REXin with Cartahge

Cía

Warlord
Joined
Feb 17, 2007
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109
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Sweden
I've been playing around with the idea to try and use REXing in ciV, and more specifically by using the liberty and exploration policies and only founding coastal cities. Carthage is the optimal civilization for this, with lot of synergy to both policytrees. Grabbing the messenger of the Gods pantheon is also nice for this strategy. The wonders which have the highest priority is the great lighthouse and the colossus, followed by all happiness-wonders.

So, I haven't had the time to try this out that much. I am only halfway through my first attempt and it is going alright. The biggest weakness seems to be the lack of science (oh really), and the fact that it is perhaps quite map-dependant. Any thoughts about this? Valid or just bad? I'm playing at immortal btw.
 
Cía;13448955 said:
I've been playing around with the idea to try and use REXing in ciV, and more specifically by using the liberty and exploration policies and only founding coastal cities. Carthage is the optimal civilization for this, with lot of synergy to both policytrees. Grabbing the messenger of the Gods pantheon is also nice for this strategy. The wonders which have the highest priority is the great lighthouse and the colossus, followed by all happiness-wonders.

So, I haven't had the time to try this out that much. I am only halfway through my first attempt and it is going alright. The biggest weakness seems to be the lack of science (oh really), and the fact that it is perhaps quite map-dependant. Any thoughts about this? Valid or just bad? I'm playing at immortal btw.

Yeah. Its something I have been meaning to try. But haven't gotten around to it yet. I would a use a Pangea and possibly work in some wars with the Elephants. I would want to try and take advantage of the extra trade range from the free Harbors. That should make the other civs connect to your expansions give you more income and better relations. Then beat up on the goat I guess.

I think this civs ability to make gold is largely unexplored territory.

And the more I think about it, I think this civ could do a t100 to t120 dom victory.
 
Cía;13448955 said:
I've been playing around with the idea to try and use REXing in ciV, and more specifically by using the liberty and exploration policies and only founding coastal cities. Carthage is the optimal civilization for this, with lot of synergy to both policytrees. Grabbing the messenger of the Gods pantheon is also nice for this strategy. The wonders which have the highest priority is the great lighthouse and the colossus, followed by all happiness-wonders.

So, I haven't had the time to try this out that much. I am only halfway through my first attempt and it is going alright. The biggest weakness seems to be the lack of science (oh really), and the fact that it is perhaps quite map-dependant. Any thoughts about this? Valid or just bad? I'm playing at immortal btw.

REX as previously defined in Civ II/III (an opening series of a very large number escort-settler pairs until all useful sites claimed) became waves of mini REXes in Civ IV and died during the Civ V balance patches. (As a side note, it might be back in BE if someone is willing to live with the first level of unhealthiness penalties since it's not nearly as brutal as the first level of unhappiness penalties is in Civ V AND if new cities can build health buildings fast enough to keep from dropping to the second level of unhealthiness.)

Look at one of those liberty wide guides which will describe within the Civ V limits how to do this as fast as the game allows but it's NOT the extremely long chain of escort-settler pairs that earlier versions were. Everything one of those says about generic civ will apply to Carthage, only you won't need to build the roads for any of your coastal cities (you only need to discover The Wheel) As I recall, it will prioritize cities bringing in a unique luxury that the empire doesn't already have, often founding on the luxury itself. Cash buying some of the libraries will be important.

Edit: As I now recall, the escort - settler pair in REXing was specific to Civ IV's min-REX wave. In Civ III, REXing was mostly done by "settler factories" NOT the capital and the escorts built elsewhere (or in the new city itself if not to far away.) It also featured having workers in queues in cities that had reached their hard pop cap limit but before the bread basket was full.
In an ironic way though Civ V brought back the general never found a city past early mid game that Civ III had. (In Civ III's case because you should already have founded them by then, but in Civ V's case since there are too many penalties to self found past then.) In both cases further expansion is best via conquest of the AIs cities instead of your own.
 
i had a lot of fun doing an Emperor Carthage Sacred Sites win. out of 20 cities about 5 werent on the coast. it was continents map. i think its possible on Immortal but needs favorable neighbors who dont rush Piety.
 
i had a lot of fun doing an Emperor Carthage Sacred Sites win. out of 20 cities about 5 werent on the coast. it was continents map. i think its possible on Immortal but needs favorable neighbors who dont rush Piety.

I've had the same experience with the Piety neighbour thing trying this strat on
Immortal. It sucks getting off to a good start and then finding two other civs took your top two choices for reformation beliefs.

That's actually the biggest problem with this strat in general. There's not enough culture to get all of the policies you need early enough especially with the increased cost per city. You can sort of mitigate this with religion by getting two +2 culture buildings or +2 culture from temples since your faith generation will be crazy with a lot of cities.

...but then the problem becomes founding a religion early enough. Especially with Messenger of the Gods you will struggle to get the beliefs you need on harder difficulties.
 
Here are a few shots from a proof of concept. This was Trad Opener > Full Liberty. Early Faith generation was suboptimal. I used the Liberty finisher on a Great prophet which was kinda lame. I should not have needed to do that. It was a Salt/Wheat coastal start (first one I rolled). I'm OK with that, Carthage was a great city spot IRL. Messenger of the Gods is in play.

Note all the coast which is available to the west. Note the annoying Japanese city.

This is the fall of Berlin.
Spoiler :


This is my core empire.
Spoiler :


gg - wont finish it. But, here is a real early game super power.
 
I've had the same experience with the Piety neighbour thing trying this strat on
Immortal. It sucks getting off to a good start and then finding two other civs took your top two choices for reformation beliefs.

That's actually the biggest problem with this strat in general. There's not enough culture to get all of the policies you need early enough especially with the increased cost per city. You can sort of mitigate this with religion by getting two +2 culture buildings or +2 culture from temples since your faith generation will be crazy with a lot of cities.

...but then the problem becomes founding a religion early enough. Especially with Messenger of the Gods you will struggle to get the beliefs you need on harder difficulties.

I didnt go MotG for the pantheon. (MotG isn't ideal for the SS strategy.) I needed a good faith generating pantheon to pull it off. SS rexing is different from other kinds of rexing. you are generally trying to win sub t200.

but in another game (one of the Immo Challenges) i tried and failed to get SS but I could still fall back to another VC because it was immortal. you change gears for about 30 turns to make up for it. i ended up going for strong gold to buy a Diplo win with about 10 cities (where I stopped rexing when I realized SS was gone). i let 3 of them grow and stagnated the others at either 3 or 5 pop. i thought about trying the 'sell a city and Musician bomb them' for CV but didnt really plan well enough for that. the only problem is when my initial strat fails early I tend to lose interest in finishing it even though I know a victory is still very likely. sometimes ill play it out but not always.

rexing for any VC is very interesting even if it isnt 'optimal' for fastest turns. its like playing the "other" half of the game, haha.
 
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