QIN SHI HUANG cottage spam strat. (improved Catherine cottage spam)

Please read this other thread first if you haven't seen it yet or you wont know what I'm talking about. > http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147012

And also thank you to synex for that clever orignal strat. Though this one you can pull the same thing off quicker and also fend back attackers untill you can rush buy a real army for serious destruction.

Okay everyone , I tried it too (the Catherine cottage spam) but I think I have made a few improvements , plus this was on noble and small Pangea map. I'll try a harder difficulty later , I'm sure it would easily work if you're clever enough.

Instead of using Catherine , use the Chinese > Qin Shi Huang.

Why ???

First , Chinese start with mining already , so first thing research bronzeworking to Chop. ( Plus they get agriculture as well so quickly pottery to make cottages )
Qin Shi Huang traits are Financial and industrious , > so you get that extra commerce like Catherine but heres the catch >

Go for Chop for stone henge , you'll get it with him 50% quicker because of the industrious trait, (and halved if you have stone which I'll explain later....) now you already have that culture boost plus will begin to start generating great people (engineers and scientists are the best for this strat )

Basically follow the intructions that the thread mentioned above has , and make sure you put a production city on a hilly area > closest if possible to the most aggresive neighbor ( such as Montezuma , Tokugawa and Alexander ..etc. AND DONT USE STATE RELIGION..... and give into demands ~ also make sure you have at least a decent defence force such as axemen & spearmen if they try raids , you'll need to be mobile and not hole up in your city or they'll just pillage your hamlets )

Another tip , DONT OPEN YOUR BORDERS , especially if you're weak with military which this strat at the start is , because the AI scout your cities out and realize they can attack (trust me , dont open borders and you'll be surprised how long you're left alone )

The MOST impotant resource to get is STONE (put your first settler near it at the start), because with stone you'll get the 3 important wonders I use for this improved version >
#stone quickly builds Stone henge for your culture boost
#stone quickly builds the Pyramids which will let you get the Civic Universal Sufferage right from the start
# AND GUESS WHAT ? it also halves the time for the Kremlin !

These first 2 wonders also generate Great people , which you'll want mainly scientists and a few engineers.

I tried Catherine and Qin , this way Qin is much quicker to getting things done ! and you wont end up dead trying to pull it off even in a Small pangea map next to Montezuma (which happened & I wiped him out with my superior army I rush bought )

Try Qin and you'll see.

I'll try now on terra big map on prince, going for a conquest, thx

I'll give it a go and let you know how i get on.

A few amendments - I think Catherine starts with Mining as well, also your borders will grow at half the speed of Catherine, but i dont forsee that causing too much of a problem due to the fact it'll just take 10turns instead of 5 for the full city fat-cross.

It's about 1100 AD, I'm four turns far from liberalism.
I've no land for an unlucky spawn, only 8 cities.
Anyway the beginning was fantastic, I've found in shanghai in a row:
Stonhenge
Pyramids
Oracle
Great Library
I chopped only one and half of wonders, leaving in the city five forests
Then I stopped to build wonders

I'm running on 80% science in positive flow cash, always first in score, always close border to ALL, no religion, near Giulius, Bismarck and Cleopatra.
Now I'll build two new cities to improve the economy near Pechino and Shanghai, I've about twenty tiles unused. from other cities.
And I'm well defended by cho ko nu, I've always loved this UU, even if never played with.

Stay tuned

Game lost......wtf....

ALL my neighbourn attacked me in a while ten turns before Tai mahal and Kremlin

GG Caesar, Isabella and Fredrick

I was very well defended but my country had an "U" shape, so moving the cho-ko-nu was very hard.

They razed one city and were going to do the same with another one.....
The game was over couse after very heavy pillaging in half of my country my strategy is totally useless.
I'm a little disappointed
The last comment: very strange playing in Tokugawa style!

That's life...or game!

Tauro: Wow, the AI "got smart" or what?

I'm curious if keeping your borders closed worsened your dip status, or whether this was a "Friendly" sneak-attack?

Yes, it got smart!!!
ten turns in war with isabella, pillage in one city...
Peace, after three turn war with caesar, in the opposite part of the empire... another city pillaged.
After about 8 turns, when I was managing to attack a roman city, I notice something like 20 german units in the german city placed in the center of my U.
He attacked me in two opposite cities and there was nothing to do, great strategy....catapults, knights, elephants, pikemen and so on. He hadn't a weak point, very strange in prince level, and he was lucky too....
You are right when you think that refusing open borded drived me to war with frederick, Couse four turns before he declared war to me he asked me open borders...
Most of the time all the civs were guarded to me, and frederick was never annoyed...
Better quit the game instead of trying to rise from my ashes, I've never been kicked in the ass like today

heh obviously you weren't well defended

Might I give a quick comment on this:

I played with Kublai Khan. His traits are creative (good for expanding borders) and agressive (defense? )

Build stonehenge anyway, you're cities expand like crazy. Find horses, build chariots, kill a civ early in the game (I wacked (how ironically) catharine's fine buttocks of the map before 800BC, giving me 2 terrific commerce cities (lots of grassland and floodplains), 2 producting cities and a naval city (should have razed that one, but I'm not in that habit) (chop rush courthouses quickly!!! Essential!!!).

Meanwhile, I had founde confusionism (oracle -> code of laws). With the free missionary I got the lovely egyptian lady on my side of the faith, and we were best buddies (friendly) untill well into the 1500 centrury AD (then I adopted free religion, and we became "pleased".

After getting confusionism, bail for music (free artist for those nasty near border cities), bail for liberalism (nice civics and free religion (Nationalism) and bail for Democracy (nice civic if you missed the piramids, otherwise, do as you please). Try getting theology (theocracy) and the tech for vasalage, and with the lead in the techrace your cities will be well defende always with modern armies, that have stanard combat I, and with baracs, vasalage and theocracy anything you want (2x city defence for archers, shock for your axemen defending your cottages etc).

This game was on monarch dificulty, large "balanced" map, 12 civs (excluding me, and before cathy was sent to the other side), everything standard. I tried the diplo win, but with 12 civs thats hard (2 were friendly with me (hatchep and the germans), 2 pleased (The aztecs (not monty) and one other, i forgot), but even 1 of the pleased abstained from votind, so I never got he majority. After capturing elizabeth nothing changed, so I won with spacerace early in the 1900's.

Cons of this approach: You're not financial..... (prolly a big con for this strat)
Pro's: You're aggressive (use it for quick expansion in the early years, using one of the early rush tactics explained elsewhere on this forum).

PS

Industrious... does that mean you produce more hammers (50% more) (in wich case chopping your wonders would have the same effect as any other trait), or does the wonder cost 50% less (making industrious combined with chopping a killer)?

Tauro , what happened to you ? , I think you lost because your empire had a strange shape. here's what to do >

City 1 , your starting capital city should ALWAYS be in the middle of your empre , this should be where you station most of your troops. The next the other new cities should be placed like a X or a cross ( not talking about the fact cross ) so you have one city to the north , east , south and west ~ make sure you pick the second city location with stone though (or iron for Chu-ko-nu)

This way , when they attack , you can rush out your anti-pillage army quickly because its central. Place your cottages on the inside of your empire , and only farms and mines on the outskirts near their borders > even if you cant use some mines or farms just make extra one anyway to give them distractions. Than you wont loose.

Last night I tried this with the Inca , it worked really well ( if not better ) , and another thing ~ Iwas was right next to Montezuma (again!) but also Kublai Khan ....... they both attacked me at the same time ! on different sides. I repelled it though with axemen and spearmen , and took a side track to catapults to sack their Khans nearest city.

If you cant handle it with Chinese or Russians , then for the aggresive (but still financial trait ) try the Inca > also you can make cheap UU that will guard your villagers while you chop rush.

Indeed.
But Frederick placed his SECOND city far away from Berlin, TWO TILES (!!!) near my capital, so my empire acquired this strange shape (I always start with a cross shape empire). I was sure to acquiring it to culture flip couse it was very near to shanghai (5 wonders on 450 AD...) but it didn't happened.....I culture bombed him with a great artist in the capital... nothing

I had
Germans on the north
Romans on the left --> placed immediatly shanghai in front of them in a wonderful place
Cleopatra on the right -->third city

BTW I reloaded the game 8 turns before the germans declared war and I opened the borders to all.
It didn't sort any effect with Frederick, he declared war...
But I managed better the civics without understimating his forces: slavery, national identity, and so on.
This was the thing to do....after heavy pillaging and two failed assault we went to peace.

Now it's 1916, the romans have only a ONE tile island (lol) and I'm running 70% science with 330 gold income per turn. Napolen declared war to Frederick
I have flight and tanks and the game is going right, I'm close to Berlin

Last very strange thing
Mansa Musa has only five cities, (me more than 15)
I have quite all financial and science buildings in all the cities and I'm still behind him.....crazy game....

P.S.
It's just a test for emperor level, I've just played on monarch with romans or incas without any problem at all, with an easy very early domination.