Best Rexing Strategy

[Groogaroo]

Hey!

I've kind of got settled in my ways a bit with my opening strategy, I always try and focus on building my economic plan probably building a wonder or two before I start to expand properly, but I always end up with tiny empires (which do okay) as I prefer to play as peacfully as possible.

So I fancied having a go at an out and out rex today to claim as much land as possible peacefully. I chose Victoria, for the bonus on settlers and I heard using financial when rexing can be handy in keeping the maintenance at bay. As I don't have a lot of experience with rexing I thought I'd post up the start and save as a challange (similar to the seafood start thread I started).

If you fancy having a go, that would be great.


The Challenge?

Get as many cities out by turn 100 as possible.

Restrictions?

I feel to keep this real you should have atleast one military unit per city and one worker per city. But thats it, anything else goes.

This is the start...

And heres the best I seem to be able to do...

It must be possible to get more than four cities out (including the capital), but I'd like to see how as I'm struggling to get more. If you don't have time to have a go but want to chip in with some tips on rexing thats also more than welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Ibian]

Grow bigger. Get your food resources improved and wait until all the high food and hammer tiles are being worked. Then spam settlers. It doesnt matter if it takes 50 turns to get there if you spit out a settler every 7-10 turns after that.

 

[Groogaroo]

Grow bigger.

You know, thats probably why I'm struggling with this, rushing to build the settlers. In my normal game I almost always grow my capital up to the cap. I just seem to get it into my head when trying to rex "Must build setllers", which is where I think I'm going wrong.

I think I'll try this again, trying to play the start as I normally would.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You know, thats probably why I'm struggling with this, rushing to build the settlers. In my normal game I almost always grow my capital up to the cap. I just seem to get it into my head when trying to rex "Must build setllers", which is where I think I'm going wrong.

I think I'll try this again, trying to play the start as I normally would.

I'm not expert on it myself yet, but I think it's the right idea.

You make a worker, then grow closer to the cap while improving tiles. Then you can start chopping or even whipping your units out (I hate whipping in capitol early though...the cap is so oppressive with 1 city as is. Unless, of course, I'm charismatic and wind up with gold or ivory or something).

 

[Jerrymander]

I spent many turns with London at population 2. If I had gone to pop 3 sooner, I might have one more city. After getting Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry, there was no need for anymore technology, so science goes to 0.

Could have had 7 or 8 cities. I have 6 workers, stole one from Hannibal. :>

I also didn't whip anything, I just chopped all my settlers. Each chop nets 45 hammers.

 

[BurN]

Well gave it a quick try. First I went berserk on settlers just to see how many I could actually get out, which was 13. Of course my units went in to strike with 14 cities and some at long distance .. but I didn't see any barbs cause all the land was pretty much settled.

Anyways did a second try and tried to do it the "right" way, though still a bit pressuring on settlers. which ended up like this:

 

[Groogaroo]

Wow! okay, so 6-7 cities is do-able. I'm still struggling to get past 4 .

Either rexing isn't for me or I'm missing something really simple! The trouble I find with this start is growing the capital initially seems to take too long, with the only food positive tiles being cows and the oasis in the BFC. Did you guys reasearch B/working first or go for AnimalHusbandry+prereq first. I must admit I tried both ways .

 

[BurN]

Hm well if I remember correctly I went: BW->agri->AH->wheel->myst->pottery->writing->alph.

I'm not sure about build order but something like this in the capital: Worker->2x warrior till pop 2->worker->warrior till pop 3->worker->settler->settler->settler->worker->settler->somethingsomething

The capital stayed at pop 3 working cow+horse+plain hill till I needed commerce. Then I switched to oasis+cottages only. But in retrospect I should've gotten the first settler out before building a third worker. Hannibal beat me with 2 turns to a sweet flood city spot. Hope this helps in any way. Btw quite a lot of chopping done.

 

[Groogaroo]

Hope this helps in any way.

Yes it does and thankyou! Its very helpful to see how other people play the same start.

 

[Jerrymander]

I went BW -> Ag -> Hunt -> AH -> Wheel -> Pot -> Masonry -> 0% science
fishing was somewhere in there.
Main city build was Worker -> warrior until pop -> Settler -> Warrior -> Worker -> Settler to infinity

I built 4 of my settlers in London, one in Canterbury, because it was a high production city.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hm well if I remember correctly I went: BW->agri->AH->wheel->myst->pottery->writing->alph.

I'm not sure about build order but something like this in the capital: Worker->2x warrior till pop 2->worker->warrior till pop 3->worker->settler->settler->settler->worker->settler->somethingsomething

The capital stayed at pop 3 working cow+horse+plain hill till I needed commerce. Then I switched to oasis+cottages only. But in retrospect I should've gotten the first settler out before building a third worker. Hannibal beat me with 2 turns to a sweet flood city spot. Hope this helps in any way. Btw quite a lot of chopping done.

Do you whip, or is it all chopping?

 

[Groogaroo]

I still seem to be only able to get to 5 cities max by turn 100! Guess I'm just not a Rexer. Thanks for posting how you played out the start I suppose I'll keep trying.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I still seem to be only able to get to 5 cities max by turn 100! Guess I'm just not a Rexer. Thanks for posting how you played out the start I suppose I'll keep trying.

Don't sweat it ... on this particular map, you really only need 4 cities on Hannibal's border to block him in (maybe five).

The Fur/Fish city north of London and Rice/Gold city south of London are 'backfill' you can get to later when you have a more stable economy.

This is what I came up with on my first go-round. My economy is borderline crashing, but I'm not working any Gold mines or Coastal Seafood, so I'm confident in a few turns after some of the borders pop, I'll be right back on track:

This probably isn't the best I can do; settling the Floodplains/Pig first and whipping the bejeezums out of it would probably yield much better results, but for what it's worth, these are some of the highlights (I hope you can interpret them):

Spoiler some turn by turn screenshots :

 

[Groogaroo]

Don't sweat it ... on this particular map, you really only need 4 cities on Hannibal's border to block him in (maybe five).

Hmmm... Thats a good point, I didn't really think about the option to block off land for back filling. I tend to only think of that when I have obvious choke points to cut people off rather than in this case with an open continent. So perhaps overall, looking at what I'm aiming to achieve, blocking off as much land as possible is probably the better way to go.

these are some of the highlights (I hope you can interpret them):

Yes, very helpful. One thing I noticed from your screenshots is that you started your first settler quite early (turn 34) also you didn't chop many forests, which is reassuring as I'd rather keep as many as I can.

The basic idea behind this thread is that I want to put more emphasis in my games to grabbing more land peacefully at the beginning but by turn 100 I want to start going for the early wonders of my choice to get what ever my particular stratagy is up and running.

I just love the early wonders, and don't build many after the Great Library generally.

Thanks for the help

 

[brades]

chopping settlers is where its at. If I'm not building a wonder all my chops go into settlers, this way your capital spends minimal time at stagnant growth.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Yes, very helpful. One thing I noticed from your screenshots is that you started your first settler quite early (turn 34) ...

Sort of ... I only swapped the Settler into the queue for 1 turn to pick up the Forest chop. On the next turn (it's easiest to tell by the cultural border pop countdown), I swapped in a Warrior so I could grow to pop3 -- at which point I then started and finished the Settler!

On the other hand, because of the two chops, I did finish the Settler at about the same time as if I had slow built it starting at Turn 34.

... also you didn't chop many forests, which is reassuring as I'd rather keep as many as I can.

I feel the same way. I think I learned that from Obsolete. He typically only chops Forests on Hills he intends to mine (or in my case, also on resources or riverside Grasslands).

 

[BurN]

And where are you going to put your cottages down? ON the forests?

 

[Gumbolt]

Perhaps the game could allow for tree huts?