Revenge of Rapid Expansion Strategy on Emperor (crossposted from earlier thread)

This was crossposted from an earlier thread ( HERE ) but since it's really to make a new point, I thought it would be better and less cluttering in its own thread.

I have recently been trying to employ a rapid expansion strategy on Emperor - by which I strive to get a sizeable lead on "Land Area" in the early parts of the game at the expense of infrastructure, finance, and tech, then try to catch up and surge ahead of the AI on tech. The example game in the earlier thread was epic speed, however, and some people jumped on this to argue that this strategy is easier on epic. So here is another game on normal speed, and this time it is an open challenge to anybody.

Here is another game I started a while ago.
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Difficulty: EMPEROR
Starting Civ: RANDOM
Land type: CONTINENTS
Game speed: NORMAL
Options: ALL DEFAULT OPTIONS
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The random civ I got was Caesar. I am well aware that there is a number of military strategies around these forums specifically involving Caesar, but believe it or not, I have never played Caesar in the past (I'm normally a peaceful builder and these rapid-expansion strategies I've been using are a fairly recent phenomenon).

I started out on a continent with Qin and Mansa Musa as neighbors. I founded two cities, pretty much beelined for iron working (partly because I could not find copper), found iron near my capital.

I built some Praetorians and completely took out Qin around 900 BC before I even discovered Alphabet. I took on Mansa Musa soon afterwards and, although his skirmishers were a bit tougher, I completely took him out at around 75 BC.

At this point I believe I have what I suspect to be a sizeable continent all to myself, riddled with barbarians of course. I have 9 cities at that point. Here is a screenshot of my situation:



And yeah, that's my treasury showing -21 GPT at 0% science.

The money situation is much more grim than that in the original game at the earlier thread. It's also much earlier in the game. The question is: can you recover and eventually outresearch the rest of the AI?

I don't have currency or code of laws yet. I don't have pyramids. I did capture a city with stonehenge in it.

There are still 4 civs I have not met. It's very possible, and in fact likely, that all 4 of those civs are on other continents. Moreover, chances are they are zooming ahead of you in tech right now. Even when you meet them you may not have any techs to trade. You'll have to prioritize while assessing your risks carefully.

Try out this savegame from this point onwards, and see if you can recover. I am also in the process of playing this out.

Play until something like 1000-1500 AD and see how far you can go in comparison to the AI. Good luck.
View attachment 113734

Always have a plan to bail yourself out of a maintenance hole. In this case, I would done the following:

1) Razed some cities I captured. In particular, I wouldn't have kept Djenne, Gao, and possibly Shanghai and/or Guangzhou. Well, Shanghai has Stonehenge, so I would have kept that. The jungle cities are in noce spots, but the spots aren't going to go anywhere. Raze the city for now and then rebuild when things are settled.

2) Made sure I had at least 1 worker/city (you seem to have this covered ok)

3) Built more cottages. Even if this replaces farms that the AI built. You can always switch back to farms later. Timbuktu, in particular, is a great candidate for cottages now (and farms later, when it would make a very nice great person city), but I would have sacrificed some production for more commerce at all the cities.

Before Code of Laws (which give you the double effect of courthouses and merchant specialists), you can't really afford to have cities that produce 1 or 2 total commerce.

From where the game stands right now, trade hammers for commerce. In the coastal cities, this means working coastal tiles until you can get some cottages up.

Right, I'm aware that it's helpful to have certain techs and infra, etc. in place before going to war so that you DON'T fall this deep into the hole to begin with. That's exactly what I normally do (except for razing cities - I raze maybe a couple real crappy ones but keep the rest)

But the challenge here is to survive and thrive given the situation I've placed myself into, because I figure if I can do it here, I can do it almost anywhere.

I think its probably true to say that the key to an early rush like this is to have caste system researched first, then decide on a few key cities to run normally and have all the rest focus on merchant specialists to keep you breaking even until things start to level out. Personally i'd say the game above is already lost though - if you could recover immediately you now have no trading partners for a long time, barbs out the wazoo and probably several non-optimal city sites

I played this game and needed about 1100 AD to get Code Of Laws. This is far from optimal, I could have switched immediatly and worked some gems earlier, which would make a big difference.
After the courthouses where up, I jumped back to 70% and founded some more cities in the remaining places.
I have made contact with 3 other civs and as expected they are far ahed in techs. There is still a slight chance I might research a tech which nobody else has (got beaten in Libaralism only in a couple of turns), which will allow me to catch up.

If played exactly, this game is still winable from the startposition.

The overexpansion was not well prepared. You should have built more cottages (especially around timbuktu) instead of farms, anticipating the need of cash. And I was able to get immediatly ~10 gpt by simply micromanaging the cities, so this was played bad even before.

I am currently thinking about the opposite strategy, that is, playing with 1-2 cities until ~500 AD and then rapidly expand, you might look at this thread and savegame

drhirsch: you're exactly right that this overexpansion was not well prepared. That was on purpose, hence the challenge. Farms around timbuktu wasn't my doing, it was the AI's. It's a rather extreme example to hopefully make a point. Good luck with the rest of your games. I'm a bit over 1500AD now and will discuss my findings later.

Phyacis: well, that remains to be seen. I haven't given up yet.

OK, I managed to get Code of Laws in 660 AD. I suspect I am way behind the other AIs, but at least I have a solid base of science (120/turn in 920 AD) that will take off as soon as I turn Timbuktu into a pure science/GP city.

My priorities were:
1) Get Code of Laws as quickly as possible
2) Get my happiness limit up
3) Meet my neighbors

#1 and #2 were accomplished by 920 AD. #3 is still abit off, though I am beelining for caravels.

My building priorities are:
1) Courthouse (chop-rush when possible)
2) Marketplace
3) Library
4) Other

You already have enough workers, so I switched all worker production to buildings.

My immediate steps from your save were:
1) Use 2 scientist specialists in Rome and Antium
2) Switch tiles without commerce to tiles with commerce, even at a loss of significant hammers, except where I wanted a quick library (for more scientists)
3) Switch worker production to buildings
4) Build cottages - replace farms around Timbuktu - build new cottages elsewhere
5) Start building a road to Olmec
6) Capture Olmec (I want the +2 happiness it will have) plus you need the cash to bootstrap your way to markets/courthouses

Longer term, sacking Hun was a priority. While my 7 Praets were there, a couple other small barbarian cities popped up, that I am in the process of containing and will eventually sack.

My research order was:
1) Currency
2) Code of Laws (660 AD)
3) Sailing
4) Calendar

We'll see where this goes when I meet my neighbors

Arg! Is there any way to get rid of sucky cities? Sure Djenne is in the middle of sugar and spice (and everything nice), but SSW of it is a prime spot for a super-production haven that looks oh so very nice.

I left Djenne defensless as early as possible, hoping some barbarians would take the opportunity, but there was too little emptiness to spawn any liberators. In desperation, when a swordsman came up next to Timbuktu, I sacrificed 6 workers to the Barbarians, leading the swordsman all the way next to Djenne, which he finally took. I had to bait him with workers the entire way, since he seemed otherwise obsessed with dying upon the gladii of the Praetorians in Timbuktu.

Once I finally convinced him that Djenne was a city worth the effort, I decided to retake it with my own military force. To my extreme annoyance however, the option to "raze the city" was not available to me at all. All that effort and Djenne WAS STILL MINE!!!

Apparently, as long as you have any ethnic hold in a city, it is illegal to raze it. Cities do however lose 1 population when conquered, so maybe if I starve it down first with a siege...

A creative way to get yourself out of the maintenance hole as a philosophical civ is to switch to caste system and put 2-3 merchants in the conquered capital. That gives you a great merchant worth 1350 gold in 8-10 turns (epic). That money allows you to get alphabet quickly then trade for the worker techs you need to "catch up". That works extremely well with oracle -> code of laws, as earlier courthouses and shrine will also help.

I seem to have played it very similarly to Walkerjks, going mad with chopping out libraries, markets and most importantly courthouses, and whipping them all the rest of the way if food allowed. I got to Code of Laws in 720AD, then went for Sailing and Calendar. I got 2 great prophets as well, and both went to become super-specialists Beijing, as it was my best commerce city at the time, and I was desperate for money. I left the farms round Timbuktu, the extra food will help make up for lack of production until I switch to Caste System, and it can support a lot of specialists once I manage to research Monarchy and get the Calendar resources hooked up.

Managing to raze both the barb cities I found kept me going until I got Currency, where I was making a small profit at 0% science. CoL was researched almost entirely using Scientists. I also founded another city to claim the gems and iron to the NW of Beijing. The barbs weren't too much of a problem, and I haven't built any more units since the start of the save. I'm trying to get the Hanging Gardens ATM, not only for the health bonus, but also to give me another pop in each city to turn into shields

I doubt if I'm anywhere near the AIs in tech ATM (Colossus, Great Library, and Sistine's Chpel have all gone) and I'm probably too far behind to catch up in time to get to Domination, so it looks like Space or Diplomatic would be the main viable wins to go for now.

I can definately support more cities now, especially once I get the FP up. I'm currently making a small profit at 60% science, and have managed to avoid having to use Caste System yet

Edit: I also built Research in several cities that had nothing useful to build. I didn't need units, or Settlers/Workers.

Interesting save game.

I won a SS victory in 1910. Diplomatic would have been feasible to get earlier.
The game in brief:

Initial priorities were as described by walkerjs above: Switch tiles to commerce, get libraries and science specs, get code og laws and courthouses.
Capturing Olpec to get fur and silver was a top pririty as well.

I managed to chop-rush the hanging gardens which was very helpful with the many cities.
Once calendar was researched, happiness ceased to be a problem and the game became much easier. Cities grew very fast. I cottage spammed everything. Timbukto became science capital with Oxford, Rome became production capital.

When the other civs arrived ~1100 I was slightly behind in tech. Managed to trade my way back to tech parity though. Bee-lining for techs that noone has and then "backfilling" seems to be the best way to keep up.
With Elisabeth, Roosevelt and Huayna on the same map (and all good friends too) the tech-race was very fast-paced. Even with my huge empire it was hard to keep up.

Beelined for communism. Got it around 1600. With state property, I was able to settle the rest of the continent. The AI settled a few spots too too, but all their cities eventually culture flipped. Built the Kremlin and switched to universal suffrage and emancipation soon after. research rate was at 90-100% for the rest of the game.

Signed defensive pacts with elisabeth and roosevelt.
Around 1800 I decided on SS victory, even though diplomatic would have been wiser given the fact that elisabeth and huayna were friendly.
Switched to pure research and got the victory in 1910. All the AIs were building spaceships too, but way behind (only SS casings).

I attached 2 save games, one from ~1500, and one the turn before SS victory.

Good work, exitpoll, although I'm far from surprised.

As for the rest of you, I can virtually guarantee that you will outtech and outproduce the AI in due time and win the game by whatever means, as long as you don't make silly mistakes.

Why am I so confident? Because of the simple concept of "inevitability."

Generally speaking, more land = more resources = more hammer = more commerce = more "stuff" to work with. There are exceptions of course, but on the whole, land is power. And you have by far the most land of every other AI to begin the savegame. You will lag behind technologically in the early going as you set things up, but thanks to the early rush, you can at least build up now free of AI intrusion (except for some barbs which, frankly, shouldn't be difficult).

Once your population grows and you're developing and working more of your land, the inevitability will strike: you are going to zoom ahead in the mid/late game.

In my game, I was just playing around at the end and wasted like 10-20 turns just building up stuff I don't need in every city (i.e. temples/supermarkets etc where I had more than enough health/happiness) while I delayed getting Fiber Optics for long as possible (I had Kremlin). I also wasted several turns rushbuilding 56 ICBMs and like 30 stealth bombers just prior to passing the nuclear non-proliferation act.

Still, I won by SS in 1914 AD and am sure I could have won by military or diplomatic means too, because the other AI were far behind and I was "friendly" with Liz/Roosevelt. I had researched every tech and was on Future Tech #2.

A shot of my empire at 1914AD 1 turn before the win:


Yes I'm in the middle of a Golden Age, and I still have 1 Great Person left over.

Demographics, with Golden Age:


Demographics as of 1904AD, WITHOUT Golden Age:


Land area is over 3 times that of the next largest civ. This kind of domination is inevitable.



I can rushbuild an entire fleet of stealth bombers/modern armor/ships/etc. basically every turn. Aided with 56 ICBM's where helpful, a military victory would've been quick and easy as well.

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I'm certainly not saying that REX is the best or the only strategy on Emperor. I do however contend that it is a viable strategy - much more so than what some people, including myself, might have thought initially. Even with the completely unprepared nature of the initial expansion and the gigantic financial hole it created, it is fairly simple to get back on track and surge ahead as long as you have a sizeable advantage in "stuff to work with." You don't even need to be financial, or have any early wonders or religion. All it takes are time, patience, and the ability not to make dumb mistakes.

Sometimes you may find yourself in an early game situation where you pretty much have to expand rapidly and militarily without really preparing in advance; in those times, when you're barely keeping up your treasury with plundered coins, your science has hit rock bottom, and the other AI's on other continents are happily zooming ahead of you, don't despair. Just place yourself in a position of eventual inevitability and you'll have the last laugh.

Hey goraemon,

Your REX strategy looks interesting, I wonder if you can try this emperor game, which I am having problem with. Then afterward could you post your result, what steps you which to get into the dominating position in the game?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=110442&d=1136515194

Hello mutax

Since I have to go soon I'll just give you a brief synopsis for now and save the rest for later.

I played your savegame last night, and here's an advice for myself: don't play the game when you're tired. I hardly micromanaged the cities at all, and generally went through the whole game in a kind of hazy autopilot. I took out Cyrus fairly early by going for iron working and managing to snag the iron resource from under Cyrus's skin, but unfortunately got sloppy and took too long with the subsequent war w/Caesar.

When I wiped Caesar out it was wayyyy over 1000AD and technologically I was in deep trouble. What's worse, I didn't even try to cultivate good relations with any of the other civs. Did not trade anything with anyone hardly as a result, except for some resources. Technologically I was on my own for basically the entire game.

Somewhere around the mid-late part of the game when I was still playing catch-up Catherine attacked me (another sign of tired sloppiness: completely ignoring military knowing full well it's suicide) and razed two of my cities - both of which were well over size 10 and very good commerce cities. Yeah. That put a dent in things. Of course I'd rather kill myself than reload or give up so I played it through, rushed some military and drove her back eventually, signed peace, built 2 new settlers and had to found those cities all over again. This was like in the 1700's or something. So I'm afraid I screwed up bigtime in this game, and played one of my worst games in recent memory.

But I still won.



It's a messy, sloppy victory and came rather late (SS 1944AD), and I'm not proud of it, but a win's a win. I basically got saved by the fact that the REX strategy ensured that inevitability was still on my side despite my completely horrible play. I'll post some screenshots and the savegame later tonight when I get back. Too tired now

Here is mutax's savegame as played by me.

1520 BC: Found and secured Iron. I went pretty quickly for Iron working after discovering no copper, and delayed settling another city until after discovering Iron nearby.



Soon afterwards declared war on Cyrus, and he was gone as of 175 BC:



Fortunately, Cyrus was very advanced and had researched Calendar and already worked some (not all) of the plantations for me near his cities (I was still a ways off from researching it) so I could gain some happiness benefits immediately.

Now you could've just stopped here and built up and probably done fine, but since this thread is about REX I planned to go for Caesar too. I built up my forces a bit and kept my eye on the visible terrain for any Iron near Caesar's borders. At the time I declared war, he didn't appear to have it hooked up and all his defenders were still archers. Declared war on 700 AD and took a couple cities:



and razed one.

Fall of Rome came afterwards:



Now at this point things got messy. He apparently had found another source of Iron down south and was beginning to produce some praetorians.

I found the iron source and pillaged it before proceeding to wipe out Caesar at 1170 AD:



Around this point Hatty and Victoria made contact with me from other continents.

The problem is, my research is at snail's pace, I can't trade anything, the other AI's are about to discover liberalism while I'm about to begin research on civil service and metal casting, and 1170AD is quite late in the game already. Chalk one up to my general inefficiency and laziness in these campaigns. I have one thing going for me: I'm #1 in land size.

{to be continued}

Demographics as of 1170 AD, immediately after taking out Caesar:



And this land area is prior to my borders expanding in many of my cities. As for everything else, it's all pretty pathetic.

So I didn't build any early wonders or found religion. So much for the Qin's industrious trait. Oh wait, I think I built the Colossus but that's it. I got beat to the Oracle slingshot, liberalism slingshot, economics, physics, and circumnavigation of the earth. I was tired and lazy, and played on autopilot, without micromanaging. I made stupid mistakes. As a result, I didn't get a single great scientist in the early-to-mid game, which means no academy for the entire game. God I sucked.

1610 AD empire:



I'm researching physics which a couple civs still don't have, hoping to grab something that can be traded. It didn't work, when I got physics everyone else either had it or was researching it so I couldn't trade.

Tech screen as of 1610 AD:



Um..yeah, I'm behind.

Fast forward to 1900 AD:



I have not researched artillery and nobody will trade me anything, so flight is the tech that will get me to rocketry and Apollo Program. Also note the two marked cities. They're smaller than the rest and their names are different from those in my previous screenshots...that's because somewhere in the 1700's Catherine declared war on me and razed two of my good commerce cities around those spots before I could drive her back. Yeah, I ignored military completely up until then, I was tired, shoot me. I'd say that took off a good 20-30 turns off my progress timeline.

Finally, 1944 AD, 1 turn before the win:



All those hospitals, airports, The Internet that I'm building in the other cities? Completely useless. I just got tired of clicking every turn so i chose buildings with the most hammers. Did I mention this game wasn't played well?

Final thoughts follow next.

Final Demographics as of 1944 AD:



Another thing I noticed about REX while playing this game is how flexible and forgiving it can be. No religion, wonders, early tech gains, not even a single scientific academy and two razed cities in the mid-late stage. No one to trade with because early game I was way behind, and when I finally got some techs that no one else had they didn't want to trade. Stupid mistakes, suboptimal plays all through and through.

There was only one constant: I had the most stuff to work with. And at the end, despite my general suckiness in this game, that was enough.

Hope it helped.

View attachment 114136

The real question is if a more economically centered approach from 4000BC would allow for better/worse performance.

Aeson said:

The real question is if a more economically centered approach from 4000BC would allow for better/worse performance.

Click to expand...

I can't really imagine it being worse. 660 AD for Code of Laws is late. I suspect just razing a couple of the cities that were captured and rebuilding those later would have saved at least 20 turns. Probably more. And that puts you in a much better position to snag a late religion or get to liberalism first.

Rapid expansion is clearly still extremely valuable in any case, but you can at least be selective about which cities you keep. At least before Code of Laws, which gives you the double bonus of courthouses and merhant specialists to generate positive income.

walkerjks said:

I can't really imagine it being worse. 660 AD for Code of Laws is late.

Click to expand...

Another extreme is to build one warrior per city and focus on the economy. And that approach can produce worse results

But I think this thread just shows how pathetic AI is. HP's "stupid mistakes, suboptimal plays all through and through" and AI still loses.