[GS] Early Game Help With Gilgamesh

[vortical42]

I recently jumped back into the game and I decided to give Sumer a try. I'm running on Immortal difficulty with Cults, Heros, and Corporations enabled. All the advice I have seen boils down to spam carts, eat your neighbors, profit. Obviously it is a bit more complicated than that. I'm usually able to crank out 3-4 carts and an archer around turn 30. I can usually roll up to the nearest AI and yoink a city at that point but then I bog down. My carts are down below half health and the AI will have started to muster some defensive units. If I just roll directly on to the next target I risk getting wiped out but if I pause to heal up the AI has more time to get it's units into place and I'm at risk of the city I just took flipping due to loyalty pressure.

Does anyone have any advice to help me get over this hump? How many carts should I be looking to have completed before I actually engage? What are some good benchmarks to look for to see if I am on track?

 

[i_imperator]

Try and attach a screenshot and a save of the situation with the game, its much easier to analyze it when you can look at what's happening.

 

[Vargas1]

Two things from your description:

1. If you're that early in the game, loyalty shouldn't be a major issue unless you're attacking someone who is far away from your base city. Either aim for a closer target, or build a settler in those first turns and forward settle near the first city you're going to attack. Either way will relieve some of those issues.
2. Be thoughtful about the exp your units gain and when to level up. With 3/4 carts and an archer, you should be in a position for at least one or two of them to level up (which should mostly heal them) after taking the first city. Also, if the AI is building farms early - which they often do - don't be shy about pillaging to heal up. Finally, if you're not quite at your next level but close, set up in a defensive position and let the AI come attack you - your carts should be strong enough to hold up, and once you heal you can go on the counterattack.

Also note - if your plan is to do ancient-era war, the most important thing is to have high production in your first city. So be mindful about where you're settling and what tiles you're working. With Sumeria particularly, it will also be worth taking out an early barb camp - you'll want the eureka for military tradition to build carts faster, and you'll get a tribal village award from it.

 

[Eanasir]

Does anyone have any experience playing Sumeria with PerfectWorld6? It’s a great mapscript that produces really interesting terrain and has got me to take a second look at 6 after I found the base game maps dull. However...I’m trying to work out if PW6 makes Sumeria much more difficult to rush with due to lack of flatlands or I’m just terrible at this iteration of Civ.

I can beat 5 fairly consistently on Deity and haven’t managed it once in 6 yet - can beat it on Immortal. Most guides say an early rush with Sumeria is one of the easiest routes with Deity but ive been tearing my hair out trying to even get a half decent start. Either I get an isolated start too far from any neighbours for a rush to work or the terrain is entirely hills, rainforest and forked rivers. When I do start within 15 or so tiles of an AI they seem to have something that, with the +4 strength for difficulty level, counters me strongly enough I just can’t keep the rush going beyond maybe two cities - Gaul pumping out endless archers with support bonuses making them straight up stronger than my carts or Egypt’s ranged carts sniping me to bits in jungly terrain that means I can’t even get near them without being on red health. I then get bogged down and they start getting walls up or crossbowmen out, or I run into loyalty trouble. This has happened even when I’ve got pretty lucky with meteors and huts and attacked with a significantly stronger starting army than my neighbour’s before turn 40.

Generally I go for a more peaceful approach to the early game and it’s entirely possible I’m deeply stupid and missing something fundamental about the tactics of early war. I’m really not getting how this is meant to be the easiest Deity option in a game supposedly easier than 5 though??

 

[vortical42]

Two things from your description:

1. If you're that early in the game, loyalty shouldn't be a major issue unless you're attacking someone who is far away from your base city. Either aim for a closer target, or build a settler in those first turns and forward settle near the first city you're going to attack. Either way will relieve some of those issues.
2. Be thoughtful about the exp your units gain and when to level up. With 3/4 carts and an archer, you should be in a position for at least one or two of them to level up (which should mostly heal them) after taking the first city. Also, if the AI is building farms early - which they often do - don't be shy about pillaging to heal up. Finally, if you're not quite at your next level but close, set up in a defensive position and let the AI come attack you - your carts should be strong enough to hold up, and once you heal you can go on the counterattack.

Also note - if your plan is to do ancient-era war, the most important thing is to have high production in your first city. So be mindful about where you're settling and what tiles you're working. With Sumeria particularly, it will also be worth taking out an early barb camp - you'll want the eureka for military tradition to build carts faster, and you'll get a tribal village award from it.

I usually don't bother trying to pick up Millitary Tradition early unless I'm going for full domination. Since you suggested it though, I gave it a shot and the results were not that impressive. The problem is, you usually don't have time to get an early builder which means no inspiration for Craftsmanship. By the time Millitary tradition unlocked I would already have 5 or 6 carts. At that point, starting work on a builder or settler becomes more important than continuing to crank out units. The only way I could see getting it in a reasonable time frame would be if I got lucky with a free builder and happened to have three available tiles worth improving.

That said, I have been saving promotions to heal now and it has helped a bit.

 

[Vargas1]

I usually don't bother trying to pick up Millitary Tradition early unless I'm going for full domination. Since you suggested it though, I gave it a shot and the results were not that impressive. The problem is, you usually don't have time to get an early builder which means no inspiration for Craftsmanship. By the time Millitary tradition unlocked I would already have 5 or 6 carts. At that point, starting work on a builder or settler becomes more important than continuing to crank out units. The only way I could see getting it in a reasonable time frame would be if I got lucky with a free builder and happened to have three available tiles worth improving.

That said, I have been saving promotions to heal now and it has helped a bit.

I almost always buy my first builder as soon as I hit 200 GP (and if you clear a barb camp, that will help with getting that gold). Unless I got lucky and started on a culture tile or wonder, I will generally be able to do that with enough time to get the inspiration for Craftmanship (sometimes I'll research it halfway and then switch over to foreign trade). I also will typically build a settler as one of my first builds (once I get to 2 pop), so I would not have 5 or 6 carts available otherwise, but I think would quickly catch up with military tradition slotted and two cities producing them instead of one.

 

[Eanasir]

Well, I tried a base Terra map instead of PerfectWorld6 and won...but I had a jungly start with lots of hills anyway so it might just have been a learn-to-play issue after all

This time I didn’t bother trying to get the eureka for Archery or spend ages looking for barb camps - actually I got almost no early goody huts and got scouted by a barb camp on turn 2. Neighbours were Canada, Ottomans and Mali, so denounced Wilf immediately as his land was closer and looked more open. My start location had great gold so I went war cart x3 -> buy builder, build settler -> forward settled Canada, slotted Agoge and built 4 slingers while researching Archery then immediately upgraded them, then carts in both cities constantly for a while as I got the cavalry card slotted.

By the time I was getting the last slinger out Canada had declared a formal war on me and it took til something like turn 40 to kill all his units in the jungle between us, so I was considering restarting. But he had a lot of farmland so decided to just push like hell, try to siege two cities at a time, only stop units to heal if they were practically dead and see what happened.

Well Toronto ended up copping a thousand-year flood that destroyed all its farmland right as I was about to heal, but fortunately also left the city nearly defenceless. Eliminated Canada (who somehow had 6-7 cities already) entirely by turn 74 with a bit of help from loyalty pressure splitting one of them off.

I was in two minds about whether to sit back and snowball or try to push Mali as well. Having never managed to wipe a neighbour on Deity I got a bit cowardly and decided to make alliances and snowball - considered a second later rush with Knights and crossbows but just didn’t have the gold to upgrade properly. Eventually won the science victory pretty comfortably despite a lot of pretty poor midgame play - switched my brain on late in the game and started using my cards more effectively plus suzeraining Geneva and other useful city states. Did have to go on a spy rampage to wreck the two stronger space competitors which worked well.

Can definitely see the appeal of an early rush with Sumeria now though I think I’d just restart if I got a start loc without great gold or production. If you can completely wipe out even one neighbour with good land it gives you a massive boost and the Ziggurats keep you from getting too behind early on. I feel like my main problem was wasting too much time trying to be ‘optimal’ with eurekas and timed promotions when you really have to focus on rushing as fast as possible in the first 50-80 turns. It’s also immensely helpful if you can siege cities immediately to deny them free hits on you while healing up. That’s one area I think PerfectWorld6 DOES make harder as it tends to create a lot of natural defences and less open cities.

edit: one other thing that helped is I planned out v carefully how to get the points for normal eras in medieval and renaissance including holding back on exploration etc - I’ve sometimes had issues with not being able to find era score during a golden age and early to mid dark ages are absolutely crippling on Deity. The +5 from eliminating a civ is massively helpful for this during a golden Classical