Tradition's 4 cities opening

Gs saving should be more powerful. If you aim for fast wins, you will have to reach 1000 bpt at some point, preferably before turn 200. There is no way you to get 8k beakers out of an academy.

I like this opening. I stayed with liberty for my games so far and my fastest win on 4 cities was turn 253. I am currently playing a game as the mayans using liberty, were I am able to settle 8 unique luxuries with 7 cities. Will see if I can beat turn 230 by this but I feel that due to the growth bonus, tradition might be the way to go now for fast science.
 
The only trouble i have with this strategy is getting them settlers/workers in time. Which earned me a bad habit of settling on top of luxes. But maybe i play too defensive, don't know yet. Anyway, got it right yesterday and beaten my previous liberty score by 20 turns (t.252 Immortal, Pangaea, Ethiopia, 4 cities) Appreciated, Tabarnak!

Ow, and i too, like Resonance, can't make myself plant a single GS. I d rather bulb something useful :)
 
Open patronage as my 7th policy in turn 99 and started to build Oracle after University.
It's rather a pity you opened Patronage. Couldn't get Rationalism in time? Finishing NC on 97 is a little late. That must be a problem. If smaller cities hold you back, try to rush buy library in the slowest one.

My plan is to finnish at least IW in Capital before I starts on my 5th city. How many cities to you end with?
It also depends on size of your secondary cities. Since they are relatively small, they're unlikely to finish workshops very quickly, thus you'll have to wait quite long before further expansion. If you wait too long, it's almost not worth it, because newly founded cities will not be able to fully develop. I'd suggest expansion, if your happiness lets you. New cities should queue up workshops as one of the first builds. Something like monument, granary, workshop. After Astronomy (presumably observatories) and before public schools there aren't many critical buildings, so you'll have time to finish workshops + IW.

To speed up DoF are you giving AI money (125 :c5gold: seems to be enough)
Is it actually working? I had no clue. :D

As long as I'm unhappy I focus on production esp. to get GL (Theology), HG, NC and University in Capital. I'm current happy so I have default as focus in rest of my cities. Do you micromanage or focus on food until you get university in all cities? After university i switch focus to science, but if only one science slot is taken I normally take one more (manuel), is this correct?
For the best results regardless conditions/victories etc. you should micro your cities tiles, specialists and workers. Always. If it's not your thing, from mid-game on it's usually enough to manually assign specialists and lock down tiles with academies. Then you can switch between production and food focus as required.
BTW, do everything you can to stay happy all the time. Apart from very early expansion stage, you shouldn't be unhappy. Definitely not after picking Rationalism.

I"m having trouble on Immortal with this strategy (part 1). I seem to be unable to gather the resources quick enough to gather $ to buy/upgrade archers. Inevitably, two AI seem to always declare war on me around turn 60 (this happens even when I do not steal a worker or buidl cities near them). Any advice?
How many archers are you trying to buy? On immortal 5 archers are enough to fend off early DoW's. Park some in cities and some on hills behind cities. With Oligarchy AI has no chance. In fact, I haven't bothered with CB's until pikes show up even on deity.

Which earned me a bad habit of settling on top of luxes.
IMO, it's a very good habit. :lol:
 
This is hard (I have build 3 but I'm not sure if it was the right decision):
80 * 8 or 10 (with ST) * 1,83 => 1172 to 1463,
If you save it for 80 turns you only need 1463/8 = 183 in average/turn the last 8 turn to get the same amount of :c5science:. Is my calc. totaly wrong?

Yeah the numbers definitely seem to favor saving most of the GS except maybe the first for an early tech VC. Only thing you don't factor in above is the opportunity cost + snowball effect. I.e. if settling one gets you a key tech (eg education) or key wonder (if there are any, Pisa, PT) that you wouldn't otherwise get it might be the best choice vs saving.
 
The problem I see is that you don't get Heroic Epic before you rush with swordsmen.
 
Very strong opening given the right circumstances.
Tried immortal with the Huns (random civ, tiny map, standard) and totally killed it by turn 80.
I think the key was only 1 close neighbour (austria) which allowed me enough peace time to get 4 cities and 5CB + 2rams + 2swords. She did not stand a chance!
Thanks Tab :)
 
Very strong opening given the right circumstances.
Tried immortal with the Huns (random civ, tiny map, standard) and totally killed it by turn 80.
I think the key was only 1 close neighbour (austria) which allowed me enough peace time to get 4 cities and 5CB + 2rams + 2swords. She did not stand a chance!
Thanks Tab :)
If you try OCC horse archers rush with them you can totally kill it by turn 50. :)
 
I was trying this Tradition, 4-city strategy on Emperor level as the Netherlands, continents, everything else standard. I found myself alone on a small continent, and out of communication with the other civs until I got Astronomy. I didn't play it correctly. In the first place, when I realized that I was alone I stopped building after my second city, bought a library in it, and built a library in my first city. I started researching Philosophy, with the intention of building the National Library before building the third and fourth cities. That turned out to be a mistake. I could never make up for falling behind in pop in those two final cities, which slowed everything down.

I figured that I might have misplayed it in another way. Seeing as how the continent could have supported eight to ten cities, would it have been better to abandon Tradition and switch over to Liberty, with the intention of filling the continent with my cities?
 
I've been trying this at Deity and I just can't get my science high enough, early enough. Playing vanilla I used to stay at 2 or 3 cities, rush buy libraries and then stomp out the NC.

I can try solving the first part of the problem, by remaining at 2 or 3 cities, and rush buying or chopping libraries. Fine. I'll try it tonight.

But the second part of the problem is actually getting to the tech with NC before turn 40. Pottery takes 10 turns. Calender another 10-12 (to prioritise lux's). Writing, depending on pop is probably 8-9 turns. The NC tech, in my last games (buying settlers so as not to slow city growth), at this point always takes another 20 turns (15 if I've been growing well). So I've researched NC roughly around turn 45-50. It takes another 15 turns to build (If I'm very lucky - thugh I'm going to try chopping it next game). So I don't get it up sometime between turn 60 and 70. (this has been ignoring deviations to archery and construction). and I can't get to education early enogh.

any idea what I'm doing wrong?
 
I found myself alone on a small continent, and out of communication with the other civs until I got Astronomy.
Yeah, this works best on pangaea and on reasonable level. If you can't milk AI, you can't rush buy so many things. You can hard build them though, but that will be somewhat slower. You've got unlucky. Netherlands is the second worst civ to start isolated , Arabia is the worst of them all.
Regarding this kind of start, strategy depends on luxes/CS with uniques on your continent. If they provide enough happiness to support high population in ~8 cities, I'd still go Tradition. Otherwise Liberty to minimize culture hit at least. Also you can take GAd as finisher, which can enter the ocean even if you haven't researched Astronomy yet, and meet other civs asap. Not sure it's the optimal choice, but it's there.

any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Trying to fit G&K into vanilla's time frame? :) You won't get NC by turn 45 a-la vanilla. Where did you get this idea from? If you expand rapidly to 4 cities, you'll be lucky to finish it before 85.
 
Heh, that "the other civs are going to hate you" thing? Yeah, that.

Playing Ethiopia on a pangaea and I'm in the middle of the landmass. As soon as I plop down my 4th city, Siam, the Huns, and Denmark all DOW me on the same turn.

I managed to fend them off, and Attila gave me 2100 gold on turn 70ish because I had 7 CBs ready to hit his capital. I bought all my libraries.
 
I managed to fend them off, and Attila gave me 2100 gold on turn 70ish because I had 7 CBs ready to hit his capital. I bought all my libraries.

It's fun to frighten them and get what you want. :goodjob:

Sometime it's better to let his capital and pick all his accumulated stuff to rush buy other things, especially when he only has copies of your luxs.
 
This is one of the key ideas if you want to get a really fast science victory. In the games where I've been winning around turn 230 I have taken all of tradition and then straight into rationalism. This can be tricky or simple depending on your tech rate. In my best game I had 290 bpt on turn 140, and if you can accelerate your science that fast it makes getting acoustics or astronomy open in time a much easier task.

I've been going for 3 or 4 cities depending on dirt, settling my second city with a rush bought library and then building NC in the capital before expanding to the 3rd or 4th city.

Getting Education as quickly as possible is important, so you want to tech for your resources and then beeline it through Civil Service. Then if you have observatory spots you can take the water techs and into Astronomy, or just take Acoustics alternatively.

You want Education fast so you can start running scientists but also so you can sign RAs as early as possible. In GandK you need to sign 4 waves of RAs, as things stand now, in order to complete the required spaceship techs. It's for this reason that babylon is still the best science civ, the early accelerated bpt gets Education open faster than any other civ. So if you finish Education on turn 90 your RAs will come on 120, 150, 180 and 210 giving you 20 turns to build the parts. The later you sign the RAs the later you will finish.

The amount of DoFs limits how fast you can finish, but I've found on deity that 4 - 6 stable partners is normal. The early RAs matter much less than the later ones.
I think I prefer this strategy. In current Immortal at T140 I have 230 bpt with 3 cities, but I every one is fighting so it's hard to expand or get more than 2-3 RA :(
 
The early RAs matter much less than the later ones.

I disagree. They help you to unlock public schools more rapidly.

@RobertSmith : 3 cities is ''less'' problematic'' but 4 cities is the little edge that you can let you capture more cities with early provokation.
 
hmm, not thinking this is a great plan for Deity *unless* you're planning warmongering.

Been playing around with it (culture plans, but still) and it forces you to miss key chances at the Oracle/HS/GMD due to being a good 30 turns behind.

What's good about it though is that you can claim the space you need early and catch up by the Renaissance fairly well. but a Pike/Knight loving civ can ruin you by turn 70-80 easily.
 
hmm, not thinking this is a great plan for Deity *unless* you're planning warmongering.

Hard to put a great plan at work at Deity :D

And yes the 6-7 CBs are to counter early DoWs. But i played some games where the AI sent me waves of archers and warriors around turn 40 before i could do something about it. In this case, a 2 cities set-up would have been a lot better.

% of success is map/AI(neighbors)/level dependent. Deity is certainly the toughest(shouldn't be it after all?), but if you can survive until turn 100 without losing a city or too much units you can make your way to victory.
 
This is a very strong opening, very safe aswel, and it gives you alot of options on what type of game you want.

I Started a game as byzantium tonight, cointents, Standard, emperor. I basically did the entire build. I met alexander and Oda :rolleyes: so i knew it was going to be a war game. Oda dowed on me just as i got my third city up around turn 60, but i had enough money to upgrade my three archers to composit bows. I was well able to defend his attack. He gave me a pretty decent peace deal. However before the attack i was debating on wheather or not to spend the money on nearbuy city states, but i decided to play it safe.

I took messanger of the gods from the parethnon believe, and i currently have my libraries almost complete with NC teched.

I was able to ally with a nearby mercintlie city state, which was very helpful. I eventually got to 4 cities around turn 70, and then alexander dennounced me, but decided to go after the celts and oda.

The celts asked me to declare war on alex, i was already planning war, so i agreed. I had overbuilt comp bows and had 3 horsemen which took out sparta and athens. Alex was defeated, but siam and Oda dennounced me. Im at 50BC now, and im doing pretty well with 6 cities!

I could probally go for any vic conditon, now that greece are out of the way. But this looks like its going to be a war game.

Thanks for posting this strat! This game is actually the first game of Gods and Kings for me, so far it is really enjoyable.

I might post a save if ye are intrested bdw. :)

Edit: i was just wondering, how well would this start work with an isolated start? I did have to reroll my game a couple of times because of that! :D
 
@RobertSmith : 3 cities is ''less'' problematic'' but 4 cities is the little edge that you can let you capture more cities with early provokation.
I love that You have open my eyes for Tradition. To build NC after 2 cities feels like something between my "old" 2-3 cities Liberty path and something new with very a nice symbios with religion regarding growth. I play either as Babylon, Korea or Greek. I will try to conquer 1 or 2 cities in a counter attack, I''m only aim at Dipl, vic. last 3 cities game was a new record for me 245. But I want to have a pre 230....

Edit: There was only one culture CS => impossible (for me) to get 2 free tech :( p.s I love to be in tech. lead and train spies in capital and then move them to do culture coup in CS ;)
 
Edit: i was just wondering, how well would this start work with an isolated start? I did have to reroll my game a couple of times because of that! :D

Build all settlers from capital. Buy a worker as soon as you hit 320 :c5gold:. You don't need much units so you should start with a shrnie in 2nd city and 3rd city and go for philo before construction to build NC as soon as possible. If the capital is low in production, stick with 3 cities until NC done. For sure it will be much slower, but it's better than nothing.

Edit: There was only one culture CS => impossible (for me) to get 2 free tech :( p.s I love to be in tech. lead and train spies in capital and then move them to do culture coup in CS ;)

It's better to concentrate very hard on culture when you reach the ren.era. I have some difficulties to finish the entire rationalism tree because i almost always get all techs needed before that. I'm still trying to find a way to get rationalism done under 200 turns but it's not an easy task. Again, it's civ/map dependant.
 
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