Early rush... eek, I'm a convert!

[Martinus]

I read Sisiutil's excellent article on early rush and gave it a try as Alexander of the Greeks (I am a big SE fan, but being more of a builder, I usually shunned Alexander, seeing his Aggressive trait as subpar, compared to Pericles or Peter for example). Marathon speed to give me some advantage.

And I'm smiten. I started on a Small map with Stalin and Ragnar by my border, and Bismarck and Monty further down - normally this set up would have me deeply scared, because each of them is a warmonger, and on top of that Ragnar is a crazy techer and Stalin and Bismarck usually snatch many wonders from me.

Yet, undaunted, I began the early rush strategy... and by 0 A.D. I had Stalin and Ragnar completely conquered, and Bismarck's lands partitioned (as Monty went to war on him as well). Of course Monty grew Furious by this time (I had a different religion) so I fortified my veteran troops in a border city and went to build up my economy... by this time I had nearly 2/3 of the continent. He mounted some failed attacks, while I quickly whipped up libraries, and went on my normal SE way. Won by 1100, with the highest score ever.

Who said Civ4 discourages warmongers?!?

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Who said Civ4 discourages warmongers?!?

Nobody, i think consensus has been pretty much other way around. Congrats on your win .

 

[Andvare]

I have also become a convert. And all due to this place.
Now my hate neighbours are the protective ones (my last completed game I started up against two of those).

In other strategy games I'm a warmonger extraordinaire, but in CivIV, I've always been a builder. Perhaps because REX was so overpowered in earlier Civs.

And while building is fine on the easier levels, on harder diffs, warmongering is the easiest/fastest way forth.

 

[desemondez]

Which difficulty level?

 

[oyzar]

I must admit i haven't actually seen any rushes done on diety while i have seen loads of early land grabbing... I am also curious about the date 1100 sounds awesome. Also what map type and size was this? Marathon is completely unbalanced for the warmonger.

 

[Martinus]

Which difficulty level?

Prince so far.

 

[Martinus]

I must admit i haven't actually seen any rushes done on diety while i have seen loads of early land grabbing... I am also curious about the date 1100 sounds awesome. Also what map type and size was this? Marathon is completely unbalanced for the warmonger.

Well it was Pangea, and on Prince, but then again the highest I ever played was Monarch.

 

[alpaca]

I must admit i haven't actually seen any rushes done on diety while i have seen loads of early land grabbing... I am also curious about the date 1100 sounds awesome. Also what map type and size was this? Marathon is completely unbalanced for the warmonger.

Yeah on Deity I think the only rush chance you really get is with Huayna Capac by spamming Quechuas left and right, or maybe with Egypt/Persia if you can get horses very early for the UU chariots. Although I haven't really played on Deity with BtS yet (won a few games in Warlords but I wanted to do something else after that because Deity for me didn't allow any mistakes, and I wanted to try no tech trading).

On Immortal you can still do it with HA or maybe Praetorians but the AI often gets Feudalism very quickly.

Obviously, Marathon is a huge advantage because of the faster relative troop movement speed. It's probably equivalent to roughly a difficulty setting lower than you're actually playing. Over-populating maps with more AIs also makes it easier because your individual opponents are weaker.
No tech trading makes it much harder because you can't bribe the AI anymore to help you (or not attack you) to a large extent.