The utility of early conquest?

[MyOtherName]

Just how useful is early conquest? What exactly is the aim one is trying to achieve? Is the war just about acquiring space?

e.g. if I'm on a large island with enough room for two civilizations, and I'm sharing it with another civilization... I suppose general wisdom is that I should eliminate him early. (How early?)

But suppose I had the option of, at the beginning of the game, simply removing my opponent from the board at no cost. Should I prefer this option to actually fighting a war?

[JavalTigar]

What no cost option are you refering too?

If the landmass is big enough for two and you are comfortable with sharing, fine.

The aim of any war is resources and stability. Do they have that Iron resource you need for your UU? Will they be good ally? Do you share a religion? Did they just build a useful wonder that would look better under your flag? Conquest is great but don't be afraid to raze their cities if they will be more trouble than they are Worth.

If you share it with Monty, Togo, Alex or Boudica--KILL THEM QUICKLY!!

If it is any other then you must weigh the cost of having plenty of room to spread or someone to trade with for a while.

This game is about choices. Every one will take you on a completely different game.

[mystyfly]

Originally Posted by JavalTigar

If you share it with Monty, Togo, Alex or Boudica--KILL THEM QUICKLY!!

Ill add shaka and joao as well ok, that's not really important, i think everyone knows them
But if one of them is on YOUR island, its not really you dow them, it usually is only a matter of time until they dow you..

[synyster]

I dont know what difficulty you're on, but, the main reason i struggled on Warlord & am now comfortable palying Noble was not getting enough cities in early & falling behind. I find if i can take 1 civ out & leave it at that by mid game i am usualy leading. This mite be due to to a big hole in my playing but thats how i go about starting =)

[oyzar]

No AI except for mansa will trade with you when there are only you two on a continent hence you should kill them because you are better off to use their land for teching yourself.

[MyOtherName]

Originally Posted by JavalTigar

What no cost option are you refering too?

A hypothetical one. Mainly, I'm wondering if conquest is just about space, or if the act of conquest itself has its own reward.

The aim of any war is resources and stability. Do they have that Iron resource you need for your UU? Will they be good ally? Do you share a religion? Did they just build a useful wonder that would look better under your flag? Conquest is great but don't be afraid to raze their cities if they will be more trouble than they are Worth.

In the game I'm currently fiddling with, I'm Kublai Khan and I'm on an island with FDR. Currently, the only thought in my head is "I want space" and "If I'm going to attack him, I might as well do it early and finish the job".

In the two games I've played on it so far (just the early game), FDR never built any wonders or founded any religions in the very early game.

If it is any other then you must weigh the cost of having plenty of room to spread or someone to trade with for a while.

I've generally had difficulty trading when I'm isolated with a single AI. Or... did you mean that I should consider keeping him around simply so I have a friendly trading partner when we finally contact the outside world?

[InvisibleStalke]

Originally Posted by oyzar

No AI except for mansa will trade with you when there are only you two on a continent hence you should kill them because you are better off to use their land for teching yourself.

Two of you on an island? Build the great wall. Send the great spy to them and then steal every tech you want while you tech normally. You should get the benefits of trading but they won't, and you can let them build you some wonders and some good cities. You should be able to get a tech lead and at the right time take them out - preferebly when you are already close to Optics.

[InvisibleStalke]

Generally I don't like very early rush unless I have a UU that needs to shine early. I'd rather fill in the intervening space and expand peacefully until my natural course of expansion takes me into their territory - preferably with a military tech advantage.

The exception might be if their capital is very close and you need the space - and also getting another good city close by is great. But if the capital is a normal distance away, stretching for an early rush is a gamble.

[Phrederick]

Originally Posted by MyOtherName

But suppose I had the option of, at the beginning of the game, simply removing my opponent from the board at no cost. Should I prefer this option to actually fighting a war?

That depends. If they were hypothetically removed in the beginning of the game, barbs would spring up, and you'd have to settle/terraform all the land yourself. If you conquer them, there will be fewer barbs to worry about, and they will develop the land and cities themselves. I tend to play games where I will expand peacefully as long as I can, and only then start to make war. By the time I'm ready for that, the enemy has usually developed the land enough that taking on another 4+ cities won't drag down my economy.

I would say actually fighting a war is going to be better. Building units and researching war-techs is cheaper than trying to settle that land with your own settlers and subsidizing all the cities until they grow large enough to be self-supporting.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally Posted by MyOtherName

But suppose I had the option of, at the beginning of the game, simply removing my opponent from the board at no cost. Should I prefer this option to actually fighting a war?

Wow, that's an awesome question.

On maps where starts are normalized, the capitals tend to have much better terrain/resources immediately about them. My guess is that you would be better off settling that location at your leisure. But conquest does have a few clear upsides:

You can capture the city, instead of training a settler.
You can capture the workers
You can promote elite units past the 10xp barb limit.
You get money when you capture the city
You have the option to bully the neighbor (ie, take his good cities, then extort techs and the like later).
You can capture shrines and Academies that you would otherwise have to waste your own GP on (probably not relevant for "early" conquest, but somewhat later).

[Gliese 581]

If you can conquer them QUICKLY, I think it's usually worth it for REXing purposes. However, as InvisibleStalke points out, if you can get the great wall and keep the peace with them, that's even better.

In one of the games I'm currently playing I started with two neighbours, I rushed one of them immediately, obtaining his two cities and wiping him out in the process. I then built the great wall and stole five or six techs from the other civ before leaving him far behind and then encountering the rest of the civs.

EDIT: It's usually a good idea to try to get the great wall any time you've got a lot of land and especially for non-coastal starts. You don't want to be alone with another civ on a big continent and have him get the great wall, trust me, the barbarians have a radar for finding a non-walled target and they'll swarm you from everywhere.

[absimiliard]

VoiceOfUnreason makes many reasonable points about the advantages of early conquest.

I will only add this to his otherwise excellent assertion.

The value of an early rush is so high that almost all the seriously advanced players will consider a rush if it is possible. Getting another capitol spot, clearing space, a free worker, and a city without having to pay for the settler can radically change a game and take it from a difficult one to win to an easy win.

Try it a few times. Don't play the whole game out, just rush your nearest opponent with whatever it takes to get it done. Play a bit more then restart and do it again. After a bit of this you'll begin to understand why early conquest is so highly thought of, and you might even find yourself advancing a level in difficulty.

That said, it is just one technique. There are definite ways to go in the early game that don't involve conquest, REXing comes to mind. But just as you should understand the value of using slavery as a technique if you wish to truly master the game you should also master the technique of early conqest in order to become a better player. The more options you can master, the more flexible your play will be and the more often you will win.

-abs
"Oh, and it's just a lot of fun when done well too."

[MyOtherName]

Originally Posted by absimiliard

Try it a few times. Don't play the whole game out, just rush your nearest opponent with whatever it takes to get it done. Play a bit more then restart and do it again. After a bit of this you'll begin to understand why early conquest is so highly thought of, and you might even find yourself advancing a level in difficulty.

I'm trying to jump start the process. I could just do it a lot and learn solely from my own experience -- but I expect the process to be faster if I have specific notions to be considering while I'm practicing.

For example, I already had the idea of "hammer price of units versus food+hammer price of settlers", and the notion that the razing bonuses could help my research. (But enough to be worth the investment? I don't know yet!) Somehow, I totally forgot that I'm also winning workers in the process, nor did I consider the improvements I might inherit and the maintenance I save. And since I'm unfamiliar with the follow-up, I have no idea how to evaluate the worth of getting a unit with a little over 10 experience or as much as 17 experience, nor a great general.

(If it matters, I've never, ever managed to even start a successful intercontinental attack, and I typically don't have much problem fending off my opponents' intercontinental attacks unless I'm really far behind in the game. In fact, one of my long standing unfulfilled goals is to get a conquest or domination victory on monarch or higher on a standard sized map with some overseas opponents)

[Deriem]

I learned how useful early conquests can be by playing a Small size Pangaea map... with 7 AIs with Agressive AI turned on. Strangely enough, 90% of the wars in that game were started by me...

But I settled only one other city in that game. Took the rest of my land from my neighbours. I also did a lucky worker grab with my exploring warrior. Man, it was a magical game. It also gave me a huge sense of worry. I started next to JC... who ended up having iron in his second city's BFC. Good thing I took it with 3 Axemen

So, if you want to really want to see the effects of an early rush, start a Small map with a lot of AIs. And make all of them civs with an early UU that requires a resource. Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, etc. Just my noob 2

[InFlux5]

Two main factors come to mind:

1. Do you need your neighbors as trading partners? (If your neighbor(s) are antisocial - Tokugawa, Shaka, etc - skip this one.)
2. Do you have enough land to expand peacefully?

If you don't have enough land it's a no-brainer. And if you can't trade techs then the civ is essentially useless to you.

The more civs you know, the more complex things get. This makes me wait longer to see how diplomacy will shake out. For example, you may screw yourself if your military target shares a religion with your intended trading partner.

[Zanttu]

And if you DoW early enough, you dont get -1 "you declared war to our friend" modifier with other civs. That's one advantage for early war vs late war.

[L4zXX0r]

Early conquest is probably, and this is my opinion, the best strategy in Civ IV. Why is this? One, it's easier to take cities earlier, because, more than likely, your closest rival civs will not have a large or veteran military. Two, taking enemy capitols is better than building your own settlers. Three, Eliminating nearby rivals gives you unprecedented room for expansion, while your far off neighbors still have to contend with each other.

My personal early goals, are to take out the closest 2 to 3 civs, then use their capitols to build up my empire. I almost always raze cities that are not capitols early game.

[Morgrad]

If my neighbor is in heavy jungle, I might just let him clear a bunch of it before I attack - that usually means waiting into the ADs. If it's a religious nut, I might wait until they pop a profit and build a shrine.

Usually, I just go smash in teeth if I'm able to.

I'm confused by the question "Is the war just about acquiring space?" I don't care about space - I care about how many tiles my empire can work - hammers, commerce, and food for GPPs. If my economy can handle adding 10 more cities (and by "can handle", I mean "units won't go on strike"), I add 'em by whatever means necessary. Even if I lose 10 turns of good research, 10 turns of mediocre research, and 10 turns of bad research, I just added 10 more cities worth of research to my empire, plus a significant amount of production. I'm probably just arguing semantics with this, so feel free to ignore me - but "space" has no value, so I don't need or want it.

Back to the original question, some other benefits of conquest vs. magical elimination of your island buddy:

Not only do you save the hammer cost of a settler when you take thier city, you also start with more than 1 population. This can be immediately used to work tiles or convert into needed production (a courthouse, for example - extremely important when expanding!)

You save the hammer cost of whatever buildings survive the takeover.

Not only do you gain workers, you save massive numbers of worker-turns - all those roads and improvements you don't have so spend your own worker's time on is a big deal.

It allows for a much faster expansion of your empire - you couldn't afford to REX those 4 or 5 cities because of the economic impact while you wait for courthouses - but you the pile of cash you get from sacking the city plus the whippable population into economy-helping buildings lets you immediately absorb them and turn them into a positive-gain on the economy within a matter of 5 or 6 turns after the revolt ends. When else in the game can you get a new city and have a courthouse and a granary in it in 5 turns? Only if you're running Universal Sufferage and have lots of gold is this even feasable.

Early conquest, middle conquest, or late conquest - if you can pull it off without units going on strike, 95%+ of the time it is worth doing. Modern conquest? Well, only if you're going for Conquest or Domination victory. Or they have aluminum and you don't and you're going for Space Race. Or they have the Space Elevator near your territory.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I look for reasons to conquer.

[gallego]

Personally I can't win on Monarch huge maps if I don't grab some sizeable territory through conquest early on. The AIs simply get more territory than I do otherwise, and with their bonuses, they tech faster and build faster than I do. Even if I win liberalism and am first to cavalry, they are just too powerful. With the choice of grabbing lots of cities and tanking the economy to a 10% science rate vs. staying small and keeping 50-60%, I always do better with the first path. Those extra cities and extra tiles build up over time.

[JavalTigar]

Originally Posted by MyOtherName

I've generally had difficulty trading when I'm isolated with a single AI. Or... did you mean that I should consider keeping him around simply so I have a friendly trading partner when we finally contact the outside world?

I meant all trade: tech, resource & trade routes. Those things will help your economy and make the AI like you and form a better relationship.

I have played out a similar situation several times. If you can still expand while maybe placing a city or two in a good chokepoint to limit the others expansion, that is most likely the best. You get a trade partner, potetial brother of the faith, and someone to watch your back while you lead your explores of to find new civs to pillage.. I mean discover.