Help wanted on Marathon speed

[D Pedro II]

Hello everybody,

This is my very first thread, but I've been a longtime reader of this forum and the strategies discussed here helped to improve my gameplay quite a lot. I play BtS on Noble, with Large/Huge maps, Marathon speed, offline.

I open this discussion, because since Civ IV vanilla, I couldn't win a game trailing a warmonger way (although I always apreciated to build wonders, I am a warmonger at heart). Having a critic thought over my last games I'm afraid that the reasons may be the following:

a. inadequate execution of axe rush: I have read many ideas posted here defining the general guidelines to make a successful axe rush. The point is that by doing this on marathon I found that chop rush is not that quick, as it takes 9 turns to chop a forested tile. Further, the chop helps to rush 1 unit and a "half" most of the times, considering that you can only rush 90 H per tile maximum and these tiles are scarce. When slavery becomes available, it takes, depending on the city production, several turns to whip 1 population. My questions: does anybody get a large enough army to perform an axe rush on marathon, before the cultural defenses become too high? If you do, how do you get new units quickly, since whipping can not be used that often?

b. focusing on the wrong techs after the axe rush: after Bronze Working, I don't build andy wonders or get an religion at all, I rather procceed to Iron Working if necessary or go for Pottery to cottage my lands if I'm on warmonger mode. What do you do after Bronze Working?

c. bad management of economy: on my builder mode, in some past games, I tasted the power of a Cottage Spam. But I'm not quite sure about the best approch for the warmonger: should I cottage everything after the axe rush and forget about the specialists or should I try to farm the cities I keep to assign specialists ? If you use specialists, which kind do you focus on: scientists or merchants? I'm asking this because during Classical and Middle Ages my science slider goes deep on the red and I'm not quite sure about what to do to recover my economy in a way that will enable me to make more war, in other word, in a way that I may recover my research so that I can build units as updated as the AI. Does anybody out there was successful in using espionage to reach the the AI after the Middle Ages? Please tell us your secret!

I am quite aware that the answer to many of my questions is: it depends, because of the large spectrum of possibilities in BtS. But since I repeatedly experience similar problems, I supposed I might be committing a few errors. So I want an external opinion to improve my gameplay or choosing another approach.

I will post my last game with Ragnar. I am in the 1400s, I crushed the Celts with the axe rush, I also engaged wars with the other two AIs, but although as a warmonger, I'm not quite sure if I should have done it...yet! I also don't have longbows and I'm not even closer to make contact with the AIs on other continents. Please take part in the discussion and criticize my game to help me get over Noble at long last!

D Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil


"By watching the nullities prevail in such a way, by watching the dishonor prosper in such a way, by watching the injustice grow in such a way, by watching the power exaggerate in the hands of the evil ones, the man gets to lose heart from virtue, to laugh about the honor, to be ashamed of being honest" - Ruy Barbosa

 

[madscientist]

Welcome to the forum.

I have been a consistent Marathon speed/huge map player since the first patch of CIV IV Vanilla. I only recently started using large maps only because my computer is agonizingly slow during the late game.

My level of play is Prince at Warlords, Monarch at BTS. I can win rarely at Monarch warlords, emporer BTS.

Some advice:

1) Winning militarily through Conquest or Domination is a very grueling and long experience on marathon speed/huge maps. To be honest your not going to "Rush" the world even with limitless Prats, it's too big. Fully expect yourself to head into the tank era before you can win.
2) Axe-rush is not that hard, you just need alot. Yes we chop slower, whipping is not as efficient, but the AI build and trech correspondingly. I am not tooting my own horn, but check out my Sword/Axe rush in the RPC Ghengis Kahn game. I did it against a protective AI quickly while only chopping the units from the capital, no whip. You use the whip in marathon speed to quick create a needed defensive unit. I am nowhere as good as alot of posters i doing this, so it can be done.
3) Watch the economy. Do not over expand, get Code or laws and currency early. Use scientist specialists for research if need be.
4) Diplomacy. Get others involved in your wars, don't be afraid of offering techs to get an ally.
5) Cottaging depends on the situation. If I need commerce I cottage. If I have floodplains I cottage them. Get enough food to the happy cap, and go from there.

One final note on huge/marathon military wins, they are hard to get. I got only one Conquest victory (and it was glorious!!!), domination I get enough to be respectable (my only emperor BTS win was domination), but mostly I get a backdoor UN diplomatic win. I basically dominate world population but often way short of the land criteria. I then simply vote myself victory, no shame in that.

I'll try to take a look at your game

 

[madscientist]

Some Comments on your Ragnar game.

1) Your cities look pretty good to me.

2) Youe were able to take out Boudica pretty fast, good deal.

3) Your problem seams to be how you addressed the 2 protective AIs.
A:Sitting Bull is notorious for teching slowly, while the Korean techs very well.
B: You declared war on Sitting Bull three times, left him half alive while taking some of his cities that are far away while letting closer ones stay native American. That's too much maintenance. Deal with the cities closest to your borders (not all need to be kept), expand geometrically.
C: You attacked Wang and his highly promoted longbows with cats/swords. Not impossible, but an uphill battle. Also you left a hal dead but dangerous Sitting BUll arround. You probably should have gotten civil service and machinery real fast to get those Beserkers.
D: You have alot of troop in cities not near battle. Bring all the drunken viking scum into war!!! If some die, so be it, less maintenance costs.

Some simple advice, you are not far away

Fewer soldiers and mor powerful attacks
Finish a foe off before attacking another, at least until you get a good feel for winning wars consistantly.
Attack closest cities first, don't drive on the capital, capture it then leave the border cities.

I think your managing the individual cities fine, it's the overall empire that needs to be cleaned up a bit.

 

[surdanis]

I love marathon and huge maps, but it's decidedly quite difficult to destroy the enemy on a huge map...

There is one possible trick... I love using terra maps to simulate the conquest of the New World, so you might have an easier time conquering the world. The strategy I used on noble difficulty with a terra map was a variation of the famous "Quechua Rush". If you don't know, this is possibly the best beginning unit for conquest because of its high rating against archers, allowing you to build a large, highly effective army until you research beyond Iron Working.

This is where you play as the Incans and build an army as quickly as you can to destroy the enemy. My variation relies somewhat on the map type being terra since all your enemy civs will be on the same continent, making it quite convenient to dispatch them all--or be dispatched, depending on how you look at it. If you attempted to play a terra game on noble the long way, without ever trying to go to war, it would be extremly difficult, and your survival would depend on your proximity to the warmongering nations next to you! As such, a noble game on a terra map requires that you be aggressive: that said, one should display this aggressiveness in a punctuated form or in a very extreme one. Finding the former strategy out of my reach in most games, I opted for the more extreme solution: Total outright conquest as fast as possible!

Your first objective is to build your city immediately on the first turn. You simply cannot waste precious time to allow your enemies to grow. You want to be sure that your civ is also in the middle of the continent to ensure that you can conquer it easier. Starting on the coast is a dead giveaway that you didn't spawn in the middle, so you will have to regenerate the map. Ideally, you should build on a hill to get more hammers to start building your Quechua army.

Your second objective is to find your nearest civ, and dispatch it with your birth unit, the almighty Quechua in the "mini rush". As you may well know, the enemy AI immediately sends his first unit on exploration, regardless of type (warrior or scout), thus leaving his city undefended for a minimum of 9 turns (depending on where he builds his city) up to 19 turns. You can cheat and reveal the map to plot your Quechua's route if you're so inclined (the game doesn't record this ever!), or you can muck about. If you decide in your purist fashion to do the latter, you may pick off anywhere from 1 to 2 civs (the second one is usually nearby as well), depending on your luck in where you are spawned on the continent and where the AI decides to settle (determining warrior build times). You may get lucky and find a village that spawns another warrior to help your initial conquest mini rush. If you're really lucky, you can expect to take out 3 to 4 civs total in the mini rush. Assuming you play with max 18 civs, you've now just pared down the competition in under 20 turns!

As for tech, you need to rush to Bronze Working for Axemen, chop and whip power and then as quickly as possible you need Horseback Riding for the Horse Archers. Masonry may never be achievable--which you need to build the Great Wall to defend against barbarians, but you CAN just capture the city that makes it. If you rush effectively, you may never need to defend against barbarians at all since they won't pop up in time by the time you capture the wonder.

Your focus should be to build as many units as possible and parade around the continent with dozen stacks of Quechua. Raze any city that isn't developed and only capture ones that are 4 to 5 plus or are strategic in their proximity to the enemies further away from your base. Do not build your own cities: capture them. Building settlers steals time away from building units, which you want to constantly be doing. Once you own several cities, you can start building barracks to up the ante.

Only start wars you know you can win quickly and definitively, so make sure you bring a large army to tear the civ down. Fight that civ through to completion until he's wiped out--capitulation simply won't be available until much later in the game after you've killed everyone! Constantly pillage the countryside to keep your treasury high... because you'll quickly be in the red and slow down to a grinding halt in tech with this strategy. Try to take out the high scorers first if they are close enough so they don't get a tech lead on you.

If done correctly, your enemies won't know what hit them. It's quite effective, but frankly, leaves a kind of empty feeling because you can easily conquer the world before you get into the AD years, leaving only barbarians to mop up in the aftergame. At that point, you can slowly build your cities into a network and expand and experience a very easy game with no fierce competion--since the barbarans advance slowly and can't even enter your land borders on the home continent due the Great Wall!

This is strategy is for the craziest of warmongers only. I haven't attempted it on anything but Noble...

 

[surdanis]

BTW, one strategy I like is rushing the Oracle to get a free tech after Bronze Working. So, should be Mysticism-->Meditation-->Priesthood.

 

[xanadux]

I love marathon and huge maps, but it's decidedly quite difficult to destroy the enemy on a huge map...

There is one possible trick... I love using terra maps to simulate the conquest of the New World, so you might have an easier time conquering the world. The strategy I used on noble difficulty with a terra map was a variation of the famous "Quechua Rush". If you don't know, this is possibly the best beginning unit for conquest because of its high rating against archers, allowing you to build a large, highly effective army until you research beyond Iron Working.

This is where you play as the Incans and build an army as quickly as you can to destroy the enemy. My variation relies somewhat on the map type being terra since all your enemy civs will be on the same continent, making it quite convenient to dispatch them all--or be dispatched, depending on how you look at it. If you attempted to play a terra game on noble the long way, without ever trying to go to war, it would be extremly difficult, and your survival would depend on your proximity to the warmongering nations next to you! As such, a noble game on a terra map requires that you be aggressive: that said, one should display this aggressiveness in a punctuated form or in a very extreme one. Finding the former strategy out of my reach in most games, I opted for the more extreme solution: Total outright conquest as fast as possible!

Your first objective is to build your city immediately on the first turn. You simply cannot waste precious time to allow your enemies to grow. You want to be sure that your civ is also in the middle of the continent to ensure that you can conquer it easier. Starting on the coast is a dead giveaway that you didn't spawn in the middle, so you will have to regenerate the map. Ideally, you should build on a hill to get more hammers to start building your Quechua army.

Your second objective is to find your nearest civ, and dispatch it with your birth unit, the almighty Quechua in the "mini rush". As you may well know, the enemy AI immediately sends his first unit on exploration, regardless of type (warrior or scout), thus leaving his city undefended for a minimum of 9 turns (depending on where he builds his city) up to 19 turns. You can cheat and reveal the map to plot your Quechua's route if you're so inclined (the game doesn't record this ever!), or you can muck about. If you decide in your purist fashion to do the latter, you may pick off anywhere from 1 to 2 civs (the second one is usually nearby as well), depending on your luck in where you are spawned on the continent and where the AI decides to settle (determining warrior build times). You may get lucky and find a village that spawns another warrior to help your initial conquest mini rush. If you're really lucky, you can expect to take out 3 to 4 civs total in the mini rush. Assuming you play with max 18 civs, you've now just pared down the competition in under 20 turns!

As for tech, you need to rush to Bronze Working for Axemen, chop and whip power and then as quickly as possible you need Horseback Riding for the Horse Archers. Masonry may never be achievable--which you need to build the Great Wall to defend against barbarians, but you CAN just capture the city that makes it. If you rush effectively, you may never need to defend against barbarians at all since they won't pop up in time by the time you capture the wonder.

Your focus should be to build as many units as possible and parade around the continent with dozen stacks of Quechua. Raze any city that isn't developed and only capture ones that are 4 to 5 plus or are strategic in their proximity to the enemies further away from your base. Do not build your own cities: capture them. Building settlers steals time away from building units, which you want to constantly be doing. Once you own several cities, you can start building barracks to up the ante.

Only start wars you know you can win quickly and definitively, so make sure you bring a large army to tear the civ down. Fight that civ through to completion until he's wiped out--capitulation simply won't be available until much later in the game after you've killed everyone! Constantly pillage the countryside to keep your treasury high... because you'll quickly be in the red and slow down to a grinding halt in tech with this strategy. Try to take out the high scorers first if they are close enough so they don't get a tech lead on you.

If done correctly, your enemies won't know what hit them. It's quite effective, but frankly, leaves a kind of empty feeling because you can easily conquer the world before you get into the AD years, leaving only barbarians to mop up in the aftergame. At that point, you can slowly build your cities into a network and expand and experience a very easy game with no fierce competion--since the barbarans advance slowly and can't even enter your land borders on the home continent due the Great Wall!

This is strategy is for the craziest of warmongers only. I haven't attempted it on anything but Noble...

Why not just use world builder, place your capital where you want it, and delete whichever civs you think you would probably have killed.

 

[D Pedro II]

Thank you for the replies!

I'll try to follow the suggestions of madscientists to recover my economy in my current game and I like the Queucha rush idea, I've already read something about it in this forum somewhere.

Even so, I used to appreciate the romans as a killing machine, but I don't at which extent the changes on the leaders traits have affected them and if it's worth to give a try with them. I am quite aware that I have much to improve in my future war strategy, but my current concern is economic.

In my peaceful wonder builder games, perhaps because I chose the leaders with the right traits, I made it well enough. Though, I'm having a hard time to concilliate my economic growth with war, since my wars have the bad habit of lasting too long (I'll have to improve myself in this aspect as well).

I still have some questions: after Writing, do you usually stop cottaging and start assigning scientists and other specialists when available like mad or do you keep cottaging? Being a warmonger, during peace times, do you prioritize science and growth buildings, like libraries, granaries, harbors etc or do you prioritize money generating/saving buildings, like markets, banks, courthouses etc.? Also, do you build them normally or do you whip them? How often do you whip on a marathon game? During peace times, do you ever build World Wonders, being warmonger? As you discover new civs, do start wars ASAP or do you wait for better naval units (Transports!)?

Sorry, too many questions I know, but some advices on these matters would be most welcome.

 

[madscientist]

Thank you for the replies!

I'll try to follow the suggestions of madscientists to recover my economy in my current game and I like the Queucha rush idea, I've already read something about it in this forum somewhere.

Even so, I used to appreciate the romans as a killing machine, but I don't at which extent the changes on the leaders traits have affected them and if it's worth to give a try with them. I am quite aware that I have much to improve in my future war strategy, but my current concern is economic.

In my peaceful wonder builder games, perhaps because I chose the leaders with the right traits, I made it well enough. Though, I'm having a hard time to concilliate my economic growth with war, since my wars have the bad habit of lasting too long (I'll have to improve myself in this aspect as well).

I still have some questions: after Writing, do you usually stop cottaging and start assigning scientists and other specialists when available like mad or do you keep cottaging? Being a warmonger, during peace times, do you prioritize science and growth buildings, like libraries, granaries, harbors etc or do you prioritize money generating/saving buildings, like markets, banks, courthouses etc.? Also, do you build them normally or do you whip them? How often do you whip on a marathon game? During peace times, do you ever build World Wonders, being warmonger? As you discover new civs, do start wars ASAP or do you wait for better naval units (Transports!)?

Sorry, too many questions I know, but some advices on these matters would be most welcome.

Alot depends on traits of the leaders. Some suggestions on building for marathon speed.
1) Prioritize. I always build courthouses ASAP except for the capital (I'll get that one everntually but not a high priority. Graneries and libraries next. Markets if I have the time.
2) I will use the whip if there is an adequate amount of food to recover in a decent time, but usually after several turns of production. Remember whipping 5 population on a building versus 1 population on an axeman both cause 1 unhappy for 30 turns.
3) I still build during war, but defeintily have several cities building the horse units to get to the front fast.
4) I build appropriate wonders in war or peace, but usually in one city. And most often the capital. This accumulates the great person point in one place and increases the GP production speed. I also build the national epic in these cities and either oxford or ironworks depending on the need.
5) I do build at least markets in cities that have decent commerce, plus it gets me the extra merchant specialists without having to run caste system. A commerce city with a library and market is pretty flexible, move the sceince slider up and run 2 merchants, move the science slider down and run 2 scientists.
6) Banks and Grocers usually come later (after factories/plants)
except for shrined cities where I highly prioritize them.
7) I whip alot in the middle game when I capture new cities, here I whip theaters unless I am creative or in FR and there is a religion in the city. then I whip Courthouses, followed by barracks and libraries.
8) I stop whipping as soon as I get emancipation

Hope these help.