consentient
Domination!
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2014
- Messages
- 3,361
how many Archers do you usually upgrade when you hit Construction around T55
A: As many as possible. I like 8, since that is enough to surround a city and take it down in a couple of turns.
how do you reliably find the money to do so (do you never buy tiles or something ?)
Best sources of money, in approximate descending order of decentness:
1. Selling spare lux to AIs you have a DoF with
2. Selling strategics to AIs you have a DoF with
3. as above but GPT
4. as above but GPT
5. Meeting CS
6. Clearing camps
7. Gold ruins
8. Pillaging
If you're active with barb quests, try to cultivate a DoF, and trade as best you can, and use your many workers to improve stuff and sell it, you can easily have 300 gold, and sometimes a lot more. In the Japan game that was posted above, I had 656 gold when I hit Construction.
Is settling on mining luxes a strong requirement (like Moriarte suggests) ?
It's a boon, not a requirement. In this game, I did not settle on a mine, but there were multiple salts and elephants to be sold.
I also usually have a problem with Melee units in my army. When want to hit Construction fast I do not go for Bronze Working. I can only build Warriors and I more often than not find myself facing 25 CS cities which one shoot my poor units.
You should not be at war if the city+garrisoned unit's combined attacks can 1-shot your units. You want to have a melee unit with 95HP be able to survive both, and withdraw him, to be replaced with another.
It usually happens with civs I am already at war with since worker stealing. Does that make them build walls early and should I therefore be declaring a "surprise war" instead ?
I'd say that more than 75% of the time I make peace after 2 worker steals, as the civ I stole workers from MAY NOT be the civ I want to take my 1st capital from, and I can concentrate on other things while I prepare for the first war.
I don't know if the AI is coded to build Walls when you won't make peace, or what causes them to build walls in general. Trial and error, and practice is how I've gotten a feel for whether or not to attack. I'm not the most mathematical player, and not the most protective of my units, and frankly, I lose some to 1-shot attacks. When this happens, I either retreat and worker bait or just let the casualties happen. If you have lots of units you can afford to lose some and keep the momentum. Watch any of my videos and you will see I lose more than the Ackens of the world.
Another question : at the moment I practice warring early and trying to clear my Continent before meeting the rest of the world. Do you manage to do this often or is this a more rare game configuration ? What strategy do you use to do this ? CB to XB ? XB on multiple fronts ? I usually try to take out an AI entirely before I move on to the next one but maybe I should focus on the capitals and clear the rest once everyone is weakened ?
Clearing continents on Deity is quite tricky, and you're not always in a great position once the capital is cleared, but I'd say you can safely do that and then choose any VC. In the most recent CDG, I found the other AIs were very far ahead in science when I met them, and I was still able to get a Diplomatic win easily. Domination on Continents just takes longer and involves either Frigates, swimming Artillery, or, if you've made really good time and the AI is behind in tech, swimming XBs/Canons, etc.