I Simply Cannot Grow a Wide Empire

[Miravlix]

"gift" the workers to a nearby barbarian and take them back when you need them.

 

[mabalogna]

What do you guys think of building the Pyramids before you REX?
An additional +25% to worker speed plus two free workers is very powerful. Just make sure to get a quick worker before you start building it (or it'll take forever).

I've tried it with Maya plus Messenger of the Gods for extra science per trade route and my workers built roads in two turns and all other improvements in 4 turns max. Early science was pretty amazing because each city immediately generated +4.

I'd only recommend it when your capital has good production in early game though. Works best with a marble start, of course.

If you're going REX you're ignoring all wonders and National Wonders until the Medieval Era. You just can't do both. I say Medieval because normally by that time i've either exhausted all my happiness, or my science output will crumble if i dont start growing my core cities up. This is also why going liberty is best for REX, since you get a policy that does what the pyramids do but with 1 less worker.

Now. If you're going to go semi-wide with a Tradition start then going to Masonry and going pyramids with the boost to wonder growth can net you a nice bonus for a Classical Era expansion push, but as was pointed out those early extra workers can be an economic hinderance if they pop too early.

 

[Infiltrator]

America is never best for ANY situation. Literally, in every possible scenario I can think of at least 3-4 civs that are flat out better. For wide empires, someone who can make a lot of money, like Arabia.

 

[chazzycat]

America is never best for ANY situation. Literally, in every possible scenario I can think of at least 3-4 civs that are flat out better. For wide empires, someone who can make a lot of money, like Arabia.

extra sight is hugely useful - park a scout on a well-positioned hill and you will see the rushes coming from far away. This allows you to keep less troops for defense, a big benefit in the early game when you're trying to REX.

cheaper tile purchases is awesome. This enables you to go for the best long-term city sites, instead of settling for cities with good tiles in the first 2 rings. you can easily buy tiles in the 3rd ring - this lends a lot of flexibility to your expansion plan.

America's benefits are harder to define/quantify but you can definitely get a very strong REX going with them.

not sure why arabs are best for wide empires, if you go wide you tend to get DOWd a lot. Arabs need trading partners. Also, wide empires already have the advantage in generating GPT over tall empires, so thats really not that big of a concern. Early defense and empire building is more important, and America is better at that.

 

[Barghaest]

extra sight is hugely useful - park a scout on a well-positioned hill and you will see the rushes coming from far away. This allows you to keep less troops for defense, a big benefit in the early game when you're trying to REX.

cheaper tile purchases is awesome. This enables you to go for the best long-term city sites, instead of settling for cities with good tiles in the first 2 rings. you can easily buy tiles in the 3rd ring - this lends a lot of flexibility to your expansion plan.

America's benefits are harder to define/quantify but you can definitely get a very strong REX going with them.

not sure why arabs are best for wide empires, if you go wide you tend to get DOWd a lot. Arabs need trading partners. Also, wide empires already have the advantage in generating GPT over tall empires, so thats really not that big of a concern. Early defense and empire building is more important, and America is better at that.

^^ This.

I think Russia is better suited to wide-empires than Arabia. Double of important strategic resources and improved gold income.

And I do find America very useful.

 

[Miravlix]

Arab does not need trading partners, their strength is the extra gold they can make without trading.

Bismark, Inca and others that get extra gold is strong candidates for wide empires, but Arab is the easiest to do it with.

Gold is the main currency of wide empires, since you can buy everything else with gold.

 

[Colonel Travis]

Arab does not need trading partners, their strength is the extra gold they can make without trading.

Exactly. The Arabian payoffs take a while but they're nice. +1 Gold from each trade route - after a long time of wideness that really adds up. The double oil production is huge, and if you're wide that means more chances to get it.

 

[chazzycat]

huh? the massive +1 gold from trading routes you mean? It's the lux sales from the bazaar that really powers the Arabs economy.

 

[mabalogna]

America is a great expansionist warmonger. Don't be so quick to stick your nose up at the reduced tile purchase cost just because you don't understand its utility. I buy a lot of tiles, its so much faster then waiting for culture borders to pop and is cheaper then supporting culture buildings for hundreds of turns just so they spread faster. Combine that ability with the Angkor Wat and you don't even need culture to expand, just gold.

The increased sight bonus is a free upgrade to all units for the entire game - this is an upgrade that no other civ can even unlock. It gives america a scouting bonus early on and a spotting bonus all game long. This gives a military advantage for range attacks since bombers and artillery can't attack without sight - so you don't have to position your units as close to cities/artillery in order to attack them.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Would 14 cities by turn 80 or so be considered REX? If so taking advantage of religion as either Mayans(Pyramids) or Ethiopia(Steeles) you can spam cities unto infinity. My REX games often have me form my religion as Messenger of the Gods + Ceremonial Burial + Pagodas combined with Meritocracy gives me +2 Global Happiness and +2 Local Happiness, so I lose 1 happiness for a Size 1-2 city. Have enough Steeles/Pyramids and you will start churning out Pagodas almost instantly. On Large maps I lose .6 Happiness per new city and on Huge maps I gain .1 Happiness per city

My tech path usually goes Pottery->Construction->

And my capital's build order is Scout, Monument, Archer, Settler, Settler, Settler, Settler... until I get DoWed. I then rush buy Composite bowmen to hold off the invading force and resume spamming settlers shortly after.

 

[Slvynn]

Would 14 cities by turn 80 or so be considered REX? If so taking advantage of religion as either Mayans(Pyramids) or Ethiopia(Steeles) you can spam cities unto infinity. My REX games often have me form my religion as Messenger of the Gods + Ceremonial Burial + Pagodas combined with Meritocracy gives me +2 Global Happiness and +2 Local Happiness, so I lose 1 happiness for a Size 1-2 city. Have enough Steeles/Pyramids and you will start churning out Pagodas almost instantly. On Large maps I lose .6 Happiness per new city and on Huge maps I gain .1 Happiness per city

My tech path usually goes Pottery->Construction->

And my capital's build order is Scout, Monument, Archer, Settler, Settler, Settler, Settler... until I get DoWed. I then rush buy Composite bowmen to hold off the invading force and resume spamming settlers shortly after.

Yes, this is defenitely REX + ICS strategy, and it works perfectly with Mayans and Ethiopia, tho Ethiopia neglect its own UA this way, the outcome of this way of development could be way bigger than if they'll turtle

 

[RealHuhn]

The question is, does going extremely wide really pay off in a science game? In the sense of, I want to win science as fast as possible.

Developing cities, especially those ones you settle around turn 100 (on standard) don't contribute a lot to the science and your core cities have to stay smaller than usual.

Of course, with a wide empire you can get more science and gold per turn. For example, in my last game as Polynesia (amazing REX civ because they can settle on all continents immediately, grab all the luxuries and have more culture), I had a whopping 1500 per turn on turn 240 (with Commerce + Order, no Rationalism).

A tech bulb with a great scientist almost gave me 2 late game techs. But I was much slower in the beginning. It took me a long time to get universities up and running. Cities were mostly too small to run specialists until later.

I won science VC on turn 283 (which is my 2nd best so far, so not bad for me).

But on the other hand, with Monty, I only built the Temple of Artemis, picked every growth belief and went Tradition with 4 cities. Clicking end turn was the biggest challenge and I won on turn 266 without even trying.

Hard to tell. I think going wide needs a very careful balance between religion, gold, growth, production, culture, specialists and military.
If you don't find the right balance, your early game will be too slow compared to a Tradition start.

 

[Colonel Travis]

huh? the massive +1 gold from trading routes you mean? It's the lux sales from the bazaar that really powers the Arabs economy.

Right, but this post was about going wide, and the comment I was responding to was about when you don't need trading partners. Getting free gold for just having a network of cities is nice, and the wider you go the more gold you get. Because gold can be - not always is - but can be harder to come by in G&K, every coin counts. Sure, the bazaar is great for selling luxuries. But are you going to get more or fewer buyers when the fighting breaks out? The wider you get, the more you're exposed to Civs who want to kill you, not buy things from you. And the more Civs that are wiped off the planet, the fewer potential buyers you have. So over the course of the game, the bazaar loses its selling potency - you're left with all the gold bonuses you get from a bazaar for doing nothing but having one, which is a strength that doesn't come from trading, which is also why I agreed with Miravlix's comment.

 

[Alrin Kharr]

Would 14 cities by turn 80 or so be considered REX? If so taking advantage of religion as either Mayans(Pyramids) or Ethiopia(Steeles) you can spam cities unto infinity. My REX games often have me form my religion as Messenger of the Gods + Ceremonial Burial + Pagodas combined with Meritocracy gives me +2 Global Happiness and +2 Local Happiness, so I lose 1 happiness for a Size 1-2 city. Have enough Steeles/Pyramids and you will start churning out Pagodas almost instantly. On Large maps I lose .6 Happiness per new city and on Huge maps I gain .1 Happiness per city

My tech path usually goes Pottery->Construction->

And my capital's build order is Scout, Monument, Archer, Settler, Settler, Settler, Settler... until I get DoWed. I then rush buy Composite bowmen to hold off the invading force and resume spamming settlers shortly after.

14 cities by turn 80 is pretty impressive to me; I've had a hard time pulling off this kind of strategy myself. Do you just have all your cities pumping out Settlers for those first turns, or would you go for Monuments/Shrines first?

 

[Adjuvant]

What about the culture hit from unlimited cities...

 

[S.K. Ren]

14 cities by turn 80 is pretty impressive to me; I've had a hard time pulling off this kind of strategy myself. Do you just have all your cities pumping out Settlers for those first turns, or would you go for Monuments/Shrines first?

Like I said my build order for my capital is: Scout->Monument->Pyramid(omitted, oops)-> Atlatlist-> Settler-> Settler-> Settler-> Settler-> Settler-> etc.

I keep building settlers till I'm DoW'd on by someone. That 14 would have been a lot higher had I had more hills near my capital and Hiawatha hadn't gotten uppity.

As for my other cities they build: Pyramid->Monument->Colosseum->Library-> Market-> Temple. Pyramid always goes first as Mayans.

In turn, at least on Emperor, I usually found the 1st or 2nd religion with the Messenger of the Gods pantheon and pick up Ceremonial Burial and Pagodas. The more cities I build the faster I can build Pagodas which makes my faith per turn that much higher. Eventually It gets to the point of being able to buy a new Pagoda every 3-4 turns and I build settlers every 4-5 turns so all I have to do is preemptively build a road to the next location and its all set to go. If I need troops I just sell luxes and strategics and rushbuy Composite Archers. As for culture... yeah it gets shot.

My policy path typically follows Liberty-> Right Side of Commerce->Order

Also build Machhu Pichu no matter the cost. Use a GE and rush build it somewhere. You'll thank me later

 

[GenjiKhan]

One option of Civilization who is impressive well for Wide Empire is Carthage . Free harbors in each city is much more powerful than it seems to be . One of the struggles of settling overseas is the time that it takes to connect these new cities to Capital and it isn't uncommon that this expansion may break your economy,because of the time it takes to rise a harbor(that is already affected by the low production of coastal cities) . But with Carthage,you get two earlier advantages(money and production) over other Civs .

Right, but this post was about going wide, and the comment I was responding to was about when you don't need trading partners. Getting free gold for just having a network of cities is nice, and the wider you go the more gold you get. Because gold can be - not always is - but can be harder to come by in G&K, every coin counts. Sure, the bazaar is great for selling luxuries. But are you going to get more or fewer buyers when the fighting breaks out? The wider you get, the more you're exposed to Civs who want to kill you, not buy things from you. And the more Civs that are wiped off the planet, the fewer potential buyers you have. So over the course of the game, the bazaar loses its selling potency - you're left with all the gold bonuses you get from a bazaar for doing nothing but having one, which is a strength that doesn't come from trading, which is also why I agreed with Miravlix's comment.

It only loses its selling potency if you are going to become warmonger or if civilizations are getting wiped in the map . Arabia is one of the three only Civilizations who is directly penalized if the number of players is reduced or if they become warmongers(the other ones are Sweden and Netherlands) . The strenght of Arabia's UA is garbage,if compared with the strenght of Bazaar and I can't understand how someone prefer the first one over the second .

 

[Colonel Travis]

It only loses its selling potency if you are going to become warmonger or if civilizations are getting wiped in the map .

I said that.

The strenght of Arabia's UA is garbage,if compared with the strenght of Bazaar and I can't understand how someone prefer the first one over the second.

Never said I preferred it. Is it still garbage if you don't compare it? I like free gold for doing something that I'd otherwise be doing with a lot of other Civs, when I'm getting zero gold for it - just as I like the science bonus for trading routes with the Messenger of the Gods pantheon. For the third time, all I'm doing is agreeing with what Miravlix said: Arabia doesn't need trading partners. That's it. It doesn't mean you shouldn't use them, can't use them, wouldn't be better off without using them, etc.

 

[Slvynn]

I agree on Arabia point - thats it could do well solo, and actually UA is enough powerfull.... Obcourse Bazzar is cashmaker even more, but for that you need to have willing trade partners (unaviable in low-player games, when you kill few AI and is warmonger, when you expand too fast and in mp games), while UA provide tons of xtra gold - more your empire, more outcome of it.

Example - Early game : Lets say you need 70 gold to upgrade unit...you get dowed by powerfull military rival , current income is +2 gold and you have 5 cities. you have 0 gold cause you just upgraded that archer as priority.
It will take 35 turns for normal civ to upgrade unit, while Arabia will need just 10.

 

[rsadiwala95]

What about the culture hit from unlimited cities...

who needs culture when going wide...??

Wide Empires= Impossible Cultural Victory (Exp when playing France)....


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My 3rd Game as Practice for REXing......Arabia (this is the first time where All UA, UU, and UB has helped me win) (Was nuked by bablylon in this 1 no screens....result...immediate buying of 5 nuke missiles..... Babylons army went nuts...power of money, power of arabia)
Also i had 32 Oil (oil = x2 for Arabia ) this was despite me building (Lol, i mean Buying) 8 bombers....

Arabia, Prince, Continents....
Religion surely helped me a lot for happiness, along with the Arabian UB...i had like 14 silver, 6 spices, 4 sugar and loads more....

Made the Machu Pichu i know its a kind of cheating....
in industrial age when faith became useless, i started accumulating faith....bought 5 Immediate GS with the faith, in Modern era (use of: Rationalism SP), all went to Tech Boost, and Combined with Tech Stealing from Babylon, i became Scientifically As strong as the Best Sci AI in The Game, the BablyLon.....
And 95% of my army was Made of Gold

Here is the Screen shots of my Empire.....

Lol....This was The Match Winning Move (screenshot taken quite Late about 80 turns later... ).......,




i already had silver, but the idea of this city + mint and the unique lux sugar, I Had to Do This...REsult a fourth of the gold comes from this city....



Turn 167...



Turn 191...a better view


I was at war with Babylon 80% of the time After Camels came in...and camels were the reason i survived the first war...i predicated the war by use of spies..tht time the corner CS was thier Ally, i immediately bought them out...and what i saw was their army trying to sneak though the CS, Behind my Lines... (Again Power of Gold, Power of Arabs)
Babylon eventually Captured Copenhagen of Danes in a war during peace time, they did so to open up more border for them to attack, and i recaptured it, and did NOT liberate.....

Commerce social Policy was a life saver.....my happiness which had become -7, got boosted to +11 with the +2 Happiness per Lux....

I Think with all Your Tips i have at-least learned to make a decent wide empire...now i am going to try this using another Civ....Maybe India., my home Civ....so tht i can be sure that it was not arabia the reason which helped me REx in This 1.....


I also Learned That Babylonian Walls Rock.....