Early Pushover Strategy (Caesar´s favorite)

[Jorunkun]

Obviously, your next steps will need to vary depending on the lay of the land and the location of your key ressources, iron and horses. I will try to describe in more general terms what to do after iron working is discovered and your first settler is built and reference my (somewhat atypical) game as an example only. So there …

Firstoff, your next tech after iron working must be The Wheel, as you will need roads to get the iron connected to your cities, your cities connected to each other … and an army-road built towards your first target capital.

With the location of the nearest iron and, hopefully, a horse tiles uncovered in your initital sweep, you will know how many cities are needed to connect them.

Best case, you will have both ressources inside your capital´s radius. In this case, I would send the settler to a suitable area rich in forest, toward the direction of your nearest neighbour. Send along one worker one warrior as an escort and use the other one to scout out as much of your first target civ´s territory as possible (more on selecting your first target in the next post).

Build another worker in your capital, barracks in your second city and mine and link up the iron as fast as possible. Then build your first barracks-trained Praetorians (or Swordsmen). If you are quick about it you will have your first ST 8 units by 2000 BC … twice as powerful as anything else out there at the time.

If either iron or horses are outside your capital, send your first settler there to found your second city, escorted by at least one warrior and one or two workers in tow. Use one to mine and hook up the iron, the other to log for barracks in your second city. Then build Praetorians, as above.

As a variant in both cases you might want to go for a third city, founded by a settler from your capital. I would always argue in favour of getting Praetorians out the door quickly, but if your second city site is at a long distance and you cannot build Praetorians (or Axemen, with copper nearby) in your capital quickly, you might pass the time by building another settler to broaden your production base. Again, chop with wild abandon - treehugging builder types worried about their prospective city health shouldn´t be playing this strategy to begin with.

In the worst case, you will have neither ressource within the capital´s radius and will need to dispatch one settler for each. In this case, I would first send for the iron as above. This is what I decided to try out in my Rome game as well.

My build queue for Rome after the first settler was Warrior (as escort) then Settler, aided by one chop. As soon as The Wheel was learned, I sent my workers to build a road to connect my two cities. Meanwhile, the build queue for the second city should be Barracks, then Praetorians.

In either case, I propose that the research path after the Wheel should be Hunting, Archery, Animal Husbandry and finally Horseback Riding; with research conducted at maximum possible speed. Again, some might argue for a break in favor of more civilian technologies after iron working, and they may be right. However, let me lay out the advantages of a diverse army in my next post before you object.

 

[abj9562]

Keep in mind that if your empire is twice the size of your opponents', 50% research for you is the equivalent of 100% for them. The only problem is building up your cities to match theirs, which will take some time, but can be done.

Not always. Since coins is part of the beaker equation a bad economy equals bad research. Numbers of cities does not directly relate to quantity of beakers produced.

 

[Jorunkun]

For this post, I will assume the following:

A) You have built a core of two or three cities covering iron and, ideally, horses (the latter is not a must-have requirement just yet, but will become one eventually).

B) You have built barracks in all your cities and have at least four barracks-trained Praetorians or Swordsmen available.

C) You know the location of at least one, preferably all of your immediate neighbours´ capitals.

If you need something to do with your newly built Praetorians while working to meet all the above requirements, send them out to hunt animals or barbarians. Fear not – at this stage you are by far the toughest bully on the block and any opposition will only strengthen you. All Praetorians/Swordsmen should be equipped with City Raider upgrades, because this is what they will do next.

In my demo, I hit the status above in 1320 BC, 68 turns into the game - if your ressources are well-placed, you can probably get there before 1600 BC. In the meantime, I had also clobbered a few barbarians (and erroneously taken one of their cities rather than razing it, hmpf) and had decided on Asoka´s capital Delhi as my first target.

Three criteria should factor in picking your first target:

1. Value
Always go for capitals first – they always have the best ressources, the most developed land and the highest population. They also yield the highest bounty in gold if you take them – this is crucial as you will begin bleeding money the moment your army enters enemy territory. Needless to say that holy cities and capitals harboring wonders should always be first on your list.

Going for lesser cities in my opinion is a mistake, because while it will fall more easily, you don´t gain much in your conquest and it will give your enemy time to prepare his defense. Rather, go straight for the jugular and mop up later as necessary.

2. Proximity
The closer the capital the better for you. This is because you will want to hook up the city to the rest of your empire with a road as quickly as possible and because upkeep payments will be less.

3. Strength and Potential
Always challenge yourself with the strongest opponent you can still manage. When in doubt, hit your opponent with the strongest potential first. This is especially true for civs whose UU is about to come into their prime – better to nip them in the bud. Greece is a strong contender here.

I decided on Delhi because it was the holy city of Judaism and sat right on the doorstep of the city holding my second source of iron. The invading army was made up of five Praetorians (two with city raider 2, the others with city raider 1), an axeman and an archer. Also along for the ride were two workers, to build roads along with the main body of the army. I had left two units stationed in the nearest city to be able to meet a counter-attack.

Delhis defences were surprisingly strong; some four archers, an axeman and a spearman (in other games, especially on Prince, I had sometimes taken capitals secured by a mere two archers) but although the AI tried counter-attacks with the axeman, I was able to take the city within the first round of attack, with not a single unit lost. The year was 850 BC. By the time Delhi came out of revolt, the city was hooked up to my road network, my army was fully rested and promoted and all opposition squashed.

In general, you can´t go far wrong with your first wave of attack. Make sure you approach via forests and over hills, don’t attack across a river and bring one more unit than the defender. Strength 3 Archers, even on hills and in a culture-heavy city, are no match for ST 8 Praetorians with City Assault spec.

In my next post, I will discuss where to directthe second and third wave of the assault, and then it´s time for the post-pushover cleanup discussion.

 

[Jorunkun]

Once you have captured your first enemy capital, the question is where to go next. While it may be tempting to go on and take or raze any other cities your enemy may have founded in the vicinity, I would strongly advise against this.

On Prince and Monarch in particular, your time in the limelight is shorter than you think. With every turn, other civs will react to your rapid growth by bolstering their defenses. While your force will get stronger with each conquest (as units promote and the remainder of your cities churn out more Praetorians and other troops), your opponents will catch up in technology … and found more cities on what should be your territory. Eventually, you will lose your advantage, so its best to take the biggest trophies while it´s still easy.

I therefore suggest you move your army to the next nearest capital as soon as individual units are healed up. It is entirely sufficient to leave your newly conquered former captial-city guarded by one or two of your units, as your enemy will be down to no more than two units per city, and his cities (if he has more than one) will likely be spread apart, resulting in further production mali.

In my demo, I pillaged access to Asokas ressources (copper, horses and iron), then used some chops and local production to build new barracks in his capital and let locally produced units take care of keeping the peace while the main body of my army moved north, to meet up with Frederick´s Germans.

If all goes well, your second invasion force should be eight to ten units strong, as your veterans are joined by a new wave of Praetorians. I would not waste time wih Archers at this point unless pressured from a third party, as offense will indeed be your best defense for quite some more turns. You might want to consider throwing Axemen in the mix though, as they produce a tad quicker and they are your best bet against axemen-counterattacks.

So hurry straight for the next capital and give it all you´ve got. And then on to the next. Don´t forget to bring up some workers – ideally, you will capture them as you take enemy cities. As your empire grows through conquest, a functional road network is essential in order to benefit from luxuries, to be able to build Praetorians in your newly conquered cities (iron!) and to be able to move units quickly should there be trouble in either of your newly conquered provinces.

In this manner, you should ideally be able to march full circle around Rome and take three or more neighbouring capitals with the main body of your army while keping down any opposition in the territories surrounding your conquests. If you run out of class A targets, turn your attention to the cities nearest your capital and take those. Raze and pillage what you cannot control, but consider leaving an enemy city or two as a buffer on the outer fringe of your empire, between you and the civs you have not made war against yet. These cities will not be a threat to you, but a nuisance to civs who would otherwise settle in the areas you cleared.

As your conquest progresses and your empire grows, horse archers should complement the makeup of your army, as they can move quickly to trouble-spots, should any arise. I use them to defend my core cities and to suppress barbarians or counterattacks in the territories I am in the process of annexing. If you encounter stiffening resistance, consider a beeline for catapults.

Once you have thus hobbled all or most of your immediate neighbours and your rampage is running out of steam, it´s time to consider securing what you have conquered and steering your research on a more peaceful, productive path at last. This will be the contents of my last post.

 

[Jorunkun]

Obviously, there´s a heavy downside to this single-minded focus on a military pushover: While other Civs bring forth great cities amid lush fields and forests, you will spawn little more than oversized military camps in a wasteland of mines and army-roads. At the height of your conquest, research spend will sometimes dip as low as 30 or 40% and almost all your income will be dereived from plunder. As a result, you will fall further and further behind on technological development, especially after the other civs begin tech trading after the discovery of the Alphabet.

While I am quite convinced that you cannot temper the early phase of the pushover strategy with a little bit of reseach here and some infrastructure development there without squandering precious turns of your domination phase and ruining your overall success, I would also argue strongly in favour of stopping and consolidating at the right time. But when is this? Honestly, I don’t have a defnitive answer to this question, and I´d be very interested in your experiences and suggestions. Meanwhile, here´s what I have learned so far.

1. Don´t stop too early
Continue taking enemy captials for as long as it´s easy – raze the ones you cannot afford to keep. If at all possible, don´t stop unless you have conquered all your immediate neighbours´ capitals. Your greatest immediate threat will be from the neighbour you didn´t hobble.

2. Don´t bite off more than you can chew
In my experience, it is entirely possible to consolidate and control an empire consisting of your original core area and one annexed country in every direction. However, don´t try to control countries beyond this first ring. Don´t try to hold any city further than 20 tiles away from your capital – unless you started on a peninsula and your only expansion room is on the far side of your only immediate neighbour.

3.´Stop when outnumbered
If your opponent is stacking his cities with more units than you can muster for the offense, stop. Triple-Promoted Praetorians are a value in and of themselves;don´t risk wearing them out on anything other than an enemy capital. If you must take that last capital, bring catapults, but then stop.

4. Stop when matched for power
If you opponents begin using catapults and swordsmen it´s probably time to call it a day. Don´t wait until Knights enter the scene – a dedicated mounted offensive will overrun your troops, especially if they are spread thin or you are attacked in two or more places. Don´t squander what you gained.


How do you stop …?
When your offensive comes to a halt, take a break and consider which cities will mark the new borders of your empire. As mentioned above, don´t try to hold on to cities on the far side of your newly acquired former capitals. Rather, leave a few cities in your enemies´ hands as buffer zones – but pillage any tiles outside of your new demesne (you will need the money). Station your troops along your new borders. Then make peace with whoever is left (interestingly, in Civ 4 your reputation does not suffer nearly as much from your initial killing-spree as it did in Civ 3).

Then begin settling the gaps in your territory. Don’t agree on open borders with your new immediate neighbors until you have settled all the land you think you will need. And reasearch the alphabet as quickly as possible, so you can begin trading tech.

In my games with Rome, Caesars traits of Creative and Organised came in handy for the middle game: Your culture will be sufficient to maintain coherent borders and if you capture a holy city, you even stand a cance at getting to par culturally with most of your opponents during the middle ages.

If you make it through the middle ages without being overrun by Knights or worse, you are usually home safe. With better civics available for managing large empires and an upgrade path for your Praetorians to Grenadiers (via Macemen) you should have caught up and secured your spoils by the time the Renaissance comes around.

 

[Gufnork]

Well, my game ended with a space race victory in 1955. I was planning for a Domination victory, but 64% of land mass is a bit harsh, especially with the low 45% of population. I had 65% pop and 55% land mass when the game ended, I think.

I'm a bit disappointed that I only got Hammarubi score, not Augustus Caesar.