Huge Pangaea, Quick speed, Noble difficulty - any strategy tips?

Hi guys,

I was wondering if anyone of you has a good idea how to make successful wars before Assembly Line with these settings? For me, these attempts always seem to end unsuccessfully.

In my opinion, the worst historical period for successful war is late medieval era and renaissance. City defenses of this era ridiculously overpower trebuchets and cuirassier-storming a hilled city which has strong cultural defenses is suicide basically. Quick speed means that during the few hundred years needed to clear city defenses the units besieging the city will get either technologically obsoleted or simpy overpowered by the enemy.

What about ancient/classical era? Because the size is huge, the enemy is usually too far away. Besides, early war hurts expansion. Instead of military units I need to spam as many settlers and workers as quickly as possible.

Yes, settler and worker spamming is crucial, when the map is huge. No matter whether the leader is Pericles or Joao II. Just that Joao II is more efficient spammer. Rapid expansion does bring the research slider down to 30-40% or even less. But it's just a temporary setback. All these workers I spam will start spamming enormous amount of cottages. By late medieval era my economy has recovered to the point where I can increase my research slider up to 60%. Next, renaissance opens up a whole bunch of research and economy boosting techs and civics.

Now that's when my game really starts. It's time to beeline Assembly Line and pwn my neighbours with the almighty infantry in the time they have muskets at best. Infantry is just the beginning. Soon, tanks will follow and soon after that - bombers. The AI has rifles at best when I blitzkrieg them with the unholy trinity of infantry-tank-bomber.

Currently playing this map with Joao II of Portugal. Joao II is really awesome leader. By 710 AD I had 17 cities (16 I built myself and 1 captured from barbs) and by around 1200 AD I was able to send all my workers to well-deserved vacation

Most of my cities have overlapping tiles. I have learned that tile sharing is rather a good thing. Every city does not have to have the full fat cross. It's even harmful, especially in the early game when health and happy gaps are small.

The year is 1670 and in 1 turn I will get Assembly Line. Arabia will be the first victim of the 17th century Portugese infantry.

There are plenty of threads on going to war early, just search for "rush". If you're playing Noble with a Huge Pangaea map, you should take over many AI cities through conquest (not just one barb city) unless you are playing OCC or trying a diplomatic win, for example. This type of map is perfect for military conquest.

If you are constantly taking over cities, the gold from sacking should sustain your empire. Build only units and production helpers in a couple of cities (don't try to make every city "perfect" with Libs, Theatres, etc...).

Yes, I have been looking into such threads, but they tend to either neglect the game speed factor or discuss only normal, epic and marathon speeds. Also, a lot of discussions are pretty old and I guess it's better to create a new thread for additional questions than necroing old threads

I guess these are the main questions about warfare in early game:

How to balance REXing and rushing?
How to keep up with the pace of technological advance in the early game when units move slowly and are expensive to produce?

You are right that those posts ignore Quick speed (and indeed, I did when responding above). In fact, I can't recall ever having seen a post about Huge Pangaea Quick. It just doesn't happen that often since Pangaea is so war-oriented. I would advise not playing this map type on Quick if you want to go to war early, but other more experienced players may have better advice.

As you say, playing a huge map quick is very hard to war because the units become outdated in the time it takes to move the long distance. Likewise, a small or standard map on epic or marathon becomes much easier because of the more forgiving war windows. Thus most players will scale the time and the size: standard size/normal speed, small size/quick, huge/epic. This is probably why there aren't many articles on quick/huge, as masterfilm says.

I know this doesn't answer your question about how best to win on those settings, but it seems you have found a good solution by postponing war till the modern era. Though it will probably be harder to move up in difficulty level than on scaled settings.

The reason why I ever ended up playing Pangaea on Quick/Huge is that I have played a lot of Earth 18 civs and FFA pangaea games on multiplayer. Earth map is huge and FFA pang is usually small and multiplayer is always quick speed. So, somehow I ended up combining the three. After being able to easily rush England and Spain as France, China as Mongolia in the Earth game I wanted to try if it's really so easy in any huge map. Now I have realized it isn't. There is a huge difference between Earth map and a random huge Pangaea.

But indeed, when playing huge Pangaea on quick speed, REXing seems to be the magical key. Not sure if it also works on higher difficulties, but on Noble it seems to work. After some 10 failed attempts as Pericles, I finally discovered REX and succeeded by postponing war until Assembly Line. And to do so as Joao II seems to be a lot easier because of Joao's traits - Expansive/Imperialistic - a perfect combination for REX!

1 Tip NEVER PLAY HUGE QUICK SPEED. The huge map setting was made for Marathon, as the small one was made for quick. So you are going to lose tons of turns just moving units.

Zx Zero Zx said:

1 Tip NEVER PLAY HUGE QUICK SPEED. The huge map setting was made for Marathon, as the small one was made for quick. So you are going to lose tons of turns just moving units.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what happens, especially during that late medieval/early renaissance trebuchet vs castle nonsense era. What I have noticed is that only modern fast-moving units can compete with the game pace. Especially when they are utilizing the railroads and airports.

Thank you everyone for helping me to understand the optimal relation between map size and game pace. I didn't realize it before how much it matters.

Just for a reference how my last game as Joao II ended



Slow movement of military is not the only problem that occurs with these settings. I tried to stop Brennus from culture-whoring at the far end of the continent, but it seems that my sea-bourne invasion delayed intolerably...

i noticed that Brennus really likes to win by culturally, even more so than ghandi

Yes, Brennus and Gandhi are flavored towards culture.
And Brennus has one of their important trait for culture: spiritual.

Douchebag Tackywaxon​