How to go wide

Barth · Sep 26, 2011

First of all, sorry for spamming so many threads asking basic questions. I just read all these wonderful strategies and watch people like Maddjinn and wainy play, and I'm just completely lost. About the only thing I can do right is stay small, do the HS-PT-ND rush, then start conquering everyone once I get artillery.

So for a couple games now I've tried to use a semi-wide strat with Iroquois. My goal is to get 6-8 cities up, then spam military and beat people up. But in my current game for example, I'm at turn 155 with 6 cities and a puppet and nowhere close to being ready to build up a war machine. Besides my capital and free city from Liberty all of my cities are still building temples and colosseums, and aren't very close to finishing.

My strat was to go Liberty, stay on 2 cities until I got NC, then get Piety - Organized Religion, get my cities up, build Monuments/Temples/Colosseums to handle happiness, then build an army and go. But like I said this was just way too slow, I'll be in Industrial by the time I can even think of actually using my 3-7 cities to build an army.

So how do I speed this up? Do I have to give up on the NC, expand out to 6-8 cities immediately, build a bare minimum of infrastructure, and then go beat up an unruly neighbor? Or ... I dunno, I'm so lost I don't even know what questions to ask. Savegame included if it sheds any light on what I'm screwing up.

Silverfuturist · Sep 27, 2011

Barth said:
First of all, sorry for spamming so many threads asking basic questions. I just read all these wonderful strategies and watch people like Maddjinn and wainy play, and I'm just completely lost. About the only thing I can do right is stay small, do the HS-PT-ND rush, then start conquering everyone once I get artillery.

So for a couple games now I've tried to use a semi-wide strat with Iroquois. My goal is to get 6-8 cities up, then spam military and beat people up. But in my current game for example, I'm at turn 155 with 6 cities and a puppet and nowhere close to being ready to build up a war machine. Besides my capital and free city from Liberty all of my cities are still building temples and colosseums, and aren't very close to finishing.

My strat was to go Liberty, stay on 2 cities until I got NC, then get Piety - Organized Religion, get my cities up, build Monuments/Temples/Colosseums to handle happiness, then build an army and go. But like I said this was just way too slow, I'll be in Industrial by the time I can even think of actually using my 3-7 cities to build an army.

So how do I speed this up? Do I have to give up on the NC, expand out to 6-8 cities immediately, build a bare minimum of infrastructure, and then go beat up an unruly neighbor? Or ... I dunno, I'm so lost I don't even know what questions to ask. Savegame included if it sheds any light on what I'm screwing up.

"My goal is to get 6-8 cities up, then spam military and beat people up"
Mohawks don't need iron, so get Iron Working ASAP, attack quickly before they have iron. If you wait until 6-8 cities are up, your opponents have the time to get iron, build up, etc.

Check out the other threads on this Mohawk Warrior rush - after Monument in the capital, spam warriors to isnta upgrade into Mohawks, puppet away, and at some point you will need to develop your capital, prob right after you have a handfull of puppets.

The Pilgrim · Sep 27, 2011

First of all, at this level you really really need to micromanage your cities. You have idle mines (iron mine!) and complain about things aren't built fast enough.

The whole idea behind going wide is keeping your population relatively low and production as high as possible. Your real goal is to have enough citizens to work all high production tiles and specialists slots, nothing more. Working farms just for the sake of it isn't what you should to (unlike in tall empire or if you can afford it). You'll compensate few worked tiles by each city with many worked tiles overall. Right now all the efforts you made to take care of happiness issues aren't utilized and "eaten" by your current high population in first two cities and you cannot support additional ones. On top of that you've invested in Fertilizer and paying to maritime CS.

If you wait until all of your cities are able to spam units nothing will ever happen. I often find that even third natively settled city cannot keep up with the first two. You should start kicking out units as soon as you can in the first two and hook up additional ones to the war machine once they're ready. War is a great source of science and money and having cash you can buy more units and buildings to speed things up. Building courthouses in annexed cities really helps with unhappiness (too much since they're bugged :crazyeye:

).

Some minor poinst:
You have too few workers for my personal taste. Once again, war will help with that.
Barracks and armory shouldn't be prioritized early on either. Double promotion is very nice, however core units can get them through action without idling war machine and you'll have a chance to build them later before mass cannon/artillery spamming.
Try to avoid buying hostile CS's.
Scouting and knowing locations of all the capitals is very important in domination game.
You've unlocked Honor, so I assume you dig towards Military Cast and Professional Army. With all the RA's you'll probably hit Industrial earlier. I'm not sure it's better than Order opening considering the fact you cash flow isn't high and you don't have any defensive buildings yet. It's a deep diving into the tree. All IMO though. I personally just don't like this policy tree unless you play Aztecs/Mongols and take it really early.

This game is still winnable, I think. Just don't wait. Get Rifling, upgrade what you have, kick out some cannons and finish off France. Let Cathy deal with Siam. Try to stay friendly with her as long as you can. Currently she is willing to sign defensive pact, maybe it means something.

After France move East to attack Japan and Arabia. Then Rome and what is left from Siam (in the best case scenario - nothing) and finally russian capital. Where is Rome, BTW? If it's next to Cathy, she might help with it as well.

Barth · Sep 27, 2011

Amazing advice, thanks so much. I'm not going to bother finishing this game since I feel like I don't really have anything to learn from it at this point. As bad as the AI is at early game wars, it's horrific at Industrial/Modern era wars. Hopefully my next game I'll get it right. Again, thanks a bunch for all the great tips

Martin Alvito · Sep 27, 2011

Going wide at higher difficulties is done in waves.

You start with a capital. You settle additional locations and leverage luxuries for :c5happy:

and cash. By the time you settle the third city, you've usually exhausted your initial potential for going wide unless you drew crazy dirt.

Circuses, Colosseums and Notre Dame can fuel another wave of expansion. However, if you're using those to reach 6-8 cities, you're simply not going to have the :c5happy:

left over to go conquer things, nor the :c5production:

to both produce a credible army and the buildings you'd need to run the :c5happy:

surplus necessary to conquer.

The third natively settled city can and will keep up with the first two if and only if there is a sufficiently high quality position available for it. Know the local dirt and plan accordingly.

Barth · Sep 27, 2011

So is going wide a peaceful VC strat only? At least in the sense of settling multiple cities rather than conquering them?

Rpger29 · Sep 27, 2011

I wouldn't say its a peaceful only strategy at all. It would maybe even be more common to have a "wide" puppet empire from conquests.

But the peaceful version that most people would traditionally call going "wide" would limit the population of each city and focus on production/gold.

In fact, you can best leverage several SP branches for maximum happiness by keeping your "settled/annexed" core down to 3-4 cities max.

Steelyglint · Sep 28, 2011

What's a 'war machine' to you OP?

Barth · Sep 28, 2011

Good question. I guess I'd label that as an empire that can build enough military units from production alone to conquer 2 Immortal/Deity level civs at the same time in separate areas of the map with Medieval/Renaissance era non-UU units. Put another way, I want to be able to match Immortal/Deity AI level unit production (aside from crazy runaway civs).

chazzycat · Sep 28, 2011

Going wide at the beginning is tough unless there are a lot of different luxuries around (plus empty space). You don't plan on going wide...you do it when the map allows it. It'll happen sometimes. Otherwise you're probably better off sticking with a few cities until you have a good happiness surplus.

Also, try playing a large map. This seems to give the most elbow room, hence the best chance to roll a map suitable for the wide playstyle.

Le Roi Soleil · Sep 29, 2011

I always shoot for three cities, regardless of map size. I find that with aggressive scouting and a willingness to challenge the AI early, I can almost always settle a bit of prime real estate with my second city - generally somewhere near a river and >= 2 lux. Third city quality is very map-dependent. I'd say on average the quality of the 3rd city is 1 lux, 1 horse (2 or 4 total), 2-3 bonus (cattle, wheat, deer, etc.). So, a decent but not super city location. Anything more is a bonus.

This is what you generally start with: your cap, a cherry 2nd city and an allright third. Anything more you need to "grow into" based upon available happiness, terrain, neighbors and the results of your wars with them.

Scout aggressively! Getting a good look at the map in the early game pays you back in so many ways. Build two scouts and go look at stuff.

Haig · Sep 29, 2011

Barth said:
Sometimes AI makes awful blunders, but sometimes it can perform really well too.

I'm playing a game where Siam made a proper invasion, frigates mauling my coast town and defenders, and then multiple riflemen and cav stormed the beach and captured my city,quickly we made peace but since then we've been buddies actually..

At the moment on the same game I'm having an industrial-era war with Persia, and they performed another great attack:
Infantry advances first, behind them anti-air guns, and behind the AA guns artillery.
My fighter planes were shot down easily so I couldn't risk sending more.
(At the moment I've built two forts with one more being built, and I'm waiting for a GG to build a citadel.)

The Pilgrim · Sep 29, 2011

Barth said:
Good question. I guess I'd label that as an empire that can build enough military units from production alone to conquer 2 Immortal/Deity level civs at the same time in separate areas of the map with Medieval/Renaissance era non-UU units. Put another way, I want to be able to match Immortal/Deity AI level unit production (aside from crazy runaway civs).

You won't be able to match AI production at these levels no matter what you do due to the happiness factor. The only way to achieve that is to weaken your neighbors. The good thing about conquering - you get new cities, even better thing about it - you take them from somebody else.
There is nothing peaceful about going wide on emperor + probably. On the contrary, I would say. At least for me, peaceful means going tall, trying to be liked by everybody, taking Rationalism and signing lots of RA's. Non-peaceful means surviving by your own raw power without relying too much on RA's and trade. Rapid expansion will aggravate your neighbors and having defensive wars only will not bring you as many new happiness sources as conquest can trough taking cities/favorable peace treaties/CS's bought with plundered money. Besides, you need to 'clean' enough space to settle 6-8 cities.
BTW, have you checked MadDjinn's Rome LP?

blitzkrieg1980 · Sep 29, 2011

Rpger29 said:
I wouldn't say its a peaceful only strategy at all. It would maybe even be more common to have a "wide" puppet empire from conquests.

But the peaceful version that most people would traditionally call going "wide" would limit the population of each city and focus on production/gold.

In fact, you can best leverage several SP branches for maximum happiness by keeping your "settled/annexed" core down to 3-4 cities max.

This is some great advice (not that everyone else hasn't put some good stuff in). When going "wide" the importance of NC is diminished as your cities' individual populations will be comparatively low for the first half of the game while you settle / puppet neighbors. Focusing on :c5production:

heavy and

heavy tiles will help you get an army up quickly, get :c5happy:

buildings up quicker, support any :c5happy:

buildings that cost maintenance, support a larger army, and by focusing on comparatively low :c5food:

tiles, your :c5unhappy:

from population is minimized.

I'd say settling 3 - 4 cities and then puppeting the rest is a good war strategy as well as peace strategy. Using liberty, every puppet city that is trade connected will give 1 :c5happy:

. Trade post spam most or all puppeted cities since it's really the only way to control them (the Governor is auto-set to gold focus) and will provide tons of gold income for you to buy allegiance with CS for their lux resources you don't have.

After getting your initial cities down and starting your conquest, you will be able to start focusing more on your capital (since more lux resources will be captured, and more SP will be providing :c5happy:

as well as any allied CS). At that point, you can put in National College (shouldn't take very long in a capital with good :c5production:

) and start growing the capital.

A lot more options open at this stage of the game. A thing I've noticed is that going wider (earlier) is better when your map has provided you with a large variety of lux resources that can be obtained with your initial 4 cities. For example, in my last game, my capital had the usual 2 lux count, but I had a variety of 6 different lux available in my immediate surroundings which were quickly obtained with peaceful settling.

The Pilgrim said:
You won't be able to match AI production at these levels no matter what you do due to the happiness factor. The only way to achieve that is to weaken your neighbors. The good thing about conquering - you get new cities, even better thing about it - you take them from somebody else.
There is nothing peaceful about going wide on emperor + probably. On the contrary, I would say. At least for me, peaceful means going tall, trying to be liked by everybody, taking Rationalism and signing lots of RA's. Non-peaceful means surviving by your own raw power without relying too much on RA's and trade. Rapid expansion will aggravate your neighbors and having defensive wars only will not bring you as many new happiness sources as conquest can trough taking cities/favorable peace treaties/CS's bought with plundered money.

This is a great post regarding 'wide' empires. I've found that my peaceful victories are much better achieved through thin/tall empires and my conquests are best achieved through "wide" or "semi-wide" empires.

chazzycat · Sep 29, 2011

Yep, going wide typically results in a lot more wars than going small/tall, mainly due to "I covet your land." It's possible to play a peaceful style with a wide empire (it's quite good for science or diplo), but usually you'll have to fight a few defensive wars.

The Pilgrim · Sep 29, 2011

blitzkrieg1980 said:
This is some great advice (not that everyone else hasn't put some good stuff in). When going "wide" the importance of NC is diminished as your cities' individual populations will be comparatively low for the first half of the game while you settle / puppet neighbors.

I have to disagree. NC is still a key build early on even in the most warmongering game. Delaying it isn't a life threatening decision, you still can win, but it complicates things. Badly. You need to get beakers from somewhere. If you don't clean ancient-classical techs in a reasonable pace you won't be able to time bulbing correctly. 15 turns delay of UU/Astronomy can be very important on standard speed. When unlocking Liberty, which you should do in case of wide empire, using GA to speed it is generally the reasonable thing to do. With early UU NC can wait until first bunch of warriors is out, of course, but I wouldn't wait any longer.

blitzkrieg1980 · Sep 30, 2011

The Pilgrim said:
I have to disagree. NC is still a key build early on even in the most warmongering game. Delaying it isn't a life threatening decision, you still can win, but it complicates things. Badly. You need to get beakers from somewhere. If you don't clean ancient-classical techs in a reasonable pace you won't be able to time bulbing correctly. 15 turns delay of UU/Astronomy can be very important on standard speed. When unlocking Liberty, which you should do in case of wide empire, using GA to speed it is generally the reasonable thing to do. With early UU NC can wait until first bunch of warriors is out, of course, but I wouldn't wait any longer.

Perhaps on Immortal/Deity where the strategic options for tech paths/SP choices are quite limited, this is true. So if that's the level the OP is playing at, then I stand corrected. Being a King/Emperor player the situations shape up a little differently.

Philosophy is fairly deep in the tech tree when it comes to the very early game/setting up empires. If you're going wide and you're planning on wars (as you should since wide empires are rarely received well suffering from "coveting your land" and "expanding too quickly" and "settling close to us" diplo hits), it is more important to find strategic resource locations and get them settled fast. The extra cities will be providing the :c5science:

that is lacking from the NC (which you will still get up, just not right away). 3 cities that grab a few lux resources and some iron/horses can provide the science while you build your early army and puppet your nearest neighbor, or just get some defensive units online while further expanding.

I think it's important to note that the NC will only provide 5 more :c5science:

in a size 4 capital (wide empires mean small early per city populations). That 5 science can easily be made up for in third and fourth settled cities with 2 and 3 population while gathering war resources.

Admittedly, it is map dependent, as are most things in civilization games. However, if you aren't able to grab a few more lux resources with your first 3 expansion cities, then going wide may not be a smart move, anyway. The extra :c5unhappy:

that each additional settled city adds before figuring in population makes thin/tall empires more desirable in those situations. In that case, rushing the NC is quite important (since every 2 population points will be providing 5.25 :c5science:

per turn) as your capital should be rapidly growing in thin/tall empires.

Le Roi Soleil · Sep 30, 2011

blitzkrieg1980 said:
Perhaps on Immortal/Deity where the strategic options for tech paths/SP choices are quite limited, this is true. So if that's the level the OP is playing at, then I stand corrected. Being a King/Emperor player the situations shape up a little differently.

One thing to keep in mind: the library increases base :science:

by 1 per two citizens. This effect, compounded with the NC's 50% bonus, means that each citizen in the cap is generating 2.25 :science:

. If you can't build an NC, it is because you also don't have libraries in your smaller cities, meaning that the citizens in these cities are generating 1 :science:

/citizen. Getting the NC up accelerates your research in the early game much more than settling more cities. It's really not even close. You also continue growing in the capital during NC construction, which obviously yields more :science:

by itself.

Below immortal, you can get away with dithering on the NC, I suppose, but you'd have to be in a very geographically competitive situation in order for that to be a good idea, and at the lower levels the AI isn't so fast to settle land, so such situations must be quite rare. I'm not a huge fan immortal/deity boilerplate strategy, but prioritizing the NC is not one of the strats I call into question.

The Pilgrim · Sep 30, 2011

@blitzkrieg1980
Yeah, OP plays on immortal. And frankly, I haven't touched anything lower than that for a while now too. So everything I wrote definitely applies on this level. You also right, on lower levels you have much more breathing space and AI's teching speed isn't as overwhelmingly higher than yours as here. Catching up is easier and you can probably get away with it.

But actually NC will provide additional 9 :c5science:

in size 4 capital.
3 :c5science:

from palace + 2 :c5science:

from library + 4 :c5science:

from pop.
Pre-NC you have total base of 9 :c5science:

.
NC adds another 3 :c5science:

to the base and on top of that +50%.
Bottom line: (9+3)*1.5 = 18 :c5science:

instead of initial 9 :c5science:

.

It's a 100% bonus with capital only, and 65-75% bonus with two cities (second one size 2-3 with a library).

To be able to generate these 9 beakers solely by pop you need to expand like completely mad, which you cannot do since you're limited by unhappiness anyways. Besides, it will take forever to all the smaller cities to finish libraries and you cannot buy all of them. It means NC will be delayed for ages to the point it is really not that critical. Le Roi Soleil is right. Not even close.

blitzkrieg1980 · Sep 30, 2011

You're totally right, I didn't factor in the innate 3 :c5science:

from the capital! Bah. My numbers were definitely askew. On King/Emperor, it isn't impossible to fall slightly behind while expanding and then burst forward after conquests, but it is definitely not an assured thing even on those levels.

I do stand corrected, but I cannot say that I've delayed the NC for ages using my previously described paths. By the time I did have it up, my capital was at 10 citizens and the :c5science:

burst was felt big time. However, I can see how on Immortal+ there isn't room for this kind of delay.

How to go wide

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