Axes Still Rule

[InvisibleStalke]

Focusing your empire on one thing at the start of the game is a powerful strategy - rather than dividing your effort and achieving only small amounts on any given goal.

An axe rush is a classic example of this. But what about the other kinds of "rush" you can do at the start?

- With a financial civ I "rush" cottages and try and get as many riverside cottages up and running as I can for a huge early tech rate and the ability to finance a lot of expansion. I find this very powerful - more so than an axe rush for this kind of leader.

- With an industrious civ I "rush" wonders. I end up with huge cultural borders and an extremely powerful central city that finances a lot of science and production through settled great people and the accumulated effects of the wonders.

- With a philo civ and access to stone, "rushing" the pyramids can be tremendously powerful.

- With a creative civ, a land grab where you wall off a large section to settle at your leisure can be tremendously powerful.

- With an aggressive civ, an axe rush is a viable strategy, but what about farming your AI opponents? Letting them build you wonders before you savage their cities? My highest ever score resulted from a game where I pillaged early civs with Keshiks but didn't take them out until later. Eventually when I was ready I claimed the pyramids which was a huge boost to research, especially when I didn't have to build it myself.

Any of these can be at least as powerful as an early axe rush.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

At 12 pages, I don't know if this thread is still worth posting in, but I am going to step up to defend the OP.

There is an objective portion and a subjective portion to his argument, and most people are criticizing the subjective part. Clearly it's just his opinion that micromanaging cities, missionaries, and the like for non-military victories is boring.

It's the objective part that people seem not to be addressing: an early axe rush is the most powerful strategy in most games. Now it's obviously true that there's nothing forcing a player to use the most effective strategy. One can certainly choose not to pursue such a strategy, and that point has been made many times over.

The fact remains that, in the back of our minds, we know that we could simply walk over our neighbors if we wanted and if we have copper relatively close to the capital. I think it's reasonable to argue that this is poor game design.

I, for one, have always felt that civ focuses too much on war, though this has been less and less true of each version. Things like culture and diplomacy have been fleshed out as the game progresses. But the underlying fact that war is the easiest and most effective path to victory has never changed.

For those of us who don't find war fun, we have to deal with this in some way. You can set up your game to not be conducive to war, or you can make a conscious decision not to pursue warfare. But can't an argument be made that no one path to victory should be easier or more effective than the others? That's clearly not the case and in my view that's bad game design.

I agree with this. There seems to be a fairly general agreement that on higher difficulty levels, you simply have to take out a neighbouring civilization early in the game to get the edge on the other competitors. There should be ways to make this a less obvious option. I think the recent addition of angry militias arising from the ruins of a razed city shows the way. Suppose conquered lands would not automatically lose their native population even if you raze every single city? Instead of automatically becoming assimilated by your culture in a few turns, the defeated tribe would keep turning up, à la barbarians, but turn up in your cities, destroying buildings, or slap in the middle of your land, destroying improvements and killing your workers. They might even become so dominant in cities you have founded on their land that they rebel, troops and all, so you'll have to fight a new war of conquest. That would be pretty accurate historically too. The Romans never conquered all of Britain because it would have been cost-prohibitive (the land in the north wasn't that valuable) and because the tribesemen kept rebelling. The Assyrians were brought down by a combination of neighbouring countries and the peoples they had conquered. The English never managed to assimilate the Irish. The Chinese conquered Vietnam on one occasion but were thrown out after a couple of generations.

So I think that, particularly early in the game, a mass rush on a neighbouring civilization should entail a very real possibility of serious and destructive consequences which would make you think twice before deciding that it was the only option you had. Where you might, in some cases, reluctantly decide that you had no choice but to attack, but where you at least as often would decide that leaving your neighbour alone (or only fighting limited wars for limited gains) would be better.

Of course, this is not to say that OP is right from a wider perspective; by his own admission, he will only play the game under conditions that fulfill his demands (nearby copper, not too high a difficulty level, the "right" kind of map, and so on), and he despises culture and diplomacy so he refuses to engage in them. Of course he gets bored! Of course he longs for a real wargame, one where war isn't one of several tools to promote your civilization. So I wonder why he bothered with Civ in the first place.

 

[Roxlimn]

I can't really see where you can say that advancing a stack of Swordsmen and Catapults and Spearmen is going to qualify as a "rush" in any sense of the word. Catas require Construction and getting there fast enough to be relevant is going to require some modicum of building capability.

Technically, Axe Rushing is also not the best option for every leader in the game, as InvisibleStalke explains. In fact, in the UNREAL and IMPOSSIBLE walkthrough threads, obsolete demonstrates an option for winning the game in about 4 hours! Even when you Axe Rush, you don't win. You just become more dominant.

In terms of real time, cultural and diplomatic wins are often the fastest wins because they don't require the same kind of micromanagement as wartime management does. Clicking on build queues is faster than arranging an SoD and moving it across the continent.

So war is important in Civ. So what? I rather think that that was rather intentional, since war seems to also be important in RW history, though I might be mistaken on that. Some people think that WWII was not really that significant an event.

 

[Fugl]

Agree with Öjevind Lång
devs should add some penalties for taking enemy capitols, making it less desirable early fex 20-30 gold per turn upkeep, would scare most away from doing it early, or large chance of flipping.
Theres many options, tho next would prolly be ppl raze em and settle spot themselfes o_0

 

[Moonlit Knight]

You posted you request... how long ago... 12 hours ago? And you label me a "troll" because you have to wait for a reply for more than 12 hours? Learn to be patient, man. Besides nothing compels me not to ignore your requests. However, I shall be kind enough to answer your two questions. I hope you will equally kind, and apologize for your rudeness and lack of faith.



The short answer to that is that improving civ is simply not my business, it's Firaxis business. This is what they are paid for. I am not paid to find solutions to their problems.
The longer answer is this: my personal opinion is that the current version of the game is radically broken, and that there seems to be no way of fixing the combat system. At any rate, I've tried various mods, but none of them adequately fixed it. The whole thing has to be redesigned from scratch. If you are looking for suggestions I have no new suggestion to offer other than the obvious ones: a decent AI, some sort of supply lines, less reliance on military units spam and more strategic choices, especially in warfare.



Again, giving examples of other computer games is besides the point. Despite its deep flaws, civ is the best of its genre. Europa Universalis is in may ways worse than civ. And I don't really like the Total War series. But perhaps a combat system more like Medieval II total war (without the RTS) might be better than the current system? I have no strong opinion on that. Having said that, I do however strongly believe that the SoD rush is overpowered and that civ is broken for that reason. Whether other computer games are any better or worse is irrelevant to the point.



So, according to you, whoever criticises (and makes you wait for an answer) is a troll.

No, a troll is someone who comes into a forum. Disregards others, flames others or insults whatever the forum has been set up for and then ignores or does not give alternative suggestions. Opinions are fine as long as the person also has the balls to put their own suggestions on the firing line. You have so far just been critical and offered NO alternative suggestions. Also you replied to several posts after mine so it was logical to assume you were ignoring it.

As for MTWII?? I think it's exactly the same. Build lots of units and outnumber them two or three to one? And you'll crush the AI.

 

[Spearthrower]

I especially like the idea of Total War battle system without an RTS element.... a fine suggestion.... *snicker*

Reductionism is rife, but no logical thought seems to precede it. Actually, that's the only reason I've continued to post in this thread, to counter the awful, fallacious arguments made by the OP.

I'm going to have to agree with you Moonlit Knight... initially I thought the thread was just plain silly.... but the OP is clearly intelligent and writes well (even with no grasp of constant logical fallacies), then I thought it was a joke because you can't state something so totally obvious and not be joking - non-sequitur's tend to be humourous as a punch-line. Then, I saw that none of the pages of objections were being countered or considered, and the OP's original argument slowly wandered around until it became somewhat different, yet still utterly obtuse. I can only surmise that this whole thread was to get a rise, get people posting crap replies to deflect the OP' boredom from having used the WB one too many times and become bored with civ. It succeeded - 14 pages of funny posts, good objections, interesting points and a great thread to link to if you ever want examples of fallacious statements.

I am genuinely pleased to see so many people post up about how they enjoy playing in a variety of styles - it certainly breaks the typical teenie stereotype you see on CFC where people are focused on pwning the AI as quickly as possible and then bragging about it. Variety and fun for fun's sake seems to be the actual norm, just less people seem to post up about it.

I have every intention of making a mod in this man's honour. It will feature only pangaea, only small maps, only axemen will be buildable, only resource will be copper and the only victory condition will be to take any opponents capital.

 

[pi-r8]

I've only played vanilla, but I agree with the sentiment of the OP. I switched to advanced starts when I realized that, 95% of the time (on any difficulty, any map type) an axe rush was the way to go. If not axes, then swords, cats, or chariots.
Unfortunately, advanced starts don't help a lot either. You just end up with maceman rushes, or rifleman rushes, or whatever.
There's other ways of playing besides the axe rush that are more fun. I just wish that they were balanced in effectiveness.

 

[Honden]

It appears as though some dislike a good game of chess.

 

[Heinz Guderian]

I assume that you (and the OP) are using "rush" to mean an offensive war.

I think that the OP and those agreeing with him use "rush" to mean: taking advantage of a window of opportunity and maximizing production of a newly acquired offensive unit to launch a concentrated attack in overwhelming numbers. I’ve found the "rush" to be the most effective kind of offensive war.

He is a troll. He is here to flame and cause disruption.

I've read most of the thread now, and I don't think that the OP is a troll. Some posters jumped at the guy because he said that is he "bored and disappointed" with BtS, but he's also a made a valid point, one I entirely agree with. Let's face it, at moderate and high difficulty levels the best way to gain an edge over the competitors is to take over one or more nearby civs with axemen or catapults early in the game. To do that the warmonger does not have to engage in sophisticated strategic thinking, the AI just is incapable of handling human players launching concentrated attacks in overwhelming numbers. Though I enjoy doing it, to me it almost feels like an exploit when I take on a barely protected capital city with a bunch of axemen. I have to admit that early warfare is pretty much a no-brainer and one of the least challenging parts the game. Late wars are much more challenging but not as decisive as the early ones.

 

[Pomp]

I think that the OP and those agreeing with him use "rush" to mean: taking advantage of a window of opportunity and maximizing production of a newly acquired offensive unit to launch a concentrated attack in overwhelming numbers. I’ve found the "rush" to be the most effective kind of offensive war.

OK, that accounts for some of my misunderstanding, anyway. To me, a rush is a style of play where you optimize your economy/build, usually at the expense of all else, in order to produce an offensive force before a more balanced play style can produce an adequate defense (i.e. a 4 or 5 pool Zergling rush in Starcraft). So, for example, beelining Cavalry isn't a rush, as I usually use the term, because other players have hundreds of turns in which to build and react. Under your definition, I really have no idea what we're all arguing about. Using superior units in overwhelming numbers is the most effective way to wage war? Really???

 

[civzombie]

To the OP:

Yes the axerush is the best strategy a good amount of the time, but hardly always (unless you do something odd like always choosing boudica on pangea).

Playing epic monarch last night I started as Ghandi very close to sitting bull in a game last night. I knew trying to axe rush his cities as Ghandi was going to bog me down.

I looked at the terrain, and realized that I could block him off and trap him in a narrow peninsula. I used that strategy and now he only has three cities and is the lowest in score, while I have the highest score on continent.

I think in this situation the axerush strategy would have lead to an inferior result than the one I accomplished without that strategy. So there you go, axes didn't rule in this game.

 

[Spinal]

The only time this doesn't apply is when you're isolated. If there's even one civ on your landmass, early war will nearly always be preferable to early Settlers and Archers.

I would simply argue that another time this is the case is when a crucial resource upon which the strategy depends is missing. With no early copper/iron resource, the argument and the strategy fall apart. Dependence on the random generation of said resource had the OP saying he'll simply quit and restart without it, which is why many posted to say this nullifies the claim.

What if you have no copper? Then the cat rush is nearly always the dominant strategy. Bad news again.

From the OP. Thank you for at least finally addressing this, even if it goes counter to your original claim that you'd simply restart in said scenario. As far as the Cat Rush goes, they altered Siege weapons in this expansion, so that they are unable to kill off a defender entirely on their own. While cat rush may still be a viable option, I don't think you or anyone has shown this yet with the changes made in the xpac.

 

[xAlephx]

Maybe I can address two complaints in one. Namely, supremacy of rushing and weakness of espionage.

Perhaps leaving someone else alive with a manageable size empire, therefore better research, would also increase the power of espionage? If you're either conquering - therefore expanding and slowing research - or razing - thereby destroying - a serious portion of your accessible neighbors, then of course espionage looks bad. If you prioritize an early neighbor for espionage, then you can have the advantages of tech sharing without the icky sharing part. Espionage will thereby give benefits you would not get through axe-rushing. You'd be wise to limit their future power - perhaps by being Creative - but you could farm them as a long term resource rather than slash and burn them.

 

[Pottery]

Using superior units in overwhelming numbers is the most effective way to wage war? Really???

Let me step into the debate as a "pro-axe nerf." The problem is that with copper and one or two decent production sites, it’s not hard in the early game to outnumber the AI’s city garrisons in a ratio of two or three to one. So I propose the following simple solution to the OP's problem: what about increasing the production cost of early axemen from 35 to 50 hammers until the discovery of iron working?

 

[Spinal]

I think that the OP and those agreeing with him use "rush" to mean: taking advantage of a window of opportunity and maximizing production of a newly acquired offensive unit to launch a concentrated attack in overwhelming numbers. I’ve found the "rush" to be the most effective kind of offensive war.



I've read most of the thread now, and I don't think that the OP is a troll. Some posters jumped at the guy because he said that is he "bored and disappointed" with BtS, but he's also a made a valid point, one I entirely agree with. Let's face it, at moderate and high difficulty levels the best way to gain an edge over the competitors is to take over one or more nearby civs with axemen or catapults early in the game. To do that the warmonger does not have to engage in sophisticated strategic thinking, the AI just is incapable of handling human players launching concentrated attacks in overwhelming numbers. Though I enjoy doing it, to me it almost feels like an exploit when I take on a barely protected capital city with a bunch of axemen. I have to admit that early warfare is pretty much a no-brainer and one of the least challenging parts the game. Late wars are much more challenging but not as decisive as the early ones.

Decisive. Good point to touch on. As much as I've posted against the OP, I will be the first to agree that the early rush technique is indeed one of the most decisive moves available in the game. Just stands to reason. Less troops, less cities, each win is far more decisive than waiting until the game has expanded across time.

However...

Decisive does not equate to dominant.

What I mean by this is the following:

When an expert in a field has described something as dominant, they'll generally provide data. Like saying, "In 200 trials, we've found X to result in over 101 cases...thus it is the dominant result"

The problem I have with the early rush is while it can decisively put you ahead of your rivals, it has an equal chance to decisively put you far, far behind.

So you've cleared your forests, sacrificing the late game for the early benefit, bee-lined toward Axeman, but have no iron/bronze...scenario over. You've wasted time and resources and future strength for a strategy that is now moot. What does the OP, or many who employ this do in this case? They restart the game. It's early, not much time invested, makes sense to restart. But what they forget is, they basically lost the game by pushing to be overly decisive.

Let's say you get copper/iron. Let's say you outnumber your opponent 3 to 1 with axeman, and roll toward the capital for the win. What happens if even with 3 to 1 odds, a few bad rolls has you NOT capturing the city, or winning this war you've set up. Again, inc restart...or even a reload where you change the attack order (or if you dont check the option to maintain outcomes, just try the battle again). I seriously doubt those that try this strategy and are not successful actually play out the game, now at war with their neighbor, devoid of forests, have no defenders, and their capital could probably be taken by a roaming bear.

So yes, early war is indeed more decisive, but until I see empirical data to say otherwise, I still don't believe, dominant.

The risk-reward of this strategy is massive. When it works, yes, it is strong...maybe the strongest approach. But when it fails, it fails massively, and the game is often lost that early, or at such a disadvantage, it isn't worth continuing.

But since it's so early, many put out of their mind the number of times they've restarted to get the needed resources, or reloaded to avoid a massive military loss.

If you were to count these failed excursions into the data along with all the overwhelming wins achieved, I'd be willing to bet more people would find this early rush massively risky, decisive, to-be-sure, but not always dominant in terms of pure wins/losses per trial.

 

[Spearthrower]

It's early, not much time invested, makes sense to restart. But what they forget is, they basically lost the game by pushing to be overly decisive.

Well said!

If they counted all those ignominious failures instead of skewing the data in their favour, this 1 trick pony would suddenly look a lot less feasible.

Instead of rebalancing axes around these people, I suggest they rework the hall of fame to include *every* single quit game, or un-finished game.... that would give us much more meaningful data to work from!

 

[Pomp]

Let me step into the debate as a "pro-axe nerf." The problem is that with copper and one or two decent production sites, it’s not hard in the early game to outnumber the AI’s city garrisons in a ratio of two or three to one. So I propose the following simple solution to the OP's problem: what about increasing the production cost of early axemen from 35 to 50 hammers until the discovery of iron working?

I've always thought that the only real nerf axes need is to make them dependent on some tech other than the one that grants both early game methods for rushing builds. It would create another decision point for the player and it would make it harder to get that big axe stack up and running quickly.

 

[Littlelisa]

Yes restarting and reloading seems to be something some do

You may as well go into the world builder and give yourself loads of mobile infantry

Though i myself have finally got out of the habit of checking the world map in world builder to see if its a fun shape to play, more fun just playing with what you get given.

If your stuck next to load of jungles with no copper and iron or on a tiny island with lots desert, deal with it. Its the challenge

 

[InFlux5]

I think a lot of us disagree with the idea that this is better always than all other strategies.

Nobody said it's "always better". In fact, those supporting the OP's argument have repeatedly stated that having another civ on your continent and having copper relatively close to your capital are prerequisites. These two conditions are met in a solid majority of my games. I don't know about you.

So we have a strategy that is mildly useful in certain situations and thats it.

More like a strategy that essentially wins the game for you in most situations. Can it be won in other ways? Of course. But you can't deny that having 2 capitals in the Ancient Era propels you far ahead of the AIs, who never pursue such a strategy.

 

[Spinal]

More like a strategy that essentially wins the game for you in most situations. Can it be won in other ways? Of course. But you can't deny that having 2 capitals in the Ancient Era propels you far ahead of the AIs, who never pursue such a strategy.

Would you deny that failure to achieve iron/bronze in this scenario, or some bad rolls, and an early military loss while trying this can lead to you losing the game in most situations?

I'd say while this strat can lead to some of the most overwhelming wins, people forget the overwhelming losses it can lead to at an earlier stage than any other strat. Problem is, folks don't play out the losses...just restart or reload.

I'd bet the actual wins to losses wouldn't be seen overpowered if folks were stuck continuing the game when the resources didn't show, or their military force didn't take the city.

The AI, as someone not programmed to reset when it fails, could be viewed as too smart to take the risk, and play the safer odds of winning across time, than trying and failing utterly, as can happen with this strat.