Catherine Cottage Spam

[Dikaioma]

It's also a good idea to have one city with a barracks in it, churning out upgraded Archers to send to all your border cities.

I was going to edit my post last night and include what you just said about the archers. I have always ended up with at least 2 cities that have a high output of hammers (plus the capitol which will always be bigger in the beginning) and they would create the military for my new cities.

 

[Taelis]

An interesting strategy. Basically a quick land grab - and getting more cities out quickly is always good.

Two questions though. First - why creative/Stonehenge? Your cultural borders don't have to expand to keep others from building cities - a patchwork of radius 1 cities with 2 empty spaces in between grabs the land just as well. And obelisks are cheap.

Second, why do you keep your cities at 1 population, and how does that help keep maintenance costs down?

 

[Synex]

An interesting strategy. Basically a quick land grab - and getting more cities out quickly is always good.

Two questions though. First - why creative/Stonehenge? Your cultural borders don't have to expand to keep others from building cities - a patchwork of radius 1 cities with 2 empty spaces in between grabs the land just as well. And obelisks are cheap.

Second, why do you keep your cities at 1 population, and how does that help keep maintenance costs down?

As far as i understand, city maintenance goes up as city size increases? If i am way wrong with this one that'd allow me to change my strategy!

As for not doing the radius 1 cities, you'll end up with about a million crap cities, draining all your commerce into city maintenance. What you want is to place good cities, quite far apart, and then let your Creative attribute fill in the gaps, without having to build a single thing!

 

[Asterothe]

Post a save-game and i'll have a look at it for you.

City micro-management is the key to this strat, you always want your commerce operating at maximum efficiency, and taking full advantage of your Commercial trait. In the early stages, you're trying to minimize growth, so often i will chose for a city to work a cottage rather than a special resource. As soon as your cottage turns from a cottage to a hamlet, it jumps from 1C to 3C. Then move your city to work another cottage square, leaving your new hamlet alone. This may seem counter intuitive, but you'll reap more benefits, quicker if you do. As soon as your city reachs size 2, it'll have two hamlet squares with 3C each, rather than one cottage and one hamlet (4C).

I'll do a nobel game and post some saves as an example.

Please note, like any strategy, it has its counters - early rushes by warriors/horse archers might be a problem, as are raging barbs etc. Its a bit slow to get going, but once it does and you get the Kremlin, you are close to unstoppable.

Wow. I won that game! (I didn't sleep at all and today is a very busy
day but that's not our subject) I started and played from beginning to end
in one session. I saved just once to write the messaga above. I have
won 2 prince victories so far and both of them were hard to obtain. This was
my third and easiest by far. After those 22 turn techs, things started
to get better and better. I think I didn't set the cities exactly as you
described it but I managed to follow the tech path you gave and with each
tech on the list things got better and eveything was so much fun. By
1500 AD when I was maxing out the money still it was 400 golds but
I balanced science and gold (usually at 70 ) and after Kremlin ,
things started to work exactly like you said. I was buyuing 5-6 buildings
per turn. Sometimes 2 wonders I'll attach 2 saves so if you can check
and tell me my mistakes about the cities, I can even do much better.
Even as I got it, it ruled! Thanks a lot. Definetly a worthy strategy, especially
against AIs. Eveyhthing completes each other like a jigsaw puzzle. State
property + universal suffrage + kremlin + emanticipation + free speech.

Since I was isolated I didn't fight at all. If it was a pangea map,
I'd love to fight with AI after Kremlin 10 units every turn! It was a narrow
space ship victory by the way but I was 3 techs ahead most of the time,
after the civics.

 

[wc3promet]

Works against AI... AI is predictable

Terrible against Human Players.

What's your Nick on Gamespy, Synex?

Basically, Synex, your strat totally fails on Small, Tiny, Duel maps.

 

[CivCorpse]

But this is all just theorycraft... on the flip side, more cities almost always means bigger military. So I guess, in theory, if you have more cities than me, and I went after you, even if I managed to capture a city, you can still potentially create more troops quicker than me. Too many variables, and like I said, I haven't tried it online, so... yeah...

Personally I would pillage you tasty little hamlets/villages. All that free gold and you get set back about 50 turns while they regrow. While if you pillage my mines and such I only need about 2-3 turns if I use multiple workers.
As for ignoring religion, I would do the opposite and get an early religion and hope my neighbors were heathens. nothing makes your neighbors happier than being a brother/sister of the faith. If you don't get an early religion ( and I like the shrine gold as well) convert to whatever is the dominant religion in your area. I find that if I don't share the same religion as my neighbors then they send the troops with scripture to my door. Also, what do you do when you have Monty or Ghengis as a neighbor? That pushy Cathy cultural boundies will piss them off even more. Have you tried this on a Pangea map?

 

[wc3promet]

Personally I would pillage you tasty little hamlets/villages. All that free gold and you get set back about 50 turns while they regrow. While if you pillage my mines and such I only need about 2-3 turns if I use multiple workers.
As for ignoring religion, I would do the opposite and get an early religion and hope my neighbors were heathens. nothing makes your neighbors happier than being a brother/sister of the faith. If you don't get an early religion ( and I like the shrine gold as well) convert to whatever is the dominant religion in your area. I find that if I don't share the same religion as my neighbors then they send the troops with scripture to my door. Also, what do you do when you have Monty or Ghengis as a neighbor? That pushy Cathy cultural boundies will piss them off even more. Have you tried this on a Pangea map?

His strat only works on Islands and Continents maps on Multiplayer where you're the only Civilization on the Piece of Land.

 

[Tearin]

Neat strategy. I have been reading different ideas and started specializing and building cottages with much more success. Commerce maximizing equals success.

I just don't see how this would work against human players. I wouldnt worry about attacking your cities (cities are hard to take). I would just pilliage your towns. Earns me money and they take so long to develope that once a few of these were pilliaged you would be up the creek.

 

[Synex]

Personally I would pillage you tasty little hamlets/villages. All that free gold and you get set back about 50 turns while they regrow. While if you pillage my mines and such I only need about 2-3 turns if I use multiple workers.
As for ignoring religion, I would do the opposite and get an early religion and hope my neighbors were heathens. nothing makes your neighbors happier than being a brother/sister of the faith. If you don't get an early religion ( and I like the shrine gold as well) convert to whatever is the dominant religion in your area. I find that if I don't share the same religion as my neighbors then they send the troops with scripture to my door. Also, what do you do when you have Monty or Ghengis as a neighbor? That pushy Cathy cultural boundies will piss them off even more. Have you tried this on a Pangea map?

Yeah, but if i was playing you i'd adopt a different strategy... duh!

Tried it on a pangea and it works great, the fact that you are always ahead on tech means i was defending with mech infs while the AI was throwing Knights at me. I won in the end by diplomatic victory by rush-buying nukes and nuking the rest of the world.

Meh... whatever works.

 

[Synex]

His strat only works on Islands and Continents maps on Multiplayer where you're the only Civilization on the Piece of Land.

I used it on a team-hub map the other day quite well. My team mate focused on building units and optimising for production while i commerced'd it up. Worked like a dream, he'd keep gifting me units and i'd keep sending him money.

If you are doing a duel map etc i'd recommend going for a different strategy. Especially small maps where it always descends into a rush for horse archers/swords and then everyone tries to 'own' everyone else.

It's a strategy for a longer, more drawn out and cultured game than a war-fest.

 

[HeXeD_3010]

Tried it on a pangea and it works great, the fact that you are always ahead on tech means i was defending with mech infs while the AI was throwing Knights at me. I won in the end by diplomatic victory by rush-buying nukes and nuking the rest of the world.

Meh... whatever works.

You played Roosevelt?

 

[Doctor Love]

Tried this last night on Monarch and got placed next to Montezuma ("oh great", I sarcastically thought). Even going bronze-working first to chop a settler I was only able to grab enough land to do 7 cities. But I figured I'd carry on and give the strategy a chance. Unfortunately Montezuma agreed to open borders with every monger in the game and by 0 AD I had floods of invaders. My cities were pretty well defended (stacks of archers, axemen, spearmen) but eventually even my "good buddy" Montezuma (who I had been paying off since the beginning of the game) eventually made a stack of elephants and swordsman and sent them at me at about 800 AD. Thanks a lot, damn Aztecs!

The problem I'm having is that because your tech % is slowly in decline, you're well behind the AI in a lot of unit techs for quite some time, and given the AI's penchant for invasion on Monarch level, I don't know how I'm supposed to survive long enough? Or did I just get unlucky with 3 civs attacking me in a row?

 

[goraemon]

Tried this last night on Monarch and got placed next to Montezuma ("oh great", I sarcastically thought). Even going bronze-working first to chop a settler I was only able to grab enough land to do 7 cities. But I figured I'd carry on and give the strategy a chance. Unfortunately Montezuma agreed to open borders with every monger in the game and by 0 AD I had floods of invaders. My cities were pretty well defended (stacks of archers, axemen, spearmen) but eventually even my "good buddy" Montezuma (who I had been paying off since the beginning of the game) eventually made a stack of elephants and swordsman and sent them at me at about 800 AD. Thanks a lot, damn Aztecs!

The problem I'm having is that because your tech % is slowly in decline, you're well behind the AI in a lot of unit techs for quite some time, and given the AI's penchant for invasion on Monarch level, I don't know how I'm supposed to survive long enough? Or did I just get unlucky with 3 civs attacking me in a row?

I've been trying the commerce approach in Monarch for some time now and can say OP's strategy works quite well. How did you get yourself into a situation where 3 civs attacked you in a row? That hasn't happened to me yet in Monarch. Either your key cities were not "pretty well defended" as you thought or you didn't mollify them enough by giving into some early demands. Did you grab a religion and turn into a heathen in the eyes of some of these civs? In any case, it's very important to have a couple production-heavy cities churn out military and focus the rest of your cities on research buildings (even with their slow prod. speed).

Currently I'm in a Monarch game utilizing more or less this strategy (except I got bronze working first to chop-rush settlers/workers, and focused a bit more on production overall) and found I was staying consistently way ahead of all other AI's in tech with 9 cities before capturing some more in the middle ages. I suspended SS production 1 turn away from building my final part for the win (somewhere in the early 1900's) just to have some fun and initiate modern warfare - going pretty well because by this time both my production AND commerce (along with population, land mass etc....) are rated #1 in the info screen by a wide margin. Some of the previous games where I lost early and restarted were mostly due to not enough focus on military production from the get-go. It's vital to maintain a serviceable arms force even while building up your commerce.

 

[Doctor Love]

I've been trying the commerce approach in Monarch for some time now and can say OP's strategy works quite well. How did you get yourself into a situation where 3 civs attacked you in a row? That hasn't happened to me yet in Monarch. Either your key cities were not "pretty well defended" as you thought or you didn't mollify them enough by giving into some early demands. Did you grab a religion and turn into a heathen in the eyes of some of these civs? In any case, it's very important to have a couple production-heavy cities churn out military and focus the rest of your cities on research buildings (even with their slow prod. speed).

Currently I'm in a Monarch game utilizing more or less this strategy (except I got bronze working first to chop-rush settlers/workers, and focused a bit more on production overall) and found I was staying consistently way ahead of all other AI's in tech with 9 cities before capturing some more in the middle ages. I suspended SS production 1 turn away from building my final part for the win (somewhere in the early 1900's) just to have some fun and initiate modern warfare - going pretty well because by this time both my production AND commerce (along with population, land mass etc....) are rated #1 in the info screen by a wide margin. Some of the previous games where I lost early and restarted were mostly due to not enough focus on military production from the get-go. It's vital to maintain a serviceable arms force even while building up your commerce.

Well I have since tried with a Large map and had better luck. My first outing that I described above I was very accomodating to the AI, but that was on a Pangea map and I think sometimes they all agree to open borders with each other and look for what they consider the weakest civ. Obviously doing this strategy can make it look like a weak civ to the AI on monarch level. In the game I tried on a Large map, I had better luck, although I was significantly hindered by a huge mass of jungle. Nevertheless, I have been able to keep up enough military and tech to be #3 by 1500AD and will likely be #1 soon, we'll see. This game I've had very few military challenges by the AI, I think it's because with a larger number of cities the cumulative effect of the commerce strategy begins to become more significant.

 

[Doctor Love]

Update:

On large map game I mentioned above, I wound up eeking out a space race victory. I was middle of the pack in score (3500 or so), after winning it scored me between 9 and 10k, Charles DeGaulle ranking.

Some observations:

Larger map really makes a big difference as leveraging your income & the Kremlin is way more effective with a larger number of cities. I think I wound up with 11 cities or so, whereas on a standard map I could only get 7 or so. Part of the reason the game wound up being so close is I had to clear a continent-sized jungle out from around about half my cities, and by the time they had really matured, I was in more need of production to build non-rushable wonders and (eventually) SS pieces. Conversely, what slowed me down (jungle) was also what saved me from a lot of military confrontations as the AI didn't seem inclined to try to send an army across the expanse of jungle, and my army of workers was able to establish enough roads that I could keep the outlying cities well-stocked with troops. Genghis tried to land a little invasion force once, but other than that no one ever declared war on me (which was rather shocking).

 

[Oggums]

There is no set strategy that will work in every game. Your success with this on Monarch or higher will depend heavily on which civs are next to you.

If you've got Gandhi or similar, then you wont have any problems.

If you start sandwiched between Alexander and Montezuma, I think you're screwed.

 

[Jantis]

There is no set strategy that will work in every game. Your success with this on Monarch or higher will depend heavily on which civs are next to you.

If you've got Gandhi or similar, then you wont have any problems.

If you start sandwiched between Alexander and Montezuma, I think you're screwed.

A Catherine Cottage Cheese & Spam Sandwich?
Sounds tasty.

 

[goraemon]

Well I have since tried with a Large map and had better luck. My first outing that I described above I was very accomodating to the AI, but that was on a Pangea map and I think sometimes they all agree to open borders with each other and look for what they consider the weakest civ. Obviously doing this strategy can make it look like a weak civ to the AI on monarch level. In the game I tried on a Large map, I had better luck, although I was significantly hindered by a huge mass of jungle. Nevertheless, I have been able to keep up enough military and tech to be #3 by 1500AD and will likely be #1 soon, we'll see. This game I've had very few military challenges by the AI, I think it's because with a larger number of cities the cumulative effect of the commerce strategy begins to become more significant.

Oh ok, a pangea map is something I haven't tried. All of my Monarch games were on all standard settings, with continents. Maybe it's time for me to try some variants to that. Congrats on the SS win

 

[trigger1]

I just want to say I'm trying this strategy and it's working quite well.

The initial stages are tricky, with lots of variables and so on, and you have to adjust accordingly. But once it is set up, with The Kremlin built and a fair bit of core commerce producting cities, it works very well. You can buy rush an insane military and totally rape everyone

 

[eiseike]

Okay everyone , I tried it too but I think I have made a few improvements , plus this was on noble and Pangea map.

Instead of using Catherine , use the Chinese > Qin Shi Huang.

Why ???

First , Chinese start with mining already , so first thing research bronzeworking to Chop. ( Plus they get agriculture as well so quickly pottery to make cottages )
Qin Shi Huang traits are Financial and industrious , > so you get that extra commerce like Catherine but heres the catch >

Go for Chop for stone henge , you'll get it with him 50% quicker , (and halved if you have stone which I'll explain later....) now you already have that culture boost plus will begin to start generating great people (engineers and scientists are the best for this strat )

Basically follow the intructions that this thread has , and make sure you put a production city on a hilly area > closest if possible to the most aggresive neighbor ( such as Montezuma , Tokugawa and Alexander ..etc. AND DONT USE STATE RELIGION..... and give into demands ~ also make sure you have at least a decent defence force such as axemen & spearmen if they try raids , you'll need to be mobile and not hole up in your city or they'll just pillage your hamlets )

Another tip , DONT OPEN YOUR BORDERS , especially if you're weak with military which this strat at the start is , because the AI scout your cities out and realize they can attack (trust me , dont open borders and you'll be surprised how long you're left alone )

The MOST impotant resource to get is STONE , because with stone you'll get the 3 important wonders I use for this improved version >
#stone quickly builds Stone henge for your culture boost
#stone quickly builds the Pyramids which will let you get the Civic Universal Sufferage right from the start
# AND GUESS WHAT ? it also halves the time for the Kremlin !

These first 2 wonders also generate Great people , which you'll want mainly scientists and a few engineers.

I tried Catherine and Qin , this way Qin is much quicker to getting things done ! and you wont end up dead trying to pull it off even in a Small pangea map next to Montezuma (which happened & I wiped him out with my superior army I rush bought )

Try Qin and you'll see.