Autocracy deity game

[snarzberry]

thanks everyone

About the UA, it is strong for the double early iron, considering how important iron is to conquest at that time. Russia's start bias gives it a better than average chance of having iron tiles in the vicinity and each tile provides double so Russia's early game iron access is greater than double the general average.

Extra money from unwanted strategic resource sales is also a good bonus to help your economy along, especially during the time that you can sell horses.

One thing that sticks in my mind about this game is that once I hit about turn 180 or 190 I'd built up so much momentum that I knew I could just cascade across the map without anything stopping me. In other games I sometimes have that amount of strength built up but often have to grab the handbrake due to unhappiness. Autocracy courthouses allow you to engage in war to your armies full potential, not stopping here and there to pause while you get happiness under control.

 

[Buccaneer]

Autocracy courthouses allow you to engage in war to your armies full potential, not stopping here and there to pause while you get happiness under control.

That's good to know and looks like to be the key point of Autocracy, which I have had very little experience with.

I understand the value of early iron but with a start bias, you're look at 6 iron anyways, usually. Tha's enough for an early rush but I guess selling the excess makes sense, if you want to give someone iron or horses. Once you have over 12, then it really doesn't matter much, I don't think, until you get to the point where giving someone else lots of iron or horses would not hurt you.

 

[snarzberry]

Yeah Russia has to be the only civ with which it can be good to sell iron in the early game even though you're engaging in iron based combat. That's if you have a real surplus that you're basically guaranteed to not need for the next 30 turns.

6 iron units does get the first rush done however it's when I've built that army up to the point of being something like 6 - 8 longswords and 3 - 5 cats that I feel really gets the ball rolling. At that point of the game, just due to sheer iron access, Russia can assemble a military of around that strength with less hassle and sooner than anyone else which is what I most like about playing them.

So with other civs I'm preparing for an initial attack of 6 long/swords and with russia I'm right away preparing for 10 or something like that. Momentum builds, heads roll.

 

[MadDjinn]

Autocracy courthouses allow you to engage in war to your armies full potential, not stopping here and there to pause while you get happiness under control.

Yes, a +6 global happy shift/city does that sort of thing.

Of course, conquering the good +happy wonders also helps a lot.

 

[MadDjinn]

I understand the value of early iron but with a start bias, you're look at 6 iron anyways, usually. Tha's enough for an early rush but I guess selling the excess makes sense, if you want to give someone iron or horses. Once you have over 12, then it really doesn't matter much, I don't think, until you get to the point where giving someone else lots of iron or horses would not hurt you.

On the flip side - there's only so many units you can build, on Deity, before they become obsolete. Sure, you can speed into LSs, but eventually better defenses/units will appear and you shouldn't still be making LSs, even though there's a tonne of iron left in your pocket (this is more true for horse units).

So selling them is about the only way to ensure the resources get used.

(though, on a marathon gamespeed, you might have more build time to get a bigger military).

 

[chazzycat]

I just finished a Russia game as well. Not really worth describing in detail, but I just want to reiterate how good their UA can be. Sure all those horses are wasted in the late game, but they can make a HUGE difference earlier.

a plot of 4 horses nets 360 gold, and horses are really common. You can really get a ton of gold with the Russians if you expand to a few horse locations. And those horses can actually last a long time - you can find buyers even in the early industrial era.

oh yeah and double iron doesn't suck. Sometimes you'll actually have extra to sell even with a strong iron-based army.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i just tried my first effort at selling my iron/horses to other civs purely to fund their bribery into war with someone. i thought if im gonna give them military resources i need them to be used against others. it worked out okay except i wanted the gold for rush buying my own stuff not buying their wars. im sure good players know how make better use of that but i just wanted to try it to see what happened. it was on emperor though, as im still generally struggling pretty hard with dom vics AND deity.

after i take a few cities and have some good gold producing puppets it feels a lot better as i have gold for that AND to fund the wars but that seems so late in the game, approaching 200 turns and ive only conquered 1 capitol and barely on my way to the 2nd. i kind of hoped that i would have SBs by 225 or so to go on a more efficient path but for every war i funded early was lost RAs.

balancing those things out is still much harder than i thought. and tedious too. far more micro-management than im used to. selling 24 horses 2 at a time for max gold sucks.

 

[ense7en]

I gave Cathy a try on Immortal in an effort to do something similar, but i'm doing embarrassingly bad.
I didn't go for the Education beeline, and consequently not much for wonders happened other than using Liberty's GE for HS and using HS's GE for ND as i knew i'd never get them normally.

Things have gone very downhill since here.
http://i.imgur.com/Z80vP.jpg

I actually really wish i'd gone Honor as i built up units early and got India's cap Delhi around t50.
It would have made a lot of sense having Honor + Autocracy later i think, especially with early war.
I got stuck in various silly wars with nearby Monty and hugely scary America.

In spite of comparable or slightly better units, i just could not get either of Monty's good cities, and ended up losing way too many decent units to him in futile efforts.

In the mean time, i focused on culture buildings and specialists too much apparently, and now my science is in big trouble compared to the top three who have gotten huge and are running away bigtime.

I don't think i want to bother with non-river starts in the future...been impossibly slow growing my cap.

 

[JamesCivFan]

I just finished a Russia game as well. Not really worth describing in detail, but I just want to reiterate how good their UA can be. Sure all those horses are wasted in the late game, but they can make a HUGE difference earlier.

a plot of 4 horses nets 360 gold, and horses are really common. You can really get a ton of gold with the Russians if you expand to a few horse locations. And those horses can actually last a long time - you can find buyers even in the early industrial era.

oh yeah and double iron doesn't suck. Sometimes you'll actually have extra to sell even with a strong iron-based army.

Their UA is strong for other victories as well. Imagine a cultural victory with a little beat up on the AI in the beginning and then staying peaceful pretty much for a the rest of the game. All those horses, iron, and later aluminium etc etc can be sold for 45 gold/piece. That means A TON of RA's, having at least 3 Cultural CS Allies, upgrading your existing units for deterrence purposes or even rushing a key building or two.

 

[snarzberry]

Yes, a +6 global happy shift/city does that sort of thing.

Of course, conquering the good +happy wonders also helps a lot.

Yeah forbidden palace near the end of the game is always a nice one to get, that's a nice happiness shot in the arm right there.

Hammer Rabbi, France would make a great Civ to play this way. They fly through the early policies so you can get the liberty GP fast without even allying a cultural CS. And then they get super-infantry with the foreign legion. Ancien Regime won't throw the policies out of whack, it'll help. It's just that much less that you have to invest in culture.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

after you annex a city isnt there a waiting period based on pop to wait until you can do anything with the city (like buy a courthouse)? i seem to remember having an ICS game with 300gpt and still not being able to conquer quickly enough because it took forever for me to be able to buy a courthouse. and i of course had plenty of money to do it, but when you conquer a 25 pop city, it drops to 12 and still having to wait many turns to get the CH was irritating.

i forget how this mechanic works exactly. its pretty telling on how bad my military skills are, haha.

 

[MadDjinn]

after you annex a city isnt there a waiting period based on pop to wait until you can do anything with the city (like buy a courthouse)? i seem to remember having an ICS game with 300gpt and still not being able to conquer quickly enough because it took forever for me to be able to buy a courthouse. and i of course had plenty of money to do it, but when you conquer a 25 pop city, it drops to 12 and still having to wait many turns to get the CH was irritating.

i forget how this mechanic works exactly. its pretty telling on how bad my military skills are, haha.

yes, there's a period of 'resistance' when you take a city, which is why it's always a very bad idea to 'annex' a city when you take it. Always choose Puppet (or Raze to reduce pop further) and then annex after the resistance is over.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

dang. ive had that in upwards of 15-20 turns after pop was halved. it was usual that the last 4-5 cities are pretty high pop. I usually raze them to about 5 pop if happiness is a concern. still, thats 10 turns slowed down and ive dropped to a really low happ before, -80 at the worst one time. I had to kill probably 8 revolting citizens who just so happen to be mech infantry and rocket launchers. pretty weird.

 

[nabt]

dang. ive had that in upwards of 15-20 turns after pop was halved. it was usual that the last 4-5 cities are pretty high pop. I usually raze them to about 5 pop if happiness is a concern. still, thats 10 turns slowed down and ive dropped to a really low happ before, -80 at the worst one time. I had to kill probably 8 revolting citizens who just so happen to be mech infantry and rocket launchers. pretty weird.

How can a civilian be a mech infantry/rocket launcher?

 

[snarzberry]

He's talking about rebel units.