City spam is a dead end; Only two alternatives?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Greetings fellow forum members!

I would appreciate comments and debate on the following premises:

Even if you could spam cities in spite of your maintenence costs, using cottages, courthouses, etc to your satisfaction, the Ai would be able to keep right up with you. I've seen the AI continue spamming cities until the map is filled, no matter how much space there is. They never suffer economically for it the way the player would, in fact I've observed no difficulty on the AI's part whatsoever. I understand some who have looked at the game code have said something or other about how the AI does incur some maintenence cost, but it is ostensibly not much of an issue for it. Bottom line, you cannot out-spam the AI, so it is a futile effort to try, unless you just so happen to be on a large continent by yourself or with a manageable amount of conquerable rivals or rivals you can box in.

In the long run, the city spam strategy is a dud in this game. Agree or disagree? I appreciate your insight, all viewpoints welcome. I actually would prefer to play with the city spam strategy myself, but it is an endless uphill struggle which culminates in a tie, at best, with the infinite AI spam in 99% of the cases.

So, to me it looks like there are two main counter-strategies. You either go for super-specialized cities which try to win the culture or science races, or you go for bloody conquest. Do you agree that these are the only two viable strategies in the game? I am sure you can attempt to do both, but for the sake of argument I'm counting them as two seperate main paths to victory.

Since you can't win the city spam fight no matter how hard you beat your maintenence costs down (until state property, by which point the map is either full or close to it), it's useless to try. Correct or no?

Which of the two suggested strategies do you prefer to play? Or do you have a third viable path to victory that I haven't considered?

______________________
Referring to CIV 4 Vanilla...

 

[axident]

REXing is a viable strategy if you know how to cushion the blow with Fin or Org, courthouses, trading, and/or Espionage. Heck I have a game going on where I was going to highlight the REX/spy/rush/wonderspam combo on Emperor. (Due to the map I couldn't REX as much as I wanted, but I've done it on other maps/starting positions just fine.)

Say, weren't you the guy who said he had "perfect" gameplay or something and pouted about AI bonuses at higher difficulty levels? What do you need other people's advice for?

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

Actually, all of my threads so far have been about comparing strategies or asking for advice.

The "near-perfect" gameplay comment referred only to the opening moves. I consider even one scout movement space wasted to be critical, and the order of "settler-worker" production, etc to be crucial. Anyone could use advice with the endgame, and if they don't think so, they have too high an opinion of themselves.

I have the mechanics of the opening down, it's more about comparing long term overall strategies that I'm interested in. Of course, if someone shows me a novel approach to the opening I haven't considered, I'd be a fool not to test it.

In Vanilla, isn't Washington the only one with Fin/Org?

 

[axident]

Actually, all of my threads so far have been about comparing strategies or asking for advice.

The "near-perfect" gameplay comment referred only to the opening moves. I consider even one scout movement space wasted to be critical, and the order of "settler-worker" production, etc to be crucial. Anyone could use advice with the endgame, and if they don't think so, they have too high an opinion of themselves.

I have the mechanics of the opening down, it's more about comparing long term overall strategies that I'm interested in. Of course, if someone shows me a novel approach to the opening I haven't considered, I'd be a fool not to test it.

In Vanilla, isn't Washington the only one with Fin/Org?

Fin or Org. Having both might be a bit excessive but whatever. Someone also noted that you can play with unrestricted leaders and pair HRE's Rathaus with an Org leader or somesuch (Gilgamesh? I forget the exact example), and be able to REX with near-impunity since you get such cheap and powerful courthouses out of it.

I recall that you reload your games a lot, even until you pop a scout from a hut rather than gold. God forbid you pop a lowly map or barbs from a hut, as well, I bet. Really near perfect of you.

 

[bazola]

Lay off the pizza guy. Sure some people were annoyed by his first post but it sparked a good debate and I'm glad to contribute to this one.

I don't remember what difficulty level you play at but I play at monarch at the moment. In my recent game as Khmer I was faced with a bleak situation; peninsula to the north and jungle to the south. I did oracle and CoL in order to get courthouses while I had 3 cities. Then I whipped courthouses and expanded to 6 cities. It didn't matter that they weren't very good. I was running around 60% science, and I let it drop to 40% when necessary to expand. The AI REXes beyond this point, but hell, they don't even build courthouses in most cities so maintenance must be a non factor for them.

So CoL, expand to 40% science or until all the land is grabbed; as long as you have 5-6 cities you will be okay. Then get currency and whip markets. Use farms in some cities and cottages in others; a hybrid economy transitions easier out of slavery and out of caste system. I then was out-teching the AI, so I won liberalism and grabbed maces. I then conquered one neighbor, and won an easy space victory with 5 cities doing good production.


Short answer; you have to do both, and you have to use slavery and specialists to keep pace.

 

[MrCynical]

Axident, can we cut the jabs at the pizza guy? It's better if everything stays civil, and it isn't good form to keep having a go at new members, whatever comment they made in another thread.

I understand some who have looked at the game code have said something or other about how the AI does incur some maintenence cost, but it is ostensibly not much of an issue for it.

It depends what level you're at. If you're at Noble, the AI pays exactly the same maintenance costs as you. At higher levels, the AI still pays the same city maintenance costs but civic costs, units maintenance and so on are reduced, so it has more gold to spare for city maintenance. Research costs are also lower, so it can keep pace with you with higher maintenance costs.

In the long run, the city spam strategy is a dud in this game. Agree or disagree? I appreciate your insight, all viewpoints welcome. I actually would prefer to play with the city spam strategy myself, but it is an endless uphill struggle which culminates in a tie, at best, with the infinite AI spam in 99% of the cases.

It's quite rare to find a city site that won't pay its own maintenance costs (and more) once up and running, so you can expand more or less indefinitely. it's the rate of expansion thats the issue. Each new city is largely dead weight until it grows a bit and gets buildings in place, and your empire can only support so many of these.

You can expand faster (whether by settlers or conquest) with a Financial or Organized civ (Washington is the only one with both those traits in vanilla). Prioritise courthouses and currency.

So, to me it looks like there are two main counter-strategies. You either go for super-specialized cities which try to win the culture or science races, or you go for bloody conquest. Do you agree that these are the only two viable strategies in the game? I am sure you can attempt to do both, but for the sake of argument I'm counting them as two seperate main paths to victory.

At higher levels (barring bottlenecks and unusual map forms) this is basically true. You can't out colonize the AI. They aren't two seperate strategies though. In the vanilla game a common high level strategy is to conquer a neighbouring civ early to bag enough land to settle down for the space race.

Since you can't win the city spam fight no matter how hard you beat your maintenence costs down (until state property, by which point the map is either full or close to it), it's useless to try. Correct or no?

Not really correct. It isn't maintenance but the sheer AI expansion rate at high levels that's the issue. Normally I find I could support more cities, but have nowhere to put them, so I have to take additional land by force.

Which of the two suggested strategies do you prefer to play? Or do you have a third viable path to victory that I haven't considered?

At Immortal+ on Vanilla, all roads lead from an early axerush. Once you have the land, how you win is up to you.

It's a little hard to tailor advice without some clue as to difficulty level. Based on some of the comments you made, I'm assuming at least Emperor, and so have based my advice on that.

 

[Matty R]

I never go for Conquest victories. Partly because my PC can't handle battles involving large amounts of units, but even if everything ran smooth I still wouldn't go on Conquests.

I prefer cultural victories, so much infact that I've edited the XML files so cities acheive Legendary status at 500,000 culture instead of 150,000 on Marathon speed.

I used to settle a maximum of 12 cities, but sometimes the maintenance and having more border cities to defend would almost destroy my gold reserves. So now I only ever have 8 cities. No more, no less. I fully develop them, chopping trees to rush wonders and priority buildings.

A major factor of where I settle is how defendable the position would be. If I can build a fortified line within 4 tiles of the city tile, it would be somewhere to consider.

I specialize my cities as best I can, with any non-specialized cities being developed to reach 21 population (20 for every tile and 1 for a specialist so that the city generates GP points), then any other tiles are cottaged.

I'm very much a pacifist now. Instead of capturing cities to gain resources, I culture-flip them, and almost every war that gets declared on me ends without a single battle taking place, due to the placement of border cities allowing excellent defensive lines to be built. Sort of like a home-made Great Wall Of China.

 

[pigswill]

A fairly standard pattern usually goes on the lines of peaceful rex, develop and improve economy, build an army, conquer a few cities, develop and improve economy, build an army, conquer a few more cities. Repeat until you feel you have enough cities for particular victory condition. Its not rex or fight or tech/develop, its cycling between them.

 

[futurehermit]

see my signature

i'm tempted to leave it at that, but i will elaborate a bit. city spam is the way to go in bts. i am about to make a new thread about it actually. in the beginning i just build settlers/workers/defenders until the land runs out. meantime my early tech priorities are pottery (cottage spam), currency (trade routes, build gold in a pinch, sell techs for $), col (courthouses), monarchy (h. rule), and cs (bureaucracy). get 1 good production city early combined with your capital to pump setters/workers. the rest of your cities should be commerce and should build defenders while growing and working cottages.

once the land is gone and you get a tech edge, which you will using this strat, then you pump units (~2 prod cities now + bureaucracy capital) and conquer a neighbour. cottage spam their empire and shoot for cavalry or tanks depending on the tech disparity. then wipe clean your continent and decide your victory condition.

this is how i've won all my games on bts so far and i can assure you that, while not the only way to win, it is a powerful approach.

 

[axident]

Sorry if I was in the wrong in this thread but it incenses me to read crap like "Bottom line, you cannot out-spam the AI, so it is a futile effort to try, unless you just so happen to be on a large continent by yourself or with a manageable amount of conquerable rivals or rivals you can box in" and then he even went and bolded stuff that is simply incorrect. You CAN Rex, you just need to be smart about it and prioritize commerce towns after your first 2 cities, cottagespam like crazy, and Fin or Org help.

1. Gilgamesh + Rathaus

2. REX and pay for it via Org or Fin and beelining or Oracle-ing courthouses

In either case spy infiltration can and will keep you in the tech race. I've peacefully REX'd to a ridiculous 10 cities or so before my first courthouse, in one game, and that was Standard size so 10 was a lot; I even sealed off enough land to expand to about 16-17 cities. That was with Napolean (Cha/Org), and I hadn't even tried the spy gambit or anything, I just beelined pottery and CoL and caught up via early cottagespam and whipped half-price courthouses. This was on Emperor/Big and Small/Standard/Normal. The big problem on that map was that it was my first with Agg AI in a long time, so I wasn't used to the sheer numbers of unit's I'd face (one garrison of about a dozen units faced literally 100+ units over the course of 5 turns), and Charlie made peace with his punching bag and turned on me. I lost 2 cities but regained one through a war of attrition (draft/building rifles, while Charlie had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of all pre-gunpowder units) and he gave me back the other one as part of peace. I re-DoW on him later and rolled over his backwards crap with modern units. I quit the game at that point as it was going to be a romp (got to tanks, nobody else was close to me in power/production/tech thanks to my massive REXing which I continued to do, getting to 20-25 cities if you count my overseas colonies which I built to grab stuff like silver which I didn't have yet).

 

[Bast]

You can settler and cottage spam with Victoria. Build the Great Wall and use the Great Spies you get to infiltrate and steal techs you might not have. Make sure all your cities are built up with courthouses and be the first to Gunpowder to grab some Vassals. V for Victory? No?

 

[axident]

You can settler and cottage spam with Victoria. Build the Great Wall and use the Great Spies you get to infiltrate and steal techs you might not have. Make sure all your cities are built up with courthouses and be the first to Gunpowder to grab some Vassals. V for Victory? No?

Yes infiltration wasn't even something I used as Napolean in that game, and I've also REX'd successfully with a Fin leader as well (Willem) using mass cottagespam and zero resources (no stone, marble, Infiltration, whatever), though I had to trade for IW fast since half of my land was stuck in jungles. WITH Infiltration those games would be even easier. Admittedly in that game I kind of had to REX as I kept pushing north and not finding any iron or copper until one of the very last cities that I founded.

Also, @futurehermit, didn't your sig used to say something about large cities too? What happened?

 

[Qwack]

I personally find that the easiest civ's to REX with are creative. Catherine is probably the best due to her Imperialistic trait. As long as you know how to make good use of build science/gold and using scientists and know which tech's to pursure early, it is pretty hard for your economy to collapse even at 0% research rate.

I dont really play a REX strategy in my games because I play tight maps, 8 civs on standard size in most of my games, but ive tested a REX strategy on low sea level and large map sizes and can push out 8-10 cities before the AD era, no economic collapse, and generally ill have currency/CoL by that point.

This strategy is even more viable in BtS due to spies and stealing tech's costing pretty little. You can fall behind in tech and catch up rather cheaply by REX'ing and then stealing technologies.

 

[Ankh]

see my signature

i'm tempted to leave it at that, but i will elaborate a bit. city spam is the way to go in bts. i am about to make a new thread about it actually. in the beginning i just build settlers/workers/defenders until the land runs out. meantime my early tech priorities are pottery (cottage spam), currency (trade routes, build gold in a pinch, sell techs for $), col (courthouses), monarchy (h. rule), and cs (bureaucracy). get 1 good production city early combined with your capital to pump setters/workers. the rest of your cities should be commerce and should build defenders while growing and working cottages.

This is basically how I play as well. I think ppl are ignoring the value of when rexing. Your 3-4th city dosnt need to work mines heck it even wont work special tiles as grain/cows sometimes. Just work cottages while building a defender and grow.

Example:

Spoiler :

Here is a border city focused on while im still expanding. Just working commerce

 

[futurehermit]

@futurehermit, didn't your sig used to say something about large cities too? What happened?

yes, i'm considering changing it back frankly to illustrate how i play now (see my horizontal + vertical expansion thread). but i think the bottom line is still land. you can have smallish cities--say due to whipping/drafting--and that is still ok, as long as you have lots of them. if you have the most land you will win most of the time.

the key is maintaining your economy and power through the first three ages while securing enough land to become a world power in the latter three ages. i always feel like if i have 15-20 cities (standard/normal) by 1500AD it is a win and then the challenge just becomes how quickly i can finish the game off.

tbh i feel like i should move up in skill level, but i don't because there are too many games where i restart because i made bad decisions or i didn't like the map or whatever. i always feel like i should only move up in skill level when i can beat what is given to me 80-90% of the time.

 

[axident]

yes, i'm considering changing it back frankly to illustrate how i play now (see my horizontal + vertical expansion thread). but i think the bottom line is still land. you can have smallish cities--say due to whipping/drafting--and that is still ok, as long as you have lots of them. if you have the most land you will win most of the time.

the key is maintaining your economy and power through the first three ages while securing enough land to become a world power in the latter three ages. i always feel like if i have 15-20 cities (standard/normal) by 1500AD it is a win and then the challenge just becomes how quickly i can finish the game off.

tbh i feel like i should move up in skill level, but i don't because there are too many games where i restart because i made bad decisions or i didn't like the map or whatever. i always feel like i should only move up in skill level when i can beat what is given to me 80-90% of the time.

Frankly the challenge of higher difficulty levels is just what you said--surviving to a later era with enough production to matter. The AI is BAD at pre-siege war, TERRIBLE at post-siege/pre-blitz war and even worse after blitzers (tanks) and fast siege (either aircraft or mobile arty) are available. Human players can utilize collateral damage and blitzers to kill MUCH larger armies pretty easily. But you already know that. For the doubters: try Deity on Road to War or some other scenario, heck even WL Rise of Rome on Deity wasn't that bad if you played anyone other than Celtia, and that merely had trebs.

I don't care about vertical vs. horizontal that much as long as I have some of both; I play very opportunistically and will go less vertical if I have less happy and no Representation, else I will go more vertical.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^i agree with pretty much all that you've said here.

the games that i have won with the most ease were the games where i was able to maximize both horizontal and vertical expansion. h.rule drives vertical expansion while military usually drives horizontal expansion.

 

[Qwack]

Played a little test game with a great REX leader, Zara Yaqob (Catherine is best leader for REX though I believe). I put the game on Low sea level so we have alot of space to expand and REX. Emperor level, Continents map script, temperate climate, Epic game speed. All other settings default.

Early game, spit out settlers as quickly as possible. If you have a heavy food capital, that is best, as you can whip settlers for 2/3 pop, then put overflow into workers. 1 worker per city is essential for this strategy.

1000 BC screenshot below. Tech path for this strategy should be worker tech's first, then alphabet, currency, CoL, trade around for techs you are missing.

Had a bit of problems with barbs near Abbis Abba at this point, but that was bad luck. Lost a battle at 21% odds. They pillaged a cottage or two around that point. Anyways, after this point, continue building units, closing off chokepoints and researching towards CoL. If you have barb cities near you, capture them ASAP, 2 Axeman lost to take barb cities = 104 hammers, settler is 150, so even if you dont have barb cities near you it should be fine. Once currency comes in, instead of building research, build gold. Continue major rapid expansion until all land is closed out. 10 AD situation in my game:

9 cities, 2 of which build wealth, 80 beakers per turn, and a relatively strong army. (4 units at the chokepoint with Monty incase he attacks). Confucianism also founded.

And a closer screenshot of 10 AD.

Axeman ready to grab barb city, and settler ready to found city 11. . Now you probably wont be this succesful with this strategy unless your Zara Yaqob or Catherine, but it works beautifully for every creative leader (Other creative leaders would probably be 1 tech behind Zara and Catherine). I have not been able to replicate these results with non-creative leaders however.

So to answer the op's question. No, city spam is not a dead end, rather it is a very open end(If your creative).



Save if anyone cares:

 

[Ankh]

Qwack nice demostration. A human player can almost REX as fast as the computer as this demostration shows without your economy collapsing, you just have to play your cards right. That's the beauty of this game, when to know you should rex, to attack or build.

 

[futurehermit]

Creative is for rexing