Tradition's 4 cities opening

Am I the only one who feels like the archer tree is a bit too good in G&K? In vanilla I often completely skipped archers as they were usually too vulnerable to survive even one attack, in G&K they tend to live to tell the tale and they can attack without being damaged themselves, which makes them stronger than other units, especially when attacking the more spiky cities. I find I'd often rather go for CBs than risk taking IW and having no iron.

Catapults are also pathetically weak in comparison. Not only do they need to set up before attacking, which is a huge liability by itself in unit vs unit combat, but they also get added nerfs against units while not being a whole lot stronger against cities when compared to CBs.

It's not quite as bad but similar to the horseman rush in early C5 vanilla. I never feel like I need to build something else, at least against the AI.

alpaca said:

Am I the only one who feels like the archer tree is a bit too good in G&K?

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They get eaten by new, stronger horsemen quite easily. (I presume you're talking about Composite bowmen). The only army I find them really super-effective against are those warrior-archer rushes the new AI likes to do.

alpaca said:

Am I the only one who feels like the archer tree is a bit too good in G&K?

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Nope. I don't think it is too good. It sucked big time in vanilla and very useful now. But I do think archery units inflict a little too much damage to cities. I don't even bother with IW until relatively late.

Bibor said:

They get eaten by new, stronger horsemen quite easily. (I presume you're talking about Composite bowmen). The only army I find them really super-effective against are those warrior-archer rushes the new AI likes to do.

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Yes, I'm talking about CBs. Archers die to horsemen or swordsmen but archers are on the same tech level as spearmen or chariot archers. Composite bowmen tend to do fair enough against horses or swords. They won't melee it through but they can usually survive one hit, which is enough.

I meant the tree as a whole: A->CB->XB->GG. In the ancient era, you build archers and upgrade them to crossbowmen once you get construction (which is a must-have tech unless you have very few cities) who are very strong compared to their contemporaries. Getting x-bows is not quite as attractive because you'll usually want to take education first but the gatlings are once again in a very favourable position in the tech tree, sitting on industrialism, which you want anyways. Rifles, in comparison, need five additional techs, dynamite six.

I have tried this two times in deity, both get Dido as a neibour, got attacked on turn 20, hold her back until she settled me AROUND with cities and swarmed with 20 Ware elephant

Hate her...

I tried this last night, and it worked really well. Took longer to get the 4th settler than I liked because I was short on cash by about 50 gold, and was at war with every other Civ I had contact with. I also still haven't built the NC, because that last city is late getting that library built.

BUT, the growth is excellent, and it generates an impressive army early. It's turn 140 and one Civ is gone while the other Civ just lost their first city.

Not sure if you mentioned it, but putting physics into the tech priority is pretty important. Your tech advantage with CBs doesn't last long. If you try to use the army, you might need trebuches to take out walled cities.

alpaca said:

Yes, I'm talking about CBs. Archers die to horsemen or swordsmen but archers are on the same tech level as spearmen or chariot archers. Composite bowmen tend to do fair enough against horses or swords. They won't melee it through but they can usually survive one hit, which is enough.

I meant the tree as a whole: A->CB->XB->GG. In the ancient era, you build archers and upgrade them to crossbowmen once you get construction (which is a must-have tech unless you have very few cities) who are very strong compared to their contemporaries. Getting x-bows is not quite as attractive because you'll usually want to take education first but the gatlings are once again in a very favourable position in the tech tree, sitting on industrialism, which you want anyways. Rifles, in comparison, need five additional techs, dynamite six.

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Yeah I agree they are effective at each stage and the upgrades are solid.
Unlike spears and pikes which start to be less useful after they hit the lancer stage

It's a nice strategy, but you can forget about massing archers when your nearest neighbour is som1 like Attila, arrows against battering rams - yeah - not so effective. A more isolated start is much more better for pumping these early cities, especially if you want to go for for science/diplo - RA are less OP now, but you still need as many as you can(i've no prob winning a sc VC, but i want faster progress and less turns), angry neighbours= slower research. All in all i think it comes down to individual playstyle, since i'm still not as flexible and experienced in the game, therefore i'm building too many buildings and not enough units, which turns my games into a defensive simulation.

I tried this in a peaceful immortal science game as Pacal. It worked pretty well - my cities got to sizes 18, 19, 20 and 23, and science peaked at a little over 1000 bpt. Launched at 293. I took fertility rites, peace-loving, swords into ploughshares and religious community. Religious community's pretty strong for a tall empire, as it's effectively a global 15% production bonus.

I messed up my tech a bit - I completed Hubble after I'd already cleared the tree, which was something of a waste. It seems as if beelining satellites is the way to go. Also, I had enough faith left over that I could have bought an extra GS - I haven't really got a handle on how many I need.

A slight problem is that now all the spaceship parts cost the same, it's difficult to build them efficiently in 4 cities.

The Mayan pyramids are pretty strong, but the Long Year thing is a bit of a mixed blessing - after you've taken a GS and a GE, the other great people are only moderately useful, and they push up the number of GPPs you need to generate your GSs.

peddroelm said:

You can't move the first city shrine before the first worker as it would delay everything too much (unless you play the Maya) - but starting with it in the the second city and eventually chopping some woods if available for any of them might be beneficial ... (might even be worth it to buy it with in second city (not very / efficient but opening Pantheon early might make it worth it) if you settle second city on lux when playing the Mayans - it would delay the 3-rd city)

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If you can get a very early worker from a cs(which can happen often at deity), chopping a forest for a 2nd shrine seems appropriated. What you don't want is to delay archers. Rushes can occur as soon as turn 40 or earlier. I can keep 200 just in case this will happen and delay 4th city a bit.

GreedysMaximus said:

It's a nice strategy, but you can forget about massing archers when your nearest neighbour is som1 like Attila, arrows against battering rams - yeah - not so effective. A more isolated start is much more better for pumping these early cities, especially if you want to go for for science/diplo - RA are less OP now, but you still need as many as you can(i've no prob winning a sc VC, but i want faster progress and less turns), angry neighbours= slower research. All in all i think it comes down to individual playstyle, since i'm still not as flexible and experienced in the game, therefore i'm building too many buildings and not enough units, which turns my games into a defensive simulation.

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Attila is...Attila. Not always successful, a 3 cities approach can be better in some situations. Like you said, experience and knowledge may vary.

Thresian said:

I tried this in a peaceful immortal science game as Pacal. It worked pretty well - my cities got to sizes 18, 19, 20 and 23, and science peaked at a little over 1000 bpt. Launched at 293.

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Try to get these numbers around turn 200. You will have a chance to launch before 240.

Thresian said:

A slight problem is that now all the spaceship parts cost the same, it's difficult to build them efficiently in 4 cities.

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Yeah this seems a bit lame now - they are all the same just different techs unlock them.

Greasy Dave said:

Excellent tips. I'm going to use them to tighten up my 4 city start. My mind boggles when i read snarzberry got a tech victory at 230 turn though I was able to do that kind of finish at Deity in vanilla. I've only had time for one playthrough of G n K at immortal and could only manage turn 326. Anway, that's kind of off-topic.

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Yeah, I'm kinda confused about how some of these guys are teching so quickly. In my immortal games, I'm typically in the industrial era around turn 200 and am always #1 or #2 in tech (I'm only number 2 if there's a runaway civ somewhere). I generally beeline the major techs that unlock important science buildings (universities, public schools) and go for research agreements whenever I can, so it's not completely obvious to me how I can speed things up.

xDaunt said:

Yeah, I'm kinda confused about how some of these guys are teching so quickly. In my immortal games, I'm typically hitting the modern era around turn 200 and am always #1 or #2 in tech (I'm only number 2 if there's a runaway civ somewhere). I generally beeline the major techs that unlock important science buildings (universities, public schools) and go for research agreements whenever I can, so it's not completely obvious to me how I can speed things up.

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I think the one of the key issues here is from CS's and possibly the civ's which they are playing with, since the DLC civ's(Babylon & Korea)have big advantages over the rest of the bunch. That being said, i'm still interested in knowing what other trickery some ppl use to obtain such fast times.

GreedysMaximus said:

I think the one of the key issues here is from CS's and possibly the civ's which they are playing with, since the DLC civ's(Babylon & Korea)have big advantages over the rest of the bunch. That being said, i'm still interested in knowing what other trickery some ppl use to obtain such fast times.

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Yeah, if you're playing Korea or Babylon that will make a difference. With regards to CS's, unless you're playing someone like Greece, Arabia, or one of the other civs that is able either to get a lot out of gold expenditures on CS's or to generate a lot of gold, you're probably not going to have a lot of CS allies. Typically you'll be able to hold about 2-3 because the AI's so fiercely go after CS's.

@Above for fast Sci victories. The other element is how many enemy civs. The more enemy civs, the easier the game is for a non-domination victory. Unless it's a 1 vs AI and not FFA. Huge maps are so much easier for a non domination victory. Less likely to run into other borders (unless you're some super starved 20-city empire) and they're more likely to attack each other than attack you because the AI's empires take up so much space with their brainless expansions. You also have more friendly partners to have RA's with.

Something like a 4 player FFA on small pangea would be a lot more butt hurt, especially when you spawn in the center of the 3 other civs and they DoW you, without giving you any one to RA with.

I'm not that good of an Immortal player and lose games from time to time. But my usual 4-civ FFA on pangea is +/- 300 turns for science vic. It's really hard to not piss off everyone for just being alive so those RA's are hard to come by. I sometimes play without CS and set the map size to small (6-player), or it's sometimes 4-civ 4 CS, or sometimes 4-civ 8 CS. It's even worse if you can't find a mountain.

Thanks for sharing this strategy. I never managed to play an effective empire with more than 2 cities on emperor and above, but with this I finally managed to employ a successful strategy. I guess I would never have thought about that early luxury selling deals. Biggest bonus is that I can keep playing tradition, because I (for some reason) dislike liberty.

Played as Netherlands on emperor and continents - which, btw, seems like a great civ for that strategy, thanks to the UA. Had some trouble to adjust to the early DOW and suffered from a rather bad starting location, but after the third try I was able to fend off the AI attacks. Finished the game with a science victory around turn 370, but wasted around 50 turns for a just-for-fun war against the civs on my continent.

Great opener! Just used it as French on my first committed King and have the most advanced military with well placed, defended and growing cities. Will be sure to use the rest of this excellent strategy. Thanks for posting!

xDaunt said:

Yeah, I'm kinda confused about how some of these guys are teching so quickly. In my immortal games, I'm typically in the industrial era around turn 200 and am always #1 or #2 in tech (I'm only number 2 if there's a runaway civ somewhere). I generally beeline the major techs that unlock important science buildings (universities, public schools) and go for research agreements whenever I can, so it's not completely obvious to me how I can speed things up.

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I was playing around with some "benchmarking" on Immortal to see what bpt I could get to by T150. I need to do more tests with the standard civs but ~200 by that point is very doable with civs like Aztecs or Korea that work well for tall teching

I think a lot of it comes from learning to micro and grow your cities effectively (e.g. trade for resources for WLKD, utilize CS allies etc)
Of course it all snowballs as the better you tech earlier the quicker you get to the science boosting buildings etc.

xDaunt said:

...With regards to CS's, unless you're playing someone like Greece, Arabia, or one of the other civs that is able either to get a lot out of gold expenditures on CS's or to generate a lot of gold, you're probably not going to have a lot of CS allies. Typically you'll be able to hold about 2-3 because the AI's so fiercely go after CS's.

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I would generally agree with this but .. I had a deity game as the Maya - 4 city peaceful science victory ... Had lots of camps, a city with a lot a river tiles and NO tithe ...Managed to keep 8 CS allied from med game to finish ..

- went full tradition - then 3 in patronage (lower influence drop, more influence for cash, science from CS) ... Patronage tree is very powerful in G&K
- 3 of those CS were Mercantile allying them provided massive happiness benefits (+ the luxuries from the other allied CS) - allowing me to sell all the copies of every lux I had acquired and strategic...(cash)..Also saved some GPT by not having to build the happiness buildings
- 2 of them were faith ...had enough faith generation to win some of the faith generation quests, at times due to me focusing on science I would win tech discovery races ... Most of the time I got some influence out of that I would top it off with cash and ally
- every quest asking for cash gifts or investors - was a cheap way to ally the CS ...
- had two allied maritime CS - along with some religion growth bonuses meant my tradition capital population grew rather high ... . Which meant pretty high gold per turn from monarchy ....Also settled a great merchant (Maya and their great person lottery) ..
-eventually I found and promptly allied a cultured CS to help with my social policy rate (help offset the patronage detour)
- had laughable military - great when you can get away with - little cash spent on acquiring and maintenance ...Some cash went into RAs but I didn't have that many DOFs... Rest of the cash was free for CS influence wars...
- As I got into/close to the tech lead towards the end game - moved my spies to my allied CS rigging as many elections as possible to maintain grip ...AIs only tend start dropping huge cash and couping fests after the UN is up ... Winning before that is preferable because at that point maintaining CS allies becomes problematic ...

nice strat... tried it on emperor (which id been having mixed results with) and its great

firstly used it for rome and went on to dominate pangea just before gunpowder - the UA is great for getting the cities up and running fast!

next i used it for korea and went science victory on continents, ended up launching around turn 220 and could have been faster. although, i did select onemoreturn and proceed to nuke sweden a couple of times and send in 3 giant death robots to clean him out the next turn for fun . take off into space then let the nukes fly!

one question, do you normally play quick or standard or what tabarnak? i use quick just cos the endgame gets so long on other modes and i like to try finishing a game in one day. (usually small map too). - Just wondering how quick/small effects things, should it make this easier or hardeR?