Of course, you will need infirmaries, aqueducts, etc.)

Now that BtS added the ability to make a building get rid of all unhealthiness (National Park national wonder), I wonder whether a new wonder or a new spell (perhaps a life, nature, or creation III spell) will eventually be added take advantage of this. If it is a creation spell (which seems more likely since the other two spheres already have all their spells), then the Kuriotates will be at more of an advantage (they represent the creation sphere, and so will surely start with that type mana)

sickness only adds 1 food more per city size, so its more manageable than unhappiness.

even at 3 food per population if you have enough food you can keep growing and benefit from doing so via specialists.

there are 36 tile yields to work with as kuriotates, supposing you ran all farms under agriculture and had sanitation, and lets use grassland, then you have 5*36=180 food, so you can grow to size 60 even if you have sickness from size 2.

now if you run Sacrifice the Weak you double that number to 120 base population you can support. then every Great Merchant you have lets you support another population. every health above 1 up to 120 adds an extra population you can support. every extra food from a tile greater than 2 base of a grassland adds a population each as well (so a floodplain means an extra population, a food resource adds several as well).


So, health isn't much of an issue, its a soft cap, where as happiness is a hard cap (only a few reasons to ever grow beyond your happy cap, like for pop-rushing or feasting).

That's so much everyone, I have to try to Kuriotates sometime then. I keep thinking they are a weak civ because of all the bonus traits that their leader gets, including "adaptive". Landgrab early with settlements, gain access to lots of resources, then basically break the game with unlimited hapiness and ridiculously high health, drawing the best trade routes from all the foreign capitals (trade route formula still the same as before right?).

With Leaves, you can adopt Guardian of Nature, which gives a +5 health (as well as happiness). As a bonus, you will also get Ancient Forests. And Yvain, one of the better heroes.