A general strategy for Assyria

megabearsfan

megabearsfan

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I recently wrote a blog about a general strategy for playing as Assyria in Brave New World. I plan to go through and write a similar strategy for each of the BNW civs, and then maybe go back to some of the older civs, so I'd love to get some feedback from the community! This is my first time writing a strategy guide for Civ, so be gentle. :)

http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2013/11/13/Civ-V-Assyria-strategy.aspx

And feel free to comment on, like, or share the blog post if you feel so inclined.

Thanks in advance!
 
nice guide! one little thing that might be good to add - if you are having trouble figuring out which civs have techs you don't have, the available trade routes screen can be very helpful for that.
 
Um, you aren't going to out tourism France with the extra writing slot, you can't get enough works of writing to fill them all anyway, even without the royal library. If it gave an artifact slot, maybe.
 
Magma_Dragoon said:
Um, you aren't going to out tourism France with the extra writing slot, you can't get enough works of writing to fill them all anyway, even without the royal library. If it gave an artifact slot, maybe.
Click to expand...

Assyria has almost double the Great Literature slots available. If you steal Great Literature from conquered civs, you should be able to fill up both your Royal Libraries and Amphitheaters. If you're relying on generating your own Great Writers, then you are probably right, Magma_Dragoon, you will not be able to out-tourism France, but you will probably still come in a close second or third. If you're able to fill them up early, you basically have Brazil's "Carnival" (generating double tourism) for the entire second half of the game, instead of just in golden ages.

There is still a hard cap on how many writers exist in the game, so if you hit that cap and don't have all your buildings full, then you're kinda screwed. But that should only be a problem on large maps with a lot of civs.
 
I kinda doubt it. My current game I have plundered about 15 pieces of art, 8 of them writing, and I still have 3 amphitheatres with empty slots. However, I will give you the fact that the royal library lets you concentrate more base tourism and culture into your Hermitage and NVC city.
 
Magma_Dragoon said:
I kinda doubt it. My current game I have plundered about 15 pieces of art, 8 of them writing, and I still have 3 amphitheatres with empty slots. However, I will give you the fact that the royal library lets you concentrate more base tourism and culture into your Hermitage and NVC city.
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Yeah, I may have oversold Assyria's cultural potential a little bit. They may not be better than France, but they will still be pretty darn close. You'll be generating more base tourism and culture than France or Brazil for a longer period. Aside from the Great Library, I don't think there are any wonders or buildings with theme bonuses until Renaissance. So Assyria will have the whole first half of the game in which to try to get a head start (and they can do it with fewer cities). Depending on how many Literatures you can create / steal, it may be enough to compete with France and Brazil in long run.

I didn't play enough games as Assyria with both France and Brazil in play. In fact, France and Brazil are two civs that tend to get killed early whenever I play, so they are rarely competing for any victory.

In any case, the Royal Library does make Assyria one of the top 3-5 candidates for the Culture Victory IMO, so they're still top-tier. I slightly revised the text in that paragraph. Maybe it sounds more reasonable now?
 
I think the main difference is that as Assyria, you really have to go conquering to have an advantage in tourism. In general for peaceful games, the number of available writing slots relative to the number of great works of writing, is not really a problem. They only really would come in handy if you are capturing significant numbers of great works from other civs.

France and Brazil on the other hand can just turtle, stay friendly with the AI and win peacefully. So it's a very different style.
 
Spots for Writing isn't the bottle neck getting writing pieces; it's spawning the works of art.

Even if doing a OCC as normal civ, there are several spots via national wonders. With a 4 city empire, you never run out spots as a normal civ.
I find the minor advantage to their UB being having +10 XP and being able to delay Amphitheater until Opera Houses are around the corner. (Mid game: Privateer not only starting with Coastal Raider III [Barracks + Armory) but also only being 5 XP away from 2X attacks.)

Anybody can get extra works via conquering.
 
joncnunn said:
I find the minor advantage to their UB being having +10 XP and being able to delay Amphitheater until Opera Houses are around the corner.
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Yeah, that's it right there. During conquest, I don't have time to build amphitheaters, but if I don't, I risk losing captured GW, which sucks.

Assyria never has to worry about this. You still might lose some Art/Artifacts but eventually your captured cities have enough slots that you often don't need to build museums.
 
Would I be a wickedly clever bastard to buy/extort cities from everyone else so I can take their artifacts only to gift/sell it back to them so I can do it again later when he has refilled it with some art? To be clear, I'd never actually capture a city, mitigating the warmonger hit, and possibly gaining diplo points for trading.

People are a renewable resource :mischief:
 
I take cities and sell them back without the GW all the time. The original city owner will pay top dollar for his city back. (like 30-40g/turn, etc.)

Usually in peace deals. Like, someone offers me 3 cities in a peace deal. I raze some of them, sell some of them to other people, keep some of them, and sometimes, I sell them right back. ;)

Although, it's never occurred to me to recapture GW this way. Usually the AI moves as many of their GW out as they can if you don't surprise attack and capture in one turn. So if I'm attacking a civ with lots of GW, I do try to DoW and cap in one turn when it's practical.
 
Chiming in agreement with several other posters, the main point of the Royal Library isn't to facilitate a cultural victory. It's to save early hammers by compacting the functionality of the Library, Amphitheater, and Barracks into one building. Of course, there is no benefit until you actually have a GWoW, so Assyria's #1 priority is teching Drama and growing the capital tall enough to support a Writer's Guild. Once that is done, build a pair of Siege Towers and go catch up in tech.

One thing that I think is important to highlight is the significance of the Royal Library only bestowing +10XP. 10 is not enough for a promotion, but that can often work to Assyria's advantage. Assyria doesn't care about promoting early units; it just needs to guarantee that its early sieges break through. Assyria was made to hit the +50HP button.
 
Ok so how does the OP suggest that you minimise the new warmonger penalty mechanic? Assyria's style of war seems at complete odds with this game mechanic (as every city carries a penalty now), whereas some other civ like say a Denmark works well with just doing the plundering and keeping face. If the point of Assyria is to get a leg up on clawing back the tech handicap, I don't see the benefit if everyone's going to loathe you for the rest of the game.
On the UB, yeah it's about saving early hammers which can then be spent on units. Given how slowly you create your own writers, and how few you can get from WWs and policies compared to artists, it seems weird to advocate this as more than a minor boost to a long term CV plan.
 
Crafty Bison said:
Ok so how does the OP suggest that you minimise the new warmonger penalty mechanic? Assyria's style of war seems at complete odds with this game mechanic (as every city carries a penalty now), whereas some other civ like say a Denmark works well with just doing the plundering and keeping face. If the point of Assyria is to get a leg up on clawing back the tech handicap, I don't see the benefit if everyone's going to loathe you for the rest of the game.
On the UB, yeah it's about saving early hammers which can then be spent on units. Given how slowly you create your own writers, and how few you can get from WWs and policies compared to artists, it seems weird to advocate this as more than a minor boost to a long term CV plan.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Assyria was hit hardest by the new warmonger penalties. Assyria is ALL about rushing Mathematics and capturing/razing cities ASAP. Doing this is suicide now, and further cements the role of ranged units as the real siege weapons in Civ5. Ranged units were already the best way to do early domination, and this just shifted the advantage even further in that direction.

Assyria is still effective though. Even if you stick with "the plan" of using CBs, Assyria is better at it than most. Generally, the way you do it is to get a spearman or warrior promoted to Cover 2 ASAP, and have them sit there taking damage while your CBs attack.

Siege Towers lose defensive terrain bonuses but they start with Cover 1 and are stronger than spearmen. The bonus they afford to all nearby units is just gravy.

Royal Libraries are great because a Siege Tower can start with Cover 2.

Rushing to a Writer's Guild is IMHO completely the wrong way to play Assyria. :p
 
Cromagnus said:
1. Yeah, Assyria was hit hardest by the new warmonger penalties... Ranged units were already the best way to do early domination, and this just shifted the advantage even further in that direction.

2. Rushing to a Writer's Guild is IMHO completely the wrong way to play Assyria. :p
Click to expand...

1. I can see why the new diplo penalties hurt Assyria, but don't follow why ranged units gained further advantage.

2. In that you are waiting too long to conquer by trying to take max advantage of the RL?
 
Well, IMHO you're better off bulbing those GW. You get a lot of great works through conquest, do you need more? The RL serve to place the GWoW that you steal.

If you're rushing to Drama and Poetry, you're not attacking until siege towers are less relevant.

Re: ranged units, you can level them up to Range + Logistics without taking cities. Siege Towers and Battering Rams are wasted units if you're not capturing cities. Since it now makes more sense to avoid early city captures, those units lose their advantage during the time that they're relevant. This reinforces "ranged early, artillery later".

The best thing about a siege tower right now is that it soaks damage for your CBs while they level up. But since you're not capturing until t90, siege towers are only effective at city attack for 10 turns, and then Pikemen are a better choice. 12 strength units get owned by XBow+city attack.
 
Crafty Bison said:
Ok so how does the OP suggest that you minimise the new warmonger penalty mechanic? Assyria's style of war seems at complete odds with this game mechanic (as every city carries a penalty now), whereas some other civ like say a Denmark works well with just doing the plundering and keeping face. If the point of Assyria is to get a leg up on clawing back the tech handicap, I don't see the benefit if everyone's going to loathe you for the rest of the game.
On the UB, yeah it's about saving early hammers which can then be spent on units. Given how slowly you create your own writers, and how few you can get from WWs and policies compared to artists, it seems weird to advocate this as more than a minor boost to a long term CV plan.
Click to expand...

The Warmonger penalty for early conquests is still somewhat dependent on map type / size. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you do not receive warmonger penalties with civilizations that you have not met. On a continents map, this means that you need to try to rush to kill everyone on your continent before Astronomy. On other map types, it might mean that you may want to delay extensive exploration until after your early wars are complete. I updated the strategy to include a paragraph about this.

I'm not a fan of the warmonger mechanic in Civ V, and Assyria is one of the civs that is most penalized by it (along with Mongolia and the Huns).
 
megabearsfan said:
The Warmonger penalty for early conquests is still somewhat dependent on map type / size. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you do not receive warmonger penalties with civilizations that you have not met. On a continents map, this means that you need to try to rush to kill everyone on your continent before Astronomy. On other map types, it might mean that you may want to delay extensive exploration until after your early wars are complete.
Click to expand...

Yeah, each warmonger hit is only applied to those who know you. Unlike breaking a promise to move troops from a border, which *everyone* will know about already when you meet them. :(

But, keep in mind that DoWing is the weakest warmonger hit. If you get unlucky and meet a civ before capturing the capital (which seems likely) you still get the hit for the capture. So it's not reliable on anything but a Continents-style map, where you only have to deal with 3 or less civs prior to Astronomy.

You can definitely clear 3 civs before anyone has caravels with Assyria. The first two you could even take out simultaneously, if you play it perfect... capturing the first city of each civ with archers and a siege tower on like turn 50, then upgrading to CBs to clear out his troops and take the two capitals on turn 60. Then you should have no trouble getting your last remaining opponent before Astronomy. If you play it perfect...
 
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