Best seafaring Civ

[tjs282]

If that means constructing alliances against them

No, it means beating them up until they pay you to stop

Maybe it would be smarter to ally with them in a pointless war against an unreachable third party? Like when Hitler declared war on the US.

Wouldn't work, if they don't have ships to sail to that 3rd party. They'll just build (even) more Archers, and then DoW you instead.

Rather, you need to build lots of rWarriors and DoW them early, preferably before they research (or pop) Bronze themselves, i.e. while they still only have Axes, Archers and Scouts. That way, you can kill their units (and hopefully capture their towns) before they have Impi. (I hate Impi, because of their M=2: even when my units actually manage to damage them, they just run away!) A=1 vs D=1 is roughly 50-50 win-loss on the flat, but even at Deity -- all other factors (city-size and number, terrain available, etc.) being equal -- you should still be able to build Axes (10s) faster than they can build Bows (12s).

Byzzies get Alph and Bronze to start: if you have to tech-trade with the Zulus at all, Alph is one of the more expensive AA techs, so you should be able to get WarCode for it (Masonry/other techs you take as a peace settlement(s)). Whatever you do, you certainly DON'T want to sell/trade them Bronze, especially at higher levels -- you might as well just shoot yourself in the head. Because once the Zulus have Bronze, you're going to need Swords to go after them, or Horsemen... but how are you going to get those techs/ resources/ shields, with Impi stomping all over your terrain-improvements...?

Far better to genocide them before they get going.

 

[justanick]

Maybe it would be smarter to ally with them in a pointless war against an unreachable third party?

Maybe, but the part about unreachable may turn out to be inconvenient. Generally speaking when on a pangäa type of map you have the opportunity to ally with the neighbor of your neighbor against your neighbor or to ally with your neighbor against his neighbor the later might be the smarter move. That way your neighbor is trapped in a pointless war. You need to pay him gtp to keep up the alliance, but while things go well you donnot need to do any fighting yourself and can concentrate on your civil build up while you neighbor will exhaust himself in wars against one enemy or if this enemy should crumble against more than one enemy. Later you use your superior forces of your knight based UU to attack your neighbor to trigger your GA for mass producing cavalry. If you donnot have a knight based UU this approach is less convenient, than you probably better go for cavalry directly. Knights are not the most efficient unit, but against an exhausted enemy they do suffice and then their speed will be convenient.

 

[walletta]

No, it means beating them up until they pay you to stopWouldn't work, if they don't have ships to sail to that 3rd party. They'll just build (even) more Archers, and then DoW you instead.

Rather, you need to build lots of rWarriors and DoW them early, preferably before they research (or pop) Bronze themselves, i.e. while they still only have Axes, Archers and Scouts. That way, you can kill their units (and hopefully capture their towns) before they have Impi. (I hate Impi, because of their M=2: even when my units actually manage to damage them, they just run away!) A=1 vs D=1 is roughly 50-50 win-loss on the flat, but even at Deity -- all other factors (city-size and number, terrain available, etc.) being equal -- you should still be able to build Axes (10s) faster than they can build Bows (12s).

Byzzies get Alph and Bronze to start: if you have to tech-trade with the Zulus at all, Alph is one of the more expensive AA techs, so you should be able to get WarCode for it (Masonry/other techs you take as a peace settlement(s)). Whatever you do, you certainly DON'T want to sell/trade them Bronze, especially at higher levels -- you might as well just shoot yourself in the head. Because once the Zulus have Bronze, you're going to need Swords to go after them, or Horsemen... but how are you going to get those techs/ resources/ shields, with Impi stomping all over your terrain-improvements...?

Far better to genocide them before they get going.

Maybe, but the part about unreachable may turn out to be inconvenient. Generally speaking when on a pangäa type of map you have the opportunity to ally with the neighbor of your neighbor against your neighbor or to ally with your neighbor against his neighbor the later might be the smarter move. That way your neighbor is trapped in a pointless war. You need to pay him gtp to keep up the alliance, but while things go well you donnot need to do any fighting yourself and can concentrate on your civil build up while you neighbor will exhaust himself in wars against one enemy or if this enemy should crumble against more than one enemy. Later you use your superior forces of your knight based UU to attack your neighbor to trigger your GA for mass producing cavalry. If you donnot have a knight based UU this approach is less convenient, than you probably better go for cavalry directly. Knights are not the most efficient unit, but against an exhausted enemy they do suffice and then their speed will be convenient.

LOL. I love this Thanks guys

However, as stated, I already found a way, which was to present them with a very small, unbreakable target to, er, break themselves upon and they duly obliged. I ended up with three armies pretty quick (two of crusaders and one of spears) and the Pentagon in the middle ages (always a blast). I have left the zulus a contemptible toe hold on 'my' island and will shove them off when I'm good and ready. Meanwhile, Egypt has had the effrontery to think it can share another of my possessions and will receive a check ere long …

Greece is a rival science-wise and Russia otherwise-wise but Greece has researched the usual wrong crap while I go for seriously useful things. It would be nice to have saltpetre, which I lack, but the next resource I need to obtain is rubber and then oil. I do not yet know whether my acquisitions include these.

 

[Lanzelot]

and since pillaging costs 0 MP for an Army, a Conquistadore-Army can pillage 9 times in a single turn (i.e. up to 9 tiles, depending on whether the tiles have got rails yet!).

What do rails have to do with this? It's always 9 tiles, independent of terrain, roads, rails or anything. Remember: they treat every tile as if it had a road (even inside enemy territory without a RoP), so can always move (and pillage) 3 x 3 = 9 times. And rails don't change this, because if you are pillaging them, you are most probabyl at war with them, so wouldn't be able to use their railway anyway...

Back on topic: most seafaring civs are very strong, even on non-archipelago maps!

My top choice, however, would be the Netherlands. Especially for the higher difficulty levels. Agricultural and searfaring mix pretty well: you have the perfect combination of starting techs (Alphabet is the most expensive of the 7 first-tier techs and gives you a head-start in the race for Republic Slingshot, Pottery alows you to build granaries right away, so you can immediately start researching for the Slingshot, as you don't need to do Pottery first!), and the extra commerce from coastal cities and the faster growth from being agricultural helps a lot with actually managing the Slingshot. Of course it depends heavily on having enough city sites that are both at the coast and on fresh water. Otherwise a lot of their bonus is nullified.

The Byzantines are great as well, for reasons already stated here by others.

And I also like the Vikings a lot for military games... Kulko, I.Larkin and myself once played a "One-City Conquest Challenge on Deity" as a Succession Game: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=491935
(Meaning: we are only allowed one single city, and we have to win the game by Conquest...) As far as I know, this is the only successful Deity OCC Conquest game on record, which shows the strength of the Berserker-based strategy used in that game...

England's Man-of-War may be good at higher levels, but at lower levels I think it loses much of its value: the AI simply isn't any good at naval warfare, so the power of the MoW is kind of wasted...