Hello Free Gold!
That's a great guide for MP ICS. I was fond of ICSing in G&K, but never truly understood the power of Piety tree for the very wide empire strategy.
I have lately been speculating on some other type of ICS MP strategy for rather special game settings.
The game settings will be following: Terra, large map for 10 human controlled civs, standard speed.
As I know, Terra doesn't usually provide enough land on the same landmass for building an ICS empire without stepping on lands of other civs. Mainly your civ has 4-6 good spots for settling without making war.
So I intend to play as Egypt, Maya or Byzantium. At first I plan to establish a strong 4-5 city Tradition empire on the shared continent and beeline to Astronomy.
Then I plan to ICS the landmasses of the New World by fully utilizing Piety social policies.
I just want to mention that MP game is going to take place on standard rather than quick speed. So the research rate is not so high and colonies of the New World still have a chance to grow up fairly well before hitting the industrial era.
I know that after advancing into New Era the cost of religious buildings and missionaries will be higher, but I still believe that ICSing of the New World is possible.
What kind of beliefs, number of cities to settle and pantheon will you suggest for that kind of strategy? Do you think than Tradition + Piety ICS strategy is a viable option for Terra?
If I remember correctly, terra is a map where you spawn in the "old world" and rush to settle the new one. As I pointed out earlier in the thread; settling past a given timeframe is something you do NOT want to do as, especially with ICS. Granted, if it's a 10 person map, the setting is "large", therefore this might be a viable strategy.
As for your tradition opener, I highly advise against it. Tradition is good on single player when you can sell luxuries for cash. The best you can do on multiplayer is tribute city states for gold, only problem with that is it's not a build. If you do not spawn near 3 city states you might as well forget about city state gold to buy settlers - it will come to late.
Another option is to hard build settlers - but if you do that you don't want to hard build any more than 3 as your capital will quickly fall behind.
So for your build I would advise doing the Liberty NC expand build. I'd link you the thread, but I have no idea where it is. In a nutshell, you stay with one city in your capital and rush to national college. Your policy order is free worker> +1 prod > free settler > rest of liberty. You should have your nc finished before you settle your first city. Then you get either an Oracle or Writers Guild for a pre turn 60 religion from liberty finisher. Then once you build either Oracle/Writers guild, you start spamming settles from the capital.
I've tested this strategy out in multiplayer and it works great if you spawn somewhere where you know you're not going to get comp bow rushed. I.e don't do this if you spawn 7 tiles from somebodies capital. Turn 60-70 is when you start building comp bows in your capital, and turn 75 is when you upgrade them to xbows. So as long as you know you can survive the first 50 or so turn, this build works wonders.
As for 'settling the new world', I advise getting commerce +3 production from coastal cities and +1 happiness from lighthouse/harbor/seaport. If you ever try to colonize a continent other than your own, always settle on the coast and don't bother with inland cities. The production will help you get a harbor up in every city for trade connection gold, as well as granting your cities happiness to grow. Food from lighthouse is also a plus.
this is still being discussed?
why havent a "strategy" which is common for 3 years been discussed when it was good but now when it got pretty much weakend and kind of suckz?
Again all this size 1 city thing is - I even tried it - with all the building needed to get cities rolling u get broke in no time .... only way to make it kind of work is having size1 army and constantly bulying CS, but this essential part is totaly missing in op writeup ..
Or having 0 army and no unit upkeep - and die like that ...
maybe i should not give this a freepush?
I don't know why it wasn't discussed, but I wouldn't say it sucks. It's a mid-late game build that takes a lot of investment.
And honestly; I usually don't have a problem with gold. This is because you get +2 gold per city or +67 gold per religion spread.
If you have 10 cities, you can expect your religion to spread to about 15 cities total. That's 30 gold a turn right there.
Assuming temples cost 2 gold per turn, shrines 1 gpt, monument 1 gpt - you can have every city with one of these and only be losing .5 gold per turn per city. If you need to field a military however, you will take a -gpt hit. And most of the time when I need to field a military, I disband it once I feel safe enough - theres no reason to be keeping 20 units when you only need 5. Still; this is without caravan gold. On emperor setting, each caravan to a city state is about 4 gold per turn, or 9 gold per turn from a cargo ship. With 3 of them you should be able to stay afloat and then some. Then late game, having 10 pop cities 3 tiles apart will generate a TON of gold from trade connections. Assuming a 20 size capital, and a 10 size city connection, you'd get about 10 gold per turn (including the cost of the 3 gpt city connection). You should have 9 other 10 pop cities, so that's easily 100 gold per turn - enough to finance your army.
after another playthrough im convinced gaining jesuit education is near impossible in SP using this strat.
Immortal difficulty, playing as ethiopia. I was in the midst of spamming cities with steles (up to about 8 or so) when the iriqouis got JE as their reformation belief on turn 58 (quick speed)
Every game i've tried the AI has gotten reformation too fast and always gets JE
i had filled only up to collective rule on liberty then was going to max piety, but was nowhere near close to reformation beliefs at that point
Your best bet is to rush an Oracle and a Writers guild asap for a quick 2 policy boost - other than that I don't know what to tell you. Jesuit education is good; but so is mass buying great people. You can easily buy 4 great scientists (without adding them to the counter) and be in the same place tech wise as you would be with Jesuit education.