Roman Rifle Rush: Diety Walkthrough (w/ speech bubbles!)

Actually it will be more of an Iron rush than a rifle rush...but I couldn't pass up a chance for alliteration. We've all been there before (right?).

Anyways, I had a hankering for some Roman rush action, plus I wanted to try out the new patch. Settings are Pangea standard everything.

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Part5
Part6
Random final thoughts



Start



Not spectacular, but extremely solid: River, 2 luxuries, and a good mix of hills and grass. Only downside is the lack of a 3 food tile, but you can't have everything.

I decide to found in place, and start building warriors. I will be building a lot of warriors. And of course, choosing a tech. Advanced strategery here my friends:



My warrior goes off exploring. I run into maritime Singapore, my future best buds, even if they don't know it yet.

Turn 14: Meet Cathy


Ah, the strategic resource master and undisputed queen of unsettling uncanny valley attractiveness. I wait around a couple turns waiting for the workers to do something dumb. If you zoom in, there are "STEAL ME" signs on the backs of those workers. I cannot resist liberating them. Then fleeing rapidly.



After my 2nd warrior fights some rearguard action, my 3rd warrior comes up and covers the retreat on a hill, a fatal weakness of the Civ5 AI. I'm also building a 4th warrior. Rome has also been in production mode since hitting size 3. The worker goes to improve the silver so I can sell it, maybe to Nobunaga who has turned up.

Note the social policy: we will be stashing that.

Dublin: take or not to take?



My defensive hill was conveniently in prime workerwatching position, and I continue my re-employment programme. I consider trying to take Dublin, but decide that it is in too good of a defensive spot for a warrior rush: I can only attack it with 2 at a time, while the garrison will counterattack onto the flat and my guys will take heavy bomardment from what is a 10 str city due to the palace (difference between 8 and 10 quite large vs warriors!).

The Petersburg Offensive:



So we press on to Petersburg with our 4 warriors, a 5th trailing not far behind. A poor worker gets caught out in the open as a newly built settler steals his shelter. Basic attack tactics: surround the city at 3 tiles, then advance in unison to take it with minimum damage.



I guess the AI likes protecting their capital instead. I killed 3 warriors earlier while providing their worker with new opportunities, but I expected Cathy to have re-armed a little more. Nice city, 2 luxuries, crap for production but as a puppet that's fine.

Nice turn 40 Stonehenge. This is why I don't try to build early wonders on deity anymore ><

Meanwhile, back in Rome, I have started a settler after my 5th warrior, so I can settle on whatever Iron pops up in 9 turns.

Bit more to come then off to bed.

Let's take a short rest.



The end of this peace treaty should coincide with the arrival of the Legions. I don't think my warriors are up to taking 12 strength Moscow, plus Cathy actually has troops there. A bit of failure on my part taking that open borders instead of swapping it for gold.

City of Iron



Lack of Iron could singlehandedly ruin my day, so I am relieved to see a 6 Iron deposit reasonably close by. I will settle on top of it since I don't want to wait for the mine construction. The city location is actually not bad.

Nobunaga's scout is dissing my size 3 capital. I don't know what kind of crazy food bonuses the AI gets, but its cities are always massive in comparison to mine early on.

Quick rundown of civs met:
Cathy
Nobu
Ramses
Askia
Hiawatha

I've cheesily been selling open borders. Dirty, dirty. Also a pact of secrecy with Nobunaga vs Cathy is signed. This animosity pays immediate dividends.

Nobu's Risk, My Reward
Peace treaty expired! Guess who ends up with this city.



So I catch a bit of a break here. Right place, right time, and all that, and I end up with Novgorod.

Techs: After Iron Working I went to grab Writing. Getting the libs up ASAP is very important. I will get Calendar after writing to keep myself out of very unhappy as the conquests continue (hopefully). My settler is moving towards the Iron.

"Now, witness the power of this fully operational battlestation."



Cathy brings a couple more chariots and warriors out of the fog to the West but it really doesn't matter vs the 13 strength purple civ eaters. Moscow falls 3 turns later.

The results would probably be the same with normal swordsmen, to be honest. But later I will probably be fighting swords instead of warriors, and I think the Legions will make a big difference there.



Seriously, the tension between uncanny valley creepiness and bizarre attractiveness is weirding me out.

First Civ Down, Overview



Well, things have gone pretty well thus far. I have 5, soon to be 6 legions. Rome is in production mode grinding out a library since I don't really have the money to rushbuy it, and would rather spend the cash on Legion upgrades anyways (Antium will build a couple more warriors to turn into Legions).

I'll be out of unhappy in a couple turns when my silver mine comes through, but that won't last long if my plans for Nobunaga pan out. That's fine, I don't expect to be happy for a long, long time.

Trying to figure out the best way to come at Nobunaga. Safest might be to fortify on his borders, DOW, and pick off anything that wanders out. But the power of the Legions might allow me to just sort of wade in there. I don't want to doodle around too long: the warmachine must keep rolling.

Anyways, until next time. Hopefully my cheesy/dumb speech bubbles were at least somewhat entertaining

Those speech bubble commentaries were great! Lolz at the expense of nations. Especially loved the sleeping warrior and that sight on Tokyo. Indeed, selling open borders for 50 golds a pop in ciV somehow feels odd. That and being a "city merchant" early in games.

By the way, I did find the red text a bit hard to read. Have you tried purple to match with your civ? Keep the updates coming.

good read so far!

Fun read, well done; I like the format.

Roman roads: the legions can build them when you need to. That can speed up conquest a lot and lets you shift them from one side of your empire to the other fast. You only want a road between Rome and Antium right now as Kagoshima is in the way. But you will want to link up to Moscow and the other puppets soon, so use the legions to part build the roads, put in 2 turns and stop until you need the roads. They get built much faster that way, just remember the route Legions save enormously on worker turns.

it will be lovely if there are more strategy thread like this, and yes, its funny

Nice read. I really hate how pathetically weak cities are considering you shouldn't put garrison in there anymore. Wouldn't call it a rifle rush, though, more like a permanent war.

Osetjka said:

By the way, I did find the red text a bit hard to read. Have you tried purple to match with your civ? Keep the updates coming.

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Good idea, purple it is.

UncleJJ said:

Roman roads: the legions can build them when you need to. That can speed up conquest a lot and lets you shift them from one side of your empire to the other fast. You only want a road between Rome and Antium right now as Kagoshima is in the way. But you will want to link up to Moscow and the other puppets soon, so use the legions to part build the roads, put in 2 turns and stop until you need the roads. They get built much faster that way, just remember the route Legions save enormously on worker turns.

Click to expand...

Good suggestion, thanks. We'll see if I can find time for the legions to build roads.

EDIT: Realized I won't even have The Wheel for like 20 more turns.

alpaca said:

Wouldn't call it a rifle rush, though, more like a permanent war.

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Alliteration alters accuracy.

Yeah, go for it aimlessgun, I like your crude but funny style - "Damnit not again!" heh, heh

I think I'm turning Japanese

Surveying the scene at turn 60, my clear next target is Japan. But first my units need to heal for a couple turns. In the meantime, I take advantage of the new "View City" feature they added for puppets in the patch. Thank god!



Apparently I have a useless Great Library in Moscow (could you even find that out before the patch?). Also, the patch notes said they added the OPTION for gold focus in puppets...but I can't figure out where to change anything! So it is on gold focus by default...I WANT MY SCIENTISTS ;_;

For real though, if I cannot get the puppets to use scientists, this is a major nerf to an always war rush.

Nerfed luxury trading



So, in the patch they made all your luxuries worth only 150 gold base. That's fine, lux selling for tons of cash was extremely powerful. But they left the AI luxuries worth 300. So you can't even trade 1 for 1 luxuries anymore. Idiotic. Ok so I'm playing on Deity, deal right, but think about people at Prince level unable to do 1 for 1 luxury trades...ugh.

PS: You can check if this is the base valuation instead of a hard bargain due to dislike because he values my Open Borders at the 'Friendly' 50 gold. The next stage, 'neutral' I call it, OB is worth 43 gold. It goes downhill from there, and you can gauge your relations somewhat using this. Exception is early game where the AI will value OB at 0 for a while.

Tech Decisions post Calendar



Decision time. I have a library and 2 scientists now in Rome who will generate a Great Scientist for me in 17 turns. I can:

A: Backfill a couple techs like Animal Husbandry and Archery, then tech Metal Casting to line up with the GS, and burn the GS on Steel.

B: Start metalcasting now and hard tech Steel, saving my GS for Gunpowder.

It may be the wrong decision (I know better players than me like Martin Alvito have mentioned bulbing Steel), but I'm going to choose B. I accept slower Longswords because my Legions are so good, so I don't feel like I need them as much. I also won't get another GS before gunpowder, so I would have had to hard tech it.

Nobu's Nightmare



Let's roll.



I feel a little behind schedule, plus Oda's troops seem to be in the south, so I throw caution to the wind and go big for 2 cities at once. That warrior actually does the intelligent thing and gets the hell out of there.

It's super effective!


Well, things almost go badly for the Nara division as a couple reinforcements show up, but the Legions hold strong. I burn resourceless Nara.

An aside on promotions: I go for an even mix of Drill and Shock, so I will have the right troops to advance onto the right tiles. I will often be advancing into the fog and trust putting highly promoted troops on the appropriate tiles to avoid disaster. I almost never use instant heal, because I want a march/blitz/medic army as fast as possible.

Oh, don't forget to get a medic ASAP. I try for 2 early medics.

A great general, Vercingetorix appears, highly ironic since I am Rome.

Your friends...will abandon you...



The Cooperation cancellations come rolling in, from Ramses and others. This is the thanks I get for taking down the tyrant Nobunaga?! A portent of things to come.

Operation Hide Behind the Archies



Well...clearly the patch has not improved the combat AI. Let's just move on.



And move on we do. I lose a warrior to surprising focus fire. I start hooking up 2 more Iron, but 8 total Iron is a bit weak. I need to find another deposit.

Oda's days are numbered, but he doesn't seem to know it...



I think I'm pretty good with letting war define who I am.

We fear you are becoming too advanced...



Askia, Ramses, and Suleiman all DOW me in succession. Shocking, I know. I don't know if I should be worried or not, because I have no idea where any of them are. Conquering has limited my exploring. So I hoard money to rushbuy legions if they show up away from my army in Japan.

I also liberated Copenhagen. The food isn't that useful right now due to unhappiness, but it does let me work almost exclusively production tiles without starvation.

The definition of insanity is...



..doing the same thing and expecting different results. Well I guess the AI doesn't 'expect' anything, seeming to lack planning skills. But I still cannot fathom what programming could cause such flagrantly bad combat choices. How hard is it to put in a bit of code saying "While 'War' = 1 DONT *$&#^ING MOVE ARCHERS NEXT TO MELEE UNITS;"

Back from the future



Steel has been teched. Time to backfill the prereqs for Gunpowder. I will go for Masonry and Construction first, so I can hook up my marble, and then get some Colosseums going.

This post-patch lack of puppet scientists is really busting my balls, and I estimate that I will not get Rifling until Turn 113, which is quite subpar.



Nobu is out of the picture, leaving me to ponder my next moves...



Here's the diplomatic scene. Bismarck is a bad motha and doesn't fear my warmongering, offering me a Cooperation Pact. Hiawatha and Sully have solid scores, and I have not seen any notifications of capitals being conquered, so I have to wonder if that score is from ReXing and rapid teching, which could be an issue if I don't get to them fast enough.

Choices, choices...


Here's the overview on turn 88. 3 of my puppets are building workshops, which is a huge mistake on my part: I should have found a way to tech Construction a bit earlier, so all of those would be Colosseums. My swords are about to become Longswords.

I couldn't hit Masonry in 1 turn because my friggin' puppets won't use scientists, and am forced to go to minimum science output and take some overflow loss.

Most importantly, I have a big choice: where to send my army? Sully and Ramses are somewhere to the south or east, while Askia is definitely West of me.

-If I throw my whole army West and an Ottoman army shows up at Rome in the east, I will be screwed. Askia is much lower score and seems to be rolling with warriors still, so I could ignore him until later?

-I only know where Askia is with any certainty. I could waste tons of time wandering around in the wilderness searching for Sully.

My dilemma is a big indictment of my failure to build a scout at some point. In previous games I actually never ran into this problem, but lesson learned here I suppose.

So my friends, where to march the machine? West to Askia? Southwest or southeast in search of Sully or Ramses?

VERY nice round, indeed lack of Colloseums for puppets to build sucks.

I'd say hold on to some iron in case of unexpected aggression around Rome (though I doubt that) and hit west, perhaps scout with a mounted... oh wait Yeah, go west

I'm sure that if you'd properly handicap yourself and NOT attack them archers on sight you could enjoy the game without those pesky exploits. I mean come on - give this brilliantly designed game a chance, as it is you're ruining it!
I will give you some points for trying (not going for Colloseums but Steel), but that's still not enough to properly immerse yourself in Civ5. Perhaps forgo this cheesy way to victory and try cultural win?

EDIT
I like that mountain ridge to the west of your lands, should make it easy to protect your borders.

Your neighbors are out to get you, but where are they? There doesn't seem to be that many resources to the east so the area isn't appealing at all. On the other hand, those mountains in the west + location of Copenhagen made the area supremely defensible and be considered safe (unless you're invading westward of course). Maybe try going west for Askia and put scouts deep in the east/south so you can spot invaders?

Also, I'm disappointed but not surprised to see Nobunaga's archers melee archers. I guess the patch didn't do anything to improve the tactical AI - all it does is make the AI conserve units and cede cities for a decisive defense that's probably never going to happen.

Great update and use of humor, keep them coming. I definitely have more fun reading the forums than playing the game at this point.

Rushing in diety on standard map size is so old on this forum already.

JustAnother said:

Rushing in diety on standard map size is so old on this forum already.

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Playing Civ5 on any difficulty with any settings is old and boring, didn't you notice Osetjka last post? We're reading this thread for fun, I wouldn't mind if it'd be moved to Stories and Tales section, but since there's no strategy involved in Civ5 it might as well stay here

Yes , that is what I'm trying to imply. This thread doesn't belong here. There are alot of strategy involved if you play the game in another way besides rushing. Some players have posted very interesting strategy.

Osetjka said:

Maybe try going west for Askia and put scouts deep in the east/south so you can spot invaders?

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Yeah send scouts east/south and invade west seems like a solid plan.

Guardian_PL said:

perhaps scout with a mounted... oh wait

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I can't even see horses yet ><

JustAnother said:

Rushing in diety on standard map size is so old on this forum already.

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I hadn't seen an actual game walkthrough of a warrior > Iron > Rifle rush around. I never claimed this was rocket science, sorry for boring you

keep it coming I always enjoy good storytelling with some strategy... from what I saw here were basically Horse rushes, so this is definitely something new!

to the AI...give them a break, try to imagine how YOU would program it with the things the game knows.
I even don't know if they use min-max deeper then 0 turn, since it seems like it's mostly AI which calculates most damage they can produce with some basic scripts around. It really is not easy to program good quality AI just look at chess how long until they bring sufficient horsepower to defeat best human and that game has only cca 10^38 positions.

So I would blame game design with 1upt. being it stacks you would meet wars guarding archers at 1 tile...

Rome without roads? Heretical!

Seriously, I understand you're doing a rifle rush, but I have never understood the point of doing a rush in the minimum time but then being in a worse strategic position than if you had taken a bit longer and picked up cheap and useful techs. As far as I can tell your workers can only build farms and mines at present. Your legions have to walk everywhere moving either 1 (rough terrain, crossing river) or 2 tiles. A road connecting Rome to the two puppet capitals will massively speed up the strategic movement of your army letting you switch from east to west in about 2 turns. That will apply to longswords and rifles as well as the legions.

At the moment you can research animal husbandry in 1 turn, it costs 38 and you have exactly 38 science / turn. That will allow you to see where any horses are and to develop some other pastures. Trapping (60 science) will take 2 turns and allow your workers to change any farms to TPs in any of your puppets and stunt their growth (probably a good thing). The wheel (60 science) allows you to link your cities and might make a small profit now and a bigger one later. They will certainly speed up all your units, military and workers, and thereby make them more useful. And you need The wheel, eventually, for Rifling anyway

So I understand going for Construction now, but can you (or anyone else) justify not picking up the 3 basic "worker" techs I mentioned above? Only Trapping is off the beeline. I know you discussed this briefly but you never said why you wanted to research longswords before the cheaper techs. Bear in mind that your research will grow as the puppets do and as libraries are built, even if they don't run scientists, you will be able to research more expensive techs faster if you attempt them later.

Your game looks very familiar. Good to see you doing a warmonger walkthrough. Far more entertaining than mine would be.

aimlessgun said:

It may be the wrong decision (I know better players than me like Martin Alvito have mentioned bulbing Steel), but I'm going to choose B.

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Yes, it's a mistake, and you learn why here:

aimlessgun said:

Here's the overview on turn 88. 3 of my puppets are building workshops, which is a huge mistake on my part: I should have found a way to tech Construction a bit earlier, so all of those would be Colosseums. My swords are about to become Longswords.

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Bulbing Steel then backfilling Masonry and Construction avoids this problem and gets the puppets working on Colosseums. You get to the Renaissance with the second GS. Just don't take the Scientists out of the Library in the capital. If you bought the Library around turn 50-55, you'll have him on turn 101-106.

You might want to consider AH -> Wheel before going for Metal Casting. I end up with AH before Iron about a third of the time (depends on when I steal the Workers and the tiles in the capital), and I usually end up with a glut of Workers with nothing better to do than cut roads.

aimlessgun said:

This post-patch lack of puppet scientists is really busting my balls, and I estimate that I will not get Rifling until Turn 113, which is quite subpar.

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You're not going to get them all that much earlier without the Babs. Ten turns at best, even pre-patch. The third GS makes a world of difference. However, I am moving away from going for Rifles and getting to the Renaissance through Education of late. Early Universities are absurdly good, and I don't really want to run tons of specialists until I have the Unis anyway. Better to get the buildings up faster, then unleash the fury and pack the city full of Scientists once the Uni is up. Also, early Astronomy on a standard map provides a huge Happiness boost.

JustAnother said:

Rushing in diety on standard map size is so old on this forum already.

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Nobody's forcing you to read the thread, Mr. 11 posts.

aimlessgun: Hilarious. Keep 'em coming!