ALC Game 16 Pre-Game Thread: Playing as Cyrus

food for thought:

i played a game with cyrus the other day and stumbled upon immortals upgraded with the blitz promotion.

one word: U-B-E-R
 
You want the Great Wall.

The reason why Bureaucracy is so great is that the production bonus is multiplicative instead of additive. It's the only multiplicative bonus in Civ IV, right?

Wrong.

The Great Wall is a multiplicative bonus when taken with Imperial.

If you get 1 XP from a combat with Imperial, you get 2 great general points.
If you get 1 XP from a combat within your borders with Imperial AND Great Wall, you get 4 Great General points instead of the 3 that you would get if it were an additive bonus like everything else.

Use World Builder to check for yourself and compare the number of XP gained by the unit vs. the Great General points gained. With Imperial and Great Wall, you get 4 times the number of points that you would get without either.

The Great Wal is a good thing.
 
Oops. I apologize for putting out bad information, thanks for correcting me and hopefully others won't make the same mistake. :)
 
I'm not as in love with the Imperialistic trait; I think it's as weak as Protective, at least in comparison to the other traits. The cheap Settlers would be more of an advantage if the food contributing to their builds was doubled along with the hammers

One word: :whipped:
 
The great wall is the 'Shizz' to use it properly I just declare and wait a few turns for the inevitable AI pillagers or SoD to enter you're territory then wipe them out. You'll have to contend with it sooner or later and it's better to do it on your own terms.

Plus the great wall looks cool to, especially if your territory is big enough.
 
Regarding the Great Wall: let the map decide if you should build it or not.

Although I agree that it's a lot of hammers that could be used for a pile of immortals, it is outright *insane* if the conditions are right.

Example: if you have two neighbors on one side of you, and a psycho or very war-like personality on another (Monty, Izzy, Catherine, Brennus, etc.), run your first war against the civ you want to kill first, but let the unit-builder build. Then, while resting/building to take out the second civ, declare war against the psycho but don't advance against him/her. Let them throw troops into your territory and smash them as they arrive.

The number of GG points is nothing short of insane, particularly if you can get Monty to come at you with lots of unpromoted or poorly promoted archers and axemen (and even swordsmen). Sign a peace treaty, go smash the second civ, then when it's time to kill the warmonger, declare war and let him come at you for 10 turns or so.

You will have no need at all to upgrade immortals if you can produce units with 3 promotions without even using civics for xp. With the great wall and the right neighbor, Cyrus can crank out highly promoted units horrifically soon. Why spend tons of gold to upgrade immortals to cavalry when you can just make cavalry (or riflemen, or grenadiers, or whatever) for the low-low cost of the hammers you were going to spend to build the unit, anyway?

Like I said - it depends on the neighbor(s), but Cryus + Great Wall can be a sick, sick combo for mid-late game warfare.
 
Don't sell the the apothecary short. Happiness will be no longer a problem then thanks to HR. The 2 bonus Health means 2 more citizens with the proper MPs to make them work.


PS- please don't waste a GG by making them a warlord when you're Char. Only do it later if you need for West Point, but you'll probably have the game in hand by then thanks to the instructors you settled earlier.
 
remember you need wheel to build chariots. I would tech:

AH, wheel, pottery, mining, BW, writing

forget the early wonders. early build either scout worker or worker scout then warrior warrior settler.

as soon as you get horses up and running have one city produce nothing but immortals and the other produce your 3rd and 4th settlers. hopefully you'll have BW in the bag by the time the 4th settler is up and running to get some copper.

I'd worker steal if you could, then beat the snot out of that person with a stack of immortals. if you are quick enough you can catch them at 20% culture and win over archers easily with 5-8 immortals

good times, this will be a fun one to watch

NaZ
 
Let's Pray to the RNG Gods that The Mali are not a close Next Door Neighbour with their Resourceless UU Archer the Skirmisher.

Immortal

4 Str + 50% vs Archers = 6 Str (also Have withdrawal chance)

Skirmisher

4 Str + 50% Natural City Defense +25% Fortify = 7Str

and that doesn't include Promotions, Their Extra First Strikes (yes they get an extra first strike compared to a Normal Archer) and Cultural Defense. Probably need 3 Immortals for every Skirmisher defender.

It'd probably be a nightmare if we had Alex, Shaka and Mansa as neighbours in this game lol!
 
I wouldn't worry about the money to upgrade immortals to horse archers to knights. IMHO uprading to horse archers is a bad move and that money could be used otherwise.

You will be swimming in GG's in this game I guess. Instructors are a better use since charismatic means faster promotions. Get 1 superhealer and the rest settled as instructor. It worked like a charm with me and Churchill. CG3 D1 redcoats of the bat. I laughed hard when I saw a complete stack of doom run into my city to get obliterated.
 
Thanks again for the great ALC series which are very entertaining and immensely instructive. :goodjob:
The only reason the Oracle killed him is because of the barbs, if he an handle the Barbs then the Oracle will be quite the advantage especially a COL SS, for those early Courthouse after your first war where you want to cut ddown that maintenance cost.
I also like Caste System for warring because you can assign artists to captured cities which will then border-pop two turns after coming out of revolt (provided they have the pop). This is much faster then the free Monuments from Stonhenge and even allows you to claim resources outside your FC quickly.
 
@Civseta-Why only 2 cities? Bit of a waste of half the Imp trait!

As somenone already have mentioned Imp trait gives only ~25% bonus for settlers in practise. It means that you can have a settler (100 shield) or three immortals (25 each). You also need a worker (60 shield) to develop that new city of yours, which means you have to build a worker instead of 2,4 immortals. You also need a unit to defend your new city, which means at least a warrior (15 shields), which is equal to 0,6 immortal. So the choices are settler+worker+defender or six immortals, which is definitely enough to take AI capital. Ask yourself do you want a new, undeveloped small city, or a big developed city?

I would definitely found only one city next to the horses, after that it is wiser to simply capture AI cities. Capturind cities early instead founding cities before campaign makes war easier, you can easily attack nearest AI when the cultural defence is still only 20%. You don't even need barracks then! (But in general you have to build barracks, if you don't start riverside and also have horses riverside. Researching wheel takes some time. Nice trick is also build city over horses, you don't need to waste time hooking it up then!)
 
CivSetä;5400899 said:
Nice trick is also build city over horses, you don't need to waste time hooking it up then!)

Whilst I agree that city # 3 should be the enemy capital and not a new founded one, I dislike founding on ressources that give commerce and shields as nicely as horses.

You need the Wheel for the unit anyway.
 
With Cyrus you have two worries. No horses and/or no nearby neighbors. On a fractal map one or the other is quite possible and, if so, an early immortal rush is impossible.

Lets "pray" for a religious neighbor who likes to found several religions next to her gold hills. And who builds the Mids just for you.:D
 
Let's Pray to the RNG Gods that The Mali are not a close Next Door Neighbour with their Resourceless UU Archer the Skirmisher.

Thats ok, because we won't have any horses ;) .

I'm looking forward to this leader. I've always had problem mid-game with him, so it'lll be interesting to see how Sis handles it.
 
Persia without horses = Romans without Iron. "teh suck".

But you may need a plan in case there really aren't any horses anyway. And also, I believe that the thinking that "if you have a lot of calendar resources nearby, don't build stonehenge" is flawed thinking. If the hapiness from charismatic and stonehenge brought you to calendar faster, stonehenge did its job.

As for the experience boast from charismatic... I don't really know how to use it well, honestly. Although a warlord with flanking II and tactics, attached with an immortal, does have 90% retreat chance. That's a hit-and-run powerhouse. Maybe medic III is not the ONLY way to go for warlords?
 
I like the imperialistic trait as it gives you better and better builds as the game progresses, and I like to war more than seek other types of wins. I use to build the GW all the time just for the synergy. You do get ALOT of GG's. By late mid-game I could be approaching 2 military producition cities with the war accademy in each and pumping out level 3 units. I liked this because I could keep my civ in bureaucracy or free speech and organized religion while my military cities kept the same benifits as vassalage and theocracy. As others have posted, I have started straying away from the GW because it mainly helps in defensive wars. My strategy was to set up a road network next to my target's borders, goad them into attacking, then defeat the majority of the enemy's army on my turf then start taking his cities. After taking the first city, I would settle again into a more defensive posture for the enemy's attempt to retake the city. All this time trying to rack up a many GG points as possible. From there take cities at a rate my economy could support. By doing this I was hoping to circumvent the WW mechanics as much as possible and allow me to stay in a state of war for longer periods of time. My problem with my strategy is I could never reliably get the target civ to attack me even after many turns of demands. So I had to start declaring war and bringing the fight to them, which basically eliminated the benefits of the GW except on defending captured cities which didn't seem to be that large of a part of the wars. The GW also allowed me to trained my new units at will with barbs and didn't have to worry about protecting my workers. Or I could let the barbs slide around my borders and molest the other civs.
I have always found Cyrus very attractive, except for his UU, which I feel is to easily countered. His UB with HR can make some decent size cities to make up for his lack of financial traits. Instead of upgrading in the early years, use obsolete units for MP. Use them as upgrades if the enemy does flank you and get into your interior.
I understand what everyone else is saying about the GW, as I said I pretty much quit building it, but, I would love to see how it can be exploited with the imperialistic trait(they do seem to go together). I guess it is a matter of turning something defensive into an offensive resource.
 
elephants counter x-bows just fine. horsearchers are also quite ok...
 
I'd vote with CivSeta that speed of rush trumps everything else. Immortals are a great cheap early unit, but even a couple fortified spears can ruin your day. I've destroyed an entire stack of immortals trying to take an enemy capital too late (50% cultural defense, 1 spear, 1 archer). However, if you can hit early enough, before spears, it's a very different story :king:

For immortals to really shine you need to get them on the offense while they face only archers and axes.
 
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