Call for Civ Specific Strategies

[Sultan Bhargash]

I think with the differences in the different cultures it might behoovle us to start to post our winning strategies for particular civs. I will start with mine for the Russians, who as expansionists, should be played on large or huge worlds with no more than the regular number of civs and the biggest possible landmass. As expansionists (and as all civs without the instant temple building of the Egyptians), dont bother trying to play them on higher than regent levels.
I built 2 or 3 scouts early and sent them out in every direction. When they yielded up warriors I put those warriors to work scouting, cutting up the little bits the scouts would miss or protecting the scouts from the few barbarians that emerged in the wilderness. My scouts yielded up almost all of the ancient techs (while I researched directly towards literature and built the Library, to keep it out of enemy hands) and even a few midevil techs. I did a big sprawl, moving towards resources first; iron took me five cities to reach. When I finally was flush against my first neighbor, England, I let my culture pull a few cities in while I was buisy on an island rush building a harbor to get saltpeter. Cossacks came on line around the same time as railroads and while my neighbors were still struggling to reach Knights. I was already a democracy, so I employed the democracy war strategy of my preference: smash and grab; more on that in another thread but basically the cossack is the ultimate invasion fighter, able to get to the edge of most AI city radius' and then run right in and kill. I am currently almost the master of half of a world, with 63 cossacks and 21 knights (no upgrade available to cossack ) and I have been able to slow my research (moving towards industrialization while everyone else is still looking for Navigation or Chemistry) in order to yield nearly a thousand gold a turn which I am using to rush build temples to increase my border sizes. Try it out.

 

[Reo]

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
I think with the differences in the different cultures it might behoovle us to start to post our winning strategies for particular civs. I will start with mine for the Russians, who as expansionists, should be played on large or huge worlds with no more than the regular number of civs and the biggest possible landmass. As expansionists (and as all civs without the instant temple building of the Egyptians), dont bother trying to play them on higher than regent levels.
I built 2 or 3 scouts early and sent them out in every direction. When they yielded up warriors I put those warriors to work scouting, cutting up the little bits the scouts would miss or protecting the scouts from the few barbarians that emerged in the wilderness. My scouts yielded up almost all of the ancient techs (while I researched directly towards literature and built the Library, to keep it out of enemy hands) and even a few midevil techs. I did a big sprawl, moving towards resources first; iron took me five cities to reach. When I finally was flush against my first neighbor, England, I let my culture pull a few cities in while I was buisy on an island rush building a harbor to get saltpeter. Cossacks came on line around the same time as railroads and while my neighbors were still struggling to reach Knights. I was already a democracy, so I employed the democracy war strategy of my preference: smash and grab; more on that in another thread but basically the cossack is the ultimate invasion fighter, able to get to the edge of most AI city radius' and then run right in and kill. I am currently almost the master of half of a world, with 63 cossacks and 21 knights (no upgrade available to cossack ) and I have been able to slow my research (moving towards industrialization while everyone else is still looking for Navigation or Chemistry) in order to yield nearly a thousand gold a turn which I am using to rush build temples to increase my border sizes. Try it out.

I'm playing on Regent, and thats not possible.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

right you are. my strategy for regent is to not play expansionist civs!

 

[Toasty]

Civ specific strategies should be fairly obvious. For instance, you should mostly concentrate on one ability--I personally LOVE the Greeks and mostly concentrate on my scientific ability and let the commercial do its work to help the scientific (i.e. lowering commercial tax rate). It's not that we need civ-specific strategies, just common sense.

 

[Smirk]

The cossack is basically the same as a cavalry, that 1 point in defense doesn't make much difference, they will still die if anything comparable attacks. The ultimate attacker is of course modern armor. So anyway your strat would be the same for whatever civ you played, everyone but russian would just use cavalry. The best premodern unit is the panzer tank, same as the normal tank but with 1 more movement, very effective for moving into enemy territory.

Other units I have had success with are the iroquois horse warrior, speed of a horseman, power of a swordsman. The persian immortals are great early on as well, not as effective as the units that have more movement however. The impi might be good as a defender unit, my offensive units usually quickly outrun my defenders, but with a unit like the impi you could keep that stack of horsemen defended.

I've had no success with the aztec dude, nice early fast movement, but with 1/1, they can't effectively fight the 1/2 spearmen so can't really take a city without very large numbers. Better off just waiting for swordsmen.

The chinese I haven't had a chance to play yet but their riders should be as effective as the panzer, but only one age earlier.

The rest are defensive units, or units that get an extra defense(like the cossack), making them the same as the comparable unit in attack, but not quite as good as a designed defender. So sum total it saves you some production not having to build specific defenders but overall you aren't a more effective offensive unit. After the ancient times I doubt it would even make a difference (since you should have good production ability at that point), so only the bab bowman are worth playing to just get their special unit to own.

 

[Sam_Catchem]

The Babylonian strategy is pretty simple for Monarch.

Research Warrior Code first. Expand as fast as you can peacefully. Build barracks in EVERY CITY. When you get boxed in by your rival..start pumping out bowmen. They are cheap and have a defense of 2. Set your science rate to 10%. Take your neighbour down and sue for peace (for techs and everything) when they are totally weak. Early genocide is pretty simple with the Babylonians. No need for Iron in an early war. When you have either established yourself as the most powerful on you continent..or totally wiped out all your rivals switch to a peaceful approach and start producing culture and science (cheap temples, etc..cheap libraries, etc.)...You should then be able to succesfully go for the science broker approach.

 

[tetley]

Decide for yourself if this is a "strat" or not:

Start & restart as Japanese until you start with horses. They get Wheel from the get-go. Somewhat of a cheat, but I won Deity with this.