4 corners MP tactics

[KM]

I'd like to share my 4 corners MP tactics, and hopefully get some input how to improve it.

Basicly I can go with several starting civilizations but I find it to work best with france for the free culture. (I tried it out with egypt too but find the only usfull bonus of egypt beeing one. Getting an early wonder not loosing the production to another player)

This is, thought, countered by france who will get the +33% wonderproduction from trad. tree + the border expansion etc. Later on I only tend to produce wonders with GE so bonus doesn t really matter.

Anyhow.

Playing four corners can be a bit tricky and the game can develop in several directions.
Usually I find players to take one of two roads.

Agressive rusher: Usually do an early swordrush in order to make an opponent rage quit, getting not only one or two puppet cities but also rape the AI for gold and resources for upgrades and happines. If a player succed in doing so with two of the players and you are left facing him then you are basicly dead, he will outproduce you with superior economy and map control and it will just be a question of time before he move in to steamroll.

Tech-builder: The other is building up a good fortyfied defence while trying to get a techlead building NC fast, expand to 4-5 cities with maxc growth.

The noob: Of course you have the noob aswell, that doesnt know what he is doing.

If you don t know the players you will have to asume the oponents beeing any mix of agressive-rusher, tech builder, I-do not know what to do noob.

Those 3 player types can also be devided into 3 seperate cathegories when talking about how they will react to loosing a city or units/possitions to another player.

The rage quitter: He quits when loosing a city or even sometimes a worker

The rage offender: (He took one city, I will make his life a hell for the rest of this game. I may loose but I-will-damn-sure-make-him-loose-aswell)

The tactical strategist (Loose-fall-back-re-group- build up)

You don t know the constelaion here either.

What you do know is this. If all are noobs, of any type, you will win, obviously)

If all are tech builders, they are not very likely to attack or expand outside of thier corner of the map adn you can try to take a part of the centre for more happines res-+ the benefit of a larger kingdom. You will thought eventually have to try to take them down and that will be more costly the longer you wait.
You can either try to take one out early and hope that he is the rage-quitter type. But if all are good players you will most defenetly have a long game ahead of you and it is important to not loose to much if playing offensive and not to fall to much behind in tech.

If all are agressive rushers, hell will brake loose and you need to be strong early to not make you all players no 1 target.

But usually the players are a mix.

If the agressive rusher get a rage-quitter noob early he will get a good advantage. And if you don t want to fall behind you must break a player yourself or attack him in the back while his army is bussy. If there is no such player close to him or he misjudge the player he might get stuck in a war where he can not advance loosing units, or not beeing able to pull back to attack someone else risking a counter attack. In this case you can benefit from not beeing at war building up a strong economy and tehc advantage and get a few more cities.

Since you can not know the mix of players you are facing I have tried to develop a strategy that I think work pretty good in beeing flexible.

It is not the best offensive swordrush, but it is possible to make on if an oportunity arise.

It is not the tech-builder. But you can rather fast switch into beeing one if there is no good targets.

So this is my starting strategy.

Civ; france
Policy: prio 1, tradition for 33% wonder construction, 33% str within own border, prio 2 honor tree for 15% bonus when lining military up and later a GG.

Building order.
Capital: worker construction until size 2, even thought the worker is not finshed switch to settler.

Tech: straight for calendar.

Your settler will be ready at the same time or a bit before calendar. Start stonhedge (the extra culture will make it able to get both the trad + honor very early)

Beeline ironworking

Build second city not to faar from capital but try to settle it at a good location. build worriors in the second city and contiune with that.

When stonhedge finish switch to the worker in capital and finish it. After that try to cram in a worrior but make sure to switch to a settler to have it finished with ironworking.

When you get ironworking you should have this: a settler, two cities 4-5 worriors, 1 worker, gold to upgrade the worriors.

While doing this I don t stand still with the worriors I scout. You should by now, using demographics, scouting and the points of the players have a pretty good idea of what you are up against.

If there is no danger for an emediate rush and no good targets to my left or right I Dont settle on top of the iron but choose a good location close to it and move the owrker there. Preferably a 6 iron tile.

If there is I settle on top of the iron and upgrade the worriors.

After this I get all the basic tech for improvements, I either expand to 5-6 cities or build libraries in the first 3 for NC. All depends on what I am up against.

But I find this to be flexible. If someone beeline iron from scratch you will be vonourable for a few turns. Other than that you will come out almost as strong as the agressive rusher, but you can quite easy fall back to tech.

Any imputs???
suggestions??+
flaming...??

 

[Tabarnak]

I like how you say ''worriors''. I bet you have to "worry" until swords upgrade?

Well France is indeed a great overall civ for many early strategies. From my experience, depending of the map, going either warmonger early or building peacefully(defensively) and wait for a big military edge(military tech edge or simply mass army) are both viable.

More ressources around, more cities. If not, prepare yourself to receive iron and attack sooner. Unless someone pop a city so close and see a big opportunity there.

I think you don't need Stonehenge with France. Pick Liberty and place 3 other cities instead(4th one on iron tile if possible). With 2 worked happiness ressources, it will be enough to raise to 3-4 pop each of your cities. Take the building time from Stonehenge to build extra workers and 1 extra city. Exchange Aristocracy for an other policy. You can always go for Aristocracy later and get some wonders later(later ones are better than early ones in my opinion).

I like how you explain the "noob" habits as well.

A more risky strategy consist to build NC first and do a Steel beeline with 2 other cities. 4 longswordmen with a GG around turn 56-58 is always a pain for the defender. But you can get caught and not be able to pull this in time.

 

[swordspider]

Not as deep as your input, but here is my general course of play in a 4-corners map. Your goal should always be to claim 2 corners of the map as fast as you can. Of course this will be through war, so clearly your focus should be on military invasion.

1. I will immediately identify the closest target player and prepare to attack. You of course do not want to attack caddy-corner so that guy is safe. Usually the guy on the same latitude seems to be closer than on longitude and you can always use embarked units to attack them. This method goes along with establishing yourself as the primary player and owning 2 of the 4 corners like you outlined. The downside is, usually the other 2 players will team up against you which makes for a good fight. Played correctly though, you should drop into full defense and substantially out-tech them. You should unquestionably be the first to Rifles/Infantry and therefore win the day.

2. If the players are all strong, then the best thing to do if you want to win is be a shark in the water. Build up an insane attack force ready to roll in a heartbeat. As soon as you see a capital fall, immediately go for the attacker's capital (again embarking makes for an amazing sneak attack). Once you attack they will be forced to stop their attack on the other player. By the time their units get home you should have taken their capital. The player they were attacking will be on their heels and you should be able to clean up the mess. Since the other player lost their capital too, they will be too weak for a counter-attack into your newly-claimed territory and once again you own 2 of the 4 corners. Get your troops to the front line and defend again until you outpace the others.

 

[MasterMishi]

I think SH is risky as it advertises you as a target to the rusher.
Your strategy is flexible but you must make the important decision at the right time or you may lose in the long run to the pure war or tech build.

 

[KM]

Basicly the strategy that I ve posted is not to different from some classical swordrush strategies apart from building SH that a lot of people neglect in favour for GL or beeline ironworking from start.

Now what is the pro's and con's.

The con's: 6+9 turns (I think) to get calendar --> later ironworking. about 10 turns to build SH (depending on aviable tiles)

The res-time doesnt really matter if you don t plan an emideate rush or get rushed since you will have to take those techs sooner or later. 8 turns equals roughly a settler.

So the decition is 14-15 turns earlier ironworking and 1 less city or SH. I could make a couple of playthroughs to decide the absolute deley but 15 should be about right.

Now the question in the long run is how much the SH acumulate happines and what that means in the long run when it comes to amount of policies at a given time.

Now the policys I allmost allways want is the 33% str in friendly territory from the tradition tree, the 15% str when lining up the defence/offence from honour tree + the 20% reduced unhappines from amount of citizens from the Piety tree.

In total that is 7 policies. Now I would have to do some play throught to see when I will get them with/without SH. But with SH I get the 20% unhappines reduction at a time when I usually really need it to not be expension/growth capped.

Now not having SH but still wanting to get the policies at the same time I would have to construct 4 monuments. The production time of course varies with the production in the cities where you build them. All thought since making them will be very much deleyed conmpared to the building of SH I will probably have to make 6-7 of them to have the same amount of acumulated culture at the point in time where I normaly get the -20% unhappines reduction.

So the question is, what is the cost of deleying some vital policies compared to the cost of 1 less settler early on, or what is the cost of constructing 6-7 monuments later on compared to 1 less settler early on.

My bet, all thought not playtested enough is that in the long run you gain more with the SH, but you will come out a bit weaker early on.

 

[Smote]

I don't like it, because it will fall behind a lot in tech, and not have a good chance of killing someone. What's the use of surviving the early game if you don't have a good chance of winning later?