Great Wall backlash

[Dwarfskinner]

Greetings,

Longtime lurker here. This is such a great resource for this game that I've never really had to post, and I would really not have much to add anyways

So...full disclosure. I am a cheater. I habitually reload maps, reload saves...I've never played a game in which I've 'winged it'. If I percieve things are going bad for me, I'll restart. This brings me to my current game.....

I love the whole espionage angle, and have been experimenting with the GW. It suites my style of play as I feel I can make up for any tech disadvantage with spying. I decided to do a raging barbarian, hemisphere map, monarch, marathon, Charlemagne....figuring that it would be a walk-over. Wrong.

After several play throughs and numerous reloads, I always end up at war with my nearest neighbor Shaka, who must have popped alot of goodie huts for techs. And he always kicks my butt handily. Even with my huge advantage, it seems he misses the brunt of the barbarians, out REX's me and then comes out fighting.

So...this time I figured I would try to seal off my continent at a chokepoint to see if the barbs would behave. To this end, I have had to settle a long way from my civ center and without a road to connect them as of yet. My problem is that by the time I 'fill the voids' and connect the city, I'm running deficits, woefully behind in tech, and Shaka is only marginally weakened. When he comes calling I'm still not ready for a fight.

So is this strategy of far-casting a settler valid? I love my current map...if I could just rid the world of evil Shaka I think I can win this.

Thx in advance

 

[Silu]

Yes, settling a faraway city in order to block land for yourself is a viable and very commonly used tactic. Just be sure you don't gimp yourself with the maintenance, 15bpt-5g at 1000BC is usually not where you want to be.

That is kind of counterintuitive though with your barbs and GW - you've effectively blocked barbs on your playground from reaching Shaka and harassing him (I'm assuming he lives southwards).

 

[Dwarfskinner]

(I'm assuming he lives southwards).

He's to the east of me actually. My thought of blocking the continent was to route the barbs to him rather than the Maya on the southern continent.

 

[Sawney Bean]

I am a cheater ...if I could just rid the world of evil Shaka I think I can win this.

Thx in advance

Reload game, enter worldbuilder and delete Shaka's initial settler

Job done

 

[banson]

if your useing rageing barbs. build the gret wall first ting you can with your capital.. onc you cme plete it all h brb wil g to shaka any way nd leave you alone.

that will be more then enough to weaken him a bit more

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

if your useing rageing barbs. build the gret wall first ting you can with your capital.. onc you cme plete it all h brb wil g to shaka any way nd leave you alone.

that will be more then enough to weaken him a bit more

Actually I don't think the barbs really 'leave you alone' as much as they hang all over your borders. This can be bad if your in the habit of sending the settler out to the new city spot, but when I build it I tend to have more military units outside cleaning them up loading up on the experience.

 

[Ecori]

If Shaka is to the east then don't bother with the southern blocking city.

Do you have a worker in your capital? It looks to me like you have 0 improved tiles in your cities.

 

[KeloGBites]

Southern city is a waste, your protective..and imperialistic..with a GW! Build up defensive units, and workers. Then let Shaka attack you and suicide against your CG and Drill archers/longbows/xbows. You'll be popping a ton of GGs, settle those in your highest production city, build the HE (You will probably have exp 4 defenders with Shaka's huge stacks attacking), then once you have a dedicated military pump. Start attacking with Catapults/Trebs and Macemen/Swords, after you finish Shaka go after the Maya who will probably expanded a lot while your at war.

 

[Ian Kognitow]

It's hard to say without actually seeing the resource spread. In any case, it looks like you have loads of hut gold and eventually can build the rathaus. I'd say what would probably be your best course would be to whip out some more settlers and start laying down cottages.
I don't know your exact tech situation but while you may be going for espionage, if you have a 100% science slider and it's 54 turns to alphabet, you should probably tech other stuff first. You would likely be best off settling the first great spy anyway and then perhaps inflitrating with the 2nd - so you won't really need regular spies to steal techs anytime soon. If you build your own commerce base and first prioritize CoL to make the rathauses (with perhaps Iron Working and maybe HBR wedged in there to keep up with militarily tech), you will have a solid, large, sustainable empire around year 0. CoL is also a very good trading tech if others don't have it. *Then* do alphabet--and it should be close in time or even sooner than you're projecting to get it now--and you should either be able to easily backfill by trading or be ready to pump out the spies. With this approach, as a PRO civ, you shouldn't have any real problem with early invasion. After alphabet, just make sure you have Construction for catapults and Shaka will happily come to grief within your GW.

And once Shaka's army is broken, he's maybe the best AI to invade. You either have a big, rich territory to take over, or if the land isn't the best you can still vassalize him, he'll still go heavy production and pump out units, and if you gift him techs as appropriate you'll have a perfect pet warmonger.

 

[Dwarfskinner]

Wow!

Great help! I'm going to put these ideas to work. I think I'm going to start again at 4000, just cause I really got a kick out of beating the barb rush and watching them beat up against my city walls

This time I'll try not to be such a sissy and reload alot, if at all, and i'll let y'all know how it turns out

 

[capnvonbaron]

That blocker city looks like it could've waited, IMO. The GWall first thing seems a little silly to me. Also, how are you building the GWall? Are you chopping it? Whipping it? Hopefully both! You should be able to pump out some military, workers, and a couple of settlers and then chop/whip that Wall into existence in just a few turns if you do it right. You'll then have a lot better chance against the ol' Shakster b/c you can focus on military right after.

Also... axes do pretty well against impi. Some 'pult/axe stacks will usually put a hurtin on what Shaka typically throws at ya.

Also also... I hate Chuckles. His starting techs are horrendous and, well, I dislike the PRO trait too. My suggestion is use a different civ.

 

[Glouglou]

Hello,

I've played the GW+raging barbs many time and in general, it is equivalent to playing one or two level below ...

What is clear:
- the barbs won't hang around your area but converge to the nearest AI
- if I'm correct, the power rating is partially taken into account by the barbs when they choose their target: they will go after the weakest so if Chaka is powerfull he will less suffer from the barbs (but that needs to be confirmed by more expert players)
- if the AI is on a peninsula, he will suffer less from the barbs because they will only arrive from one side of their territory, it can make real difference between two AI with the raging barbs
- your blocking city is simply preventing them to pass so they cannot run to Chaka and it makes it easier for him

But basically, after you have built the GW, you should grow your capital as much as possible and then use it as a settler/worker pump to catch all the best city sites ...
Chaka should not be a problem before 0Jc ... or your doing something wrong ... but a closer look at your capital would be needed ...

By the way, researching Alphabet is useless as you should be way ahead in techs ... Your tech priority should be:
Priesthood for Oracle (you should not miss it in this configuration) and opening Code of Laws
Potery for cottages
and then Code of Laws (especially for the rathaus) and currency

All this for supporting intensive rexing ...

Also, do not fogbust too much as this will allow for more barbs poping and running to the AI ...

 

[Dwarfskinner]

I feel quite foolish here as I made a few errors in my original post.

1. It's not Shaka to the east, it's Mansu Mensa and he has a huge tech lead, maya and Babylon to the south
2. I have the game set at no trading techs that you got from trade
3. I went for Buddism and got it

So I did restart last night and nixed the religion in favor of getting stone and roads. Popped archery and mining from huts and figured...rockin it

Made archer, worker,walls....started GW and the hoard arrived as soon as I hooked up my quarry. It seems to me that they showed up much earlier that usual. And although my city is safe, i've really screwed my production as my workers can't chop.

I think the game knows I cheat and punishes me

I'm gonna try it again though as I just love the prospects of this map.

 

[Ian Kognitow]

Also... axes do pretty well against impi. Some 'pult/axe stacks will usually put a hurtin on what Shaka typically throws at ya.

Just having a half-dozen cats that one is freely willing to lose as fodder, virtually any invading AI stack pre-gunpowder can likely be annihilated so long as it has to journey through some cultural-territory before arriving at the gates of any city. Particularly with GW and the opportunity to very quickly promote a Great Medic, having fool warmongers like Shaka around should be considered a boon. And particularly with the very top warmongers like Shaka (or Monty/Genghis), even if his stack is very quickly crippled beyond the capacity to kill a single city-unit, unless he had sprung from his own border city to easily retreat to, the AI will neither even attempt to retreat--often not even to a patch of forest that might deter you from finishing them off--or allow peace (except perhaps at the cost of *you* turning over whole cities) but either completely commit suicide against a city or sit there bleeding/drooling whilst your units very quickly get back to full strength.
Anyway, with rare exception, far better for any of the warmongers to set their sights on *you* first rather than having them absorb a bunch of territory/vassals first.

 

[Glouglou]

I feel quite foolish here as I made a few errors in my original post.

1. It's not Shaka to the east, it's Mansu Mensa and he has a huge tech lead, maya and Babylon to the south
2. I have the game set at no trading techs that you got from trade
3. I went for Buddism and got it

So I did restart last night and nixed the religion in favor of getting stone and roads. Popped archery and mining from huts and figured...rockin it

Made archer, worker,walls....started GW and the hoard arrived as soon as I hooked up my quarry. It seems to me that they showed up much earlier that usual. And although my city is safe, i've really screwed my production as my workers can't chop.

I think the game knows I cheat and punishes me

I'm gonna try it again though as I just love the prospects of this map.

What speed is it?
Why do you build wall?

Your tech order shall be:
Masonry>mining>BW at worst you can go monotheism for a religion or Code of law so Buddhism can be avoided

You're build order shall avoided all unnecessary built:
depending on what you can do in your first city, a worker first can be the way, but mysticism and hunting does not allow much ... the rest of your build shall only be exploring units (warriors).

 

[0range]

I play with barbarians off, so I never make the Great Wall.

 

[banson]

play with it on nd make it. youll easily see how much pain they do.. in my last game it fulluled all barbs to ghandi while he was fighting monty. kept him at one city and well after i beet monty to a pulp , i felt sorry for him and gave him a settler wich he grew from.

 

[banson]

by the time i do make gwi generaly have 3 barbs in my zone so they get pushed out when it built.

 

[DarkFyre99]

So...full disclosure. I am a cheater. I habitually reload maps, reload saves...I've never played a game in which I've 'winged it'. If I percieve things are going bad for me, I'll restart. This brings me to my current game.....

Eh... to each their own. If you're playing alone, not competing against anyone, and not hacking the game, then no matter what you do, you're not "cheating." You're having fun.

I'm playing a game right now where I gave myself a "dragon" (bomber) in 4000 BCE, just for fun. Of course, I'm not going to brag about the fact that I've met all the other Civs on three different continents, and circumnavigated the globe by 1000 BCE, because once I had an open border agreement, I could just blindly right-click the darkness until I managed to click a city, and then recon, rinse, and repeat my way across the globe. And if I win the game, I'm not going to brag... because I got a "dragon" and they don't.

But I'm having fun so far. Primarily because it's a different game experience than playing it normal.

As long as you're having fun, and not competing against another human being, anything you do with the game, using the tools provided, isn't cheating. Just don't expect everyone to be impressed by your L33T C1V PL4Y1N 5KI11Z.

I love the whole espionage angle, and have been experimenting with the GW. It suites my style of play as I feel I can make up for any tech disadvantage with spying. I decided to do a raging barbarian, hemisphere map, monarch, marathon, Charlemagne....figuring that it would be a walk-over. Wrong.

You chose your leader??? You cheater! Don't you know you're supposed to play with everything chosen at random?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm assuming you chose those settings with the idea of getting the Great Wall, and letting the barbarians harrass your enemies. I can see why you guessed wrong. As I understand it, the bonus the AIs get against barbarians are inversely proportional to the bonus you get against them. So the higher the game level, the more bonuses they get agaisnt them, so raging barbarians are pretty much free XP for the AIs... and they start with more units, and more powerful units, than you do anyways.

After several play throughs and numerous reloads, I always end up at war with my nearest neighbor Shaka, who must have popped alot of goodie huts for techs. And he always kicks my butt handily. Even with my huge advantage, it seems he misses the brunt of the barbarians, out REX's me and then comes out fighting.

There is one very good rule for CIV: land is power. The hammers you invested towards the Great Wall could've been spent on Settlers, so that you could get more land, more citizens to work the land, more workers to improve the land, more armies to defend your land, etc...

So...this time I figured I would try to seal off my continent at a chokepoint to see if the barbs would behave. To this end, I have had to settle a long way from my civ center and without a road to connect them as of yet. My problem is that by the time I 'fill the voids' and connect the city, I'm running deficits, woefully behind in tech, and Shaka is only marginally weakened. When he comes calling I'm still not ready for a fight.

My usual strategy in the early game, when happiness is low, and maintenance is high, is to work as many improved resource tiles as possible, with as few cities as possible, that are as close to my capital as possible. Settling far away like that, just to create a choke point, pretty much violates all three principles. I would only settle that far away early in the game if there was something good over there, like a vital strategic resource, is the only thing that IMO would justify the high maintenance costs that city would impose upon my empire.

So is this strategy of far-casting a settler valid? I love my current map...if I could just rid the world of evil Shaka I think I can win this.

Thx in advance

I think you're initial premise, that raging barbs would inconvenience the AI in any way, is flawed.

edit: going for an early religion usually isn't a good idea at any level higher than prince. It's just not worth the investment in early beakers. You're better off researching a military tech like bronze working or animal handling. If you still want to build the Great Wall, build it with your second city, and let your capital spam settlers, city defenders, and workers. And Mansa Musa is a tech whore... no wonder he has the edge every time.

 

[CouNterOrdeR]

I say go for a religion if you want. I play monarch and do so for RP purposes and it really isnt that hard to get, dont know why people hate it so much. Just a different style of play which is nice and fun sometimes. I really dont like that map. I cant stand desert and half that map so far is desert.
Raging barbs and rushing GW isnt even a game. I dont agree with the people who said raging barbs doesnt hurt the AI. Those barbs will severely slow alot of AIs down and likely kill 1 or 2.

I smell cheese....