civ trait discussion for huge milked map

[Smirk]

I've been playing thru a few short games with different civs trying to find the strengths and weaknesses of them for a huge milking game. This no doubt can change dramatically for different difficulty so I'm just going to talk about chieftain mostly and some diety. The others inbetween will only vary by scale from those two opposite points.


For chieftain the biggest hurdle I've been having is just the really slow tech pace, which in turn makes the development pace really slow.

* Expansionist lets you burn thru the ancient age with the free hut advances, you have the potential of doing better than the minimum 4 turns but with the large map that varies. However, its pretty hard to get that sort of tech advancement anyway in the ancient ages, and since you'll get very little help from the other civs you seriously have to consider how you are going to do your reseach. This allows you to plan ahead and just concentrate on development to support research in later ages. With this you can ignore any sort of city improvement, and only build settlers and workers (and a few barracks and units). I rank this as the best chieftain trait, hands down, but for diety its about the worst trait. Since science is the last thing you will spend time on in diety, for every age.

* Industrious the extra shields for cities and greater is pretty worthless since the bulk of your cities will be completely corrupt and in the late game where it would have a greater effect you should already be dominating. The double worker efficiency is what you would want this for, early growth is spurred greatly, even those first warriors and settler can be out a good 5-10 turns faster than with any other trait. (Short of getting an early settler, which is also a high probability for expansionist.)

* Commercial the extra commerce and lower corruption may be a large benefit since you'll have many cities and hopefully many of them are large. But this does very little to help early growth which is so important. So while this certainly quickens the pace later on does not help much when it matters.

* Scientific, the cheaper library can be a great boon for research as well as early city culture expansion removing the need to ever build a temple. However, the free age tech can be milked from other scientific civs so shouldn't be a reason to go with a scientific civ. And with a huge map, you're bound to get 3 or 4 scientific AI civs. I rank this low for chieftain games, it fares slightly better for a diety game where that free tech can help you gain back the tech curve from the AI who most likely will outpace you.

* Militaristic lets you build barracks easily in the beginning which can be a big help for taking a couple early cities as well as clearing the area for the large early growth. However, the chieftain AI is pitiful and the severly increased production cost makes the opponents a joke so you do not need many or any sort of speed in building. Because of the AI penalties you also do not need leaders since there is no threat of the AI ever building any wonders except by sheer luck or bad play on your part. This has limited usefulness in chieftain. In diety however, I consider this a must have, you will need that early speed to simply compete with the AI, and leaders are the only way you're ever likely to get a wonder built.

* Religious seems quite worthless in any difficulty. What few city expansions you need shouldn't be difficult to rush or get in some other method (like building a library). While the govn't change is handy, is certainly not something to aim for unless you do change govn't often.

My ranking for Chieftain
1. Expansionist
2. Industrious
3. Commercial
4. Scientific
5. Militaristic
6. Religious

Diety
1. Militaristic
2. Industrious
3. Scientific
4. Commercial
5. Expansionist
6. Religious

One big factor not mentioned here is the actual Civ, the UU plays an important role both in the golden age occurance as well as the advantage the UU gives. For a chieftain game an ancient age UU is a waste of a golden age, since you don't need any advantage to combat the AI. However, a diety game could make or break depending how the ancient age is handled.

From the list above America may sound like the best civ for the job. But since their UU is silly and will not enter the picture you'll have to generate your golden age with wonders which is a bit less dependable. I believe any civ with one of the top 3 traits played with a good strategy can make up for what it lacks. It will cost more to have two times the workers than an industrious civ, but should balance out in the end.

I think for milking the best golden age will be when your bulk of cities (first 50 or so) are building the first improvements. For me this is the early to mid middle ages, getting those initial aquaducts and marketplaces when I lack the money to rush on a wide scale. In most of them I will literally never build anything else so that extra shield bonus will never factor in unless its used at this point.


One final factor, the inadvertant golden age from wonder production. For me I generally only care about the pyramids, sun tzu and the science wonders. So this is another downside of scientific and militaristic since I could inadvertantly start my GA too early before I am prepared. (What's the pyramids class?)


Any other thoughts, ommisions or just plain wrong statements? I hope this spurs some discussion about other play styles I lack.

As a side note I noticed that China is incorrectly labeled as Industrious and Scientific in the original manual, which wasn't present at all in the original game but is present with the Ottomans in PTW. This is one of the more powerful combinations IMO outside huge milking. Old, old manual, on the back MOO3 due out first quarter 2002, heh heh heh.

 

[Shillen]

I think industrious is just a must-have. It's the only overpowered trait. After that I'll take militaristic, scientific, or commercial. All are about equal in my book. Expansionist is too much of a gamble, and the ancient age goes far too fast on deity anyway (my last huge map deity game I was in the middle ages in 1000BC).

Definitely don't underrate religious. Saving a few turns on your revolt to republic/monarchy is pretty darn helpful. But the biggest help is the revolt to democracy during the milking period. With a huge empire your anarchy is going to last a long time if you're not religious. Anarchy actually halves the speed of your workers. So a religious civ would get 5-8 turns of double worker speed, while other civ's will get 5-8 of half worker speed, meaning the religious civ is gaining about 15-24 worker turns over a non-religious civ.

Also your comments about scientific civ's seems to apply to vanilla civ3 or ptw 1.14. In 1.21 each scientific civ can get a different advance, so the more scientific civ's the better, even in a chieftain game.

 

[Moonsinger]

At the Chieftain level, I prefer Industrious and Scientific because I will be the one who do all the research.

At the Deity level, I prefer Industrious and Militaristic.

 

[Ronald]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
At the Chieftain level, I prefer Industrious and Scientific because I will be the one who do all the research.

IMHO commercial does better than scientific for fast own research
(the less corruption and the additional commerce I think outweighs the 3 free techs and the cheaper libraries and universities)

Ronald

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Ronald
IMHO commercial does better than scientific for fast own research
(the less corruption and the additional commerce I think outweighs the 3 free techs and the cheaper libraries and universities)

Now that you mention it, Commercial and Scientific civ may be the best at this level. To make up for the lack of Industrious trait, we can always build more workers. They are dirt cheap at this level anyway.

 

[Procifica]

Definitely don't underrate religious. Saving a few turns on your revolt to republic/monarchy is pretty darn helpful. But the biggest help is the revolt to democracy during the milking period. With a huge empire your anarchy is going to last a long time if you're not religious. Anarchy actually halves the speed of your workers. So a religious civ would get 5-8 turns of double worker speed, while other civ's will get 5-8 of half worker speed, meaning the religious civ is gaining about 15-24 worker turns over a non-religious civ.

That's why I switched from Commerical/Industrial to Religious/Industrial. The anarchy switching from Despotism to Republic and then Republic to Democracy can be CRIPPLING. And, it is nice to be able to build the early temples faster.

Though, I'm beginning to realize that Industrial/Commerical would probably once again be better, as my corruption right now in my current game is as high as all other commerce related stuff combined, and this is with my forbidden palace and palace on opposite sides of my huge continent (supported 4 civ's).

Later in the game, with the culture problem, libraries/universities/research labs aren't as useful, and the commerical and industrial advantages always apply and are useful.

Throughout most of the middle ages and nearly all of the industrial age, I was researching techs at 4 turns each without the scientific trait, and in the modern age, without being able to have many culture buildings because of the chance of cultural victory, 6 turns/tech has become acceptable to me.

 

[SirPleb]

Smirk, I agree with most of your rankings and descriptions. My only significant difference would be the rating of Religious. I think that the turns saved by fast revolutions are quite powerful. Especially since the first government flip tends to be at an early stage of the game where every turn counts for a lot. I also find the cheaper temples useful at Deity level. Rushing a few very early temples is practical for a Religious Civ in border towns. They can run 1 shield/turn for 10 turns, then rush a temple. Doing just a few of those early in the game maintains cultural parity and makes capturing rival towns much safer.

Overall I rank industrious and religious highest. Both of these have a larger impact on the early game than the mid and end game I think. But that's when I want it - early gains reap compound interest as the game develops.

I also rate militaristic fairly high, for the cheap barracks as well as for the faster promotions to elite.

As far as the Golden Age is concerned I think the perfect timing for one if I could choose would be soon after having a first war and establishing a Forbidden Palace. That's usually not possible of course. If I have to choose between having it sooner than that or later, I'll pick sooner. Of course a GA when I have just 15 or so towns won't result in the same total production gain as one which waits till I have 50 or more towns. But again there's a compounding effect - I'd rather have the chance to leverage a smaller gain made at an earlier date than have a larger gain later.

At Chieftain level I might rate commercial and scientific higher than I do at Deity. And I might be more inclined to go for a later Golden Age. I'm not sure of that, might still consider religious / industrious / militaristic stronger. The main difference I'm thinking of is the need to carry research forward without help from the other Civs, that might sway me toward commercial or scientific, and toward a later GA.

 

[Ronald]

Originally posted by Moonsinger


Now that you mention it, Commercial and Scientific civ may be the best at this level. To make up for the lack of Industrious trait, we can always build more workers. They are dirt cheap at this level anyway.

You're right, this combination would create the best research rate.
Usually I always forget to build enough workers, but for this combination you have to make tons of them.

Ronald

 

[Procifica]

I'm finding Industrial/Commerical to be quite effective...I've done almost all of the Middle Ages techs in 4 turns, only 2 techs took more than 5 turns (Banking took 7, Democracy took 6). I hit the Middle Ages at 330BC with all Ancient Techs researched.

More workers means 1) extra cost for each one, and 2) time lost waiting for more workers to be produced (which adds up quick).

 

[Smirk]

I tried a few more games of this sort with some mixed traits and reconfirmed some of my thoughts about expansionist and shed some light on commercial and industrial.

First was a game with the English, I was able to get all the ancient techs before 1000BC. This would be more important in a more difficult stage but commercial is really a wasted trait for Chieftain. I was very far ahead in tech and with 10 calvary could slowly take out every other civ (circa 600AD), so you really do not need much production.
I haven't yet gotten the game really far so it could have a major effect if you have like 100 cities building settlers. My original intention was to try this and use the RCP technique with commercial to see just how much you could wring out of the third or fourth rings. I plan to come back to this and try it again, but clearly if you can build <15 turn settlers in 40 towns at once you could very quickly get the domination limit score, of course your pop points would suffer with this level of settler production.


My next game was with the Americans, and this one looks to be breaking some personal records. I was in a Republic before 2000BC (nice 2 turn anarchy since my civ was so small), and then was in Democracy around 300AD (moderate 5 turn anarchy). I sidetracked my tech to get demo and MT but I'll still get rails long before 800AD. This all with a 4 turn tech rate. I used a bit of RCP here with 4 inner cities and then about 6 second ring cities, all with librarys, markets and universities by around 10AD.

I will be playing around with Russia to get some more perspective with scientific. I think the cheap libs and univs will help me pick up the 4t tech pace quicker, and with a prebuild for copers and then copers starting a GA which would come at the exact time when research starts to bog down (ie as you are building the universities).


BTW One strategy I use for expansionist which may not be obvious is that I try to get all the first tier techs by trade before I start opening huts.
I usually get the first hut I see since I'm building scouts initially and will usually pop a settler (if not I restart the game unless another hut is nearby).
Also I end up manually researching one or two techs. I like to block off the Mysticism path since you will not get a tech you are researching unless its the only option available. So while I am researching Polytheism I usually get every other tech including republic from huts. (This prevents me learning Poly or Monarchy.)