Russia in 18 civ

[SJN]

Hi,

I am not a civ expert (still struggling with Prince) and I am certainly not an expert with Catherine. I usually play Boudica, WVO, or (most recently) Elizabeth. I either try to maximize wealth or military.

With that disclaimer in place, let me suggest that you try to get Code of Laws as a religion. I do this *all* the time and it works great. You can usually get that far in the game without needing the money.

What works really well for me is to build the Oracle. Sure, I get the Meditation or Polythesism late (no religion), but then I grab priesthood, build the Oracle, and get Code of Laws. *boom* instant religion (with 1 free missionary), city building GProphet points, and (most importantly) COURTHOUSES. It's a serious bonus.

If you have all of these forests I keep hearing about, and you feel "lucky", gamble for both the pyramids AND the oracle. That takes 2 cities and a number of workers chopping down everything. You won't have many options for lumber mills later in the game if you do this, and you want have many options for chopping future wonders, so make sure you really want this.

But the beauty is, you jump to representation AND Caste system. Even if you plan on doing a cottage economy, this early in the game I find that the +3 per specialist gives me a huge boost even for a short run. You can later switch to Universal Sufferage and get some hammers out of your cottages.

Anyway, it's just a suggestion. Try it out and let me know if it does anything good for you.

 

[CrazyCanuck87]

Try this build order and head west:
Worker->Barracks->Warrior->CHARIOTS!

By turn 56, normal speed, playing a little sloppily, I had razed Hamburg and captured Berlin, Paris, and Antium. Unfortunately I came up a little short at Rome, but I'm pretty sure it's possible to take out three European civs in the first 60 turns or so, if you play a little more carefully than I did. This was at Emperor difficulty, although since this is a scenario, not a regular start, the other civs don't start with archers, which makes the rush significantly easier.

Also, cheap (Cre) libraries are great for keeping the economy alive. Build a library and run two scientists in each conquered city, and tech along at a decent pace, even with the slider at 0%, while you build cottages and wait for Curr and CoL to bring the slider back up.

 

[lolo79]

The oracle technique works GREAT. Get confucianism, spread it and it offsets the expansion costs. Failed at my game, though; can't seem to balance city-building and army creation yet; a lot of Russian land comes of a pretty weak as soon as you try to do everything at the same time (as you could in Western Europe)

 

[SharpMango]

interesting thread.
i picked up one thing on a strategic level which bears mentioning. the earth map is chocobloc full of lots and lots of lovely indented coastline. So naturally a lot of civs have access to this coast and take full advantage of it. By this i mean the extra commerce generation

Russia on the other hand is severely constricted, even with the lack of grassland and the preponderance of plains..now if u want to play in a historical manner and dominate the historical russia then this does present you with a severe financial problem, because quite simply, you wont be able to keep up with the financial output on a gdp per capita type basis. So to play within the confines of modern russia presents a big problem.
I really dont know how to combat it EXCEPT through war.
i personally may just go on a lot of wars for nothing but the pillage, especially if i attack south-east/south-west..perhaps you could even make one or two civs on ur southern flank capitulate to you eg persia greece etc. once they're your vassals you might be able to 'liberate' their cities back to them. this would give you stronger vassals whilst retaining the territorial integrity of the russian landmass..
but like another player said.....
europe is the key to controlling the world...the amount of resources packed in there, with those awesome capital location sites...makes my eyes water.especially since the civs there tend to be smaller and positively asking to be invaded :yum:

 

[lolo79]

I just wasted an entire weekend trying to recreate RL Russia while combing military and development strategies. I end up feeling like by rhllthe renaissance that I'm wasting my time. I'm not quite cultural, not quite a military powerhouse. I need to rethink strategy.
I think another option may be to fight incessant wars until 1700 and hope that by then I have a RL territory. Build the oracle and confucianism to offset money issues and understand that the QUICKER I get across Russia the sooner I can shift to culture and modern wonders.
The key is not to let china get too powerful- they vassalize half the world and then inevitable war with china and their vassal Mongolia leads to unmanageable world war as for Europe, I should probably conquer most of it to weaken the little crappers and focus on the east

 

[SJN]

Hi,

So, this thread interested me so much that I tried it. I played russia, on earth, 18 civs, and Prince level.

Are the resources the same every time? or do they change?

I found "Stone" to the east of moscow and put my second city there. That's critical for building the pyramids. I literally chopped the oracle and the pyramids in two cities. It was awesome. Even though I was largely using cottages and not specialists, Representation bumped my science level up significantly.

One of the awesome things about pyramids is that it gives great engineer great people points. I built the Hanging Gardens there and the national epic so I was producing great engineers pretty quickly.

Got Liberalism first, got nationalism, and used a great engineer to rush the Taj Mahal for an instant golden age.

After that, I started struggling, but that was mostly because I launched an invasion before it was quite ready. Maybe next weekend I can play again and see if I can pull it off better...

-- SJN

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I played LAN with my rookie friend...I was mali and he was russia. I did an ill-advised skirmisher rush on Hatty (it was uphill but I killed her), but he had almost double my score at one point! Russia has lots of room to expand and if you cottage it they get pretty strong. This was compounded for me by the fact that mali start with basically NO strong hammer tiles and ZERO forests. This hurts a lot. Africa has some good land and if I were to re-do it I might just go early IW and settle that first.

How did that turn out? Well, I turned the game on a dime when rome declared on my friend. He pulled his large axe garrisons over to the west to deal with rome. Me, having pushed through/wiped out hatty and taken damascus from Sal, took this opportunity to snipe his southern city with longbows. When he brought his axe stack back over, I had walls whipped up and he hesitated outside the city with his axes. This was a problem, because unlike him I DID have catapults, and he lost 10+ axes at very little cost to me, then the AP forced peace .

Shortly after I took the 40something gpt hindu shrine from sal and capitulated him, grabbed a fairly runaway tech lead, had most of africa, and we decided I'd won .

Russia has one of the better starts in the game though IMO. Maybe only Monty has it better?

Inca is pretty interesting on that map. It's actually possible to quecha rush Monty on noble . Settling SA is better though.

 

[lolo79]

And this time, it's for real.

I'm top of the game, it's 1540 and I'm over halfway across Siberia. I keep churning armies, so I have no short supply of troops.

Siberia is defended by a strong China (1st or 2nd after me on scoreboard) but my Greek vassals are lending a good hand so I'm taking down a city at a time.

In terms of wonders, the buidling of Pyramids and Oracle is KEY. After that science stays honorable; (I got lucky because I captured a German city that developed Taoism) (and I discovered Divine Right!). Also great: I built Versailles, this also should get a chopping rush ASAP in one of the big cities you get out of Siberia (chances are it will already have been developped by another civ, so pick it up and start building Versailles as soon as you conquer)

I have to Say I got a great lucky streak in events: free melee upgrade for my axemen early on, free golden age, etc. On the other hand, some sure-fire battle odds turned against me so this isn't a free ride, people.

I have no idea how to download pictures of the game like some people are able to but as soon as I figure it out I'll show you.

This is all very exciting, hope I haven't jinxed it.
the urgent thing is to take a couple of more good cities from China so I can take over the rest of Siberia by the next war. And, very important, not to let China get technologically too advance during the lull in fighting.