Emperor Giulio
King
I am looking to improve my strategy while playing as the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar. I like to utilize Julius Caesar’s imperialistic and organized abilities. Below is an outline of my usual order of business.
1.Establish 4 core cities. (construct: monuments, and barracks) (secure a source of iron) (develop the city land plots with 4 workers) (Fortify cities with 1 combat I trained praetorian each)
2.Find a state religion and spread in all cities. ( use organized religion civic)
3.Build an army of 10-15 praetorians mostly trained with city raider I. Declare war on weaker civilizations, if complete take over is unattainable, I strive to at least take their capitols and/or some core cites. Consolidate power and develop newly conquered cites, (build monuments, and courthouses) (fortify with strong defender units) (spread state religion) (build forbidden palace in a conquered capitol)
4.Normalize the economy construct courthouses in all cities; great prophets can construct special holy building, in turn generating needed wealth.
This strategy is effective up until this point. Here is where I find myself technologically backward from other civilizations, especially ones living on the other side of the globe. I figure building libraries would remedy this problem, but it’s hard to throw that into the mix while trying to do these other important things.
My usual tech tree progression is: Bronze working, Iron working, Roads, Meditation, Priesthood, Writing, and I usually use the free tech from the Oracle to find Code of Laws which gives me Confucianism, (usually my state religion). From here I work towards monotheism so I can utilize the organized religion civic.
What would you suggest I do to improve this system?
Thanks,
UPDATE – 8/11/09
This is what I have done to refine my tactics. I no longer have a mad rush to find Confucianism, now I just conquer a holy city from a weaker civilization and make it my state religion. Usually the founders of religions at early points of the game are easy targets because they tend to not spend too much time on their military. Second, I have taken much consideration on cottage spamming, like so many of you have advised. Cottage spamming has helped my economy, in turn helped my research funding to keep me more or less on the same technological wave length as my rivals. Once I have discovered code of laws, I still keep the slavery civic, so I can whip the courthouses, especially effective in conquered cities. I usually keep slavery to whip the essential, maybe even my libraries, depending if I could just utilize forests to chop rush them. Next after establishing a forbidden palace in a conquered capitol and applying the Caste system civic, I like to set as many merchants as I can in the conquered cities while avoiding starvation.
Right now I am in a great game where these new methods have been allowing me in the medieval era to wage war with a powerful army of well trained mace men and battle hardened praetorians (slowly being upgraded to mace men with the gold from the spoils of war) and substantial amount of catapults and trebuchets.
Allow me to back track,
I established my 4 core cities, and then I took out my closest neighbor with a state religion, Byzantium. After conquering their holy city, I adopted Buddhism (ironically) and took their capitol, their remaining cities fell easily. Now I have the unfriendly Arab Hindus to the south. I fortified my border cities there heavily and built the Chichen Itza for extra defense. They will be dealt with as soon as I achieve my technological advantage further, which I believe will happen without a doubt because I have more land and I am developing my cities at a good rate. Their protective trait will count for nothing when I march on them with a scientifically superior force. Currently my powerful medieval army is conquering Portugal to the west, the enemy is ready to capitulate, but I am going to completely usurp them. My civilization combined with 2 conquered ones, the Arabs won’t stand a chance, and once I absorb them, neither will the rest of the world.
8/13/09
I actually had a change in direction after I conquered the Portuguese. Instead of training another massive army to conquer the Arabs to the south, I had a revolutions and became a free state, by choosing the civics; Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation, Environmentalism, and Free Religion. By this point I had encountered The USA and China, both of whom are pleased towards me and with each other. We also have trade agreements and exchange map information. To the south of them, are the Aztecs who are hostile toward all of us, however, they are secluded, small, and weak.
Inspired by a another thread, I had built the globe theater and the national park in a barbarian city I had captured, which is surrounded almost entirely by jungle and forests. I had sent my workers to preserve all of them. This combined with environmentalism; I can imagine it would be an interesting place to live. Also, I hope this will help prevent global warming. (Question: If I preserve forest, or develop any land for that matter (i.e. water mills, workshops, mines, water mills), outside of a city radius, but within my borders, is it still producing anything beneficial for my civilization? Or is it pointless?)
I currently have a cautious relationship with Saladin, whether or not I decide to attack will be based on entirely how well he does…
1.Establish 4 core cities. (construct: monuments, and barracks) (secure a source of iron) (develop the city land plots with 4 workers) (Fortify cities with 1 combat I trained praetorian each)
2.Find a state religion and spread in all cities. ( use organized religion civic)
3.Build an army of 10-15 praetorians mostly trained with city raider I. Declare war on weaker civilizations, if complete take over is unattainable, I strive to at least take their capitols and/or some core cites. Consolidate power and develop newly conquered cites, (build monuments, and courthouses) (fortify with strong defender units) (spread state religion) (build forbidden palace in a conquered capitol)
4.Normalize the economy construct courthouses in all cities; great prophets can construct special holy building, in turn generating needed wealth.
This strategy is effective up until this point. Here is where I find myself technologically backward from other civilizations, especially ones living on the other side of the globe. I figure building libraries would remedy this problem, but it’s hard to throw that into the mix while trying to do these other important things.
My usual tech tree progression is: Bronze working, Iron working, Roads, Meditation, Priesthood, Writing, and I usually use the free tech from the Oracle to find Code of Laws which gives me Confucianism, (usually my state religion). From here I work towards monotheism so I can utilize the organized religion civic.
What would you suggest I do to improve this system?
Thanks,
UPDATE – 8/11/09
This is what I have done to refine my tactics. I no longer have a mad rush to find Confucianism, now I just conquer a holy city from a weaker civilization and make it my state religion. Usually the founders of religions at early points of the game are easy targets because they tend to not spend too much time on their military. Second, I have taken much consideration on cottage spamming, like so many of you have advised. Cottage spamming has helped my economy, in turn helped my research funding to keep me more or less on the same technological wave length as my rivals. Once I have discovered code of laws, I still keep the slavery civic, so I can whip the courthouses, especially effective in conquered cities. I usually keep slavery to whip the essential, maybe even my libraries, depending if I could just utilize forests to chop rush them. Next after establishing a forbidden palace in a conquered capitol and applying the Caste system civic, I like to set as many merchants as I can in the conquered cities while avoiding starvation.
Right now I am in a great game where these new methods have been allowing me in the medieval era to wage war with a powerful army of well trained mace men and battle hardened praetorians (slowly being upgraded to mace men with the gold from the spoils of war) and substantial amount of catapults and trebuchets.
Allow me to back track,
I established my 4 core cities, and then I took out my closest neighbor with a state religion, Byzantium. After conquering their holy city, I adopted Buddhism (ironically) and took their capitol, their remaining cities fell easily. Now I have the unfriendly Arab Hindus to the south. I fortified my border cities there heavily and built the Chichen Itza for extra defense. They will be dealt with as soon as I achieve my technological advantage further, which I believe will happen without a doubt because I have more land and I am developing my cities at a good rate. Their protective trait will count for nothing when I march on them with a scientifically superior force. Currently my powerful medieval army is conquering Portugal to the west, the enemy is ready to capitulate, but I am going to completely usurp them. My civilization combined with 2 conquered ones, the Arabs won’t stand a chance, and once I absorb them, neither will the rest of the world.
8/13/09
I actually had a change in direction after I conquered the Portuguese. Instead of training another massive army to conquer the Arabs to the south, I had a revolutions and became a free state, by choosing the civics; Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation, Environmentalism, and Free Religion. By this point I had encountered The USA and China, both of whom are pleased towards me and with each other. We also have trade agreements and exchange map information. To the south of them, are the Aztecs who are hostile toward all of us, however, they are secluded, small, and weak.
Inspired by a another thread, I had built the globe theater and the national park in a barbarian city I had captured, which is surrounded almost entirely by jungle and forests. I had sent my workers to preserve all of them. This combined with environmentalism; I can imagine it would be an interesting place to live. Also, I hope this will help prevent global warming. (Question: If I preserve forest, or develop any land for that matter (i.e. water mills, workshops, mines, water mills), outside of a city radius, but within my borders, is it still producing anything beneficial for my civilization? Or is it pointless?)
I currently have a cautious relationship with Saladin, whether or not I decide to attack will be based on entirely how well he does…
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