Wow, paired siege engines are amazing. Even with the awful forested hill terrain they can practically just walk up to an early city and take it. Battering rams got nothing on them.
Looks like I may need to use this as a practice run and start over. All of my neighbors are very, very far away. I couldn't even start my first war until about t.80. This map probably would've been better for a peaceful game. I got a mountain marble start with a Mt. Sinai Petra location nearby and several other good inland expo sites.
What techs do you pick up on the way to Mathematics? I'm guessing you need Mining right away and also Pottery even though they aren't on the beeline.
Also, how do you fit in the early wonders and NC? I was hoping I could hold off on the GL a bit while I got the war machine rolling, but unfortunately it went on t.70 while I was headed to my first target.
Well, keep in mind that conquest isn't the optimal strategy. But, if you are going to conquer, you need to do so as early as possible before you completely outpace the AI in tech. I'm pretty sure by t70 the only reason the AI still had techs I didn't have was that I was intentionally not researching some of the low-level techs.
First things first, you need two scouts to go get those ruins, meet CS for gold, and scout out your expo and conquer spots.
You want two archers too, and they probably need to be focused on barbs to protect your workers and make Growth CS allies, etc., until you're ready to cap a few capitals.
Have your siege towers bully CS early on, but only ones that you don't need to be friends with. Early in the game 2 siege towers (heck maybe even one, I can't remember) is enough to bully a CS.
All that early money really needs to go to workers. (Or one purchased settler)
The #1 most important thing to do is to get your internal food trade routes going as soon as possible. As you already know. So get Sailing as soon as you have the cash for another caravan/cargo ship. Which should be as early as possible. You also want Engineering ASAP, but it can wait IMHO until after Civil Service and Education. I prioritize caravans over workers because an immediate +4 food is better than 24+ turns to get +4 food out of 4 farms, but still workers are key.
The second important thing you need to do is get workers early and get a lot of them. You need to be making good food tiles as fast as you can, and workers, even on this map, allow you to sell lux/strategics for at the very least some gpt. The sooner the better. DoW a neighbor as soon as they build a worker and capture it. Keep capturing the workers they build. Also DoW a nearby CS (one that's easy to steal from) but one that doesn't have a pledge to protect on them. Your goal is to have a ridiculous amount of workers. If any city is ever working a crappy food tile, you don't have enough workers.
Now, regarding conquest:
I think the optimal conquest-based SV approach on this map/settings/leader combo is to capture the capital of two AIs and get one more city each in a peace deal. The longer you wait to capture (to a point), the better, but you want to do it while they still have techs you don't. You want to capture them early enough to annex (after NC of course) and build them up fast. If you can get two capitals, you only need to build (or should I say buy) one or two settlers. I think 5 cities is the sweet spot, but really if you can't find another observatory spot, 4 is probably good enough. The less cities you have to build, the better, because that leaves more room in your build queue for everything else. Now, undeniably, peaceful is better... you can get 5 cities rolling early, and IMHO this will almost always lead to a faster finish time. And you're less at risk of having game-lasting hate. So, one alternative is to accept cities in peace deals and NOT capture the capitals. Either way, whether you capture the capitals or not, you want to be getting cities in peace deals. But, you should only keep cities you really need. Unique resources and good potential for growth, adjacent mountain, with river grassland or floodplains ideally. Close to your capital/expos if possible.
Here's where the strategy goes off the rails and into (IMHO) abuse of a bad game mechanic. I personally wish they'd change this, and I wish the HOF would consider it an exploit, but until that time, pyramids liberty pillage/repair is just so powerful you can't ignore it. Only keep the cities you get in a peace deal if they're *awesome*.
If they're not awesome... raze them. Ideally, the cities you get in a peace deal already have lots of improved tiles. Why? Because you're going to raze them to the ground and have horsemen pillaging the crap out of those improvements every turn until the game ends. All that money allows you to completely focus on growth and rush buy everything. You can easily achieve 200gpt from this. Any more than that is probably diminishing returns because of the number of workers you'd need to build/buy. I'm not sure if it's worth the reduced social policy gain to puppet, improve and *THEN* raze, especially because at the time you'd be improving them, you probably need all those workers improving your own cities. But that would get you more improved tiles...
So, now that we have enough money to rush-buy everything we'll ever need, we can talk about Wonders. If you're not winning the race to wonders, you don't have enough workers chopping. Plus, we don't really need to build anything after like t100 because of all the pillage and bully money. You should also have enough money to ally every damn CS worth allying.
Which wonders, and in which order? The GL is nice and IMHO worth it on Chieftain, but not until after Temple of Artemis and Hanging Gardens. ToA doesn't need to be built in your capital. Hanging Gardens should be placed in your capital with NC. Early Oracle + GL is a nice early boost to GS points, plus you need the extra social policy because you're doing Tradition + at least the Liberty opener. You also need Pyramids, you also need NC... sounds like a lot of hammers, right? Well, they don't need to all be in the same city, and this is why you need workers. CHOP!
The order of ToA, HG, GL, NC and Oracle is something I'm not 100% sure on but you should definitely be chopping out ToA in an expo. Last time I did HG,GL,NC, and Oracle in that order in the capital, with ToA in an expo. But, that meant I was doing a 2-city NC instead of a 1-city NC. I just don't think a one-city NC is practical, because you can't get workers early enough to chop out the GL & NC and still get everything else you need early.
Regarding tech, I do rush to Mathematics, but I try to pick up all the basic lux/strategics along the way. Also, relatively early Writing for GL, and Calendar right before you complete it so you can rush Philosophy. If you time it right, you're building NC that next turn. So you do need to get a Library up early. But only one really. You can chop out a fast early NC before you annex your "expos"...
Anyway, you should be able to get every worthwhile Wonder after t100, but really it's all about early science buildings. You really also should try to get a religion going ASAP. You still want faith for GS/GE at the end. (4 GS, 2 GE IMHO, one GE for Hubble, the other for the last spaceship part)
I recognize that this is a heck of a lot to think about, but you can probably pull off a t220 win this way. Of course, if you do it peaceful, you could pull off t200. Even the pitiful RA beakers on Chieftain help.
One thing to keep in mind... early city capture works best if people don't know you. You won't have any friends otherwise. And friends equal tons of cash. So, you have to adjust to the map. If you can completely eliminate two nearby civs before meeting anyone else, it's probably worth it. If not, you might be better off only taking cities in peace deals, because the free techs really are a drop in the bucket. Mostly I take the capitals because you can build a siege tower faster than a settler and I just can't play Assyria without taking a city. ;-)
Ultimately, the effectiveness of this is highly dependent on the map.
I'd be curious to hear Tommy's approach to get t190. It's probably a lot of worker-stealing, but otherwise much more peaceful.
), and a boatload of sub 260's
