Fun with DeGaulle

Finished a game less a week ago in what was my first attempt with playing the French. A little strange since I've been playing Civ IV since it came out but anyway; the leader of choice of here was DeGaulle. Being charismatic and Industrious, I only knew from the onset I would be building some wonders. What I didn't realize is that Paris would host almost all of them.

Paris was a real nice capital. Six or seven floodplains, five hills. Given how nice the geography was, I figured I'd give Obsolete's wonderspam/SSE strategy a chance, with the exception of cottaging the floodplains. Paris began spamming the early wonders, for the record I had no marble or stone. I was able to build a nice ring around Paris consisting of six other cities. I used another city (don't remember which one) for all the artist wonders (parthenon, MoM, etc..) so as not to diffuse GA points in Paris.

Game Settings were big and small, normal speed, monarch. As the wonders and great people piled up, it didn't take long for all those settled great people under representation to build an enormous tech lead. But this is where the fun begins. Having never played as the French, I was looking forward to musketeers because I really like the janissary. As gunpowder and military tradition go hand in hand, I was building an army of cuirassiers and musketeers (the key here being a movement of two for each of these units). The versatility of this tandem makes warfare a breeze. Send in four (or more) evenly spaced pairs and it is possible to keep the AI from reinforcing the front. This made life easy for the 1 MP army (maces, cats & trebs, Xbows, Longbows, pikes) to move in take cities quickly, heal, and move onto the next. With extra musketeers and cuirassiers rapidly moving through my turf to the front (they are the only units I was making), it was usually feasible to find a pair to stash in a recently captured city while the SoD marched on. I also used spies to swtich enemy AI out of slavery so they couldn't whip additional defenders.

It is also worth noting that in this game my two best friends were shaka and monty (+15 or better relationship). I used these two to keep other AIs from teching too fast.

None of this presents any new revelations to civ or how to play the game. But I thought I would just share a little on what was a fun game and how efficient war was with the musketeer even though all they were was cuirassier protectors. No other civ provides this kind of tactic.

Sounds like some serious fun. Maybe I'll have to give DeGalle a try. In my game I'm playing right now I'm a knock down drag out war where Janissaries are the mainstay of the army.

That captial you got really does sound like the wonder center. What type of win did you get?

Having Monty as a big ally is quite an accomplishment. Seeing as he always comes in demanding all the gold and techs you have. I just got BTS not long ago, and haven't played a game with Shaka in it yet.

You definately got me curious to see how Degalle is.

I love chopping stonehenge Degaulle. The free monuments with charismatic and ind for chopping is pretty sweet combo and start.

The victory was a space race completed in 1908. I was also trying for a cultural victory. Paris was well over 60000 and I used all the artists generated from the 'artist wonder' city to bolster it and another city where I built the late artist wonders (hollywood, broadway, and rock and roll). Those cities were both in the mid 30k when I landed at Alpha Centauri. The U.N. victory and the apostolic palace victories both came up slightly short throughout the game (though I tried). Additionally, I finished at at about 40% for population and land.

A lot of this game had to do with the local geography. While I was resource short (not much trading during the game), the turf was mostly grassland and hordes of rivers. Rhiems was built at the center of three rivers and had 19 of its 20 tiles riverside. Incidentally, it had 16 mature watermills. Absurd, to say the least.

The other thing I did in this game was use Mad Scientists (perhaps credit should go to someone else) idea of building the globe theatre and the national park on a grasslands city. Calcutta (captured from Gandhi) had 20 grasslands (one corn and one cow). It was well farmed and workshopped until I had all infrastructure I wanted built and then switched to all farms. 85 food total; Calcutta's population skyrocketed to 41 before the game ended with room to grow. It boasted four temples and four cathedrals so it ran a lot of priests. I went back and reviewed previous National Park cities where the focus was on forest preserves. They were paltry in comparison but it isn't too often you'll find a site like Calcutta in this game.

Arguably, I could've launched a spaceship much earlier than I did but I couldn't resist the temptation to wage war with the cuirassier/musketeer combo. Their ability to get deep into enemy territory and quash reinforcements was a powerful component. Combined with using the spies to move civics away from slavery, poor Joao and Gandhi simply couldn't amass a resistance. For the record, I will be using that spy tactic again, it had not occured to me before.

"Having Monty as a big ally is quite an accomplishment. Seeing as he always comes in demanding all the gold and techs you have."

Getting in good with any of the ultra-aggressive leaders is quite easy: you simply go to war with a common enemy. (Either join them after they declare, or talk them into joining you.) From then on they'll view you as being on "their side" as long as you don't do anything to screw it up.

What difficulty was this?

monarch difficulty

In my original post, I said "No other civ can boast this type of tactic" when referring to the musketeers 2 movement points and how they can keep up with cuirassiers preventing reinforcements from reaching the war front. I'm going to modify that a little because Shaka can essentially do the same thing with a chariot or horse archer/Impi combo. Though I don't see this pairing as being as efficient, it accomplishes the same goal of putting problematic pairings deep into enemy territory.

French are great. The UU is solid, the UB is good enough for cultural victories or if you are running representation generally. The starting techs are awesome. Trait pairings are generally good. Some of my best games have been with the French (any of them).

futurehermit said:

French are great. The UU is solid, the UB is good enough for cultural victories or if you are running representation generally. The starting techs are awesome. Trait pairings are generally good. Some of my best games have been with the French (any of them).

Click to expand...

I agree for all the same reasons.
I've been playing more multiplayer and I've been struggling to think of a way to make it to Musketeers and Knights/Cuirassiers in time to be relevant, but haven't really been able to yet.

Perhaps we can do an updated Guilds + Gunpowder beeline with the French in mind?