Use this thread to discuss our long term plans.

I think domination is a viable goal.

A few general ideas I have;

Get Amazons to open up Astronomy while we get Liberalism on the way to Rifling, draft/whip an army to take out a rival each.
Heavy use of nukes to trigger global warming and take real advantage of Dikes (coast won't turn to desert) Also, if going nuke heavy, SDI is a must.
Culture is out of the question, but we'll have to be very wary of the Indian civ (can't remember who off the top of my head)

I think that the military VCs are the way to go.
But i don't see that great use of nukes. They are expensive, Manhattan is expensive and the techs to arrive there too.
Infantry and artillery, possibly with Marines later can do a good job.

Also, remember that our UU is great in late renaissance to sneak attack someone.

In any case we need Communism, provided we can sign a PA with Amazon.
And provided PAs are turned on (can anyone please confirm?). Otherwise, see Highlander motto.

Nukes are insanely powerful. They're worth it should we reach that point in the game, no questions.

Use the East Indiaman to transport a mass of drafted rifles to kill a neighbour. Winning peacefully will be almost impossible without beating up other teams.

I vote for Azzaman's approach. I was thinking myself that beelining Liberalism makes the most of our tech advantage. It also fits in with the research plan I have been arguing for: we research Math > Currency > CoL > CS (or Philosophy if we miss Confucianism), while AMAZON techs IW > Compass > Optics. We grab Astronomy or Nationalism from Liberalism and then research toward Rifles. The only thing I haven't accounted for is a detour to Aesthetics > Literature for the Great Library or NE.

I like the nuke strategy, that's a very clever idea. As long as we're still fighting at that part of the game it should be worth it. I love the idea of harming our opponents disproportionately with global warming, it's a sneaky way to cause small amounts of damage to our allies in preparation for when we turn against them later on.

Before the modern era, rifles do seem like a good approach, taking down a team's home island will be a big win. Depending on how the map looks it may be worth it to fight pre-astronomy to take out an enemies mainland/star possessions. If, as I expect, the mainland is resource rich doing so would cause some serious harm. If we're going for CS quickly, maybe the Amazons could pick up machinery so we can fight with macemen pre-Astronomy.

I like the nuke strategy, that's a very clever idea. As long as we're still fighting at that part of the game it should be worth it. I love the idea of harming our opponents disproportionately with global warming, it's a sneaky way to cause small amounts of damage to our allies in preparation for when we turn against them later on.

Before the modern era, rifles do seem like a good approach, taking down a team's home island will be a big win. Depending on how the map looks it may be worth it to fight pre-astronomy to take out an enemies mainland/star possessions. If, as I expect, the mainland is resource rich doing so would cause some serious harm. If we're going for CS quickly, maybe the Amazons could pick up machinery so we can fight with macemen pre-Astronomy.

Really? Because I guarente that the TMIT is telling the Amazons to do the same he LOVES nukes and if we give them all our techs he will do so.

Why wait for nukes and the modern era to go for domination win? Beeline for Cavalry and run them over!

Why wait for nukes and the modern era to go for domination win? Beeline for Cavalry and run them over!

I'm not advocating waiting for nukes, just that if we haven't won because of heavy drafting at Rifling, we'd strongly want to consider nuking an opponent or two to make our dikes more valuable.

I see the strategy as something like playing Survivor. We need to make alliances, and if we're in the biggest alliance we win. Once the other teams are gone, the alliance by necessity breaks up, and we need to make sure we're part of the biggest smaller alliance.

Exactly what units we plan to use depends entirely on what era we're in when we want to declare war. If we make it to the modern era, then certainly we want to use nukes, but I don't really see the use of thinking about that just yet.

PS I don't agree at all that nukes make dikes better. Aside from anything else, nukes destroy dikes. If we're nuking everyone else and not getting nuked back, we don't need dikes, we've won already. And if we're getting nuked into the ground like everybody else we probably won't have our dikes any more anyway. In any case if enough nukes have been fired to trigger a significant level of global warming then someone has likely won the game already.

My games on the comp hardly ever get to the Modern era, but I haven't played an unmodded game in a long time. The last time I fired a nuke was with the Total Realism mod playing on the Earth Map in Civ 4 Warlords. It was allot of fun, but I had to slow myself down just to make sure I hadn't won before I got to use a nuke.

I see your points Irgy and Azzaman333, but I think that if we end up using nukes then we were going slow...unless things are seriously insanely fast when playing against humans who have a hunger for trading techs.

This scenario is almost guaranteed to get to the modern era, because every team has a home island of four cities which are completely impenetrable until Astronomy. Plus, unlike against the AI where you can just grow huge and outplay all of them and be a runaway winner, in multiplayer a runaway winner is just going to get dogpiled. So rather than one team getting quickly ahead, it needs to go the opposite way with one team getting eliminated at a time, and that takes longer. And finally, I've always been of the view that if you always win before the modern era, you're not playing on the right difficulty setting. Here, we're all competing against very strong teams.

My games on the comp hardly ever get to the Modern era, but I haven't played an unmodded game in a long time. The last time I fired a nuke was with the Total Realism mod playing on the Earth Map in Civ 4 Warlords. It was allot of fun, but I had to slow myself down just to make sure I hadn't won before I got to use a nuke.

I see your points Irgy and Azzaman333, but I think that if we end up using nukes then we were going slow...unless things are seriously insanely fast when playing against humans who have a hunger for trading techs.

On a map like this, the only likely victory condition that'll be possible before nukes is cultural.

I'd be pretty damn impressed by a culture win that was faster than human teams can tech to nukes.

Although I admit that was something like what happened in my self-play game. One civ had teched nukes, but another kept sabotaging the Manhattan Project for a long time.

Nukes also require uranium. On this map that could be a bit of a problem.

I'd be pretty damn impressed by a culture win that was faster than human teams can tech to nukes.

Although I admit that was something like what happened in my self-play game. One civ had teched nukes, but another kept sabotaging the Manhattan Project for a long time.

It's not likely, but it's the only one that I'd say is possible.

What if there is no uranium?

We'll know when we tech Physics.

I see the strategy as something like playing Survivor. We need to make alliances, and if we're in the biggest alliance we win. Once the other teams are gone, the alliance by necessity breaks up, and we need to make sure we're part of the biggest smaller alliance.

Exactly what units we plan to use depends entirely on what era we're in when we want to declare war...


This post contains much wisdom. I'm glad to see that our team is handling diplomacy so well. Therein lays victory.

I saw a comment about the benefits of a team moving its capital to the mainland, to open trade with everyone else. That seems a bit scary, but it made me think of a question. Can you create colonies in MP games? If you create one, do you retain control over it like a vassal? This might be a mechanism for opening up trade routes that would not involve a capital relocation. Or maybe colonies are a bad idea in general -- I don't know, have never tried it...

If vassal states is enabled, colonies can be made.

So do you need Feudalism to unlock colonies?

If vassal states is enabled, colonies can be made.

I thought those were disabled.

@1889;
Yes, Feudalism is needed for colonies.

I thought those were disabled.

I'm just saying what's required for a colony to be made. I have no idea whether the settings will allow for it.

FYI I just double checked and huts, events and vassels are off.

Caveat: I have never won a MP game, and play at a fairly low SP level. But someone has to give strategy a good kick and it might as well be me. ;)

Checklist of things needed to win (some have been accomplished)


High production (hammers)
High GNP
Obtain resources, deny to others
Choose friends & enemies
Choose a target and eliminate
Raise happy and health caps to level needed for max population with max improved tiles
Improve tiles ahead of population growth and to allow switching for micromanagement
Decide an economy type and develop accordingly (SE, CE, mixed, etc)
Decide optimum #cities and grow to that point
Settle contested land ahead of uncontested (except when economic impact too high)
Build a well-equipped military
Use espionage to its capability
Choose tech path to enable other parts of strategy
Win in battle via better units, more units, or more promotions (or all 3)
Choice of civics to support rest of strategy, or strategy to support civics
City specialization and placement of national wonders

We seem to have a decent handle on high GNP and choosing friends. Our past tech choices have targeted what we needed but the future could maybe use a bit of work. Settling the copper site supports getting and potentially denying resources, and settling in contested land ahead of uncontested. The horse site gets resources but no need to deny them since the neighbor competing for them is an ally. We need to know what the economy will be and from that how many cities, how many units, what civics to use, and what tiles to improve.

Anyone with more MP success or a higher level of play want to comment here?

Do we plan to have any GP farm cities? Do we know what each of our cities is going to do?
Do we have a long-term tech plan that will yield advantages, other than use the power of 4 vs 2?
Are we going to try to take out someone (mavs perhaps) and get the lion's share of the spoils, or let the Q have that land?
Can we win long term if we're not one of the aggressors -- or are we better off being strong in some other way while others do the dirty work?

To my knowledge,
Copper city will be a production city, as will Canopus.
Site B on our home island will be a pure commerce city.
Sirius the standard bureaucracy commerce/hammers hybrid.
1N of Vesta in this screenshot (http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu269/Trystero_CFC/Civ4ScreenShot0167.jpg) looks like a good candidate for a GP farm (3 5:food: resources) Alternatively, building the GP farm to use the Banana on the northern spoke could be safer, depending on how we're sharing it with Amazon.

There's no point trying to take someone out this early. However, come Astronomy, we want to fight for as much land as possible. We want to come out of the Maverick war stronger than Quatronia, because they'll be our next target. However, we may want to fight Mavericks for the mainland, as a long, drawn out war will benefit us more than Mavericks, due to our tech alliance.

We have to be big to win, because ultimately the ability to outproduce your rivals wins you wars (unless there's a massive tech difference)

Nowhere really stands out as a GP farm to me yet. All the sites on Bode, including the 1N of Vesta site Azzaman refers to are going to be excellent production sites, and I think we want to use them as that for the time being. We might not want to set up a GP farm for a while yet anyway.

I'd rather save the rest of the cheap great people for later. An academy in the beauro-capital is a good idea, but otherwise I don't know what we'd do with them. I don't want to pump out great people to bulb technologies that we then share with 3 other teams. What else are we going to do with them in the short term though? Burn our cheap golden age? Settle them?

The next great person I'd want after the scientist we're about to get would be a prophet for building the confucian shrine. If we don't build a GP farm for a while then we could even afford to have a city work a priest for 67 turns to produce one.

A production city can easily be converted into a GP farm.

Hi, just for reference I'm linking to my post about strategy here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9370443&postcount=1313)


Thank you everybody for putting out some ideas!

I would suggest not getting caught in the details of any plans yet. If we plan now which cities are production and which are commerce we may find people have vastly different ideas on what to do with the production or commerce in the first place.

So since we all want to win by military, how do you want to see us win by military?
Which opponent(s) do we want to attack first? second? ... etc. on to last EDIT: even listing them out to 'last' is probably too much detail for this stage in the game. Just saying 'nearest non ETTT member' is a perfectly good answer
What point in the tech tree do we want to attack?
Which units do we emphasize?


Try to find a plan you like that just answers these broader questions first. We can get into more details as we find consensus on the broader questions.

A production city can easily be converted into a GP farm.

How? I thought food was needed.

@pindicator I think Mavericks are our first Target. Merlot seem to be Amazons first.

How? I thought food was needed.

I should've specified the site 1N of Vesta can easily be turned from production to a relatively good GP farm. At size 7 it could have 4 specialists with 3:food: surplus, just from the clams and pig.


I think one thing we should definitely aim to do is cut Mavericks and Merlot off from each other. The longer they don't meet, the better off our alliance will be.

[QUOTE=pindicator;9374236]
Which opponent(s) do we want to attack first? second? ... etc. on to last [i]EDIT: even listing them out to 'last' is probably too much detail for this stage in the game. Just saying 'nearest non ETTT member' is a perfectly good answer
[QUOTE]

The other alliance members will no doubt have some ideas on that matter as well. If the alliance holds together and it really is a team of 4 vs. 2 I'd think simultaneously declaring on the non alliance members would be best. Also considering the fragile nature of alliances in MTDG’s I’d suggest declaring war as soon as we have some advantage over the other teams. In other words let’s not wait so long that our allies are considering betraying us so they can grab the win themselves.

There's no point trying to take someone out this early. However, come Astronomy, we want to fight for as much land as possible. We want to come out of the Maverick war stronger than Quatronia, because they'll be our next target. However, we may want to fight Mavericks for the mainland, as a long, drawn out war will benefit us more than Mavericks, due to our tech alliance.

The other alliance members will no doubt have some ideas on that matter as well. If the alliance holds together and it really is a team of 4 vs. 2 I'd think simultaneously declaring on the non alliance members would be best. Also considering the fragile nature of alliances in MTDG’s I’d suggest declaring war as soon as we have some advantage over the other teams. In other words let’s not wait so long that our allies are considering betraying us so they can grab the win themselves.

Definitely a lot of common ground in these 2 ideas -- 1889, am I right in guessing you are also throwing your hat in for the idea to bee-line astronomy and invade Mavericks' home island?

Definitely a lot of common ground in these 2 ideas -- 1889, am I right in guessing you are also throwing your hat in for the idea to bee-line astronomy and invade Mavericks' home island?

Add me to that list. In fact I can't imagine what else we would want to do really.

The only question to me is what sort of military units we'll have when we get Astronomy, and I'd rather just see how that pans out than try and force it.

It doesn't matter to me also whether we research Astronomy or someone else in the ETTT does, as long as it's something of a 'beeline' either way. Which really just means that the following techs are researched consecutively:
Metal Casting->Machinery->Optics->Astronomy

This means someone else needs to research Compass and Calendar along the way.

As far as what units we want when we get Astronomy, I think Rifles are a good target.

Won't we get Astronomy long before Rifles?

Depends how hard we beeline them.

If we beeline Astronomy, we'll be not even anywhere close to rifles when we get it.

Compare:
(... Machinery), Optics, Calendar, Astronomy

with:
(... Machinery), Fuedalism, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder, Civil Service/Theology, Paper, Printing Press, Replacable Parts, Rifling

I'd rather attack with Astronomy and Axemen if that's all we have than wait a long time to get a better military tech. We should have at least Maces though, as we need Machinery anyway and we'll want Civil Service for Beaurocracy. Knights and Muskets aren't that much of a stretch either.

Why attack at tech parity?

Attack when you can win. If that's tech parity with a large production lead (or even just a large enough lead in already produced military) then that's good enough. As long as you have seige you can win a battle even behind in tech without necessarily making huging losses.

That said, it's very unlikely we'll be at tech parity anyway. All I'm saying is we shouldn't delay the invasion to research ourselves a bigger tech lead, unless we don't think we can win comfortably with what we have.

We should also have most of the land army built before Astronomy, so that we can build nothing but galleons (or whatever our UU is called) once we get Astronomy and be ready to go.

If that's feasable anyway. The huge tech rate of that this game is heading for means we're likely to get to technologies before we're really prepared for them.

Exactly Irgy but if we have an army big enough to win why wait until we build a massive galleon fleet? It may be overly ambitious to expect our first war to wipe out an opposing team. I’m not sure what their production is but we would have to not only build a more powerful force but also all the galleons necessary to transport that force and the necessary reinforcements. I think a more limited war over territory on the main land would be within our capabilities sooner and may help cement the alliance.

In any case the war plans of the alliance will be settled by consensus. Excuse my ignorance but have the other even been made aware that they are in an alliance as opposed to a tech partnership?

I'm not necessarily suggesting we do wait until Astronomy to go to war. In fact if we decide to sink the exploring units we'll be at war fairly quickly. Controlling all of Bode is a sensible goal before we get to Astronomy.

However, until Astronomy, we can't finish the job. Until we finish the job, we're under constant harassment.

If we dominate the land but not the seas, they can build a bunch of Triremes to pillage our seafood and send our army in circles chasing potential offshore raids. If we dominate the seas but not the land, we still would have a lot of trouble stopping them landing a party of raiding land units in a single turn and running the fleet to safety. To dominate both we'll need to build (and pay upkeep for) a lot of units, and we'll be absolutely itching for Astronomy when we can actually get the spoils.

A tech partnership is effectively an alliance, just without the longer term guarantees. Quatronia and ourselves have a clear mutual interest in ganging up two on one with against Mavericks, and Quatronia are already giving the impression that this is their intention.

Why I mentioned Rifles was because intercontinental invasions will be very difficult. Catapults/Trebuchets will decimate us (unless we can raze cities).

A tech partnership is effectively an alliance, just without the longer term guarantees. Quatronia and ourselves have a clear mutual interest in ganging up two on one with against Mavericks, and Quatronia are already giving the impression that this is their intention.


I disagree a bazillion percent. If war breaks out before our allies are firmly on board they will reevaluate where their best interests lay. It may appear that ganging up on Mavericks benefits everyone now, but if the war fails to go according to plan that judgment will be reevaluated. War is a huge drain on an economy; our tech partners may decide it is an opportunity for them to surge ahead. Taking our allies for granted in this way is a potential diplomatic catastrophe.

Technically what we have right now is an alliance with Amazon only, and a tech partnership that includes Quatronia and CDZ.

We should try to out-rex Mavericks on the spoke between us, so that we enter the future war already having a production advantage. On the Amazon side we should split that spoke evenly and encourage the Amazons to try to out-rex Merlot on their other spoke. Quatronia and CDZ should attempt the same with the spokes on the other side of M&M.

If we can get triremes and maces while Mavs lack them (by being ahead in tech), then we should consider knocking Mavs down a bit even before Astronomy. On the other hand, even a successful war temporarily weakens the winner, so maybe we should aim for the 2nd war? :think:

I believe Mavs got MC from the Oracle, so they'll definitely have triremes.

Technically what we have right now is an alliance with Amazon only...

Technically a defensive alliance only though.

If we beeline Astronomy, we'll be not even anywhere close to rifles when we get it.

Compare:
(... Machinery), Optics, Calendar, Astronomy

with:
(... Machinery), Fuedalism, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder, Civil Service/Theology, Paper, Printing Press, Replacable Parts, Rifling



What about utilizing the tech partnership here and spreading out the research? I'm just hastily throwing this idea together so it may not work exactly like this but what about:

Team A:
Civil Service (800), Paper (600), Printing Press (1600)

Team B:
Feudalism (700), Guilds (1000), Gunpowder (1200)

Team C:
Machinery (700), Calendar (350), Filler - Engineering? (1000), Banking (700)

Team D:
Compass (400), Optics (600), Astronomy (2000)


4 teams putting in roughly 3000 beakers worth of research will get us 2 techs away from rifles. Then we just need to research:

Replaceable Parts (1800), Rifling (2400)

What about utilizing the tech partnership here and spreading out the research? I'm just hastily throwing this idea together so it may not work exactly like this but what about:

Team A:
Civil Service (800), Paper (600), Printing Press (1600)

Team B:
Feudalism (700), Guilds (1000), Gunpowder (1200)

Team C:
Machinery (700), Calendar (350), Filler - Engineering? (1000), Banking (700)

Team D:
Compass (400), Optics (600), Astronomy (2000)


4 teams putting in roughly 3000 beakers worth of research will get us 2 techs away from rifles. Then we just need to research:

Replaceable Parts (1800), Rifling (2400)

Something like that sounds plausible, but do we really want to skip Education and Liberalism?

Even though it's only two techs, Replaceable Parts and Rifling are still an extra 4200 beakers that we can't research in parallel. Comparing that to the 3000 total beakers in each of the groups you've got, even with research rates increasing it's still going to take about twice as long to get to Rifling as Astronomy. Contrast that with my view that we should have most of the land army built before Astronomy.

The reason I'm in such a hurry is that I honestly think we'll be effectively racing against AMAZON and CDZ (and Quatronia to a degree). The team that finishes off their first target the quickest is the one that's going to be the best prepared for the next phase of the game.

If we pump out galleons as soon as we have Astronomy and fill them with an invasion force immediately, while other teams are dithering around waiting for Rifles, we'll have the Mavericks home island to ourselves, while AMAZON and CDZ are still at war getting harassed by Merlot.

Err, we're really racing Quatronia for Mavericks land, so us and Amazons will be more powerful to take out CDZ and Quatronia.

Err, we're really racing Quatronia for Mavericks land, so us and Amazons will be more powerful to take out CDZ and Quatronia.

Sorry, it was a bit confusing, but I'm really merging two races into one with that description.

Race 1: Between us and Quatronia for Mavericks land. Winning this race has more immediate consequences.
Race 2: Between the left and right hand sides of the map, to finish off their enemy first. So on the left there's ourselves and Quatronia against Mavericks, and on the right there's Amazon and CDZ against Merlot. Whichever of Merlot or Mavericks falls first gives the two corresponding teams an advantage. This advantage may only come into play once it's just ourselves and AMAZON.

But in a way, it's still all one race, to be the first team to take some new land. There's not a lot of land on this map, so it's going to be at a premium. The more we can get the better.