Caravan Dump strategy

Apologies if this has been detailed before, but I'm relatively new to the game and haven't seen this strategy anywhere on the forums yet.

I've recently got into Civ Rev on the 360 after it was given away to Gold users, and after playing quite a few MP games, a friend of mine has come up with quite a devious strategy.

He essentially stockpiles caravans and squirrels them away until the late-game, forming them into trains and loading them onto carriers, protected by Battleship fleets. By the modern age, if you pick a good city (far away and over water) you can earn about 550 gold per train - raised to 800 with the caravan bonuses of Egypt and the Arabs, meaning with just 25 trains (75 caravans) you can go from 0 to the 20k requirement for an economic victory in a single turn.

As most players build cities on the coast, and you can drop a caravan into a city from a ship, regardless of if you are at war or not with the player, it can't be prevented unless they sink the ship that turn. If you do the trick of pausing production of a wonder, then transferring that to the World Bank too, you can achieve all economic milestones and build the bank in a single turn.

Now of course there's much easier and reliable ways to get an economic victory, but the genius behind this strategy is that it's an amazing way to come back into the game after flying under the radar, and for very little in the way of resources (you don't even really need the battleships if people aren't expecting it) As you have a small empire and are miles away from any win conditions, other players will tend to consider you out the game and focus on each other and ignore you in favour of direct threats.

There's no real way of pulling a cultural, domination or technological victory out of the bag when lagging far behind your opponents in GPs, military might or tech respectively, so this is a fantastic way of coming back from behind.

Has anyone else tried this? Does it work for you? I see caravans are considered largely pointless by the community, so I imagine this would be quite a surprise to pull off against some.

Extrobollar said:

He essentially stockpiles caravans and squirrels them away until the late-game, forming them into trains and loading them onto carriers, protected by Battleship fleets. By the modern age, if you pick a good city (far away and over water) you can earn about 550 gold per train - raised to 800 with the caravan bonuses of Egypt and the Arabs, meaning with just 25 trains (75 caravans) you can go from 0 to the 20k requirement for an economic victory in a single turn.

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1) It is generally good to get gold when you can get it. So at some point mid game I might get attacked by another civ (or they may approach a victory condition). I'd rather have 10,000 in gold to defend myself than no gold and a pile of caravans.
I'd expect to get more than 800g If I waited to the modern era. Also if you trade with the AI you can keep your strategy secret and sell the AI tech to get even more gold back.

2) when you get a couple of caravans to them you might as well rush some units - they probably don't have the reserves to defend against maybe 5000g of units even if their civ is bigger than yours. Just make sure you have the key offensive tech like steam power or steel etc.

3) when forming your caravans remember to merge the caravan with your most isolated city on top (ideally a little island by the pole or something) then you get more gold.

4) GB the MIC and rush it in a city at the same time (easy with all your gold) then you won't need to hammer out the WB and you can save those hammers for caravans.

Often games go too fast to even start to use this. I'd use some variant of it every now and then in a tournament, but I don't think anyone else does. I'd always end up going for a domination win though.

In regards to selling tech to the AI, he actually does this to recoup the cash they receive if he's using caravans from the start. Ideally he'll pick one that's at war with a human to bolster them and sell them his own tech - essentially splitting the research paths with them.

I understand this is not optimal play, but it's mainly a good way to come back from behind in secret. if the other players have out expanded, out cultured and out tech-ed you, then there's not many ways to get back into the game. You can't hit 20 culture milestones in a turn, and if you can take every capital in a turn then you were likely winning anyway. The spacecraft takes a lot of turns to arrive, and again, if you're in a position to launch first then you're likely way ahead of everyone else.

If you find rather than trying to absorb your cities into your empire, you get left alone while the big dogs duke it out, it's a strategy you can peruse in secret unmolested. If you tried an economic victory conventionally in a weak position, you would be taken out before you hit the last milestone as everyone would be given plenty of notice.

This is the only win condition you can reliably hit via stealth, and that's mainly what It's intended for.

Extrobollar said:

This is the only win condition you can reliably hit via stealth, and that's mainly what It's intended for.

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Sounds like it could be fun.

But does he actually get to use it much? It seems like most people could get a lot of units to attack you before that point if they had out expanded you and out teched you. I struggle to get to use my version of it, and mine come into play much earlier.

I suppose it generally depends on your local metagame. We normally play 3-4 human players out of a pool of 5 of us, so not against random players. I don't really know how or if this would work in that environment.

In our group though, he's usually lagging behind most of the game and is saved from being taken over by one player as the other dominant player will usually take that as an opportunity to attack the attacker, so generally he's left alone while the front runners expand their energies on each other.

He developed this as his only real way of coming from behind. He'd never hit the tech or domination milestones as a result of being so far behind, and if he came close to culture or economic wins, both larger empires would call a truce to dismember him, so this is really the only viable way to do it.

It's not a strategy for everyone and it isn't a strategy for most situations, but if you do find yourself in that spot where you're being ignored because you're at the point where conventional wisdom says you can't possibly win the game anymore (which can happen halfway into a game) and conquering you is too much trouble/would leave your other borders open to attack, then this is a way to turn the tables.

Ignore science, ignore culture, ignore troops, ignore money. None of those are going to win you the game anymore and you aren't really in danger of being invaded. Put everything into increasing production and spend the next 20 turns building your caravan fleet and getting a wonder on pause to drop the bank in a turn.

Again, this isn't a strategy to begin with, but one to switch to if in a non-military losing situation.