getting trounced as Siam

clif9710

Warlord
Joined
Sep 28, 2009
Messages
200
Location
Chicago
In vanilla or GK, I can't get Siam to work for me. The only times I've been moderately successful have been in vanilla when I go on a rampage early with my elephants and keep on fighting, or take a continent and hold off invasion with a navy. Even then, coming in third place is the best I can do. In GK, my elephants no longer have the advantage against cities they had in vanilla.

But war mongering isn't playing to Siam's advantage of big benefits from CS alliances to gain a cultural victory with a minimum of cities. I never have enough gold to keep more than two or three in alliance.

When I try to go the one or two or three city route, it always turns out the same way...I can do well up to a point but inevitably a neighbor who has been a friend will clean my clock at will in the later game. With their many cities cranking out units, my few cities, though huge, can't keep up.

I'm brand new to GK but my sense is that it will make Siam/cultural within reach, but not so far. Any ideas? I'm sick of crying on my solid gold breastplate!
 
Found a religion.

Get tithing for income.

Spread your religion to every city-state; city-states that follow your religion have a slower influence decrease.

Alternatively, Papal Primacy can be amusing if your religion has a very powerful spread - when you have this and patronage, you can become friendly with CS you haven't even met (and will receive income from them). I've only done that as Byzantines though (texts AND preachers)

Get as much faith income as you can; send missionaries and great prophets out and convert the world; other civ's and their problems with that be damned.

Pledge protection to every CS you WONT be bribing. Combined with patronage, protected civs will default to 30 influence and be friendly without you spending anything on them.

Once you actively bribe them, remove protection to stop other civs taking tribute and forcing them to get mad at you - unless you can maintain an army/conduct a war and don't care.

Enhance your religion ASAP. Get texts or preachers so it spreads fast on its own - with missionaries and prophets hitting the right locations, you can overpower everything else.

You don't need a ton of cities but you want big cities. Get tradition & make maritime CS your #1 priority.

Avoid scientists. Take manual control of specialist allocation and run merchants, engineers (to rush merchants wonders), artists (to settle for landmarks). Lategame, use the artists for golden ages because the empire-wide culture boost can surpass the individual tile.
 
It is sad how calvary (including knights) can't knock over cities anymore. But Siam still has basically the most strong-for-its-time unique unit of any class. Expanding during elephant time like you said you've been doing should be all you need to enter the late game as a continent-owner.

Anyway as a trim and lean suggestion, maybe try deprioritizing culture CSs in early game and focus on maritime. Extra .5 fold bonus for every city per maritime ally is very strong.
 
Siam is very versatile. It doesn't have to play a purely cultural game because the extras are just as beneficial to other victory types. If you're going on conquering no matter your original intended path, you will have so much gold from those cities that keeping at least half of all CS shouldn't be a problem. I find nowadays that with 3-5 cities I can easily reach 100+ gpt and still keep at least 10 military units around so with more cities it should be even easier.

PS: Tithes is weak.
 
I just won a game as Siam with Diplo. My economy divebombed in the middle, but I got it working, all while funding the poorest military on Earth, and only got DoW'd once, which was Pakal with his one rifleman :p

Siam isn't really a kill everything civ at all. Basically a CV or a DV are your best bets, and with Patronage, a strong religion, cash, and Siam's UA, a Diplo win is a very liable bet.
 
Siam isn't really a kill everything civ at all. Basically a CV or a DV are your best bets, and with Patronage, a strong religion, cash, and Siam's UA, a Diplo win is a very liable bet.

Siam can definitely be a 'kill all' civ, if you want. It certainly is one of the AI favorites, when it comes to domination runaways. Basically, once you've mauled a big chunk of the world during your dominating elephants era, you should have enough gold puppets to afford to buy out as many CS's of all types as you need, to finish out the game- whether you finish out as domination or culture or whatever.
 
I find that wide is better for Siam. If you're committed to a cultural victory, "wide" will have to be mostly puppets. Otherwise, just go ahead and found lots of cities. The bonuses you get from city states will keep your people happy, and the maritime bonus scales with size. Going wide is the easiest way to get cash. Trade routes, puppet gold cities, etc., can really boost your gpt. If you decide to go wide, try to get Machu Picchu as well.
 
lots of good ideas you've given me to work with. I've just played my best Siam game. With three cities I've dominated the west half of a continent and have a line of 4 CS's on my eastern border not only providing a nice shield against other civs but also, with effective use of religion and spying, giving me 4 solid allies.

Everything is working in good Siamese fashion, tons of food, plenty of culture so techs and policies have been rolling in.

When war came, Washington attempted a huge invasion through my CS allies. It was a joy to see them filter that force so that I only had bits and pieces to clean up that made it through, kinda like the Maginot line was supposed to work. I only had to help defend one CS.

Now it's quiet but I know old George is preparing a second offensive that will break the CS barrier since their limited number of units were taken out. Also, second most powerful Elizabeth is, I know, going to stage a naval attack soon...

I've only played GK a short time but it's a big improvement over vanilla; harder to beat, better UI, more realistic combat and diplomacy. It makes vanilla look like a beta version.
 
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