How to play germans.

Bonuses:

Start: Elite units get upgraded automatically

Ancient Era: Warriors start with veteran upgrade
Medieval Era: +1 production from forests
Industrial Era: 1/2 price barracks
Modern Era: 2% interest

The bonuses we should focus on really are the auto upgrade for elite units, this means that each time you get a new technology, obsolate units will get an upgrade (for example when you get iron working warriors become legions).
Then, the warriors start with veteran upgrade and +1 production from forests in the medieval era.

Let's see how you can start:

Work on 2 forests, 4 production per turn and build 2 warriors, if you want 4, try to get as much gold as possible. Then, grow in Berlin and in the new city, that should have at least 2 grasslands, 3 forests and 1-2 water tiles. If there are rushers as aztecs, arabs, zulu, then build warriors to defend yourself and set the first 2/4 warriors on choke points.

Try to get as fast as possible, if you want focusing only on science, pottery, masonry, irrigation, to get free wall in your capital to defend against others, and +1 pop for every city. If you want before this, build another city good as the second one, working on 2 forests - 1 grasslands, in 5 turns you will have 2 pop instead of 1 building the settler.

If you are afraid, go for bronze working first and build 1-2 archers (not the third, or at least don't build the army, let's see why). After you get irrigation and bronze working (research this now), go for alphabet. You will reach medieval era now. Start producing barracks in every city (with 2-3 cities you should do enough), then, build roads if possible to faster the moves.

You should have 200 gold if you explored with 4 warriors, or 100-150 with 2, however try to sell technologies to AI getting gold. Rush barracks if you want in every city after you are half on the way (20/40 for example). Now, start putting all into production, or if you want food, 1 grassland, 3 forests, 1 worker (10 production), but try to have 10 production or more if possible. Each turn normally you should produce 3 warriors with an elite bonus, combine the army and try to get infiltration, march and blitz (if you want also scout). Finish the archer armies first if you think one is going to rush you, then restart producing these warriors, and remember DON'T GET IRON WORKING OR DON'T GET MORE THAN 30 SCIENCE PER TURN, if you do this the strategy won't work. Produce as many warriors as you want, 10 armies are ok for you.

Now, just in case one is going to rush you, try to research as fast as possible iron working, if you want buy it from AI (they go for it really fast). However if they don't do this, reach 10 warrior armies, as fast as possible. Do everything but working on iron working, and if you have more than 30 science you will get it free for the backfilling. After you have the armies, go NOW for IRON WORKING and upgrade your units, then, go for monarchy and then feudalism (obviously try to start this race as fast as possible). You will have 10 knights armies, you can attack others now then, or wait for tanks, but here the strategy ends.

Technology order:

Pottery
Masonry
Irrigation
Bronze Working
Alphabet
Writing
Literacy
Code of Laws
Monarchy
Feudalism (horseback riding needed).

Until you don't have your 10 warriors armies, be sure you don't have more than 30 science per turn. 25 is ok. Use the scientist to rush monarchy if you want that can help you in the race, getting a new great person, or settle it, if that's since the start. If you want, continue for PANZER, then nothing will stop you, unless the other one has a bigger army.

Beautiful strategy using the warriors as a setup to future attacks. What year do you usually have the knights ready to attack.

Beautiful strategy using the warriors as a setup to future attacks. What year do you usually have the knights ready to attack.

I don't remember. What I remember is that in years like 500-1000AD (if you play as you should do), you should be ready to rush others. And against techers this should work, but kill them before they get tanks

With 2 cities your not getting 10 knight armies by 1000 ad especially not 500ad. I do a strategy similar to this where i use Elite warriors an upgrade them. I usually have about 15-20 knight armies ready by 1200ad-1500ad. You should also go for bronze working to rush a barrack and build vet archers first THAN elite warriors.

double post sorry

Update i hit 20 Knight armies at 1000ad. Best i ever done.

I never htuoght of using barracks... I always just tried attacking to get elites :)
EDIT: ive never experienced this backfilling. Ive done many a research at 1 tech a turn... And i cant add settlers to cities. Is my PS3 broken?

When you attempt to move a Settler into one of your cities, you should be presented with the option to "Join City" - activated by pressing the triangle button on the PS3 controller. It will then add a fixed amount of population growth to your city, which you can see from the green bar above the city name on the screen.

I was convinced that it still added 1 population. I joined after the patch that addressed this.

Hi Morte, I'm a new civ fanatic. You really did a great job with all these strategies! I tried to follow this german strategy, but when I finally got iron working, only a few warrior armies were upgraded to legions, while a few of them still remained warrior armies... Why? Probably I made a mistake, thank you for your help.

Hi Morte, I'm a new civ fanatic. You really did a great job with all these strategies! I tried to follow this german strategy, but when I finally got iron working, only a few warrior armies were upgraded to legions, while a few of them still remained warrior armies... Why? Probably I made a mistake, thank you for your help.

Hi, maybe it was because those warrior armies were not elite (1 upgrade other than veteran upgrade).. If these warriors were all elites, then it is a glitch.

However, if you are from Italy, like me, I could help with ease

Yeah, they were not elite, only veteran. Thanks Morte! I wrote you a PM.

carina l'opzione blocca messaggi, proprio simpatica! bye bye

Can you explain how you expand after producing 10 elite warrior armies. I don't suppose you get to Feudalism with only 3 cities?

Can I assume that you expand after you get 10 warrior armies while teching to Feudalism?

Can I assume that you expand after you get 10 warrior armies while teching to Feudalism?

It wouldn't be very efficient to get 10 warrior armies and then expand. Probably he puts one city on warrior duty and expands out of the others, possibly adding 1-2 more barracks cities for making elite warriors. I believe his goal is to produce just under 30 science per turn (that way avoiding backfilling Iron Working and getting legions too fast). At 25 science per turn, you get Monarchy in 6 turns and Feudalism in another 6 (with a turn tucked in there to finish Iron Working first of course). That's fast enough for most games. The only important part is getting started on it soon enough.

I have used the Germans a fair amount and I've never needed 10 armies. That's really overkill.

It wouldn't be very efficient to get 10 warrior armies and then expand.For sure. I tried this out last night. I took an AI cap, used my free settler as a settler farm, and had my two capitals work on warriors. After Germany gets +1 from trees, a normal capital makes a warrior army every five turns. Unlike most civs, this means your capitals are fairly useful for the start of the game as something besides a settler farm. (Which makes finding a good settler farm important.) I unfortunately happened to have a map where I couldn't get decent production going at all.

I would recommend against forming armies with the warriors unless you have to, that way if you get in a situation where you need to produce after the upgrades, you aren't stuck with units that won't upgrade. Just stack them in border cities.

Chances are good you will have an AI nearby that is not as strong as you, don't forget to threaten them for gold while you're waiting for the tech.

I have used the Germans a fair amount and I've never needed 10 armies. That's really overkill.Assuming blitz, 10 is like 20. That's massive.

OK, I am trying this, but it is not working so well.

a) Finding the location with 3 forests, 2 grass and 2 sea is by no means guaranteed.
I have tried it compromising on grassland, but that sucks due to lower growth.
Trying it compromising on forests worked better, in that growth makes up for production due to having more population to deploy - e.g. on trade as well

b) Setting a decent second city location is also by no means guaranteed

c) You pretty much always (DS) get stumped in the middle of the continent, so all the other AIs are breathing down your neck pretty much straight away

d) swapping cities between production, science and growth compromises your ability to either tech rush or churn out units like crazy.

Maybe I am missing something here?
I don't find Morte's explanations at all easy to follow.

It might be easier to help if you could offer some benchmarks. Like how many cities do you have at 0 AD? How many elite warriors will you have by then? How soon can you get to Feudalism?

A bad map is a bad map and they certainly can happen. No doubt that will make things harder. You shouldn't always have that much trouble finding a 3 tree 2 grass spot. You really don't need sea tiles by your production cities. When I play Germany I normally try to have around 3 production cities and maybe 5+ tech cities. That's on the small side.

As for aggression from the AI, elite warrior armies should keep you safe long enough to tech up to Feudalism. If you aren't able to upgrade to knights by the early ADs, then you're going too slowly.

Also note that this strategy is pretty old. Most players probably wouldn't bother with Irrigation unless they already had several cities to grow. If you're spending more than a few turns going down the Irrigation path and wind up just growing 3ish cities, then it's really a waste of time and less good than just skipping it. There's also no reason to tech Literacy unless you're going to get it first (you usually won't if China is in the game).

Thanks for your response.

I know it is gentle, but for many reasons I play SP.
Yes, I know it shouldnt be hard, but, you know, some of us are slower than others.

Well, Maybe Morte's description didnt really elaborate on spread of cities.
I got the imporession that there were only 3 needed at most.

If the irrigation thing is a side track, that means the real tech sequence is:
Bronze Working
Alphabet
Writing
Literacy
Code of Laws
Monarchy
Feudalism
(possibly with HBR and the irrigation string as items bought from other civs)

A couple things you could do a little differently from Morte:

One is that I do not think you need ten armies, especially if you are going to promote them to Knight armies before you attack. Even more so if you are making each of your armies out of three elite warriors. Two or three Ninja/Lightning/Immortal armies can do the job, especially with replacements on the way.

Another is that you do not have to be married to the idea of making armies with three special abilities each. Under that idea, you just need just one elite warrior army to form the 'kernel' of each of your armies. Go ahead and get iron working. You can finish your armies with regular/veteran Legions. If you do this, you will need a few more armies, but I still think 10 is more than really necessary.

I think three cities would probably make it kind of slow. It's hard to get enough science with just three. Really you want to be making just under or about 30 science (so you don't accidentally backfill Iron Working). It's not easy for Germany to get that much science with three cities, especially when 1-2 of them are dedicated to pumping out warriors.

The way I'd start out is consider moving my settler a bit to be closer to the action. See if there are any close AI capitals. Your vet warriors can often take a capital if you can reach it with an army in the first 10 turns. Starting with two capitals is a really good head start.

In any case, you try to get your 100 gold as normal and hopefully promote a warrior or three (don't army them unless you are going to attack a city). If the opportunity presents itself, you may want to try to expand a little now or you can wait. You want to tech up to Code of Laws (Alphabet, Writing, Code of Laws). You do not need Literacy. You won't be building courthouses. If you can get Literacy first, the +1 science per city is nice, but it's not really a big deal as you won't have all that many cities at the start and later when you start conquering it still doesn't matter much because you already have what you need.

When you're making your run to a tech, make sure you pay attention to that tech's cost so you can get there efficiently. Alphabet is 20 beakers, Writing is 40 and Code of Laws is 60. If you're doing 10 per turn, you get all that in 12 turns. If you're doing 8 per turn, it'll take you 16 turns. It's also not a bad idea to get Bronze Working and maybe another 20 beaker tech at some point so you'll be in medieval and have +1 forest production. That should let you pump out a couple more settlers and set up a couple of barracks cities quickly. Your barracks cities should be settled in medieval so they'll be 3 population. Settle on 3 trees and don't worry about any other resources. That will give you 9 production per turn, which is fine.

So the goal is to have 5 techs (medieval), Republic government (Code of Laws), two (or so) production cities and enough science cities so you're doing somewhere in the 20-30 beaker range. That should be around five science cities for a total of seven cities, give or take. If you've gotten a decent start, you should be able to be in this position in the 1000BC-500BC range. If you're closer to 0-500 AD, your rush will probably still work, but it won't be a total walk.

Now set your science to Monarchy. You should have it in 7-8 turns. Tech Feudalism all but the last turn. That's another 7 or so turns. Now you grab Iron Working (warriors become legions) and finish Feudalism (legions become knights). So that's 14+ turns of making warriors, which should be plenty since your production cities do 9 production and warriors cost 10. You'll have something like 20 warriors, which will become 6 or 7 legion armies and then 6 or 7 knight armies very quickly. Now go kill!

Note that food and growth resources really aren't very important to this strategy. Your science cities serve only one purpose: get you Feudalism. If you can put them on fish, great. If not, who cares? They don't need to grow. Likewise with your production cities. You will soon enough have plenty of enemy cities and can expand more if you choose. The point of this strategy is to have several elite knight armies around 0 AD, which will let you stomp all over even Deity-level AI (or most players online). With those armies you will either win outright gain enough of an advantage that your lack of long-term planning for your initial cities won't hurt you a bit.

A couple things you could do a little differently from Morte:

One is that I do not think you need ten armies, especially if you are going to promote them to Knight armies before you attack. Even more so if you are making each of your armies out of three elite warriors. Two or three Ninja/Lightning/Immortal armies can do the job, especially with replacements on the way.

Another is that you do not have to be married to the idea of making armies with three special abilities each. Under that idea, you just need just one elite warrior army to form the 'kernel' of each of your armies. Go ahead and get iron working. You can finish your armies with regular/veteran Legions. If you do this, you will need a few more armies, but I still think 10 is more than really necessary.

Yeah, this is fine to do. I'd want more than 2-3 armies if possible because you could get unlucky and lose one in a 18-12 battle or something stupid like that, but 2-3 can certainly work if you're fast enough.

Finishing your armies with non-elites is also a good strategy if you don't have time to set up multiple barracks or if you accidentally get Iron Working too soon. Some players will tech Iron Working halfway early (your tech progress never decays in this game) so they can finish it in a single turn if need be. In general, you can defend pretty well with elite warriors while setting all this up. You can build a couple of archers if you think you need them, but don't go building archer armies. They are a waste. You are the aggressor. You don't need to defend.

Yeah, my two suggestions really work best in concert. By not waiting to make so many warriors, you can go to IW earlier and start pushing toward Feudalism. Since your Germans will actually have their Knights as soon as you tech up, you can reasonably hope to get them going very early. One thing I try to do is acquire one or two scientists. I hold them in reserve to insta-learn Feudalism and, if I have two, Monarchy.