4 cities swords rush prelude

[Tabarnak]

With Tradition

I only played 1 hour and half so far but the old and entertaining optimized production strategy should be back. It will be a sort of hybrid strat between these 2 approaches.

More infos will follow in next days.

 

[Tiber4321]

Is it still -4 happiness for every new city? I was hoping they would cut this in half.

I'm going to have learn a lot about it before I decide if I want to but it or not.

 

[notadummy]

from what I've read, happiness is a lot easier to come by, due to mercantile CS and all the new luxuries.

 

[ShahJahanII]

from what I've read, happiness is a lot easier to come by, due to mercantile CS and all the new luxuries.

It's ridiculously easy. Organized religion has been changed, so a conquer probably won't need yo take it, but a lighter diplomacy for more trade, Mercantile CS, new luxuries, and religion make happiness a cinch.

 

[ShahJahanII]

Tabarnak: This strategy was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of the combat changes. I find this is one of the few uses of the Iroquois, but has it been nerfed?

 

[vexing]

iroquois can be ridiculously powerful now, though i'll let someone else spoil the "how."

 

[Tiber4321]

Good news, all the happiness penalties in domination games just ruined the fun of conquest. The idea that founding a new city would cost 4 happiness, with nothing to mitigate, essentially made Civ 5 a four city game. If they fixed the happiness stuff, it will be a huge improvement.

 

[Tabarnak]

from what I've read, happiness is a lot easier to come by, due to mercantile CS and all the new luxuries.

I didn't have time to play again since the last post. If happiness is more aboundant, this can certify that a Tradition approach is probably a nice way to go(Liberty can be interesting too, but it's just nice that Tradition can compete that tree again ) due to large amount of happiness available, like it was before the june 2011 patch for the vanilla game.

Well in my very first try i went Liberty first and tried to copy paste a bit what i was able to do from vanila but it seems that only the worker first approach can be interesting at least for a monument/granary approach followed by a wonder. I failed at going for 4 cities in a record time.

But Traditon opens something interesting...the amount of gold can be raised in some ways(locking tiles while building a settler etc.) and the possibility of growing faster later and with free monuments make 2nd and 3rd city great candidates to pump up warriors. With a lot of spare money it's now possible to rush buy 1 or 2 workers pretty fast.

Anyway this is only the beginning of a long and rigorous analysis

I only played at quick speed yet(mainyl for mp analysis) but it's largely possible to chunk our 4th city aorund turn 34-35 in time for iron working.

Prelude approach :

Research AH-Pottery. Start with scout-worker-faith building(pottery in time). Grow to 4 Then 3 settlers going for iron working. Settle on a lux with one city(preferably a mine). Maybe researching another lux tech before IW too? Not sure yet. The faith building let you choose a religion soon enough, giving you another boost(like the +1 production for pop 3 cities).

Probably going for Metal Casting after other lux techs and Philo and build workshops in early huge cities for maximum output.

The average way to get NC in mp games is around turn 63. I was very close from that date when i tried a Tradition approach(with an army of 6 swords of course )

 

[gozpel]

Tabarnak: I never played quick in my life in my own games, so turn 63 would relate to around turn 95-100 on Standard?

4 cities, NC and 6 swords sounds like SF to me, I know I can do something like that in the old game, but happiness will be killing me and where are my workers?

Still 2 days until I can play the game, so I'm not bagging you. If the changes are this radical, I'm just hoping Firaxis really, really checked every point on their ToDo-list. Or everything will be changed again in the next patch.

 

[Tabarnak]

I played further more and i can say that Tradition is awesome. The finisher is heaven. Raw beakers can be leveraged very high with astonishing production. I played on a pangea map on king at quick speed. 4 cities : 13-13-11-10 around 700 AD making over 170 bpt. Keep in mind that i never traded a single time with the AI to recreate a mp environment.

I had over 8% tech lead from the average in techs. Oracle is a powerful wonder to get to accelerate things. The 2nd city can be raised high enough to let build this wonder while finishing the NC in capital.

A Physic beeline followed with Education looks pretty powerful. Getting trebuchets with ND is well suited for this production oriented approach(if war coming, happiness support, or simply to grow even more). Piety looks very interesting too. Staging with half shrine-temples cost, followed by a faith boost and then the free ga. Getting a free golden age from happy bucket before free golden age Piety seems nice to gives a large income boost in a crucial time(with all these med units available to upgrade and all other missions).

Also, raising an early ge for Tower of Pisa(aka HS from vanilla) when researching Printing Press seems to be a good pattern.

 

[ShahJahanII]

Do you find liberty is no longer useful? If it is, what strategies would actually use it?

 

[Tabarnak]

Do you find liberty is no longer useful? If it is, what strategies would actually use it?

I haven't tried a full game with Liberty yet.

Now, about the game i'm still playing :

1440 AD, 300 bpt, +100 gpt without golden age, +16% over the average in techs, 2 techs from indu. era, 4x public schools, 4x factories...

Cities : 18-17-15-13(+2 more from Siam )

Yep it's decided. I'm gonna make a production enhanced strategy combined with a 4 city sword rush. This approach is golden. This will be explained approximatively like this old production strat but with pictures and more infos.

The problem come from Piety. Freedom can be unlocked only from Indu. era, which is possible after reaching 3 policies form Piety with Oracle built(after finishing Tradition of course). Now, i think that Rationalism is still the best tree for teching with the possibility to buy gs with faith and his finisher(started from the ren. era, this can be achieved in time, i presume, for the last techs). Probably that the right side of Liberty will be an alternative way and pick rationalism later if not going for a cultural or domination game.

I will at least explain how to make a 4 cities set-up with Tradition toward iron working, Philo then Physics for ND and trebuchets(you don't need iron anymore!) for a nice synergy for both expansion and war times. They key here is to build NC as soon as possible and get manually a ge in time for ND. Then your empire will be able to produce at lighting speed.

 

[EEE_BOY]

God, already chunk out strategies when most of the world people are still waiting for steam to unlock GaK?

 

[Civologist]

I'm not sure how successful 6 swords will be at taking multiple cities. From what I've heard G&K seems to reward bringing siege units to cities. This will require some play testing.

 

[smallfish]

I'm not sure how successful 6 swords will be at taking multiple cities. From what I've heard G&K seems to reward bringing siege units to cities. This will require some play testing.

Bring catapults with your swords

Spoiler :

 

[puyo]

Yes, still able to take a civ before 100 turn with swords and catapults.

Same with special early mounted units (carthage, byzance for example) with catapults.

 

[Tabarnak]

I played my first mp game(again, no trades) and got a much better game with Etiopia! I like this civ.

1600 AD, cities were at 29-26-19-18 with 2 more later that grown to 8 and 9 pop in 25 turns(quick speed) plus 2 cities from Sweden. I reached the modern era at that time too using only 1 gs for insta boost. Reached 370 bpt. Everyone quit that game seeing that i was leading with 1300 pts while 2nd best was still at 700 pts

4 cities Tradition opening(and finisher) with a beeline to metal casting(after philo) and physics(for ND and trebuchets) is really op. I built a ton of wonders. Capital reached 80 hammers per turn.

Some details remain to be modified and then i will begin the write up, probably tomorrow. The difference between mp and sp is only about trading stuff. I will make one with trading here in the S&T sub-forum.

 

[Cel.erity]

Confirmed that this works on Deity, though I only tried it with Rome. The early rush is not as effective as before, I think you do need to wait for catapults instead of going with 6 swords. The build is fine even for a peaceful start though; your swords will deter anybody from wanting to attack you.

The biggest obstacle for this build on Deity is the lack of faith. Unless you're lucky with some CSes or ruins, you may not be able to found a pantheon or a religion. Then again, this is probably not a big deal since I expect most other builds will face the same problem. Faith is the hardest thing to fight for in Deity games. If you can get the +2 science from trade routes belief though, oh lord, things snowball very quickly.

 

[Tabarnak]

Confirmed that this works on Deity

Thanks for the imput

 

[Febreze]

They key here is to build NC as soon as possible and get manually a ge in time for ND. Then your empire will be able to produce at lighting speed.

At what point exactly are you managing to build the NC, usually? Is it typically before or after settler production in the capital?