FridoDiamond
Chieftain
Everyone says that Austria is OP, the UA is strong, but I don't understand which victory I should go for with Austria and how, any advice?
Austria strategy
- Thread starter FridoDiamond
- Start date
Peacemongerer
Prince
Honestly, the ability sucks unless you've got a sizeable money advantage and can deal with unhappiness easy, which the AI usally does in the upper difficulty levels. Prince and below? Austria is pathetic. It's only OP when in the hands of AI with buffs. As a human, you should probably just play normally. You'd have to pay 1k to ally with a CS, then play some more just to puppet it, then more just to annex it; the bonuses you get from alliance usually outweigh what a normal city will give you anyway.
EDIT:
Didn't realize you got to bypass the courthouses entirely. If that's the case, then yeah this might be a bit OP... you'd spend way more than 1,500 trying to build the building a cs has in one of your cities yourself. Doing this late in the game when the CS has built a lot of stuff might actually be downright unstoppable.
EDIT:
Didn't realize you got to bypass the courthouses entirely. If that's the case, then yeah this might be a bit OP... you'd spend way more than 1,500 trying to build the building a cs has in one of your cities yourself. Doing this late in the game when the CS has built a lot of stuff might actually be downright unstoppable.
You can ally yourself to the CS, pay for the marriage, and annex the city all in one turn. I think the cost varies depending on game speed, but if memory serves it was 1500 on the marathon game I played as Austria.
It's immensely powerful, as you not only get the new city, you get it without any unrest, without having to build a courthouse, without losing any buildings, and you even get whatever units the CS had built. Plus CS are generally in pretty good locations with 2-4 resources available (not to mention getting your own permanent source of porcelain/jewelry). And yes, while you have to deal with unhappiness from city spread/population, you do not have to deal with the other unhappiness factors which come with conquering a city.\
EDIT: Oh, as far as OP's question, it depends. It's actually not helpful for a diplomatic victory as the former city states are treated as regular cities within your empire (they lose their UN votes), and annexing them tends to piss off the other AI civs. But you can use the UA to compliment any other victory strategy you feel like pursuing as most of those cities are going to come pretty well developed by the time you can afford to buy them.
Yzman
Deity
I was under the impression that since the city state becomes part of their empire, this wouldn't help in a diplomatic victory, in fact it may make it impossible by eliminating city states that can vote for you.
Valbuena
Warlord
This is true.
First of all, it's only 500
on standart speed to marry a city state and it works as soon as you are allied with them.
500 is the cost of a settler and with a marriage you get a city with almost all the buildings which are available at that point in time and all their units!
In the early game, you most likely get a worker, 2 archers and a spearmen or something similar.
What does that mean? You want to become allied with a city state close to you as soon as possible.
How? Killing barb camps is pretty much the only quest you can fulfill early on. Easiest way to do that is picking the honor policy tree and it does come with additional benefits:
1) You will have a lot of units from your marriage and you can use them as garrisons in your cities (= +1
and +2
per city)
2) In later marriages, some troops of CSs will be outdated and you have to upgrade them (= much cheaper with -33% upgrade costs)
3) Austria always has to battle unhappiness because city states generally have a large population (= walls, castles grant +1 each)
Also pick beliefs which give you a happiness boost. You will need it!
I'd like to go right side of commerce next and then you can decide. Either go for a science victory or for domination.
Science can work well because you have a lot of big cities. Domination will be easy because you have a shedload of units from your marriages.
Seriously, when played to its strengths, Austria is easily the best civ in the game
on standart speed to marry a city state and it works as soon as you are allied with them.500
is the cost of a settler and with a marriage you get a city with almost all the buildings which are available at that point in time and all their units!In the early game, you most likely get a worker, 2 archers and a spearmen or something similar.
What does that mean? You want to become allied with a city state close to you as soon as possible.
How? Killing barb camps is pretty much the only quest you can fulfill early on. Easiest way to do that is picking the honor policy tree and it does come with additional benefits:
1) You will have a lot of units from your marriage and you can use them as garrisons in your cities (= +1
and +2 per city)2) In later marriages, some troops of CSs will be outdated and you have to upgrade them (= much cheaper with -33% upgrade costs)
3) Austria always has to battle unhappiness because city states generally have a large population (= walls, castles grant +1
each)Also pick beliefs which give you a happiness boost. You will need it!
I'd like to go right side of commerce next and then you can decide. Either go for a science victory or for domination.
Science can work well because you have a lot of big cities. Domination will be easy because you have a shedload of units from your marriages.
Seriously, when played to its strengths, Austria is easily the best civ in the game
Memoryjar
Emperor
Up this thread cause my current game (Immortal).
I neglected Austria till this game where I randomized it.
I'm really impress.
In a standard game, all is good.
UU is really good in last third game with artillery and doesn't really outmoded (I always upgrade my mounted units for +1 sight, so with hussard it's a free upgrade).
UB is a windmill for cities and come exactly before factories, I like this.
UA is useful. With quest, allies cities are easy. When I have happiness for a new city, I can grab one CS with quite full buildings or a free army with military CS. Now I can use this lot of happiness in late game for something.
With Commerce and order, SV is fast, Domination easy.
Maybe will change my India or Sweden love.
I neglected Austria till this game where I randomized it.
I'm really impress.
In a standard game, all is good.
UU is really good in last third game with artillery and doesn't really outmoded (I always upgrade my mounted units for +1 sight, so with hussard it's a free upgrade).
UB is a windmill for cities and come exactly before factories, I like this.
UA is useful. With quest, allies cities are easy. When I have happiness for a new city, I can grab one CS with quite full buildings or a free army with military CS. Now I can use this lot of happiness in late game for something.
With Commerce and order, SV is fast, Domination easy.
Maybe will change my India or Sweden love.
They are strong - but the hardest part of Austria is finding a victory condition to fit. I like playing a civ where I basically know from the start what Im going to achieve and I cant do that with Austria.
What I would say is - probably not diplomatic. You might take out enough City States to make it almost impossible.
Science is an ok option - you take city states with Unis/Observatories and annex them. Theyre usually pretty high on population aswell. Problem is, if you just puppet them you get a massive science penalty - and if you annex them you're getting a science pen from having more cities anyway, and you have to deal with more unhappiness which can stifle your growth as well.
Culture - I think this is the best Austrian method of victory. Going wide via city state marriages means you get a lot of buildings with slots for great works/museums. It might be a good strategy to build your national wonders like the Hermitage BEFORE annexing or else it would become hard work finishing them. In addition - your Coffee house means if you have some big core cities that can afford specialists you should spit out great persons at quite a rate. If you have taken tradition (which you should) and have some faith then you should be able to buy some great engineers to build things like Broadway as well to help win.
Id like that play style as well because I think it fits historically. Vienna, and Austria have been great cultural places for their size, creating many artistic and musical geniuses such as Mozart, Strauss etc. Austria is a great cultural city, so you can roleplay it this way.
In fact...I might just give this a go now!
Failing that - domination is possible, because you buy the CS's army aswell, and you get a decent UU in the Hussar.
What I would say is - probably not diplomatic. You might take out enough City States to make it almost impossible.
Science is an ok option - you take city states with Unis/Observatories and annex them. Theyre usually pretty high on population aswell. Problem is, if you just puppet them you get a massive science penalty - and if you annex them you're getting a science pen from having more cities anyway, and you have to deal with more unhappiness which can stifle your growth as well.
Culture - I think this is the best Austrian method of victory. Going wide via city state marriages means you get a lot of buildings with slots for great works/museums. It might be a good strategy to build your national wonders like the Hermitage BEFORE annexing or else it would become hard work finishing them. In addition - your Coffee house means if you have some big core cities that can afford specialists you should spit out great persons at quite a rate. If you have taken tradition (which you should) and have some faith then you should be able to buy some great engineers to build things like Broadway as well to help win.
Id like that play style as well because I think it fits historically. Vienna, and Austria have been great cultural places for their size, creating many artistic and musical geniuses such as Mozart, Strauss etc. Austria is a great cultural city, so you can roleplay it this way.
In fact...I might just give this a go now!
Failing that - domination is possible, because you buy the CS's army aswell, and you get a decent UU in the Hussar.
direblade99
Warlord
Late game domination can be good for Austria (on higher difficulties), play a standard four cities science game but save up a bunch of gold, then buy several militaristic city states at once, they tend to have units on every tile and you can carpet of doom AI's. It also helps that the cities themselves tend to be decent and you can use them for further unit production/science output.
The UB is good for generating more great scientists and the extra production for everything (and for hill cities) helps when making units or just for going science.
The UU in my opinion is one of the better ones in the game and ties in with late game artillery/cavalry domination with hussars providing line of sight on cities and killing units.
The UB is good for generating more great scientists and the extra production for everything (and for hill cities) helps when making units or just for going science.
The UU in my opinion is one of the better ones in the game and ties in with late game artillery/cavalry domination with hussars providing line of sight on cities and killing units.
Play as any other civ, puppet\annex only CS that have good strategic spot or lot of resources\luxuries.
For victory, you can go anything except diplo (even that isn't too bad, but Austria is best for domination in my opinion, with science\culture vic if you have good start to take advantage of their UB)
UA is not hard to work, if you have happiness\gpt problem, you can always puppet it first, then annex it later.
as for CS choices, you don't need that CS that's on the other side of the map, pick ones that are closer to you... the only "far away CS" that I would pick is if you want to sneak attack AI and use it for quick reinforcement.
For victory, you can go anything except diplo (even that isn't too bad, but Austria is best for domination in my opinion, with science\culture vic if you have good start to take advantage of their UB)
UA is not hard to work, if you have happiness\gpt problem, you can always puppet it first, then annex it later.
as for CS choices, you don't need that CS that's on the other side of the map, pick ones that are closer to you... the only "far away CS" that I would pick is if you want to sneak attack AI and use it for quick reinforcement.
