Alexander Social Policies

[Carl5872]

Hoping to get some advice from the experts.

Im playing a huge inland lake marathon game with Alexander. I decided to go down honor first, and use my hoplites and companion cavalry to blitz my two nearest neighbors leaving them with a city each. From there I expanded peacefully with settlers trying to buy up city states, while completing the patronage city state. The problem is that Ramkamhaim was on the opposite side of the lake as me, and grew out of control unchecked (his score is almost double mine. I think I have a few more city states than him, but he DOW'd me and is a full tech level higher than me. Despite this, he's made some military blunders, and Ive been on par with him in the war so far. Another factor to my evasion of him obliterating me is that he is not using the lake to cross, and hit my empire directly, but rather he is conquering my city states on his side of the empire and sending very few troops around the ring towards my side, which so far Ive been able to kill, and am currently working on liberating a city state he conquered early.

I do not have order or autocracy unlocked yet, but wanted to know what my 3rd social policy choice should be, or what to do in m current situation. Plus any tips on playing Alexander in general.

Thanks

 

[FeiLing]

Hard to say, but probably autocracy, as you might only be able to win this game with your military. (What was the difficulty?).

There aren't any tactical advises for Alexander specifically. You already know he's good at early warring. The UB is nice sometimes, but doesn't mean on the other hand, that you must go for a diplomatic victory - for e.g. 1-2 culturals CS allies are already pretty nice for their culture bonus along with their unique resources you get for extra happiness). Usually one would just keep the early war machine rolling and win by domination with him. (Other AI's won't be very peaceful towards you anyway, after you've declared war twice).

 

[Carl5872]

Hard to say, but probably autocracy, as you might only be able to win this game with your military. (What was the difficulty?).

There aren't any tactical advises for Alexander specifically. You already know he's good at early warring. The UB is nice sometimes, but doesn't mean on the other hand, that you must go for a diplomatic victory - for e.g. 1-2 culturals CS allies are already pretty nice for their culture bonus along with their unique resources you get for extra happiness). Usually one would just keep the early war machine rolling and win by domination with him. (Other AI's won't be very peaceful towards you anyway, after you've declared war twice).

Thanks for the advice. Im playing on emperor. Currently I don't have Autocracy unlocked and have to choose a policy. I went with Rationalism to try to catch up to Ramalamadingdong in techs. Not sure if it was the right choice though...

 

[FeiLing]

Oh, then I wouldn't open Autocracy (you probably won't finish/delve very deep into it anymore). Just finish the left side of rationalism. Maybe the right side too if you have happiness problems.
Spare SPs then maybe into Tradition (either Monarchy if Capital is huge pop and it is reachable or just the opener and the Garrison SP (right one)) or just the Commerce opener (depends if you will actually get 3, 2 or only one more spare SP after finish whatever you wanted from rationalism)).

 

[joncnunn]

Alexander with Honor & Patronage already and not yet in Industrial:

If your planning on domination victory I'm thinking:

Piety if your concerned at all about happiness. (In this case you actually have a decent chance of completing the tree)

Commerce if you instead need cash.

The good openers if your wanting to switch to either Order or Autocracy are:

Base Commerce as above for some more gold in the capital.

Tradition if your instead want faster cultural tile expansion throughout your empire

Autocracy: If going this route beeline to Court Houses.

Order: If you have Military CS; beeline to that policy.

(For either of Autocracy / Order; your not likely to complete the tree before winning)

I wouldn't go Rationalism going after Domination victory as RA benefits will be poor as you'll have fewer and fewer RA partners.