BTS – A guide for higher difficulties for standard speed and maps (emperor+)

Snaaty

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BTS – A guide for higher difficulties for standard speed and maps (emperor+)

...

There have been several strategies and articles around here lately for higher levels. Most of them are very good, still I think that the most effective strategy hasn’t been posted out in detail… …so this is what we are going to do here (only works on BtS… …warlords and vanilla are MORE difficult):

…

Step 1: Choose your civilisation

Easiest is to pick a financial and/or philosophical leader (any will do)

…

Step 2: Early game (up to 1000 BC):

Build a worker first, research the techs you need to improve the lands around your capital (to work your strategic resources), then go archery (defence) and then bronze working (chopping). Gambling on horses or bronze usually is too risky. Focus on food and production while having your firs worker improve the land around your capital. Commerce you don’t need that early in the game, your capital will only serve as a settler and worker pump in the beginning.

Depending on level, you have to build a decent defensive force after your first worker is completed (starting with a warrior or a scout, depending on what you started with). On deity, I would advise you to build 4-5 archers and grow the capital to happy cap while doing so. Then build a second worker and then go settler, worker, worker, settler, worker worker, settler (helped with some chopping; but try to keep 3-4 forests for later). Settler your cities aggressively towards your neighbours, blocking as many land as possible for your second expansion wave. While doing so, research pottery and writing, to get your economy going.

One of the cities you have founded (city 2 -4) should focus on production and ideally gain access to a strategic resource (bronze or horses) to get some better defenders online, the second city should go hybrid in the beginning to be able to help in troop production but also bring in some commerce (you can specialize this city later), the last should go commerce to bring your economy online. If you can grab one or two early happy resources with these cities, even better. In the capital, build a library after the initial expansion and blocking is done and grow again to happy cap. Always build a monument (if not creative) first in your new cities, then barracks (whip both). You will need them, to keep your power rating high enough for not being attacked. Then have your production city produce 4 chariots or axmen. This should be enough for not getting backstabbed (but don’t whip there, grow the city to happy cap). Let you capital run two scientists ASAP, when the library is done, to help in research and generate the first GS.

…

Step 3: Early to midgame (up to 500 AD):

Don’t accept a religion, except ALL your neighbours share the same one OR all of your neighbours have picked a “worst enemy” and despite running a different religion you manage to keep them at least “cautios”.

Your research path after writing is:

Aesthetics (seems useless, but in fact, it’s great. The AI´s NEVER research it and you therefore trade it for anything you need. On deity, only research 2 turns into Alphabet and you can trade for it once one of your neighbours has it, then you can collect what you want, like Math, Iron working etc.)

Literature (Since you have kept some forest around your capital, you can now chop the Great Library without any risk of loosing it. And usually, you can sell Literature for some money afterwards)

Now you can do some backfilling (Sailing, Mono, Priest etc)

CoL (you wont be first, but still can trade it for Monarchy and/or Calendar and/or Currency together with Literature, because once CoL is researched by one AI, the others don’t evaluate it high)

CS (to switch to Bureaucracy)

…

When you capital is done with the library and growing to happy cap and working two scientists, you usually can squeeze in one more worker and settler. Have your production city help producing workers and settlers, to backfill all your land ASAP. Specialize your cities early. You only need two production cities, the rest should go for commerce (cottages). But remember to build enough farms for every city, so they can grow quickly into their cottages. You usually are able to settle around 8 cities in BtS, thanks to the changed AI settling strategy (they won’t settle behind your cities, even with open borders, up to very later in the game). Since all your cities are defended with archers and have barracks, around 1 AD, an army of 8 units (chariots, axes, swords) is usually enough to have a power rating that prevents from getting backstabbed, when you play your politics right.

Around the time Literature hits home your capital should have generated the first GS. Build an academy in your capital with him and have some workers start to cottage around your capital. Build the GL in the capital, followed by the NE and have it run 2 scientists all the time after the GL and the NE are finished. The next GS you use to bulp Philosophy (switch to Pacifism and adopt the safest religion), the next for Paper, the next for Education, the next for Liberalism (don’t trade for Machinery or you can’t bulb Liberalism). If a GS shouldn’t arrive in time, backfill some more techs or prerequisites for bulbing Liberalism (you need Calendar, Metal Casting & Compass). NEVER trade for cheep techs, that only helps your rivals. Like that, you are guarantied to get Liberalism first.

In parallel, you should have now settled all your land and have something like 8 cities, all decent sized. Once you have won the Liberalism race you can stop running Pacifism. Switch to Theocracy, spread the religion you are running to all your cities and start building CR 2 maces (6-10, depending on your money situation).

Pick Nationalism as freebee from Liberalism and build the Taj Mahal in your best production city. Once the Taj Mahal is finished and your Golden Age starts, switch to Caste System and Pacifism again and try to generate a GM in your capital or any other food rich city, via running a zillion of Merchants. If you fail the first time, simply burn the GP you got for another Golden Age and repeat.

…

Step 4: Midgame (up to 1000 AD):

Pick a victim your want to conquer and put all espionage points on it. Pick a friend (best is a tech whore with less then 8 cities) and exclusively trade with him, to get all prerequisites for beelining towards rifling (trade for machinery, guilds, engineering, maybe even banking). He will run away in tech, but once you have expanded via war, you will overtake him quite easily. Check if the Apostolic Palace has been built on your continent. Check how many votes you need to have a blocking majority. Spread the religion of the Apostolic Palace (AP) to ALL your cities, and, when you start to conquer cities, start with those that have the religion of the AP or bring some missionaries with you, to get the blocking majority (thanks to your early expansion policy and therefore your many big cities, this should be relatively easy). Fuelled by your golden Ages, you should be able to reach Rifling around 1000 AD. Revolt to Nationalism (best is during a Golden Age), fire your trade mission (the GM you have generated earlier, best is to keep him until you REALLY need him, because bigger cities = bigger revenue). Build 8-10 spies and 6-8 trebuchets while teching towards Rifling because you might need them in your war. Build a forge, a market, a theatre and a coliseum in all your cities to battle down War Weariness. In a food rich city, build the Globe Theatre.

…

Step 5: Late-Midgame (after rifling):

Now it gets REALLY easy:

Upgrade your CR 2 maces to rifles, draft some more and declare on your victim. You can draft 2 rifles in every city with all the happy buildings you have build and you can draft forever in your Globe City, without raising your culture slider above 20%. You will end up pretty soon with 30 - 40 rifles… …send your spies in first, fortify them for 5 turns in the city you want to conquer for the best discount (use 4 spies per city to cope with losses and failure) and use them to inflict revolts to take down the city defences for the turn of your attack. You can now also turn the spy rate to 100% for some turns to get enough spy points. If everything should go wrong and you loose all spies in one city (never happened to me before when using 4 spies per city, but you never now) you still have your trebs to inflict enough collateral damage to capture any city (don’t bother bombarding city defences, because this takes WAY to long in BtS). Within something like 10 – 20 turns you should have defeated your neighbour (depending if you vassalize him or conquer him completely) and you can turn towards your next victim or start to tech happily towards space.

At this point, you should have enough cities and production to easily win the game, with more or less any tactics, so I will stop the guide here.

…

I will add a demo game to this guide, as soon as I find the time, so you can see this in practice, but I think it’s pretty easy if you stick to the basic teching and research described here.

Have fun trying

Snaaty
 
Wow, very interesting and different, but make alot mof sense.

Some points I have never really considered then a few questions

Comments
1) One of the few stategies I have read on the forums that recommend getting archery very early, back to when i started playing the game. Now I only do this if I have a protective leader.
2) Build a worker, then military to allow capital growth to the happy limit. Only then start settler, and a very agressive approach to worker and settlers. I NEVER get that many workers early but I think I'll reconsider that.
3) Aesthetics before alphabet. Wow, thought of it but always thought it would be a losing fight.
4) Bulb liberalism before getting machinery, got it!!

questions

1) before your first settler, do you build a barracks in the capital? if not when do you, if ever?

2) Will this work on marathon speed?

3) How do you maintain the economy by settling far from the capital (against AI borders).

4) Do you always go archery as the first military tech? Some leaders just scream BW first (Indians, English, Stalin) or AH (Egyptians and Mongols).

5) If on a coast, how do you fit in the more expensive workboats. If you start with fishing would you build a workboat first?

6) LAST: How do you hook up cities? You mention delaying sailing so I am assuming it's the wheel. Often it's easier to use rivers and coasts to connect cities than building roads.
 
OK, one more question. Does your strat still generally allow for an axe-rush if appropriate.
 
@ madscientist:

One thing to say first: I wanted to keep it this as general as possible, to allow the best use with most civs...

...

Now to your comments:

1. Archery:
When playing deity, you only have time to research either AH or bronze (depending on which techs you start with), before the barbs strart to come (and you usually dont find any)... ...and once they come and you aren´t prepared, you´re dead.

So assuming that you haven´t bronze or horses in your capitals BFC, you MUST go Archery.

2. Many workers & settlers:
You have to specialize your research to keep up without having anything contribute to your research besides your palace. So, like you already have suspected, you need two workers for every new city to build a road, and some improvements and cottages in time

A size 5 capital can build a settler every 4-6 turns, depending on tiles you work and forests you chop. So growing your capital and only then produce settlers is faster then the other way round

3. Aesthetics:
Weird, isn´t it? But it really ALWAYS works:lol:

4. Evading Machinery to build Liberalism
Selfexplaining...

...

and your questions:

1.
Capital doesn´t get a baracks, nor a granary. It only pumps archers, then workers/settlers, then a lib, running two scientists, then another settler & worker, then the GL & NE

2.
No idea, I only played BtS on standard speed and maps so far

3.
Two workers for each city, building roads & improvements & cottages

4.
No, like said above, I always try either bronze or AH first, only then I go Archery (=90% for going archery)

6.
Seafood is great, because it gives you heaps of food & commerce. If you start with fishing, a workboat first, if not a worker or a warrior/scout while reseaching fishing

7. Yes, IF you find bronze, just set all your 4 early cities chopping/building/whipping axes and you will end up with heaps of them (but you must be very carful here, because you cant afford to keep too many captured cities...)
 
Thanks for the reply. I'll look foreward to the demo game. I'll certainly try these with my next leader, probably Suiliman.
 
On Immortal, I can usually avoid Archery (I can't speak to Deity). BW early and try to claim Copper with the second city. If not, lots of fogbusters and double up warriors in threatened cities (it's not perfect, I lose some tile improvements to pillaging). Sometimes there's just too much space to fogbust, and I have to go to Archery, but I prefer not to.

I don't think I build quite as many workers as you recommend, but probably still more than many people. Workers are the most powerful accelerant of your empire in the early days. A typical order for me might be worker-warrior-warrior-settler-worker-warrior-worker-settler-worker-settler. I like to get the second city founded fairly soon (the capital will grow onto all resources first, and perhaps mines if I've got a strong food surplus, but not necessarily to the happy-cap before spitting out the first settler), because I'm usually taking a spot that the AI will quickly claim if I don't. I very much agree with the "blocking off territory to settle later" approach. But I find that four or five workers is all I really need unless I have unusually high happy caps, or a ton of jungle to chop or floodplains to cottage. Usually, cities will hit their happy-caps, and then not need any more tile improvements for a while, and roads are not that urgent (besides connecting Copper/Horse). I'll build up to 8 or 10 workers eventually, prior to the raised happy-caps that come with HR and Calendar.

I haven't yet figured out Aesthetics, but I'll try it early and see. I have noticed that it's now much easier to trade for Alphabet rather than self-researching it.

You cottage your capital, then put the NE there? Is the short-term benefit ('bulbing your way to Liberalism) worth the long-term contradictions implied there? I've generally been generating 2-3 GSs off library scientists (capital academy, Philo bulb, perhaps another academy or half of Ed) and mostly running to Liberalism off cottages. My GP farm gets set up rather late (like I said, I haven't figured out when to fit Aesthetics in, so I've mostly been missing the GL).

Looking forward to the game.

peace,
lilnev
 
I managed to do a short game last night, so like promised, here comes the demo game:

…

The settings are standard continent map, standard speed, deity level, Persia, Darius

And here we start:

0-1.JPG

We have a river, which is good, three food resources (corn, cow and sheep), which is also good, tons of forests (guess what… …yes, good again), but mainly plains in the BFC (bad) and definitely no horses, bronze or iron in the BFC (due to the wood, also bad). Since we are on a plains hill next to the river, we will settle in place off course.

First steps are to find the coast and our neighbours, so that we know where to settle first…

...

The save:

View attachment Snaaty BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Turnset 1: 4000 – 2440 BC:

We have scouted our neighbourhood and have found plenty of resources, the cost but unhappily also lots of tundra, more plains and a desert…

The river next to our capital seems pretty long, connecting our continent south to north. There are 4 great sites for our next cities near, all helping in our blocking effords, which I have marked in the map:

1-1.JPG

A: Gives access to bronze, pigs and fur, next to the river
B: Gives access to gold and corn, next to the river
C: Gives access to corn, wheat, bananas and silk, next to the river
D: Gives access to cow, rice and marble, near a lake

…

Since our first settling wave only can contain 3 cities, due to production and money limits, we have to make a decision here...

C we have to settle, because food is the most important resource and 3 food resources near a city will make it a great second settler and worker pump, so C has to be settled first. With some mines near, it will also make a great hybrid city…

But this also means, that we have to settle B next, to prevent any AI squeezing a city in-between… …it will be our commerce city and get only cottages beside the goldmines

And, since we need bronze or horses, we have to settle A third, to get some, so I fear we will have to live without marble and rice (cows we will get later in our backlands…), because this spot will be gone for sure once we have our first 3 cities placed… …A will be our production centre and get only farms and mines.

The next screen shows our “save” area:

1-2.JPG

We have 5 archers, 3 already placed and fortified, another on tour to replace the warriors on the gold hill near the river, and two workers building a first mine (and chopping the forest while doing so)

Two neighbours are met, Pacal (could be worse) and Toku (is worse). A view of our capital:

1-3.JPG

As you can see, we need two mines to max our worker/settler output, so this is why we are busy building the first one.

We have researched:

AH, archery, mining, bronze, mysticism, currently working on the wheel
Masonry we got from a hut

We were also lucky getting some additional scouts from huts, but only around 40 gold altogether… …and since deity isn’t nice to scouts, they all decided to die before the end of the first turnset… …so we are blind now…

...

The save:

View attachment Snaaty BC-2440.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Turnset 2: 2440 BC – 1440 BC:

We managed to settle the cities planned, but lost the marble site to Pacal, as expected. Maybe we can trade for marble later with him…

2-1.JPG

We also got some quite good news at the start of this turnset… …named Mansa and also living on our continent…

Mansa and Toku are Buddhist (Mansa founded the religion), Pacal is Jewish (he founded Hinduism and Judaism but switched to Judaism some time ago)

Our capital:

2-2.JPG

The mines have been built, some forests have been chopped and currently more archers are in production, because the Barbs keep pestering us and we need more fogbusters before settling our backlands. Thanks to the gold hooked up, our capital can work one mine more next turn. You also can see in this screenshot, that our research is down to 30% (was already down to 20% some turns ago, but after building the first cottages near our commerce city & hybrid city, we have stabilized around 30%). We actually don´t work the goldmine, because working and growing cottages right from the start does us more good because it also brings some money AND fuels growth (food is the MOST important thing by far, another important thing to note)...

Once writing hits home in 5 turns, we can run 2 scientists in the capital, and then our research problems should be solved once and for all…

We have researched in this turnset:

The wheel (finished), pottery, writing (current project)

We are having 8 workers already at work, mainly busy connecting our cities, hooking up resources and building cottages to bring our research up to around 50 % so we can start the second settle wave…

Barbs killing themselves on our fortified archers so far: 18 warriors, 7 archers

...

The save:

View attachment Snaaty BC-1440.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Really nice to see a higher level walkthrough. ;)

Hope this game will be played fairly quick and not as slow as the ALC games :)
 
Turnset 3: 1440 BC – 625 BC:

We have launched our second wave of settlers… …one new city already is founded, two more settlers are on the way and the last one will be ready in a few turns.

You also can see in the picture below, that our capital is working already on the GL and Pasargadae (city C) has grown to size 8 and is our new settler/worker pump…

What you can also see is the fact, that we haven’t been fast enough in fogbusting our backlands and the barbs have squeezed in a city up north.

3-1.JPG

We are neutral in any political affairs, while the Buddhist faction slowly starts to hate the Jewish Pacal. Soon it will be save enough to join the Buddhist club, then finally Toku will eventually open borders and start to trade with us (I really, really hate that guy…)

3-2.JPG

We haven’t been able to do any tech-trades so far, because only Toku has alphabet (Argh… …have I already mentioned, that I really, really hate that guy?), so we are right now busy with backfilling and will start on CoL once the backfilling is done.

But at least we have been able to do some techtrading, providing us with silver, diamonds and MARBLE (this is great news indeed). This only proves that it isn’t really necessary to have luxury resources yourself, as long as your territory is large enough to provide you with some monopoly resources to trade…

Our research has been:

Writing (finished), Aesthetics, Poly, Literature, Fishing (in progress)

We are WAY to weak, so our bronze city will produce units from now on to prevent bad surprises…

Our research is up again at 60%, because our cottages are maturing and our capital also gets cottaged up more and more.

3-3.JPG

The first GS will arrive in 2 turns and will build an academy, which should finally give us an edge over the AI´s once the GL is finished and our capital starts working more cottages

...

The save:

View attachment Snaaty BC-0625.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
I´m not playing deity my self, (only emperor normal speed) but couldn´t you have setttled the marble city before the "A" city ? or did pascal grab that site fast ?

Then have a settler standing ready to settle site "A" if pascal was moving in that direction....? Only settling when the economy has recovered from the REX.

About the "fog busting" i got a few questions. How does it work ?

Does it prevent the AI from appering and building cities ?

Are the other benefits?
 
Turnset 4: 625 BC – 325 AD:

Only some turns into this turnset, Pacal suddenly has “too much on his hands”… …great… …we start to produce units in 3 cities… …I don’t know if it was changed in one of the patches, but after we produced units for about 20 turns and more then doubled our power rating, Pacal stopped having “too much on his hands”… …that was close…

Around the same time, Toku decided to backstab his friend Mansa… …that was REALLY close… …I have to force myself to produce some more units EARLIER in the next game…

An overview over our empire:

4-1.JPG

You can see that we have only settled good spots, waisting quite some territory in our backlands but providing us with fast growing cities (we could have squeezed in two cities more, you dont need small and mediocre cities, like mentioned before food and growth is all that matters)

And our capital, building the Taj Mahal and tying to generate a GE:

4-2.JPG

We also were able to start trading in this turnset and traded for:

Alphabet, Math, Monarchy, Currency, Metal Casting and Feudalism

Our research was:

CoL, CS, Education, Liberalism (including all prerequisites and some backfilling)

And we burned a GS each for Phil, Paper, Education, and Liberalism

We reached Liberalism 300 AD and picked Nationalism as freebee. Now we are doing some more backfilling and then we start to beeline towards Rifling.

The tech situation:

4-3.JPG

From now on we will exclusively trade with Mansa. Pacal is going to be our victim and Toku is so backwards, that we simply will ignore him from now on (and besides, he lives far, far away).

We also have switched to Buddhism during this turnset, because Pacal hates Mansa and Toku and we are able to keep him at “cautious” with various trades and gifts, and he was selected to get all our spy points

We also have reached 10 workers, more we dont need. We will simply switch to serfdom during the golden age to come to work ALL our tiles

The save:

View attachment Snaaty AD-0325.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
I´m not playing deity my self, (only emperor normal speed) but couldn´t you have setttled the marble city before the "A" city ? or did pascal grab that site fast ?

Then have a settler standing ready to settle site "A" if pascal was moving in that direction....? Only settling when the economy has recovered from the REX.

About the "fog busting" i got a few questions. How does it work ?

Does it prevent the AI from appering and building cities ?

Are the other benefits?

I settled C first, because I priorize food higer then lux. or strat resources and I was afraid of loosing the site C to Mansa (he was running around there with a scout and a skirmisher already)

Settling asap with 2 workers ready lets any city with enough food grow REALLY fast, so better dump your economy for some turns to have another city up and running right from the start

No barbs will sqawn and no barb cities will appear in the regions visible to you (no fog of war), so fogbusting is a must on deity due to the hords of barbs and cities appearing otherwise
 
Turnset 5: 325 AD – 900 AD

We have been rexing and cottaging like crazy. All our cities have received Buddhism (the religion we are running) and Judaism, because Pacal has build the AP. The last AP vote showed, that we and half of Mansa would have enough votes to block any resolution… …that’s why we have changed plans within this turnset and have decided to attack Mansa first, making him our vassal (he still is at war with Toku, but nobody has gained anything so far).

We have been running two golden ages and have switched our civics form Pacifism to Theocracy (to produce level 3 units right away) and form Slavery to Serfdom (faster workers), then back to Pacifism and Caste System to get a GM (or the other way round). Then we planned to switch to Nationalism and Slavery on the last turn to the golden age, but off course, I have forgotten about that. That cost us 2 turns of revolution because I had to revolt right after the golden age… …argh

A quick overview over our belongings:

5-1.JPG

The 3 cities in the north are only having farms and mines and are our production centres (one also got the globe theatre to do the major drafting), all other cities got cottaged up like crazy

We also have managed to get a GM on the second try so we have been running two Golden Ages so far (one form the Taj and one from the wrong GP) and therefore will be able to launch a trade mission that will bring us around 1700 gold anytime now (with the 1100 we have in our treasury, we have 2800 altogheter), so we will have enough gold to upgrade all our old troops to rifles instantly.

The tech situation:

5-2.JPG

Like expected, Mansa has taken off in tech, but he is lacking all warfare techs, so he will be easy prey. Toku is still living in a cave and Pacal also isn’t advanced enough to be of any danger for our expansion plans in his direction (these are only delayed, not cancelled). But he is having a heap of money right now (maybe missed a wonder he planned) so I’m tempted to sell him Education for 1950 gold. Not that we would need the money, but hey, having spare money is cool…

Our army 900 AD:

10 spies
8 CR 2 maces
4 CR 1 or 2 axes
2 CR 1 or 2 swords
6 CR 2 trebs

We even have a caravel touring around, because we have traded for Optics with Mansa.

Rifling will hit home next turn, so we can start to draft like crazy then… …the only setback was, that we lost 2 turns for the revolution after the golden age

...

The save:

View attachment Snaaty AD-0900.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
@ Indiansmoke:

Very early in all cities and later to bring up new and food rich cities. That´s why I usually run slavery most of the time. Later size and happiness are more important so I stop whipping like 20 turns before a war, but during a war, I switch back to whip the captured cities to happiness
 
ooh, I've been enjoying your adventures of DD so I'm definitely looking forward to getting around to this thread. looks like it's mostly done. thanks for the write up ;)!

If you're switching to and from slavery a lot (not sure havent read article yet) would you go with a spiritual civ like mansa, whom i believe is spiritual and financial right?
 
And we burned a GS each for Phil, Paper, Education, and Liberalism
On your capital screenshot you have an academy and are working towards your fifth GP (59/500 GPP), so there is one great scientist missing. Perhaps you researched Paper without bulbing?

Anyway, I could hardly believe my eyes seeing your capital building Taj Mahal in 325 AD! Very impressive stuff you show here!

I'm currently getting along at emperor, winning maybe 50% of my games. Seems like I need to focus even more.
 
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