Hard to win if I don't quick rush

[Martin79]

Hi,

I play prince level and I find myself to have very good games when I go for an early rush vs 1 or 2 neighbors (Immortals are good units for that strategy).

If I don't go for a quick rush, I will usually have big problems later in the game. Not enough cities, neighbors threatening my borders with a huge army, etc.

Am I the only one in that situation?

 

[Zanttu]

How about this strategy: Worker first in capital, then warriors/archers until at happy cap, then worker-settler-worker-worker-settler-worker-worker.... Continue until you have about 5-6 cities, then stop for a moment. Research Currency+Code of Laws, build/whip courthouses everywhere and start another REx phase. After this you should have 8-10 cities, which should be enough to win any game. If you're playing on higher levels, then settle your first 3-5 cities aggressively so you can block enough land for backfilling later.

This is simple strategy, and of course very flexible. For example if you are blocked by the AI before you get enough cities, you can always start a war. The original idea of growing the capital to the happy cap before any more workers/settlers was intended by Snaaty in the "Guide for higher difficulties on standard speeds and maps", and it can be found here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=248435

I see no reason why this wouldn't work on lower difficulties also.

 

[madscientist]

I agree 100% with what Zanttu said.

The only other comment is that if you have very close neighbors and cannot establish those cities, then you probably need to take one or two neighbors.

You do not have to rush all the time to win.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I can beat monarch without an early rush, although if the opportunity arises I do go for it.

Another good strategy is worker first in capital, whip settlers at pop 4 until you get 4 or 5 cities up and running, then build the pyramids. I usually play a specialist economy (unless I am financial, then I cottage spam a bit) so it works well for this. You can normally get the pyramids if you have forests to chop around the capital. Then I beeline literature (warlords expansion, I haven't got BtS) for the Great Library, and I normally race ahead in tech from then on. You can get a great engineer from the pyramids to build the library in 1 turn quite often as well (although I also run scientists in the capital, so may get a GS instead, I normally use him for an academy or lightbulbing philo).

If I am isolated I tend to cottage everywhere, fill the land with cities, and turtle up for space with an occasional hit and run attack for resources like aluminium or oil.

 

[Daedal]

Great thing about CIV is... there's so many ways to succeed. That said the early rush does make the rest of the game much easier if you can pull it off without hurting your early development too bad.

 

[CivMcNut]

Once I started reading articles about how easy it was to do effective rushes on the forums, that's been the bulk of what I do. The computer expands and techs too fast on these higher difficulty to be able to sit back and peacefully expand a lot of times. Sometimes I'll have 3 cities down and I'll be blocked off from expansion.

A good case for peaceful expansion would be if your nearest neighbor is a good distance away and not expanding in your direction, giving you the chance to pick the best spots around for your later cities.

Keep an eye on your power chart if you're going a peaceful route, fall too behind in power, the AI will start becoming really warlike towards you.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Don't forget a good bit of blocking with a well placed city and no open borders can do wonders for peaceful builder games. As long as the choke point is well defended you can backfill cities at your leisure. It depends on the map generator giving you a nice block point though.

 

[kcmarkwell]

You don't have to have a good early UU for a successful rush. Try massing about any type of unit vs humans and most units vs AI. For instance, try rushing your nearest human opponent with 10 / 20 warriors. Typically they are building their second settler and have one maybe two defenders tops. Kinda funny to see a warrior stack approaching your capital too. With the AI, archers even works with correct drill promotions and early enough.

 

[Molybdeus]

Worker raiding at the beginning of the game is almost effective as rushing, and is always an available option. (Whereas rushing usually requires resources.) If you steal your opponent's first worker, you can inhibit their expansion while accelerating your own, thus decreasing the need to rush them early.

 

[DragonHawk]

I learned something new everyday on this forum. My initial instinct is always for early rush using Axemen after 2/3 cities (Chariots if no access to bronze). My mindset is one of AI capital should be my 4th city, since it will always have better resource than my surroundings. I admit I only play Prince level so far.

So my question is, how do I curve this love I have for early conquests ???? Because everytime I see an AI capital, I would

 

[Silence101]

A successful early rush is the equivalent of lowering the difficulty level.

 

[absimiliard]

You can crash an economy by taking too many cities in a rush. You can crash an economy by REXing too many cities.

If you have the skill to recover from the crash you should do okay regardless. How you get the cities doesn't matter as much as knowing how to support them.

Just learn to REX faster and you'll be fine in non-rushing situations.

-abs

 

[Morgrad]

The thing about not rushing is that it means you don't have to rush.

Get to construction and build a pile of swords and cats. Or dark ages and use maces and trebuchets. Or rifles and cannons. Or whatever.

Just get a nice big pile of units and go stomp someone - you don't necessarily have to do it early, and if you play diplomacy correctly, it shouldn't be that hard at all to win against an established AI Civ.

 

[Silence101]

The thing about not rushing is that it means you don't have to rush.

Get to construction and build a pile of swords and cats. Or dark ages and use maces and trebuchets. Or rifles and cannons. Or whatever.

Just get a nice big pile of units and go stomp someone - you don't necessarily have to do it early, and if you play diplomacy correctly, it shouldn't be that hard at all to win against an established AI Civ.

I don't think that really falls under the definition of a 'rush'... falls more under Basic Warmongering 101.

 

[dragomaster]

Writing is an early tech, if you are planing to rex more than two citys or are planig to put them far away, even consider a junk city if it blooks of the AI. then beline writing and wipp librarys. those scientists are great early, even if you are planing to play a CE.

 

[Molybdeus]

You can crash an economy by taking too many cities in a rush. You can crash an economy by REXing too many cities.

If you conquer too much territory, leave some cities unprotected and let the barbarians have them. I once captured two holy cities (one with both Hinduism and Judaism) with a chariot rush as Mehmed, and then had to let Istanbul fall to barbarians. But it was worth it in the end, because it was easy to coast to victory after that.

In fact that is the principal reason I don't like early rushes. If it doesn't work for some reason -perhaps your opponent built spearmen to counter your chariots while you weren't looking- then you have probably lost. If it does work well you have probably essentially won the game in 2,000 BC.

 

[humbe]

Hi,
I play prince level and I find myself to have very good games when I go for an early rush vs 1 or 2 neighbors (Immortals are good units for that strategy).

If I don't go for a quick rush, I will usually have big problems later in the game. Not enough cities, neighbors threatening my borders with a huge army, etc.

Am I the only one in that situation?

If you play lots of AIs, more than the default for the map size, you might need to fight them early, or explore other islands/continents early in order to get a big enough chunk of land.

Early war works with any leader. Some has a bonus yes, but none which are critical.

I'm usually playing monarch or emperor. I like to play maps with islands or at least many continents, and with lots of AI players. Consequently, there is seldom much free space to grab. If I start to get worker and then get to happy cap before producing settlers there might not be space to build a single decent city extra.

I often start with a worker, unless I don't know any useful improvement techs to start with and it takes longer time to research one than to build the worker. I start pushing out settler as soon as I've gotten to use the tiles with lots of food/hammers. (Like fish/crab/cattle tiles etc). As you use extra food to build settlers too, getting to use another 3 resource tile (food + hammers = 3), does not increase the settler speed a lot. Using another 2 resource tile won't increase settler speed at all. I usually end up with one or if I'm lucky, two such resources within the fat cross in my capitol.

So I basically try to push out the first settler as soon as I can without sacrificing too much later production. Using this strategy I might be able to steal one other good city site. If I'm very lucky, use it to cut the AI off so I can get a few more, or if not, I fill in a couple of non-ideal cities to secure resources and to get some land inside my culture boundaries.

When playing many AIs some of the AIs will war each other and gain extra land. Some will be lucky and have land to grab uncontested. I need to grab a decent share to stand a chance later. So either i have to try and steal some land fairly early, or I'll have to be quick to get boats to explore uncharted territories that I can take advantage of before the AI finds them.