ALC Game #7 Pre-Game Show: Playing as Frederick

That was a very nice week "off". Time to get going again. In the next ALC game, I'll be playing as Frederick II the Great, leader of Germany. (Well, technically, Prussia, but hey, whatever...) This thread is to discuss, before the game, how to best exploit that particular leader's characteristics.

The fact sheet:

• Traits: Creative and Philosophical
• Starting Techs: Hunting and Mining
• Unique Unit: Panzer (Replaces Tank; Strength: 28, Movement: 2, Cost: 180, Unique Abilities: +50% versus armoured units)

I was tempted to do another poll to determine the leader, as I did for France, but I went the autocratic route and chose Freddy. He seems like the less popular of the two, though I could be wrong about that. Regardless, his traits often come up as two of the weakest available (though lots of players like them nonetheless), and the previous two ALC games featured Bismarck's traits: Louis (Industrious) and Victoria (Expansive). Granted, Louis was Creative as well, but that is usually regarded as a much weaker trait than Industrious. And I haven't played as a Philosophical leader since Mao. So of the two leaders, Freddy struck me as the greater (and more refreshing) challenge. As with Nappy, I will try to come back and play as the "skipped" leaders later on.

(Sidebar: I'm keeping all the game settings unchanged--Prince level, continents map, normal speed, etc. I've won all the ALCs thus far, thanks to the group mind, and was tempted to change things, but decided against it. Instead, besides exploiting the leader's unique characteristics, what I also want to focus on is winning earlier and more handily for a better end score. The Hatty game set a high-water mark of 44777. I'd like to beat that. If it means attempting some different strategies, such as streamlined tech paths or whatever, so much the better.)

Frederick is Creative, which everyone agrees is great in the early game but not very useful later on. So the early game is when it should be exploited. Spamming settlers for a land grab seems like the best way. I usually build 3-5 cities then go warring--I'm thinking 6-9 might be in order this time, regardless of what happens to the research rate. Should I even forgo city defenders at first, until barbs become a threat? I don't want to be afraid to try something risky.

Creative also makes theatres and colosseums faster to build. The theatres are handy, I find, colosseums less so. Theatres help with cities' happiness cap. They also contribute culture and add to border expansion and cultural pressure on nearby tiles and cities. And of course, once you build 6 of them you can build the Globe Theatre. I may therefore research Drama earlier than I usually do. Colosseums I only tend to build where I have to, in cities with constant happiness issues. Even then, I prefer more broadly-beneficial solutions like spreading religions.

Philosophical generates Great People faster. In the Mao game, I almost wound up exploiting this trait by accident. I'd like to be more calculating with it this time. As in the Mao game, I'd like to allocate wonders to cities based upon their GP generation. I'd like to build the Parthenon to add to the GP generation, and I'm hoping for stone to make a run for the Pyramids, which I haven't built in the ALCs since Mao. Since Freddy is not Industrious, I'd especially like to target the GE-generating wonders in one city to see how many of them we can produce. And if GPs are a goal, I may try to build Stonehenge even though I'm creative--mainly for the GPs. +3 culture in the early game would also assist with an early land-grab.

In fact, a land-grab would play into this, giving me more cities to choose from for wonder-building and GP generation, while others can focus on building military, settlers, workers, and so on.

Philosophical also makes Universities a faster build. So a race to Liberalism--picking up Education along the way--makes even more sense than usual.

On top of that, should we attempt more of a specialist economy this time? More specialists also equal more GPs. The only issue is that Freddy is not Financial, and I could see the economy suffering. A surfeit of Great Merchants just won't make up for that.

An early war of opportunity is always a good idea, but I'm thinking that, if conditions lend themselves to it, I should throttle back the aggression in this game. Partly so I can run Pacifism to further exploit Philosophical and Great People, partly because the German Unique Unit shows up so darn late. Panzers are available with Industrialism, which is also the tech that gives America its UU, the Navy SEAL--also roundly criticized as coming too late in the game. I might be looking at doing an early land-grab and Axe/Sword-powered war of conquest, settling back to gain a tech lead (helped by those cheap universities), bee-lining to Industrialism at an appropriate point, and then fighting a Panzer-powered late war if it suits my chosen victory condition.

Speaking of which, Diplomatic may be a good VC to pursue if I'm going to be peaceful for much of the game. The late Panzer war would, in that case, be fought to mainly (a) gain population for UN votes and (b) gain "mutual military struggle" points with an ally. An early pursuit of Liberalism and adoption of Free Religion may also make sense for this. But as usual, this depends very much on game conditions.

But let's flip back to the early game and talk about the starting techs. Well, ya gotta love Mining. It makes Bronze Working a quick tech to acquire, which I can use to chop and whip what I'll need for an early land grab. I can also look to snag copper for Axes to defend those early cities. Without an early UU requiring a different tech, researching BW first is a no-brainer.

Hunting is also nice to start with. My first city build (or two) can be a Scout. If I want to attempt an early land-grab, I'll need to explore the terrain. In addition, we saw in the Louis game how discovering the lay of the land as early as possible will go a long way towards determining the optimal victory condition to pursue. Popping as many huts as possible for what ever advantages they can bestow is also attractive. We can also cross our fingers and hope for a campable resource nearby. Failing that, we'll hope for cows, pigs, or sheep, since Hunting makes Animal Husbandry slightly cheaper.

So I look forward to everyone's thoughts on playing as Frederick.

One other thing: my refreshing break from the ALCs has resulted in my decision to relax a little. You may find me taking a little more time between posting each round, and I may keep taking longer breaks between the remaining ALC games. So please be patient. It just gives us more time to discuss strategy!

if i were you i would go for culture since he's my fav leader for it.
good luck.

Digging for synergies....

In my mind, the big tech for Philosophical is not Education, but Literature. Score the library, with all the yummy GP points, plus epic. The pre-req for Literature is Polytheism, which offers up the Parthenon. And both of those are Marble wonders. So if you can secure it, Masonry comes into play and wouldn't you know, Mining is the pre-req.

OK, first weird trick: Masonry + Mathmatics yields Construction, which gets you the cheap colisseum, and catapults, and war pants, which goes really well with hunting if you can secure Ivory early, which requires Hunting. Bingo.

Cheap Theaters gets you the Globe that much faster, which means you can get a whiptastic Globe + Heroic Epic up in a hurry if you go that direction.

Shorter term, Libraries are a big deal (because the science specialists are pulling double GP points), so a quick run to Writing makes a bunch of sense (and is on the beeline). The fast way is directly from hunting to Animal Loving to Writing, though you can save a touch of time if you pick off agriculture first.

Now if you go scout first (a strategy I like, since scouts lose their hut advantage quickly) then you've bought yourself a bit of time. Bronze Working right away doesn't do you any good, because you aren't going to use slavery right away, nor are you going to build axemen until you first kick out a worker. So you've room to slip in an extra tech. Another worker tech? maybe, but those have no leverage either.

My take on it might be this: what's the build after the worker going to be? If you are going for a land grab, you'll want to be chopping out a settler. But if you try to build the settler at the same time, that's going to stunt your growth. So maybe you build on one channel while you grow, and chop on the other. What's the build? If you are going to be sending out an early settler, you need military. You could go with warriors, of course - but you've got research time, and hunting is already in the bag, so maybe you grab archery before BW, so that you can train an archer while you chop the settler.

An alternative is to allow yourself to be lucky with bronzeworking. If copper appears in the fat cross, switch your research to wheel immediately; the worker mines the copper while Wheel finishes, then builds the road. In the mean time, you toss some turns into a barracks, or maybe a settler (sure, it stunts your growth a little, but you'll be axing and chopping soon). If copper isn't immediately available, turn towards Archery.

An interesting question in my mind, assuming you are making a run towards literature, is when to grab for Mysticism. Poly you postpone as long as you can, but Mysticism you may want to grab early, to score the cheap obelisks in each city - upping the culture of your land grab, or to pick off the henge for the priest points, and it's another Masonry pre-req.

If you want to exploit the panzer, then you're pretty much looking at conquest, domination, or space race as your victory condition. It does come late, but it's a truly awe-inspiring unit. If I understand the combat calculations correctly, panzer vs. tank goes at 28 vs. 18.67 which basically means dead tank.

Theoretically you could go for a late game, specialist-based cultural victory, but I don't think that would really utilize the panzer. It would get you to the late game, but you'd still be trying to play a peaceful, defensive type of game. If you really want to take advantage of the unit, a late game war is a must.

In a different thread, we had talked about the merchant city -- Wall Street plus Caste System to run as many merchants as possible with any Great Merchants merged back in to generate more cash and more food. That's a strategy that really works best in a long game where the city has time to develop properly. This might be the time to try it.

Another "exotic" strategy to consider is the Oracle -> Pyramids slingshot being discussed in the threads below.

Detailed analysis: # of specialist cities needed per era
Open competition: Earliest pyramids using philosophical civ and no stone

Without any food-oriented technology to start out with, Frederick probably isn't the ideal leader for that approach, but it's really possible with any Philosophical leader, especially if you don't consider the 1000BC time cutoff to be necessary (it probably isn't on Prince). It's at least something to think about, especially since you said you want to think about going for the Pyramids and/or a specialist economy.

FWIW, i think most people seem to agree that not being Financial isn't a disadvantage for a specialist economy. In fact, it's a requirement. If you are Financial, then cottages are far better. If you aren't, then you're sacrificing less by not building as many cottages.

My guess is that if you do any or all of these, you probably won't achieve your goal of an especially early victory with an unusually high score. These will be new techniques that you probably just won't pull off with the perfection necessary for that kind of win. On the other hand, if you're looking for a "different" sort of game, then that might be exactly the way to do it.

How much use of the Panzer do you expect to make and still challenge your score as Hatty? Your chances of besting your score are maximized if you take advantage of the philosophical and cultural traits rather than capitalizing on the unique unit, especially given the Panzer's arrival time. I think planning for as early a cultural victory as possible may be the way to go for optimum score.

Philosophical should help you generate GP from buildings+specialists. It might be worth thinking about cutting down on your wonder-building tendencies; if you're going for initial rex to make use of creative then you'll be building settlers and archers instead of early wonders. I'd still go for Oracle and think about most useful slingshot. Other wonders you could capture later if they're on your continent.
Philosophical and pacifism should really help GP production even without parthenon so could look into philosophy slingshot. Not being spiritual obviously means you have to plan your civic changes a bit more carefully.
Its also worth considering that you don't really need an early UU to go on an early rampage. So maybe go for early rex followed by military build up and rampage to get a hunk of territory; a benefit of creative is that you can raze and build and get borders re-established quickly. Earlier victory requires earlier domination of your home continent.

If I can humbly throw my hat into the ring, I would strongly advise going for the Metal Casting/GE slingshot referenced in Dr. Jiggle's post. Once you have the Oracle done in 1880 BC or earlier, you can decide what to do as your own leanings dictate. The main options will be: #1) Complete Pyramids, #2) Rush Machinery and fight your first war with Crossbows, or #3) Use Prophet + Engineer to rush Civil Service and Machinery and fight your first war with Macemen by 500 BC (or second, if you can fight a war as soon as Xbows are out as well). I think it would be a treat for those of us fooling around with these openings to have a comparison game to look at, and it would also serve as a guideline for players who have been reading those related threads to see it in practice, which will help them try it themselves or decide if it's the kind of game they want to play.

Under this plan, you'll be facilitating a domination/conquest win, which should be fine if you're after a quick game and therefore high score. The reduced tech costs (compared to Monarch) and Frederick's Creative trait will certainly pay off in trying this strategy. With Creative, you have more flexibility in your city placement, and his Mining gives that first Worker something to do while you finish off either Agriculture or Animal Husbandry as the map dictates. We could probably tell you from the opening screenshot the exact year you'll have the GE handy. The downside is you'll probably feel quite nervous having next to no military for the first 2500 years, but the gloves will come off quite quickly.

I agree with those who vote for going for the build we're working on. You might not be able to pull oracle + pyramids off with frederick, but I would definitely love to see a game where you try and ensure pyramids and run a specialist economy.

From there, you can use the specialist economy to go for a domination.

I agree with others who say that if you're not gonna play an aggressive game, then you're not going to leverage the panzer.

So, I would use philosophical and creative in aggressive ways instead of the more intuitive cultural victory.

Philosophical is huge for a specialist economy with pyramids (see the cited threads).

Creative is a respectable warmongerers trait, and a decent domination trait since it helps cover land area a bit faster. Plus, as I've learned recently, with 20% culture slider, cheap theatre, and cheap coliseum, you can get 5 extra happy faces, which means more population, which is also necessary for domination victory.

In short, I definitely think domination victory would make for the best synergy, and I would encourage running a specialist econ with pyramids.

Either trying a new, different strategy or going for a big end score works for me. If they're mutually exclusive, that's just the way of it.

It's unseasonably warm here today and I just can't focus on those articles. I'll have to look at them if and when it cools off around here.

Sisiutil said:

Either trying a new, different strategy or going for a big end score works for me. If they're mutually exclusive, that's just the way of it.

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What were saying is they aren't. You can try a plan that has some risks to it like you expressed interest in, and its a plan to give a fast, and therefore high-scoring win.

Sisiutil said:

It's unseasonably warm here today and I just can't focus on those articles. I'll have to look at them if and when it cools off around here.

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I just saw you have yourself labeled as 'Pacific Northwest'. I'm in Seattle and in total agreement as regards the current heat wave.

Eqqman said:

What were saying is they aren't. You can try a plan that has some risks to it like you expressed interest in, and its a plan to give a fast, and therefore high-scoring win.

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I think I'm the one who implied that they might be incompatible goals. My point was that although this is theoretically a plan that can result in a very quick, high scoring win, in practice it will be something new for Sisiutil, so he's liable to make a few mistakes here and there and maybe not execute it in the perfectly efficient manner that would lead to that high score.

Seeing as I recently voted the Panzer as one of the worst UUs in the game, relying on them at all seems like a bad idea, whether you're shooting for Conquest or not. A "real" Diplomacy win seems a good option-- you won't found any of the early religions (Philosophy seems likely, though), and you could play religious diplomacy to leverage the Hindu vs Buddhist conflict into some bonus points. An early Space Ship (1900? Before?) would also be a challenge, and with the GL and all those Great Scientists, the tech tree can get short real fast.

All this depends on your neighbors, of course. Whenever I play a peaceful leader like Frederick, I always seem to draw one of the loonies as a neighbor. Izzy might not be so bad- she won't challenge you for the UN vote, most likely- but Monty, Napoleon or Tokugawa could derail a peaceful game quickly. If you're thinking about planning ahead, coming up with "good neighbor" and "bad neighbor" tracks might be one way to go.

Voice of Unreason, how does the Globe + Heroic Epic work? It seems like the two work to cross purposes-- one makes hammers more efficient, while one turns population into hammers without cost. Does the HE supplement the down time when you can't whip units? Or do you use it to whip buildings so the city can concentrate on units? I'm sure it works, but I can't see it clearly at this moment.

Sisiutil, I'm pleasantly surprised you only took a week off. Take your time; you've earned it. Looking forward to the game.

Bonus like the HE apply to whipped Hammers

ie 1 pop can buy 60 hammers worth of units in an HE city.

i have to agree with hermit on this issue, your traits lead you to early landgrab, and a specialist based econ. running at 0% science and using the cheap theaters to manage war weariness.
go on the path agriculture, animal husbandry, writing.

do not forget to get pottery before you spit out the oracle.. as it is a pre-req for metal casting.

while you are building the oracle see if you can research through iron working, once the oracle pops rush a forge by a combination of whipping and chopping. your first 2 GP will be a prophet and an engineer. if you can use them for techs (you will have researched masonry for the pyramids so unfortunately you cant pop the prophet for civil service) you can atleast use the engineer to build the pyramids for free, or if you miss them (god forbid) you can use it to pop machinery. (later use another GE to build the great library for free if you can time it right)

drop libraries in your cities and use specialists rather than research.

the one point where I differ a bit from futurehermit is do drop a few cottages at one location, preferably the capitol so you get the commerce magnification when you switch to beurocracy.

assuming you do get the pyramids, you can switch to representation and caste system to set up an entirely specialist based econ.

i guess the big difference long term would be to decide which gp's to really focus on. the city with the oracle will always have the taint of great prophets.. but you could drop a few temples in there or the ankor wat wonder to use a few priests to get a prophet when you need to.

the engineer city can always be switched back to scientists, but either one is fine as far as producing gps.

though a pile of great scientists does have its advantages.. so does setting academies in a few cities incase you switch to cottages midgame in them.
(or use multiple scientists)

you could follow jiggle's merchant path, and create a long term exponential cash source. this would let you use the sliders despite maintanance costs, as a high end commerce city can produce upwards of 500gpt lategame.

and of cource you could artist bomb and try to rush your way to that 50k in 3 cities goal.. I havent been able to pull it off yet but I'd like to see it if you decide not to warmonger.

either way, if you miss the pyramids for one reason or another, you pop for machinery, and go take the pyramids from whoever built them.. then resume on the strat

I will definately be following this thread, I assume you are one of the most experienced players here in the forum, and I am definately looking to see if you choose to apply this strat so we can all see its merits and deficiencies as a game unfolds

best of luck

NaZ

I'd say Archery first if you want the land grab. Then Bronze working, because you will need to know where the copper is. Third you look at worker techs like Agriculture, Pottery and Animal Husbandry to garner the resources. Don't dawdle about CoL either. A fast Land grab means Higher maintainance...

I'd call Oracle and Pyramids the only massively useful wonders. If you can get them and exploit them, Stonehenge, Parthenon and Great Lighthouse would be nice, but not game breaking. By the time you get Literature, the Great Library should be easy to get. Collossus, Chichen Itza and Hanging Gardens are nice, but not mandatory.

Diplomatically, find someone and suck up to them hardcore. Izzy would be easy for this, all you need to do is open your borders and switch to her religion. From there, make friends. When they want to fight, get some of the target's land for your self. You need to really suck up if you want support in UN votes at the end of the game...

lol I've seen you War in all of your ALC games I'd Like to See if you could play a Prince game on 'Alway Peace' mode or play a game where you can't declare war and that you can only go to war if the opposing AI Declares 1st. lol

Gnarfflinger said:

I'd say Archery first if you want the land grab. Then Bronze working, because you will need to know where the copper is.

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I had thought that at first, but ultimately talked myself out of it. Can you convince me back? The basis of my thinking was that if you find copper at your capital then Archery becomes a lot less urgent - you'd rather have The Wheel, say, to get the copper hooked up.

Put another way, if you are landgrabbing, and have copper locally, are you building Archers or Axes during the initial expansion phase? If the answer is archers, then Archery totally makes sense to me. If the answer is axes, I think you can wait for the copper reveal.

But I'm happy to listen to evidence that I'm off base.

Thanks Krikkitone, I knew there was something missing. May have to shoot for that in my next game.

If you're going to run a specialist based economy, and rely on specialists for science, use your philosophical trait to get your universities built quickly and get Oxford built in your science city. I actually really like the philosphical trait...

Consider combining Oxford and Nat'l Epic in a high-food city, run lots of scientists, and join the many great scientists into this city as super-specialists. Add representation, and you can have a mighty science city...

It's still too hot to focus. Ugh. I'll have to read through those threads when I'm in my air-conditioned office tomorrow. Ahhhh...I feel cooler just thinking about it.

I like the idea of early Pyramids (stone or not), Representation, specialist economy. Kinda different. Keep in mind this is Normal rather than Epic or Marathon, though.

I can see I'll have to play v-e-e-e-e-e-ry slowly in the opening rounds. I'll need guidance from those of you who have pulled this off.