I'm trying to get back into the game on Emperor. I usually go for domination wins, with Babylon for the early Academy to get rolling towards Education.
It seems like the optimal strategy for me is to plant 4-5 cities early, then develop them and puppet my neighbors.
My last game, I was playing continents, and I was stuck on a small, long continent with me at the southern end and Siam at the north end. His starting position kind of sucked (nothing but plains with no rivers nearby), while mine was pretty good.
I thought I should go for a sword rush, so that I could get the continent to myself early and tech to Industrial without having to worry about anything. But he had only four cities by the time I attacked, so by the end there was a huge gap of unsettled land between my main cities and my puppets.
So I know if I leave that land unsettled, later AIs are going to settle there and I'll have a hard time defending and be forced to get open borders regularly. But I don't want to settle them myself, since the land is not great and it'll totally screw over my SP rate.
So the question is, would it have been better to let him plant a bunch of crappy little cities and fill most of the island, then hope my tech is good enough to take them all over as puppets? Or should I maybe have just razed all his cities (including his capital) and waited for another AI to settle the island? Does anyone do this?
It seems like the optimal strategy for me is to plant 4-5 cities early, then develop them and puppet my neighbors.
My last game, I was playing continents, and I was stuck on a small, long continent with me at the southern end and Siam at the north end. His starting position kind of sucked (nothing but plains with no rivers nearby), while mine was pretty good.
I thought I should go for a sword rush, so that I could get the continent to myself early and tech to Industrial without having to worry about anything. But he had only four cities by the time I attacked, so by the end there was a huge gap of unsettled land between my main cities and my puppets.
So I know if I leave that land unsettled, later AIs are going to settle there and I'll have a hard time defending and be forced to get open borders regularly. But I don't want to settle them myself, since the land is not great and it'll totally screw over my SP rate.
So the question is, would it have been better to let him plant a bunch of crappy little cities and fill most of the island, then hope my tech is good enough to take them all over as puppets? Or should I maybe have just razed all his cities (including his capital) and waited for another AI to settle the island? Does anyone do this?
