Epic or Marathon?

[Armorydave]

Ah, I get it. I hadn't got the worker first, cities later component. Makes sense. I suppose you stay with one city moderately long unless needed to get copper.

Btw, I know what a plains/hill gives a city tile. What do you get for Ivory or Stone or Marble?

Also the connection to crowded maps (I usually play Large w/ about 10 opponents instead of 8). Why the preference for Fractal over Pangaea? & have you considered Great Plains. A lot of resources, but VERY concentrated by region (West: Silver/Gold/Sheep/Dye; Center: Wheat/Cattle/Gems; East: Corn/Pigs/Sugar. Pretty much nothing else except C/I/S/M, and the last two are rare. No Ivory/Silk/Bananas at all in my current game).

I suppose this would not work nearly as well on Normal speed, since tech would advance faster in relation to Axeman mobility.

CK

I generally stay at one city longer than any Civ except the ones I am attacking. Another benefit of the extremely early attack strategy is that they go into a mode where they build only archers and workers as long as they don't get a huge surplus of archers (at which time they might try to squeeze out a settler). My second city is almost always intended to get me either copper or horses and I generally don't found it until I know for sure that I can get one of the two.

Ivory, Stone or Marble on a normal plains square (i.e. no hills) acts the same as if you founded on a plains hill (i.e. you get 2 production from your capital square instead of one). Since none of them give great benefits when developed they are ideal to found on top of. I *always* move on top of those three if it is a one move jump from my starting point. Also nice that they get hooked up immediately once you get hunting or masonry and they cannot be pillaged. It works the same for copper and iron but you can never see them to start the game. Always a pleasant surprise when copper pops underneath the plains square you founded on.

Stone, Marble Copper or Iron on a plains hill is the holy grail. It gives your base city *3* production which is pretty insane early on (I haven't gotten this in a long time but assume it is still the same). My best game ever was founded on a plains hill and copper popped underneath when I got bronze working. I was playing Mansa and never even bothered to get Archery until I could trade for it.

I go with Fractal because Pangaea is too easy and predictable especially with this strategy. I found continents to be boring/unrealistic maps. I haven't tried Great Plains because (I thought) they were all flat worlds and I have never cared for flat worlds. More a preference thing than any reason. I do vary map size although I don't play huge for computer/lifestyle reasons (I want to have a life). I will occasionally do a Pangaea but not with the better leaders.

I might have to give Great Plains a try. The one map I started on it a while back was interesting but I bored with the game quickly for some reason (I suspect some bad battle luck put me in an ugly position).

I think it might work well enough on normal speed because as long as you keep them from hooking up a strategic resource (such a key part of the strategy) they can't do anything but archers until Feudalism. For a badly beleaguered, tech suppressed nation it takes a long time to get to Feudalism even on Normal speed (I used to play normal but switched to epic after the first 20 games or so). You might be right though, it has been a long time since I played on normal speed.

BTW, I love slightly overcrowded worlds. Seems like a lot more action especially prior 0 AD. It also makes the worker grab/eternal warfare strategy (4,000 year wars are common in my games) a little easier to execute (if nothing else you aren't ferrying workers across huge expanses of territory to get them back to your cultural border).

 

[Scrybe]

How do you handle war weariness with this strategy? Seems like your civ would be eternally unhappy.

 

[Armorydave]

Far as I can tell, war weariness doesn't even kick in until you have a city over size 11 or 12 so for 90% of these wars I never see any war weariness. My cities almost never go much over size (12) until well after 0AD because I tend to whip pretty liberally (especially to finish off buildings, settlers and even the occasional wonder) and focus more on tech and hammers than food early on. Occasionally my capital will go higher but by that time I've usually captured some luxury resources and built several buildings to offset the problem. I also *try* to get one missionary to each Civ that doesn't have a religion so I have 2-3 tech and resource trading buddies. This also works best if you are fighting the civs that founded opposing religions (usually Buddhism and Judaism) because if they are not engaged in war they spread religion like zealots.

Any civ I haven't finished off by the time war weariness starts appearing might get a temporary peace but they will have been crippled to the point that they can never recover. I also lose almost no units with this strategy (since you are mostly nabbing workers and pillaging for the first 3,000+- years) which keeps war weariness at a minimum. I don't believe in attrition fighting. I believe in tech suppressing my opponents and overwhelming them with a smaller number of highly superior forces (better promotions, more advanced). If I am losing a substantial number of non-siege units I am doing something wrong. Siege units are meant to do the dying for your city raiders.

One final note, if you set up all your fights to be roughly 2-1 favorites (i.e you are 6 str they are 3 str after adjustments) you will get 2 exp for each fight and almost never lose units. I usually don't look for my "best" odds fight when my stack rolls up to a city, I look for the best odds fight that is still better than the 2-1 ratio. You may lose a couple more units (which has a marginal effect on war weariness if it is just a couple) but get a ton more exp (and great generals) over the course of a game.

 

[Armorydave]

I hadn't considered this but at normal speed, war weariness would probably be a much bigger issue using this strategy. I largely developed/expanded on it after switching to epic speed so don't really know how it would play out at normal speed. I think the principles all still work but it might force more space wins than domination wins because everything moves along so much faster.

 

[Scrybe]

My cities almost never go much over size (12) until well after 0AD because I tend to whip pretty liberally (especially to finish off buildings, settlers and even the occasional wonder) and focus more on tech and hammers than food early on.

I don't understand this strategy at all. How do you have ANY population? When you say you "whip" that means using the Slavery civic to convert population to hammers, right? Sorry for the lame questions. I've been playing on and off for almost 2 years, I guess I should know this stuff. But I've never been able to use Slavery since I NEED my population to work my tiles to keep any sort of income and research going. I must be missing something obvious.

 

[Verge]

I don't understand this strategy at all. How do you have ANY population? When you say you "whip" that means using the Slavery civic to convert population to hammers, right? Sorry for the lame questions. I've been playing on and off for almost 2 years, I guess I should know this stuff. But I've never been able to use Slavery since I NEED my population to work my tiles to keep any sort of income and research going. I must be missing something obvious.

Efficient use of the whip is a very good strategy to master, even if you don't intend to use Slavery extensively in most of your games. Taking the whip to the population can greatly boost your game provided you know how and when to do so.

I frequently whip, for example, at or above the happy cap, since the food would be going to waste on unhappy citizens anyway. Whipping Granaries and happy-providing buildings (temples and whatnot) is a particularly efficient tactic. Cracking the whip to produce overflows for large builds is also very useful.


If you'd like to know more, Scrybe, there are plenty of articles about effective use of slavery here on the forums. At the War Academy, VoiceOfUnreason has a very good article, Vocum Sineratio: The Whip.

 

[Armorydave]

I don't understand this strategy at all. How do you have ANY population? When you say you "whip" that means using the Slavery civic to convert population to hammers, right? Sorry for the lame questions. I've been playing on and off for almost 2 years, I guess I should know this stuff. But I've never been able to use Slavery since I NEED my population to work my tiles to keep any sort of income and research going. I must be missing something obvious.

Playing at Monarch/Emperor population is capped by unhappiness long before war weariness becomes an issue (literally thousands of years before). The "eternal war" strategy really does nothing to change that as prior to 0AD only my capital is going over size 10 anyway (with or without war) and even that is relatively rare (have to get lucky on "hunting/mining based" luxury resources and/or get calender quickly). I seldom get lucky on resources and do not prioritize calender.

If you concentrate on working commerce tiles it helps alleviate the tech problems associated with lower population. You won't grow as fast but since you reach the unhappiness cap pretty quickly you would just be whipping them anyway (or worse letting them soak food without being productive). My attitude is that if they are unhappy they aren't working hard enough (/crack). There are good guides to maximizing the potential of whipping and at higher levels it seems a must strategy for a Monarch or above domination player.

Also , the city governor always seems to chose food over commerce at least until you reach the happiness cap for your city. You need to change his priorities manually to maximize science at the cost of some population growth. This is especially critical very early on if you are going for a religion. You can usually get Hinduism and essentially always get Judaism (which also helps science radically) if you maximize commerce out of the gate.

Finally, lower pop cities also cost less to maintain which further alleviates the problem.

Generally speaking I take over the tech lead right after I build the Oracle (I almost always get it) and pop Alphabet. Shrewd tech trading (and making sure to get a couple tech buddies) is key to this strategy. One advantage to attacking other civs very early on is you don't get the diplomacy minus with (many/any) other civs because they don't know each other yet. The other is that if you chose right you can radically suppress the tech whores or those that have ridiculous capitals. I attacked Mehmed in my current game as soon as I reached his Civ on the other side of my continent because he had 5 floodplains, horses, two gold mines *and* two food resources (corn and pig) inside his capital border. I knew if he was left to cottage/mine them I would be screwed in the tech race so I worker grabbed him and used the worker to explore further till and animal got him. By the time he got the chance to mine/cottage (couple thousand years later I gave him peace for a couple techs) I was already light years ahead.

 

[Scrybe]

If you'd like to know more, Scrybe, there are plenty of articles about effective use of slavery here on the forums. At the War Academy, VoiceOfUnreason has a very good article, Vocum Sineratio: The Whip.

Thanks! I'll check that out. It always bugs me when I find some option completely useless, then find out someone has a whole stratagy based on it. Makes me feel like a moron.

Generally speaking I take over the tech lead right after I build the Oracle (I almost always get it) and pop Alphabet. Shrewd tech trading (and making sure to get a couple tech buddies) is key to this strategy. One advantage to attacking other civs very early on is you don't get the diplomacy minus with (many/any) other civs because they don't know each other yet. The other is that if you chose right you can radically suppress the tech whores or those that have ridiculous capitals.

Wow. Maybe I approached this strategy too half-heartedly. See, the first strategy I learned here was right after IV came out... it was based on starting a bee-line towards Bronze Working while pumping out a Worker who then chops a Settler, thereby getting a second city started ASAP. I think I've been sticking too close to that strategy for too long, and carry the latent philosophy of it with me even when I try to deviate from it. I tried attacking the first Civ I came across, but they were so far away, (At least 40 tiles) that I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. I sat a couple powered up forest Warriors outside their capitol, but they just kept making more and more archers and never a worker. I guess I should wait until they have a worker to attack?

Oh and to reconnect to the OP, the last game I did was my first try at Epic. This current one I went for Marathon. I really like it so far. I usually take a week or so to play each game, so I really don't notice the difference except that the scaling of unit movement is much more realistic. (No more thousand year marches across the desert to engage an enemy!)

 

[Armorydave]

I sat a couple powered up forest Warriors outside their capitol, but they just kept making more and more archers and never a worker. I guess I should wait until they have a worker to attack?

Yep, definitely wait until they build a worker that you can jump. Probably the third of fourth best aspects of this strategy is that I never build workers anymore. Literally never and have them almost as soon and relatively quickly in much greater supply than my rivals (especially if I can get to war with 2 or 3 civs relatively early). At Monarch level worker is usually one of the first build for most Civs (a few do work boats & scouts first) so it doesn't take long. If you have a Woodsman 2 warrior by the time he appears you can even nab him if he is one tile inside the cultural border if he is adjacent to a forest.

I weave in and out of their territory constantly and never get next to a city unless it is a woods square and I am cutting a road or nabbing a worker. Generally I work very hard to never leave the woods (never know when an archer will be sitting in some stupid square obscured by fog of war). If you go outside the forest (say to pillage a farm or grab a worker) *and* they have 2 or more archers (used to be 3 before the patch) in their city they will come out and attack you.

If you plant a warrior in their territory they will never queue up a worker and eventually will build enough archers to come unseat you from your position. I might do that if I didn't have a Woodsman 2 warrior yet (specifically plant one in a forest-hill if one exists) just to keep them from building a worker (and hooking up strargic resources) until I had a Woodsman 2 warrior to grab him. Once you have the Woodsman 2 warriors no reason to be stationary especially if you want them to queue up a worker or settler. I manage to nab settlers pretty often because the AI moves them around foolishly when they are under eternal siege. That includes separating them from their escorts to try and run back to the city if you move a warrior into their territory soon after they set out to found the new city.

 

[ck07]

Yep, definitely wait until they build a worker that you can jump. Probably the third of fourth best aspects of this strategy is that I never build workers anymore. Literally never and have them almost as soon and relatively quickly in much greater supply than my rivals (especially if I can get to war with 2 or 3 civs relatively early).

....

What do you DO with all those workers?

 

[duckmanbro]

I liked Marathon before, but I play slowly, and micromanage everything, and took too much time. Epic seems to be the best for me (on BTS).

 

[nzcamel]

This thread has been very helpful. I was wondering about the scaling of time between marathon/epic and standard; and I think I've got a good grasp on it.

I'm a marathon kinda guy, cos I like it to be as close to reality as pos!

 

[Armorydave]

What do you DO with all those workers?

My current game I kept about 12 to start and now that my empire is closing in on 50% of the world am up to about 24. The pattern tends to be, too many between 1000BC and 500AD then not enough after that until I sack a capital or two and add to the workforce. I am playing a tropical game so there was a ton of jungle to remove in the mid game that kept my worker force active.