The world for a price

[BalbanesBeoulve]

So recently i've been enjoying going for late game domination wins fueled by cold hard cash. Just turn off research, and buy yourself an army. Go from last in power to first in a few turns.

So let's discuss this method of victory.

There's 3 civs that this works best with because of their UBs. Mali, England, and America. I think America would be the best choice because they get the biggest gold bonus, and their UU compliments this strategy perfectly. The Navy Seal is a very underrated UU if you don't mind winning late. They can literally take a new city every single turn, and never need to stop to rest with a big enough stack of them and with their march promotion. Unfortunately none of the Americans are financial, though 2 of them are charismatic, and your Navy seals will end up ridiculously leveled.

You can pull this off without the Kremlin, but it helps a ton.

So in my current emperor game I'm going to go for this kind of victory. I'm Ragnar of England. I'm trying to decide when to start my rush. Right now i've got cannons and riflemen, and i'd be up against longbows and maybe muskets, only elizabeth has riflemen right now. I accidentally left tech brokering off from my last game where i was messing around with colonies, so everybody's been teching ridiculously slow for an emperor game. it also helps that i had 3 straight Mauseleum powered golden ages. 45 turns of golden ages pretty much guarantee you a tech lead, though I spent most of that at 20% gold rushbuying infrastructure, so every single city has almost every building. Plus there have been tons of wars. It's a big and small map and I have my own island. Degaulle has his own island, and the other 5 share a big continent.

So my question is, should i start taking over the world now? I'd completely dominate right now, but if i turn off research there's a chance people might catch up and get to infantry before i win.

I could also tech to infantry and artillery. The plus side of that is that the next upgrade doesn't come around for a long time. We're talking centuries before mechanized infantry come around. If they ever get tanks i wouldn't have them, but at least i'd have anti-tanks. And i'd only need to tech artillery, corporation, and assembly line and i'm there. only 3 techs. So i'm leaning towards that.

The last choice is waiting a long time and teching to industralism, flight, and radio and taking over the world with tanks and bombers. At worst i'll fight infantry, and defending infantry will get slaughtered by bombers and tanks. The game will end later, but the actual fighting stage of the game will definitely go by faster. on the plus side being able to fly in reinforcements instead of shipping them by boat will be a huge convenience. But this is a lot of extra techs over just Artillery and infantry. Railroad, combustion, electricity, flight, radio, and industrialism.

Which should i choose?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

If you want to war with rifles - forget about rush buying. Crank the culture slider up and draft instead. You will get more production quicker and for less effort. Maybe supplement with some rush buying, but drafting rifles is ridiculously productive. And at that stage you typically can't rush nearly as fast as you can draft.

Rush buying comes into its own later - when you have tanks, bombers and most especially nukes. Drafting is less helpful then as the pop cost is higher - and switching to liberalism as you have more towns might be better than nationalism if you have a big empire, since you can only draft 3 units a turn, whereas you can rushbuy as many as your funds allow.

Turning off science and going 100% cash for rushbuy is awesome. Make sure you have fascism though - when your rushbought army goes to war you might find yourself desperately needing some time in police state. One of my favorite approaches is to build Cristo Redentor. Then spend 3-4 turns in police state amassing cash. Then switch to democracy for 1 turn (with 100% culture to offset war weariness) and spend that cash rushbuying in every single city.

Fission is cool too. Nothing like stockpiling cash while building the manhattan project. Then rushbuying nukes in every city on the next turn. Instant thermonuclear destruction.

 

[absimiliard]

Oooooh. Cristo Redemptor cheeze!

I love it. Very nice trick InvisibleStalker, very nice. I regularly us Golden Ages for similar cheesiness, pre-building units for one turn followed by a GA powered police state, slave-state pumping out fuedal theocratic whatevers. But to use it with the wonder means you can do it all the time.

Excellent use of spiritual. (in it's wonder-based variant)

-abs

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Yeah, i built the cristo redentor, and broadway. Was going to build/rushbuy all the other radio wonders too, and had all my cities cranking out units. I find that getting all the modern happy resource wonders plus the eiffel tower lets you stay in US without having to switch to police state and having to raise the culture slider.

But then game crashed. Reloaded the last auto save, the game crashed again. It keeps crashing in the same year over and over and now the game is ruined. Disappointing. .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Rushbuying is a very powerful late warmonger option. I can't think of a better way to quickly put all those towns the AI likes to spam to use than to convert gold -----> production. With a strong enough economy this actually lets you product units more quickly than drafting, and they'll be better units if you have industrialism.

 

[SlipperyPeople]

I generally like to turn off the research once I have marines, battlships, and destroyers (combustion and Indus?) and then buy myself a navy and about 50 marines. Marines aren't really outclassed by anthing until mech inf (I rarely run into tanks on coastal cities even when the AI has the technology) so I frequently win the game by razing every coastal city I can get to and forcing capitulations without ever having to crank the research back up.

 

[CivMcNut]

I haven't turned off research before in a military type victory. I guess I have a fear I would get mired down fighting one foe and then another one would out-tech me. I do like supplimenting my big invasion force with upgraded units from the past.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I haven't turned off research before in a military type victory. I guess I have a fear I would get mired down fighting one foe and then another one would out-tech me. I do like supplimenting my big invasion force with upgraded units from the past.

You do have to plan ahead somewhat. I turned off research in the most recent game I played, knowing I had one civ between me and domination (albeit the highest scoring civ in the game). 0% research meant roughly 1k gold/turn. That's 3-4 cities pumping powerful, well promoted units every other turn or so, in addition to the normal production cities! This is best done right after acquiring a tech that opens up units that will be useful in battle for a long time. By the time US becomes viable, the tech that really jumps out at me is industrialism, where suddenly you can rush buy tanks and marines easily (after my thread on flight and everyone's insights on it, I'll probably grab flight too).

It feels like a major gamble, but in reality it isn't all that dangerous if you pick your timing to do it. Sure, Cathy had all the casings and thrusters...right as I won .

It's especially potent if you have a tech lead, because your first victim will tend to be more advanced than your second (typically you'll attack the high score people first), and you can surely roll over civs quickly...meaning you may well have that tech lead on every single civ you fight on your way to domination or conquest. The whole point of turning the slider down is to win FAST, kind of like the intent behind maxing the culture slider.