Drafting, Nationhood?

[Commodore Nate]

I've only drafted for emergencies, but after reading the excellent article in the War Academy and everyone's input here, I'll have to try it offensively.

 

[warhead66]

You have to have nationhood in order to draft.

to draft double click your city. once you go "in" to the city, you'll see a little button that says draft. press that.

note that drafting subtracts one population point, gives you three "angry faces" and requires a city with 10% of your countries original origin in. in addition to this the city must have at least 7 population points.

A good idea is to find a city with a very fast growth rate. build the globe theatre in it and draft away. once you build the globe theater all the angry faces in the city disappears. having a barracks isn't a dumb idea either and if possible get theocracy as religious government. that way your drafting units won't have to suck.

 

[warhead66]

I've only drafted for emergencies, but after reading the excellent article in the War Academy and everyone's input here, I'll have to try it offensively.

drafting is really, really handy. you just gotta know your cities before doing it. the cities sorrounded by water are always a good point for drafting. they grow really fast, and they can't really do anything. so if you can keep em happy you can actually get a larger army out of the non productive towns while working on improvements in the productive ones, hereby eliminating those "useless" cities that sometimes tend to pop up

 

[Pantastic]

The thing that's amazing about drafting is how fast you can have a huge army. Have your military city and production city focus on building siege and special units and draft away - maybe 1 or 2 units from big cities, but burn down those medium-sized cities since they recover fast and should have excess happiness. On an epic speed game I've gone from last on the power graph amongst the real powers to first in ten turns or so. Best thing about nationalism is that those kind of crappy drafted troops make great garrisons for captured cities, so you're not stuck wasting your highly promoted units sitting in some spot to prevent revolt.

 

[Bast]

I've only ever used Nationhood once. When I played as Victoria on a small 18 civilization map. It was crowded and I couldn't put many cottages up. Plus London had plenty of food and unhappiness was a problem so I put the Globe Theatre there and next thing I realized I could really do some whipping and drafting there. Won a domination victory there.

I should try it again sometime.

 

[mike p]

I prefer Nationhood to Free Speech, most of the time. (Except if I were going for a cultural victory, obviously, or when I was already way ahead on the power graph.)

Sure you lose a some commerce and culture, but you get somewhat lower civics costs to compensate and the draft makes for a huge increase in production, as long as you need to build units anyway.

It's also nice to stay in Nationhood when not Spiritual when Alex, Monty, or Shaka are hanging around because if they do come after you, you can draft without anarchy.

It's definitely not as strong of a peace time civic as Free Speech, but Nationhood has saved many games for me when I've gotted DoWed.

 

[Mik1984]

Drafting rocks! Just do it regularly and plan ahead. You can save a lot of production this way.

 

[warhead66]

theres just something magical about watching all of those happy faces from religion, theatres and luxurious resources and then wiping that smartass smirk of their face by handing out rifles to the masses.

drafting kicks ass!

 

[bovinespy]

theres just something magical about watching all of those happy faces from religion, theatres and luxurious resources and then wiping that smartass smirk of their face by handing out rifles to the masses.

drafting kicks ass!

This made me laugh out loud! Thanks.

As for Nationalism, I used to avoid it like the plague. Then, after seeing a thread here at CFC, I tried it in an England game with Redcoats, and I was sold. Now I use it a lot in my war-monger games even when it's not a UU that gets drafted. My last domination victory with Shaka on Epic speed was greatly fueled by drafted muskets, either as garrison troops or as cannon fodder. I stayed in Nationalism for the final couple centuries of that game, as I recall.

However, my first few times I wasn't up on the little details of how best to draft efficiently. As others have said, focus on drafting from medium-sized cities, and of course, your Globe Theatre city. DO NOT do what I did the first time, which was repeatedly draft from my LARGEST cities. Bad, bad idea that was.

 

[warhead66]

This made me laugh out loud! Thanks.

As for Nationalism, I used to avoid it like the plague. Then, after seeing a thread here at CFC, I tried it in an England game with Redcoats, and I was sold. Now I use it a lot in my war-monger games even when it's not a UU that gets drafted. My last domination victory with Shaka on Epic speed was greatly fueled by drafted muskets, either as garrison troops or as cannon fodder. I stayed in Nationalism for the final couple centuries of that game, as I recall.

However, my first few times I wasn't up on the little details of how best to draft efficiently. As others have said, focus on drafting from medium-sized cities, and of course, your Globe Theatre city. DO NOT do what I did the first time, which was repeatedly draft from my LARGEST cities. Bad, bad idea that was.

t'was a pleasure ..

and damn straight about the drafting. i agree. but the best time to draft is when you're not at war. when you are at war you have the from war war what is it good for absolutely nothing (everything cause i need that city with 150 hammers and 4 wonders..) uh! so along with that and hell no we won't go, drafting is actually pretty bad if you already are at war, unless of course you risk losing an important city.

a thing i hate about drafting though is the fact that the population cost rises.
1. it doesnt make sense.
2. i'm never able to follow up with the growth rate as the average lifespan of my citizens is about 40-50 so as soon as i get infantry i kind of just stop drafting. i still have it though, but that's just cause it's so kickass.

as for drafting you should always have that mega city that is pretty useless. one of those cities with no hammers what so ever but with a TON of food = 20-30 in population, a globe theatre and if possible, a holy city religous building, (and of course the globe theatre in the largest city!) that way you get free drafting and make money on the city. i don't understand why you think it's a bad idea to draft from the largest cities? i mean don't overkill but if you have a slow growing city that spends 30 turns growing from 6-7 then drafting from that one is a pretty bad call in my opinion.

if you play on world map, it's place like Denmark, Washington Beijing and others that really kicks ass here. Denmark is insane when it comes to growth (it's where amsterdam starts in the game, kinda sucks that the vikings can't start where they originally are from, but the dutch actually has to move because they simply can't fit where they should be.. so maybe they shouldnt be at all . . . . .) but what the hell we're the canada of europe..

"Drafting: it's better than sex..!"

 

[bovinespy]

t'was a pleasure ..

and damn straight about the drafting. i agree. but the best time to draft is when you're not at war. when you are at war you have the from war war what is it good for absolutely nothing (everything cause i need that city with 150 hammers and 4 wonders..) uh! so along with that and hell no we won't go, drafting is actually pretty bad if you already are at war, unless of course you risk losing an important city.

I fully agree. The only drafting I generally do while at war is either from the Globe Theatre city or on an emergency basis, if a core city is threatened.

as for drafting you should always have that mega city that is pretty useless. one of those cities with no hammers what so ever but with a TON of food = 20-30 in population, a globe theatre and if possible, a holy city religous building, (and of course the globe theatre in the largest city!) that way you get free drafting and make money on the city. i don't understand why you think it's a bad idea to draft from the largest cities? i mean don't overkill but if you have a slow growing city that spends 30 turns growing from 6-7 then drafting from that one is a pretty bad call in my opinion.

There's 2 main reasons why drafting from your largest cities is usually a bad idea:

1. Your largest cities are the ones that are closest to or at their happiness cap. Usually, you have to burn from your smaller cities.

2. It takes a lot more food (and time) to regrow a pop point in large cities than it does in smaller ones.

When I first drafted from my largest cities, I ended up tanking my economy for many turns during and after the war. Mind you, this was from cities with like 12 to 14 population. Much better to draft from medium-sized (7 to 9 pop) cities.

if you play on world map, it's place like Denmark, Washington Beijing and others that really kicks ass here. Denmark is insane when it comes to growth (it's where amsterdam starts in the game, kinda sucks that the vikings can't start where they originally are from, but the dutch actually has to move because they simply can't fit where they should be.. so maybe they shouldnt be at all . . . . .) but what the hell we're the canada of europe..

I haven't played the Earth map in quite a while, but that sounds about right. IIRC, Egypt, Babylonia, northern India, and Mexico also had great food bonus clusters that would make excellent Globe Theatre-draft factories.

"Drafting: it's better than sex..!"

Well.... I don't know if I'd go quite that far...