Delaying critical buildings vs building units for war

Gaming Lexus

Chieftain
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Feb 5, 2016
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London
Hi all

First post here of an experienced (but not good) player so please take it easy! ;)

I know any question asked about strategy is usually situational and there is sometimes no hard and fast rule. That's one of the things that makes Civ great IMO as rarely is a game the same as the next!

Context:
Playing Catherine on King. Fractal. Secured early horses and iron with 4 cities. Happiness coming out of my ears! Neighbouring. Liberty opening -> Honor. Secured religion. Civs: Alexander, Bismarck and Harun. 3 CS in trade range; 2 as allies through quests.

Situation:
Bismarck was expanding quickly in unhelpful strategic locations to my progression to what I had anticipated early to goal towards a dom victory. I thought I could 'nip out' a capital early and could do without aggressive neighbours. I decided to move towards Germany vs Greece as I didn't fancy my chances against an early game Greece. I was moving units towards Bismarck's cities when he settled away from said cities, in the middle of my units (which were out of visibility (+7 tiles) from his main cities). He then noticed my military units (obviously) and gave me the war warning. I didn't want to get diplomatic penalty so I declared war instead of saying they were moving through. I razed the obstructive city and continued my march to their main cities. At this time, I had 2nd strongest military after Harun and was producing units out of one city and pushing out important economical buildings in the other three as I was last in demographics for literacy at the time.

My core questions is:
Would you delay critical buildings (i.e. libraries, National College, workshops and universities in favour of generating lots of military units?

Given this situation, would you delay libraries and workshops in all cities to produce military from all or somewhere in-between?

Thanks in anticipation of your views :)
 
The only time units are worth delaying Libraries & NC for is if you would be in danger of losing a city otherwise.

And if you are in such a situation where you are forced to do so, while the game is likely to be much more interesting than normal, you won't set any turn number to victory records.
 
It depends on what victory you are pursuing. If you want to win by Domination, there is no need whatsoever to build any of those buildings on King.
 
It depends on what victory you are pursuing. If you want to win by Domination, there is no need whatsoever to build any of those buildings on King.

Can you get away with being slow to build libraries & the NC on King? Yes

It is optimal? No.
 
It is completely reasonable to delay infrastructure in favor of units, especially on king difficulty.
 
I like to start with an early war, and pick up a near-by cap with CBs. If you plan for it you can still have NC up around turn 100. It might be a little later then that but the cap is likely to be a good city and the extra breathing room can be great. I'd have targeted Alex though; crippling him would have made life a lot easier going forward.
 
Can you get away with being slow to build libraries & the NC on King? Yes

It is optimal? No.

Uh, if you want to win by Domination, then absolutely its optimal not to build any buildings after maybe a Monument. You can win the fastest and most easily just by pumping out units and swarming the computer.
 
You can pretty much kill any AI with composite bow rushes. So I'd take out the warmonger first.
 
You can pretty much kill any AI with composite bow rushes. So I'd take out the warmonger first.

Just some tips I learnt trying out comp bow rushes: save all your gold, sell anything that your happiness can afford, get 400, ideally 480 gold before turn 55. Pottery, AH then rush Construction, maybe calendar or trapping if that's the only luxury you have. Go scout monument scout granary archerx2, make sure enough production to finish the archers at Liberty free settler. Get 1 settler, then archers till you hit construction. 4 comps is not quite enough, 5 is ok, 6 you win. (On immortal or deity)
 
Can you get away with being slow to build libraries & the NC on King? Yes

It is optimal? No.

what does 'optimal' mean in this context? if we are talking about 'optimal' win times then yes, building units is definitely optimal. there is no vc as fast as domination, especially on king. seeing as the opening poster probably thought about using conquest to assist with his peaceful vc delaying the nc is not optimal. but, generally speaking, one does not need any kind of science buildings to win a domination victory, even on deity you can skip libraries if you feel like it. we had a pretty decent 'illiterate' thread going on a few wekks (months?) ago. buildings like barracks, stone works, workshops and stables are much more important for a domination victory than libraries. if one is going honor and doing an all-in push being behind in tech, even fielding obsolete units (crossbows versus rifles as an example) will not matter because of promotions.
 
what does 'optimal' mean in this context? if we are talking about 'optimal' win times then yes, building units is definitely optimal. there is no vc as fast as domination, especially on king. seeing as the opening poster probably thought about using conquest to assist with his peaceful vc delaying the nc is not optimal. but, generally speaking, one does not need any kind of science buildings to win a domination victory, even on deity you can skip libraries if you feel like it. we had a pretty decent 'illiterate' thread going on a few wekks (months?) ago. buildings like barracks, stone works, workshops and stables are much more important for a domination victory than libraries. if one is going honor and doing an all-in push being behind in tech, even fielding obsolete units (crossbows versus rifles as an example) will not matter because of promotions.

No you cannot always get away with an illiterate rush on each and every deity map(maybe on king). In the CDG 4 Spain map I had to rush my nearest neighbor but the going was tough from them on. Most often the deity AI may not get to muskets. However an illiterate rush with archery line is bound to fail once AI has enough musket/melee units.

CBs vs rifleman work in cases where you are against 6-7 city deity AIs. Try to go against 15 cities AI with tonnes of rifles. Even with ranged-Logistics XBs you would get one shotted most of the time. I do not want to say what happens once an AI reaches t200-210 flight.:lol:
Illiterate strategy may work on some small maps but when it fails it fails big time. In the CDG 5 Indonesia after I had cleared the continent pre t100 with archer-CBs I had terrible gold/science and happiness issues.
 
This situation can happen when the computer declares on you. People on this forum seem to imply that your always in control of what can build.

In a recent game on deity I was trying to get petra as Arabia on a desert start with desert folklore. It was going fine until the aztecs declare on me and I realize they can go through forest to next to my capital. I had to spam basic archers and warriors even up to turn 90. I managed to stabilize and got NC on turn 110. Latest NC for years. I turned this into an X-bow rush. The game hasn't fully shaken out but I'm goner win the deathmatch with Montezuma and currently friends with a very strong Rome which is only other neighbor.

The main problems I see with building units and foregoing the NC for units is that the pay of isn't immense. Lets say you take the capital then you get alot of hate. This may lead to less favorable trading in the mid game. You wont get as many research agreements of. When forced to build units I usually go for slow wars with very favorable attrition rates and tech up behind it.
 
No you cannot always get away with an illiterate rush on each and every deity map(maybe on king). In the CDG 4 Spain map I had to rush my nearest neighbor but the going was tough from them on. Most often the deity AI may not get to muskets. However an illiterate rush with archery line is bound to fail once AI has enough musket/melee units.

CBs vs rifleman work in cases where you are against 6-7 city deity AIs. Try to go against 15 cities AI with tonnes of rifles. Even with ranged-Logistics XBs you would get one shotted most of the time. I do not want to say what happens once an AI reaches t200-210 flight.
Illiterate strategy may work on some small maps but when it fails it fails big time. In the CDG 5 Indonesia after I had cleared the continent pre t100 with archer-CBs I had terrible gold/science and happiness issues.

respectfully disagree. a good player like manpanzee, acken, ironfighter will be able to clear most open maps with xbow, if not that definitely artillery.

also your point about getting oneshotted is pretty much moot since one should never allow a sword-line unit next to an archer line unit. even if they're from the same era there's a decent chance for the archer-line unit to die.

I also never ever said that you can win all games going illiterate, I merely stated it as an option. delaying the nc does not equal illiteracy.
 
I can't speak for optimal play on King, but on Deity I would suggest you only skip libraries/go illiterate if the situation and your skill set allows, not simply "if you feel like it". The strategy favours tighter maps with all AI starting on one landmass (being closer together increases access to trade route partners for science and decreases travel time between capitals), an early game advantage (el dorado, any wonders as Spain, planning as Shoshone), and players with good troop movement skills.
In terms of buildings other than Monument, I would put market and happiness buildings as more important than +production buildings (or barracks), unless you have a LOT of relevant resources. Illiterate strategy means you're committing to a fast DomV; as such, you have a lot less turns to get the return on hammers you invested in +production buildings.
 
We had a pretty decent 'illiterate' thread going on a few weeks (months?) ago.
Those have been very interesting to read about, and I believe a couple players used the strategy recently with the DCLs.

But is not a key aspect to use trade routes to leach science in the beginning? That particular bit will not work at King!
 
Those have been very interesting to read about, and I believe a couple players used the strategy recently with the DCLs.

But is not a key aspect to use trade routes to leach science in the beginning? That particular bit will not work at King!

very much true I forgot to take that into consideration. it's a strategy that works best at immortal or deity.

that being said though I've never been all that hot about illiteracy, I build science buildings in every single one of my domination victories.

matter of fact I personally prefer rushing to xbows/arty/bombers/xcom with a fast science game compared to long drawn out honor commerce autocracy games.

after all the question in the thread was "is it worth to delay the national college" and not "is it worth to completely forgo science buildings".

to me the answer clearly is yes, it's almost always worth to delay the nc if that means you can possibly conquer an additional city before peacing out or defend a city of your own.

I can't speak for optimal play on King, but on Deity I would suggest you only skip libraries/go illiterate if the situation and your skill set allows, not simply "if you feel like it". The strategy favours tighter maps with all AI starting on one landmass (being closer together increases access to trade route partners for science and decreases travel time between capitals), an early game advantage (el dorado, any wonders as Spain, planning as Shoshone), and players with good troop movement skills.
In terms of buildings other than Monument, I would put market and happiness buildings as more important than +production buildings (or barracks), unless you have a LOT of relevant resources. Illiterate strategy means you're committing to a fast DomV; as such, you have a lot less turns to get the return on hammers you invested in +production buildings.

markets might just be the single most important building for a successful domv, especially if one is not playing as zulu/germany/poland/ottomans. I build them in every city, even in ones that don't produce more than 2 or 3 gold, and I build them asap.

having negative gpt is the downfall of every successful domination attempt, it leeches your science and kills any opportunity for fast upgrades, it makes you field less units and makes you unable to buy luxuries/city states/rushbuy units or walls.
 
The correct answer is:

If building the units results in being able to defend a city when you otherwise couldn't, enabled success in a war which otherwise wouldn't be possible, or if building the unit prevented the war entirely, then it was the correct choice. If the decision doesn't have that degree of influence on events to follow, then it wasn't worth it. Since there's no way of determining this without playing through and then reloading and trying the other way, and also considering that the results of this particular game may vary from similar but not congruent situations in the future, the argument that either choice is superior to the degree that one choice is "correct" and the other is "incorrect" is rather moot.

Through experience, you can get a pretty good idea of how much or how little of any particular element of the game you can get away with, and who you can get away with it against.
 
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