How do I succeed mid-game?

weishaupt

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 27, 2011
Messages
9
OK so I usually do good in online...in the beginning. I usually go for a horseback rush and take one or two caps. However, as soon as I get past the expansion phase and all the land is grabbed up I just kind of "wing it" - sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. I'm wondering if any one can give me some tips for the mid to end game. I'm looking for a more solid mid game strategy because what will happen is I either dominate with my early rush and then beeline for mathematics and take out the last player or - I get out teched and the other players jut turtle up until they get space race victory.

I know its not very clear but can anyone help me?
 
Yup, I can help you. You want to start expanding. Keep your horsemen around for defense. Other than that, don't build much besides settlers. Most of your cities can stay empty. If somebody takes one, take it back. A few archers in strategic places is all you need.

All you need here is Code of Laws. You may grab Irrigation or Literacy if opportunity allows, but neither is necessary. During the expansion phase, you want to work hammers and gold only. You don't need to tech here. You want to push your trade level up until you can do 70 per turn. At that point you can switch to Democracy. Keep expanding if you have room.

You'll be at 105 science now. You should tech Banking. You also need a great scientist. You may just have one. If not, try to pull one off the AI (if any) or grab the Monarchy or Invention bonus. With no GS things get harder. Anyway, use your GS on Industrialization and tech University. Next stop: Oxford University. You will get Advanced Flight. Build one wing (if you think you need it) and a few single bombers and go grab all remaining capitals.
 
thanks! this actually sounds like it could work :)

  • how many archers or archer armies do you usually keep in a city when its a a strategic necessary?
  • why 70 trade? is there a reason or is this just what works for you?
  • when you switch to democracy and start getting techs again do you attempt to expand still or do you 100% focus on tech?
  • Do you build a lot of pikemen when you reach democracy?

annnnd...

  • What would you do if someone beats you to oxford university?

thanks again, I'm sure this will help me refine my strategy.
 
thanks! this actually sounds like it could work :)

It has many times for me.

how many archers or archer armies do you usually keep in a city when its a a strategic necessary?

I almost never build defensive armies at all. It's best to just give your opponent something to kill, then counter. If you run out of horsemen or they are too far away, use legions. For defenses, just a unit in the city (an archer or warrior) to prevent drop-offs is sufficient for most cases. Use scouts so you have a few turns to prepare for whatever is coming. Watch your seaways and fortify on chokepoints. You don't want heavy defenses in a city most of the time because then if the city gets a GA flip, you can't take it back.

why 70 trade? is there a reason or is this just what works for you?

The reason is that 70 + 1.5 (for Democracy) = 105, which is the minimum amount of science you have to be producing per turn to jump up to Industrialization with only the Banking prerequisite. The other prerequisite for Industrialization is Steam Power, which is a great tech to get, but it's more important to get to Industrialization and Advanced Flight first. You can pick up Steam whenever you like. You want Industrialization asap because of the 5 gold per city per turn first-to-research bonus.

You should have at least 10 cities at this point, probably more, so that adds up to a lot of gold. It's useful in rushing Oxford, if you don't have a Great Builder. I failed to mention the other thing you want to do here is settle a production city early on. Set it to build an expensive wonder. Go all production in the city unless you have really strong growth there. Just putting it on three trees for 6 production per turn is fine. Once you hit University, you switch it to Oxford University and you'll keep all that production and save a ton of gold. If that city has been at it for, say, 15 turns, that's 90 production. Oxford costs 150, so you're nearly there. This tactic is invaluable and reminds me of experiences in the IT world ("build me something, I'll tell you what it is later").

when you switch to democracy and start getting techs again do you attempt to expand still or do you 100% focus on tech?

I usually try to expand a bit more, but obviously the focus is off expansion. You don't really want to be at just exactly 105 tech because that could cost you turns if you lose a city somehow or even if somebody just moves a galley onto one of your trade tiles.

Do you build a lot of pikemen when you reach democracy?

No. Typically I have bombers so soon after that, there's no need for defenses. 2 turns for Banking. Now Industrialization if I have a scientist. If I don't then it'll take longer and more pikes will be necessary. 2 turns for University. Maybe a couple more turns to build up gold to rush Oxford. So you can see I might have Advanced Flight as few as four turns after switching to Democracy. At this point my opponent may be headed my way with some extremely expensive knight armies. One 27 attack bomber will fix that problem real fast. Most players quit when seeing a single bomber (especially before 500 AD).

What would you do if someone beats you to oxford university?

Now that's tricky. Did I get Industrialization first? If so, I might still be okay. There's a video series on Youtube in which this exact thing happens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amS5rlD30Y4). Getting the money techs is crucial. If I fail to get Oxford, I run straight at Corporation. Having both of these usually will result in the win. If my opponent has bombers it's tougher. Sometimes you can find and take a weak city and grab Advanced Flight. More often it's just tough unless you can tech up to Flight very quickly. There's no defense against bombers other than fighters which is why this strategy works so well.

thanks again, I'm sure this will help me refine my strategy.

No problem. If you are on xbox feel free to add me "El Thrasher". Also this forum is kind of dead for CivRev. There's a lot more discussion over at http://forums.2kgames.com/forumdisplay.php?39-Civilization-Revolution-General-Discussion. Also we run tournaments and stuff. You should join up.
 
it did seem kind of dead on here to me - i thought it was just because civ rev wasn't that popular of a game. okay I will add you tomorrow, my gt is fugitiverafiki (will be changing it soon haha), I don't know if I'm tournament quality but i may try it out after a little more online practice.. I'll be joining the 2k forums as well.

so far I've played two games with this strategy both of which went well, even though I lost one. Played Aztecs, conquered two opponents with Horseback rush then started using this strategy. I won at 1250 AD - having a bomber wing was serious overkill against archer armies. Very satisfying win.

second game i decided to try the romans since they start with Code of Laws. Instead of horseback rushing I put defensive units fortified at chokepoints and started expanding immediately. It was slow at first and I was getting out-teched by the egypt player, but when I switched to democracy I caught up quickly and beat him to oxford university getting advanced flight. This was all well and good but the egypt player focused on tech and used a great scientist to grab flight. This was an issue. I didn't have flight, just advanced flight so he massacred my bomber wings. Since my cities were so small I had to stay on mostly gold production to build anything modern.

I think I could have avoided by having a major production city, also I think I'll skip the romans. They do have a major advantage by having code of laws to start but I prefer to get my hands dirty taking caps right from the start.

Let me know if you have any tips that can help me with production.

I like what you said about placing scouts - I definitely need to start doing that.
I could've got to industrialization a lot faster in the romans game had I known about banking -> industrialization jump. I'm really just starting to get used to using (perhaps abusing is a better word here) the backfilling technique. I went straight for steam power instead of banking.
 
The Romans can be very powerful but they generally aren't considered as strong as the Aztecs right off the bat. A popular strategy for them is to very quickly get a lot of cities settled, then do a legion rush. You can make an obscene amount of legions in a short period of time. Then you move a settler near your enemy, settle the city and down a half-cost road come all those legions. It's a really fun way to go.

Otherwise having a lot of little cities can work out pretty well. You'll get faster as you work at it. Egypt with a Colossus start can tech pretty fast sometimes but generally you can get bombers out using Oxford before anybody can tech up to flight.

For production, you just need to bank hammers in a couple of cities. If you have Construction using oak is really good. Once you've used that production for Oxford or something, you may have to flip cities to gold production to get more bombers out. This is normally fine since you won't need any more techs. If your opponent gets Flight quickly, then you may have problems. Instead of figuring out what to do when this happens (there isn't much you can do if you're very far behind in tech), what you want to do is be proactive and prevent that from happening. An Egyptian player isn't going to tech very well with archers camping all his deserts. He's not going to be able to expand very well when there's a horseman army two tiles away waiting to grab any settlers he puts out.

The key to being good at this game is being able to attack, defend, expand and tech all at the same time though sometimes you may be able to put one or two of those activities on hold.
 
played today and got bombers at 750 ad! im getting faster little by little!
just watched the aztecs vs thrashers aztec series, learned a few things about horsearmy defense. but I'm wondering - how did you get to 3 horsearmies by 1900 bc? could you go into your aztec starting strategy for me, because I could really do some damage with 3 armies.

also do you think its better to practice on h2h of ffa? I've been playing a lot of ffa and its improved my gameplay a lot but it seems like the tournaments on 2k are h2h.
 
I always move my settler with the Aztecs. If you find an AI cap by 3500 BC, you can walk right in and have two cities. It's worth putting Tenochtitlan in a horrible spot if you can get the AI cap since it is guaranteed to be in a balanced spot.

In this particular game, I walked forward and moved my settler onto a friendly hut which gave me 25 more gold and showed me the nearby Seven Cities of Gold. I settled next turn in a good spot and got a galley asap so I had 200 gold on like turn 4. I put my free settler on the galley to drop it off on a different part of the continent and build a horse army there, which I think was a good move but unfortunately for me there was nothing over there. Had I gone the other way, I would have found Duke a lot sooner which would have obviously been better for me and worse for him. He was dug in by the time I could reach him, but it was still worth pressing him despite the loss of two horse armies. While he built a bunch of archers, I teched Code of Laws and started expanding which ultimately lead to my win.

You can see from the video that it would have been better to maybe go in more slowly with one or two armies while sending the rest around the back way with a galley. That also would have lead to a quicker win.

The tournament games are typically h2h mainly due to scheduling. It's much easier for two players to meet up than four. We did do a ffa tournament a couple of years back. It was fun but hard to make it happen.

I play exclusively h2h these days. I find fewer cheats there. In a ffa you might have one solid opponent and then two noobs who give cities away or turtle and build archer armies but have no way to win. There's definitely a difference in how you want to handle yourself. Settler moving is riskier in a ffa. AI exploitation is more important. I mostly play player matches against good opponents like Duke. Most of our games are over in like five moves but sometimes, generally when we spawn on opposite ends of the map, we get one worthy of Youtube.
 
Top Bottom