How much does it matter that you play to your Civ's strengths?

Graethyenne

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
58
Hi there,

I have a ton of hours into this game ~1200, but I feel like I don't always "understand" it very well.

Recently fired up Assyria a few times (currently playing quick speed with the NQ mod on Empire) which on paper looks like an early warfare civ.

-UA triggers on conquering cities.
-UU relatively early and explicitly focuses on conquering cities.
-UB relatively early and gives bonus xp to units trained there (after you get a great writing installed).

But my starts have been either 1) isolated or 2) in dodgy terrain that makes it hard to get around. And by the time I got my siege towers to my nearest neighbor his cities they were defending in the high twenties and despite a full honor tree and great general, it ended in tears.

Do I just need to accept that a start is not going to work for early conquest, or must* Assyria do some classical conquest to be competitive?

*I realize must is too strong a word, but I guess I mean to say "how handicapped is not doing this?

Thanks :)
 
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547630

If you read this guide you'll see that very early war, like what you want to do here is best played with the Liberty policy tree. Honor is better for late medieval era warfare with Crossbows so at a point where the Siege Towers are almost obsolete (the bonus to allied units is still cool though and it doesn't pass on upgrade).

On the other hand I don't remember what the changes to Honor in the NQ Mod are and I can't check right now so I may be wrong :D

I think the Siege Towers are generally considered a mediocre unit but I think this only applies to Immortal and Deity where the timespan of its usefulness is very short. On Emperor you should be OK :)
 
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547630

If you read this guide you'll see that very early war, like what you want to do here is best played with the Liberty policy tree. Honor is better for late medieval era warfare with Crossbows so at a point where the Siege Towers are almost obsolete (the bonus to allied units is still cool though and it doesn't pass on upgrade).

On the other hand I don't remember what the changes to Honor in the NQ Mod are and I can't check right now so I may be wrong :D

I think the Siege Towers are generally considered a mediocre unit but I think this only applies to Immortal and Deity where the timespan of its usefulness is very short. On Emperor you should be OK :)

But doesnt liberty give yo ua free scientist so you can get faster to crosbowman?

olso the extra XP from military tradition can give youre combositbowman more promotions early on. pretty usefull and the early general can give you more strenght for taking cities.
 
But doesnt liberty give yo ua free scientist so you can get faster to crosbowman?

olso the extra XP from military tradition can give youre combositbowman more promotions early on. pretty usefull and the early general can give you more strenght for taking cities.

The important part with Liberty in the early game is actually the +1 production per city, the free settler and the discount on subsequent settlers, which makes you save a lot of hammers early. Those hammers are spent to make a bunch of archers and a couple melee units. Then you upgrade the archers to CBs on the turn you get to Construction which should be your beeline after the required luxury techs. If everything goes well you should be starting war around T60 and if your neighbours are close and poorly prepared you should be starting to take cities in the next 10 turns (even earlier in some cases). This means you actually start warring long before you could have finished any policy tree. The GS will come to late to matter for CB rush and you may chose to get a GE anyway to rush the National College. But this doesn't prevent you from going directly and faster to Machinery after starting the conquest in Classical Era ;)

Honor on the other hand really relies on all of its policies to become truly strong and especially the finisher which will be your way to finance your slaughters for the entire game but this requires that you wait until you finish the tree, around T80-90. That's shortly before you should get to Machinery around T100 so almost perfect timing. At this point your well promoted XBs and Swordsmen will clearly be the coolest guys around for at least 50 turns (even more if they get Range and Logistics which they will if you do not lose any units, which you shouldn't). But earlier than that your army will be pathetic because you'll be beelining Philosophy before Construction and Machinery so you'll probably be facing enemy CBs and swordsmen with archers and warriors. In any case you will never be able to take 15+ defence cities with archers and 25+ defence cities with CBs without losing a lot of them.

Anyway, if you want to incorporate Siege Towers in your plans of domination, Mathematics is probably your next station after Construction and they will probably help taking cities faster while not being one shot by city defence yet if you went for Liberty for an early rush. The good point is that stealing techs from city capture can potentially get you faster to Machinery and make you steamroll half the world with well promoted XBs before even entering the Renaissance. The bonus from Royal Libraries will only apply once you have a Great Work of Writing in your empire which won't be early anyway. At best it will help the newly trained units to (slightly) catch up to the veterans which will already have numerous promotions from conquering countless cities ^^

But once again, I don't remember the bonuses in the NQ Mod. Honor might be more flexible there :)
 
The important part with Liberty in the early game is actually the +1 production per city, the free settler and the discount on subsequent settlers, which makes you save a lot of hammers early. Those hammers are spent to make a bunch of archers and a couple melee units. Then you upgrade the archers to CBs on the turn you get to Construction which should be your beeline after the required luxury techs. If everything goes well you should be starting war around T60 and if your neighbours are close and poorly prepared you should be starting to take cities in the next 10 turns (even earlier in some cases). This means you actually start warring long before you could have finished any policy tree. The GS will come to late to matter for CB rush and you may chose to get a GE anyway to rush the National College. But this doesn't prevent you from going directly and faster to Machinery after starting the conquest in Classical Era ;)

Honor on the other hand really relies on all of its policies to become truly strong and especially the finisher which will be your way to finance your slaughters for the entire game but this requires that you wait until you finish the tree, around T80-90. That's shortly before you should get to Machinery around T100 so almost perfect timing. At this point your well promoted XBs and Swordsmen will clearly be the coolest guys around for at least 50 turns (even more if they get Range and Logistics which they will if you do not lose any units, which you shouldn't). But earlier than that your army will be pathetic because you'll be beelining Philosophy before Construction and Machinery so you'll probably be facing enemy CBs and swordsmen with archers and warriors. In any case you will never be able to take 15+ defence cities with archers and 25+ defence cities with CBs without losing a lot of them.

Anyway, if you want to incorporate Siege Towers in your plans of domination, Mathematics is probably your next station after Construction and they will probably help taking cities faster while not being one shot by city defence yet if you went for Liberty for an early rush. The good point is that stealing techs from city capture can potentially get you faster to Machinery and make you steamroll half the world with well promoted XBs before even entering the Renaissance. The bonus from Royal Libraries will only apply once you have a Great Work of Writing in your empire which won't be early anyway. At best it will help the newly trained units to (slightly) catch up to the veterans which will already have numerous promotions from conquering countless cities ^^

But once again, I don't remember the bonuses in the NQ Mod. Honor might be more flexible there :)

How much cities do you settle with liberty? I only settle ONE. And conquer the rest. Forward settle the current target and kill him.
 
How much cities do you settle with liberty? I only settle ONE. And conquer the rest. Forward settle the current target and kill him.

The usual thing is to settle 3 : your capital, the one from the free settler and one self made settler. This is to : 1. not hit the unit cap too early because that stupid thing hurts a lot 2. get more culture early on to get through Liberty faster 3. have more cities to produce more units at a time because you can't build units in puppets.

But as everything in this game, it depends on the map and your strategy. If you want to skip the CB rush part and start with XB rush with Liberty I like to settle 5-10 cities depending on space and available unique luxuries. I have to say I have had far more success using this strategy than the direct CB rush but sometimes you have no choice if you start next to Attila, Shaka, Oda and/or Montezuma you'll have to get relevant troops very early and not spend your hammers on useless stuff like extra settlers whose cities will be captured from the get go or buildings which will start to pay off only after your cities are sieged by a carpet of 20 units ^^
 
@Gray

How many units did you build? My guess is you don't build enough units. The city being at 20 strength should not matter, siege towers buff the attacks of all units when the move adjacent to the city. If you had the normal 3-4 composite bowmen, a couple melee and a couple siege towers a 20 strength city would fall in almost one turn after the siege tower hit last. Overbuild siege towers too, you always want to have one to get in range.
 
What difficulty are you playing? Assyria is my favorite civ because it's pretty easy to wipe your first two encounters with towers and archers and not even lag science due to the UA. Three siege towers and three archers shouldn't have difficulty against any city except the warmonger unit spammer civs. Optimize your attack by taking out units while outside of city bombardment range and move units into range at the same time. Pillage to heal, and get your first General over there as quickly as you can. Also steal a worker from them early to slow their progress. Don't neglect your NC and go XBs for your third conquest. Even then, the towers are great accompaniment to siege.

Not sure what difficulty you're playing, but this should be relatively easy at Emperor. I also prefer to open with Liberty rather than Honour or Tradition.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 
Emperor Difficulty :)

Thanks for all the great feedback! I suspect danaphanous hit it on the head - I was trying to do this with too few units. Although I was having bad luck with terrain (for some reason these starts had enemy cities surrounded in hills and forest so I it took sooo long to get into position).

I am also definitely guilty of building the GL (which isn't impossible on Emperor) but I guess maybe I'll try liberty and get to the three citiess with archers built ready to upgrade with less emphasis on the Siege Tower (and force myself to ignore the GL unless I get writing out of a good hut super early).

I also have been tending to farm barbs for culture courtesy of the Honor opener. How does libert do culture (beyond the extra city/monument and the +1 per city)?
 
Emperor Difficulty :)

Thanks for all the great feedback! I suspect danaphanous hit it on the head - I was trying to do this with too few units.

Well, if taking cities with as few units as possible is your thing, you've definitely picked the right civ!
 
I am also definitely guilty of building the GL (which isn't impossible on Emperor) but I guess maybe I'll try liberty and get to the three citiess with archers built ready to upgrade with less emphasis on the Siege Tower (and force myself to ignore the GL unless I get writing out of a good hut super early).

Oh yeah, if you're going early domination you can clearly not afford to build any ancient wonders : you need the hammers for troops.

I also have been tending to farm barbs for culture courtesy of the Honor opener. How does libert do culture (beyond the extra city/monument and the +1 per city)?

Farming barbs with Honor is good, you can get through the tree way faster that way, especially on a tundra/snow start where you know the AI won't expand and the camps will be able to respawn even if they get cleared because of an enemy scout or whatever.

Liberty usually gets lots of culture through the sheer number of cities, monuments and the help from Representation. You can usually finish the tree around T75 if you settle 6 or 7 cities. A big help also comes from pantheons : Religious Idols and Goddess of Festivals are god tier for Liberty in my opinion :D If you're playing a lower difficulty, are in a game where few AI focus religion or are playing a civ which does not rely on faith pantheons to get a religion God of the Open Sky, Oral Tradition and Sacred Path are also viable. Later when you get a religion, Pagodas and Mosques are very nice too.
If you settle only 3 or 4 you won't be much faster than tradition so you'll have to rely on cultured CSes (which should be doable because you're building a bunch of archers which will run around and do barb quests before getting back for the serious business) and later on you'll get culture from your puppets which do not increase the policy cost until they're annexed. The bonuses from pantheons and religion apply here too but not that much because you're not that wide in the beginning.
 
Hi there,

Do I just need to accept that a start is not going to work for early conquest, or must* Assyria do some classical conquest to be competitive?

Thanks :)

I look at it this way, Civ is a game about avoiding obstacles the game and your opponents throw at you, while maximizing advantages/opportunities to get a "foothold" that lets you leap ahead of your opponents along one of the victory paths. You also have to find ways to weaken the people ahead of you.

Civ bonuses present possible avenues to find those opportunities. But they never trump the map and the situation you find yourself in. Your situation can certainly make your civ bonuses obsolete, or at least not the best opportunity facing you in any given moment. Some civs have bonuses that are more "general purpose" and much less easily made obsolete by the random game circumstances. In my opinion, Assyria has a very strongly specific bonus. You can't know before starting any new game whether an early war will be a good idea. I find it interesting that people are giving you so much specific advice without asking for your savegame. It could be in your case early war isn't the best option on the table.

So in summary, I don't think you ever need to utilize a civ's bonus to win (except something like Venice, where it's a literal replacement for some other game mechanic). And sometimes forcing yourself to use it is the wrong thing to do. The nice thing about Assyria is that you always have the option to take cities to gain techs; even later in the game after your siege towers are obsolete.
 
Top Bottom