Catapult rushes

[Artichoker]

There are only a few things that can possibly beat a granary in a civ IV city:

1. Workers, settlers, and units to explore earlygame
2. Monument if city placement dictates needing a border pop and you have no other source of culture.
3. Military units if you want them ASAP in a city that is hammer heavy, food-poor.
4. Key early-game wonders
5. Very early library in some cases.

If you're not doing those things, you should probably be in slavery, pushing for a cap booster, or heading for caste system...

1) and 5) can easily occupy the majority of ancient-era production.

I rather often delay granaries in my cities, for these 2 reasons.

 

[vicawoo]

Gah, I'm not talking that much about granaries. The context was that davemcw was implying he didn't expect to trade for monarchy.

If you have hereditary rule, whipping is going to make up a lot of your catapult production, in which case granaries are a no brainer.

However, if you don't have hereditary rule and are stuck at a low happy cap, you usually are working very useful tiles. Now grassland hills aren't going to be that useful if you are going to regrow too fast (common with 2 food sources), so you'll tend to stall out with high hammer tiles anyway. Granaries cost hammers, so it's not always worth it to build them in a "timing attack" rush situation. It's often better to work higher hammer tiles.
For example, granaries are a no-no when axe rushing, chariot rushing, even horse archer rushing. Even when I'm expansive, it's not worth it.

In that context, it *may* not be worth it when catapult rushing without hereditary rule, although my test games have been pro-granaries.

 

[Gwynnja]

Gah, I'm not talking that much about granaries.

^^^ thanks. I thought the thread was "catapult rushes," not "blah blah blah granaries."

 

[DaveMcW]

You don't *need* granaries, but they generally repay their build costs in the timeframe of a catapult rush. So you might as well build them.

Pottery is often needed for cottages to speed up research on Construction. All cottages are then whipped to produce catapults.

 

[FlyingSwan]

@Vicawoo.I must admit i dont see how monarchy comes into the picture with a rush.Which settings are you playing?(i,l run my tests again then)Im playing emp/norm.

In your OP your talking about Phants and Cats,that doesnt seem like a rush to me,better rush the Cats,axemen then get HBR/CUR with the citys youve taken over.

Another civ I found suprisingly good for a cat rush was Harrumbi,cheap Bowmen with Cats are awesome as long as you get them out fast.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1) and 5) can easily occupy the majority of ancient-era production.

I rather often delay granaries in my cities, for these 2 reasons.

Me too, but I wasn't making the list for a player who wins the highest levels more consistently than myself .

The point is that the granary is the single most powerful structure in the game on average, but there are still things that can take priority.

 

[vicawoo]

You could probably do slightly better if you mixed in riverside plains cottages to even out your food and avoided whipping.

Let me shift this discussion a little:

great scientist: mathematics, academy, or settle.
Academy is better in the long run. Settling is slightly worse techwise with binary research, but once you switch off cottages and get close to striking, it's much better.
Mathematics, I've gone once when I was forced to tech iron working in a high jungle, no strategic resource, low land situation. Otherwise your rush is too slow.

 

[DaveMcW]

Academy + Bureaucracy + Cottages is the killer combo. Build the academy if you can't pop another scientist in time.

 

[Grashopa]

With a strong bureau capital, I'll forgo early wars (and expansion) focusing on beakers, getting Oxford up ASAP allowing for lib - assembly line or something at which point domination is not far off.

 

[vicawoo]

So far my good times (turn 85ish/850bc construction) have been from riverside cottaging my non-specials after my second city,though I'm a few axes behind where I want to be. Rivers in the second city help a lot.

Unless you're philosophical, the academy won't be out in time to help much. Relying on pure scientists is way too slow (had a no river, pure scientist test, about 110 turn construction...)

8 catapults/~4 cities:
Against a 40% city, that's 5 to level the defenses leaving 3 available to collateral 1st turn.
Against walls, about 12 bombardments gets it to almost 0, leaving 4 to collateral.
With 4 cities, you build 1 turn, 2 pop whip next turn, chop, so each city can produce 2 catapults 3 turns after construction. Of course roads affect things.

Pre-chopping until construction is good. Animal husbandry and bronze working before pottery is bad, those 15 turns slows you down too much.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Would a feasible strategy be a Catapult choke, where you manage to keep the AI down to fielding only Archers, then continuously siege attack with only Catapults, in order to get near infinite experience?

Once you get a Great General, have him add experience to a stack of Catapults so that they can all get the City Raider 3 promo, while the General himself has City Raider 3 plus the 30% retreat chance.

Maybe you can have a Warrior/Scout/Archer/Axeman with Combat I + Medic I in the stack.


It certainly sounds like a fun idea to try, especially if you have already captured sufficient Cities that capturing another one would likely hinder your economy too much to be worth it.

 

[Dave Hartwick]

You can level up catapults against a barb city, except you don't get generals and you have to watch that an AI doesn't poach it.

 

[vicawoo]

So everyone vouches for academy? It's nice, but not very strategy specific, in fact it tends to be worse than usual as you tend to start losing a ton of gold.

And more test results:
- unlike horse archer rushing, it's very effective vs unit spammers. You can sacrifice a little tech speed for more production, and kill their 10+ stack of doom with almost no losses, then conquer. Probably one of the best ways to deal warmongers with too much land early.
- Boudica march is very efficient (8 exp from combat 3). Let's go over what makes catapult wars "slow":
having to replace siege: don't bother healing hurt siege (maybe 1 if you're charismatic), and just keep them for bombardment. You collateral 3 to 4 siege per city, but you have decent chances of saving the last 1 or 2.
Enough healthy units to mop up: if you lose or wait multiple turns to heal.
With march units, after you destroy their main force you can either make multiple stacks with additional units, or have 1 to 2 cities pump units while you switch back into economy. It was almost stupidly easy on immortal tests.

 

[DaveMcW]

Settled scientist often beats academy pre-Civil Service.

But you want an academy later, just be sure you have a plan to get one.

 

[FlyingSwan]

So let's talk about catapult rushes. Usually I just REX then transition into construction, but we can probably come up with something quicker and more powerful.
[/QUOTE

Quickest Ive got for Construction so far is turn 69(IMM/NOR)-not an amazing start-1st city river corn,2nd city gold and FPs.I went Pot/Writ/BW/Math/Mas/Con.Build order was worker/warrior/settler/Library/worker/barracks 1st city,then library/barracks 2nd city.

Then its a chop-athon to get as many axes/cats/chariots out before the economy collapses.Nice thing about IMM with this tactic is the barb citys that spring up early are good for XP and when there well placed it saves building more settlers,and for early gold to keep the war machine rolling.

 

[vicawoo]

You can do it turn 70ish with 2 riverside cities (without gold) and good starting techs, but I don't think you'll have enough production with only 2 cities.

Also if you're not on a crowded map barbarians may start to swarm you.