Archipeligo strategy

[Andorim]

I have been playing on an archipeligo world for the last few games, and the strategy is quite a bit different from other world types.

I am curious about what strategies are working well for other players. In terms of research, some advances, like sailing, are much more useful early on. But how do you balance that priority against the need to research things like wheel, mining, bronze, agriculture, and animal husbandry?

It also seems that having a lot of military units is less important in an archipeligo world.

What works, and doesn't work, for you?

 

[Halk]

Only played one game like that.

I didn't build any offensive military for conquest. Just military to defend my places.

There's two ways to play Civ4 at the start, it seems.

1) Get a settler ASAP. Either by cutting down trees with a worker, or just starting a settler from 4000BC
2) Build up your city to 4 or 5 and then start churning out settlers.

Playing with archipegalos (from now on 'islands' ) then you need more to start the settlers off.

To found your second city you need to have already found the location by scouting it - which you can only do by building a boat. And you need a boat to take your settler there. You also can't as easily share workers.

So my strategy is if there are woods around, go straight for a worker, and cut them down to build my first city up. When it starts to cap out, by that time I have all the tech I need and can easily produce ships. At that point I've also scouted around and found where I want my cities to be, I then place them there and job done. It's not as important to have a small border with an opposing civ as it is in a normal continental game, so there isn't the same rush to get your settler down before the opponents borders encroach too much.

 

[Brewster]

Something worth mentioning is to be the first to circumnavigate the globe. On most island maps this should not be too difficult and you will gain an extra movement for all of your ships.

 

[LeConquerant]

Brewster wrote: Something worth mentioning is to be the first to circumnavigate the globe. On most island maps this should not be too difficult and you will gain an extra movement for all of your ships.

Hey Brewster, where does that tip come from? is it in the manual, and I would have missed it?

 

[Halk]

Just did another one. Lost. Thought I was going to win easily.

Was slightly leading in tech, had a fantastic economy.

But it all came down to not being able to pull of a score victory because Bismark and Peter had more population, and not being able to get a cultural victory because I didn't know I needed one until the end, and not getting a diplomatic victory - simply because you can't get one very easily unless you're going to win anyway. Tech didn't advance as far as space.

As far as military went, I didn't need any. No barbarians, nobody warred anybody.

Religion spread very very slowly.

Since I'd not met anyone by 1000 AD I decided to try and get Christianity spread around the globe. I managed it with the Germans and Americans, but it really doesn't spread well with archipegalos and high sea level.

Surprisingly I did fine for essential raw materials - but then realised they were no use.

Military victory I suppose could happen. You could wipe another civilization out in one single turn because you can get your troops anywhere on the map.

But producing units would be very tough, since there's very few hammers around.

Game didn't take long though. Normal sized world, epic length lasted 2 hours.

 

[LeConquerant]

I have not seen any Barbarian on my archipelago map...

but the game as such does not look violent (I play on Prince), on the contrary, it looks peaceful, with hardly any war raging: is it the archipelago or just hazard?

I suppose that game is likely to end-up with space victory. I can see only one way to avoid it: attack the strongest Technology AI's early, instead of growing by attacking the weaker AI.

 

[Uniqueuponhim]

Archipelagos are my favourite maps, but I always play on low sea level, so that cities can have a decent amount of production, and so that my ships can get around the world to meet other civs more easily. I still have the civ 3 mindset of "expand expand expand" in early game though, so while the expansion does slow me down a little on these maps, it seems it doesn't slow down quite enough to keep me from ruining myself.

 

[LeConquerant]

(...) it seems it doesn't slow down quite enough to keep me from ruining myself.

I believe expansionist gameplay is made easier by the extra gold from the sea.

 

[Corlindale]

I like Archipelagoes.
Fishing and Sailing should definetely be early tech priorities, though sailing can wait a bit if you start on an island with room for 2-3 cities.
Colonize your island, and make sure you found cities by the sea whenever possible. This means a road network won't be as crucial.
You hardly need military in the beginning because neither barbs nor opponents will be on your island.
Send out Galleys with a settler and a worker each early, and try to colonize nearby islands, and make contact with other civs early for trade routes and religion spreading.
If space is limited and you can't get to other islands with Galleys, you are in trouble, and might have to do a beeline for Astronomy.
You should definately get the Colussus and The Great Lighthouse, as their bonuses are very significant on Archipelagos.

Production will often be a problem, because you won't get hammers from sea squares(except whale and oil), so you might want to emphasize mines and workshops more than you'd normally do.

 

[Andorim]

...Production will often be a problem, because you won't get hammers from sea squares(except whale and oil), so you might want to emphasize mines and workshops more than you'd normally do.

This has been a really big problem for me. I ended up with a size-12 city that was producing just 1 hammer! Other than priests, workshops, forges, and mines when possible, what can be done to increase production?

 

[Corlindale]

This has been a really big problem for me. I ended up with a size-12 city that was producing just 1 hammer! Other than priests, workshops, forges, and mines when possible, what can be done to increase production?

Well, there aren't really many options besides that. Sure, you can build improvements to boost your hammers by 25% or more, but 25% of very few hammers is not a lot.
If you find yourself with excess food, for example from fishes, you might want to hire some engineers. Then you'll get both the benefit from their shields, and from the increased chance of generating a Great Enginner, one of my favourite GP's. Trouble is that you can't really get that many engineers in the early game, and so Priests are a good alternative, as you mentioned. If you rely a lot on Priests, you should get the Angkor Wat too.

You can also choose to rush production in your cities, but this is very expensive, regardless of whether you do it by means of Slavery or Univ. Suffrage. You should do this for the select few buildings a desolate city by the sea will need to start becoming efficient on it's own, like a Lighthouse(Extra food for specialists), a Harbor(greatly boosts income, unless you are the Mercantillistic type) and a Forge/Temple(for Engineer/Priest).
You should generally have a lot of both cash and food on archipelago, so you might be able to rush quite often. Make good use of Great Merchants to get money. A Great Merchant sailing halfway across the globe to do a trade mission will give you a LOT of cash.

 

[Jarrod32]

Another archipelago tip...the 'work boat' can travel around your island, and go from island to island (as long as you don't have to cross ocean squares) for some early exploring. It lets you look for resources, etc to decide where to send those settlers (and missionaries!) when you do get sailing...

 

[tharg]

There's two ways to play Civ4 at the start, it seems.

1) Get a settler ASAP. Either by cutting down trees with a worker, or just starting a settler from 4000BC
2) Build up your city to 4 or 5 and then start churning out settlers.

I generally look at two factors.

How many city tiles are producing four plus recourses, rather than the usual three? Typically I let a city grow until all four plus recourse tiles are being worked or it hits its happiness cap. Which often means starting a settler straight away.

What tiles a worker will be able to improve if I start building one straightaway.

Is building something else likely to be useful. Are you racing the other AIs to the local goodie huts?

Remember part of the cost of a settler or worker is the resources that you will not be gathering when your city fails to grow.