Great Lighthouse Tactic

sw99

Random Entity
Joined
Jul 7, 2001
Messages
129
Location
Derby, England
I stumbled across this tactic pretty much by accident and i've now used it for the last three games with much success.

I tend to be a fairly peaceful player, emphasising culture and tech and pretty much building all the improvements. I don't usually start aggressive wars till cavalry or at least knights depending on what CSU I have so an early/mid game boost is quite handy.

I'm usually on a medium sized continent with 2 or 3 other powers and at around 500ad or so it's pretty much deadlocked. We're all even in power, landmass and tech, and there it would stagnate for the forseeable future. Until i discovered this nice little strategy.

Build the great lighthouse! In the past two versions of civ i never ever bothered with it. But it is soo much more useful now.

With the GL and two or three galleys you can reach the other civs who will be trapped on their continent/islands and explore the whole world before anyone else can leave their coastlines.

I have been able to offer my world maps to the AI for huge amounts of tech/money/resources/luxuries etc. And even better, whilst my galleys are mopping up the last black areas on the map, i can keep selling these maps every two or three turns. It doesn't take long before they are all bankrupt and have nothing to offer me.

With such a domination over the seas before the AI can build caravels or frigate and reach each other, I withhold communications from to the other AI's and keep them firmly under me.

Absolutely indispensable for my games now :D
 
This is quite a handy approach.
I use it myself, and indeed it does give me a big advantage in trade.
Another advantage that i like is that i get better info on the other civs, especially after opening an embassy everywhere..
Aside from that, i believe that the great library only gives you techs from that are owned by any 2 civs _you know_
So it's indispensible when using the great library to keep up with science on an archipelago map.
Besides that, on an archipelago map, it's one of the biggest wonders anyway.

-Ranges
 
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