Hiawatha the Magnificent - domination strategy

[Ringo Kid]

This is my strategy for an easy Monarch or Emperor level win with the Iroquois on a small pangea map. Culture flips are turned off. If you like to play with flips on to increase the difficulty a bit, it will slow you down but not stop you from winning.

First thing to do is to research the wheel and see if you have horses close to your starting location. Obviously you want to settle a town there and grab them. Next research goal is Horseback Riding , then Monarchy. Switch govs to Monarchy. Then lower the science slider and increase the luxury to keep all your citizens producing those mounted warriors. You can lower the science to zero if you like. When I get to the point I have lots of extra cash, I rush more Mounted Warriors.

Capital builds settlers and explorers, other core cities build a barracks and a worker and Mounted Warriors. Workers build mines everywhere - as much shield production as you can get to pump out Mounted Warriors.

When you have the tech, the capital builds Temple of Artemis. (Temple in Every City ) Since the goal for this strat is domination, this is the wonder you want - not for the temples themselves, but for the free real estate the temples give you. You want to own 66 per cent of the world asap.

Dont build anything else. You dont need them for this strategy.

Once you build the Wonder, the capital switches back to building settlers. If your capital is weak on food pick your strongest food city and build settlers from that one and have your capital build more mounted warriors.

Corrupt captured cities build settlers too.

Use the settlers to build cities that fill in spaces in your cultural borders, so you have no gaps.

Use the Mounted Warriors to capture enemy cities as rapidly as possible.
Stacks of about five to ten of them will take a city easily, since the defenders will only be spearmen or pikes at best.

Have a large crew of road building slaves following the Mounted Warriors as they advance, so your replacements arrive faster and the luxuries get connected. That way you dont need garrisons anywhere but along your borders- so you can use all or almost all your Mounted Warriors on the attack.
The luxs, Monarchy govt and lux slider will keep everybody happy in your productive cities. If you need a unit or two in your largest most productive cities to keep everyone happy, thats okay too.

Eliminate the other civs one by one until you hit the magic 66 percent.

You should get there about 600-800 AD with a score of 6,000 or more. My best finish, from a start with two food bonuses and horses at the capital ended at 300 AD with a score over 10,000.

In that game I had just three other civs, and rushed builds almost every turn once I switched to monarchy to speed up the game as much as possible.



History will remember you as "Hiawatha the Magnificent ! "

 

[darski]

This is an interesting strategy. I might just give it a try just because I don''t usually choose the Iros but need to expand my horizons a bit.

I am not sure I can be so single-minded in my playing though.

 

[NickyH]

Sounds like a quick game and a lot of fun! The Mounted Warriors can really own the ancient age, and they are horribly cheap to build, considering they have an attack value of 3 and only cost 30 shields.

When you have the tech, the capital builds Temple of Artemis. (Temple in Every City ) Since the goal for this strat is domination, this is the wonder you want - not for the temples themselves, but for the free real estate the temples give you. You want to own 66 per cent of the world asap.

I've never thought of Temple of Artemis as worth the cost in shields, but with this kind of strategy it would be great. Immediate culture in all the cities you conquer would compensate for the louse city spacing the AI uses, and it would prevent culture flips to a certain degree. I'd definitely keep culture flips turned on for the extra challenge, since ToA would get you a decent culture from all those temples in the cities you conquer. It even helps a little when your foreigners are complaining about "the aggression against our mother country." On top of that, you cold even drop your research to zero once you have the techs you need, and the temple won't go obsolete. Use teh cash for happiness and rushing M Warriors.

I'm playing a game with the Iros right now, and I must say they are one of my favorites. I'll try tis strategy in my next game.

 

[Ringo Kid]

It kind of emulates the Mongols as they swept across Asia, then Europe; leveling cities, pillaging and killing everyone they could find. But in Civ3 the Iroq. have the best early mounted unit by far. The Mongols were certainly dominant, and I think controlled more territory than any other empire ever has.

The single mindedness is not as simple as it sounds though, because you need to manage things carefully to get your empire up to speed early enough to crush the AI before it really gets going.

 

[eldar]

The Mongols were certainly dominant, and I think controlled more territory than any other empire ever has.

2nd largest in area, but not by much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires#All_empires

 

[darski]

I have tried three of these games so far on tiny and I really do like this. It is a very different way for me to play but it is very effective.

 

[eldar]

Now I remember where I've seen these settings before... I have a personal best of 290AD at DG (with Culture Flips *on* and without the benefit of the ToA - I did however get the Statue of Zeus).

Check the HoF and you'll see the best date so far is 925BC, with two better C3C DG Iro dates and one Vanilla Deity Chinese date ahead of mine.

 

[darski]

Well I have discovered the major flaw in this strategy. It makes other games seem slow and tedious in comparison.

 

[Spoonwood]

It will only work on certain levels, for certain map types, and even if it enables you to kill every AI but one, who you leave with only one city... thus implying you almost surely *could* win any victory condition, it won't get your empire to every victory condition faster than you might have done otherwise. It best gets viewed as specific to a certain type of game, just like every other strategy for civ III.

 

[NickyH]

It best gets viewed as specific to a certain type of game, just like every other strategy for civ III.

Well, I don't think it's intended as a general strategy for any kind of game, but rather is a certain type of game.

 

[Ringo Kid]

Yeah thats right, this is just for a quick game, with a high score and lots of action. And lots of fun too, I hope!

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I think you might be faster if you leave out building the ToA. Capturing it, maybe. Or just make do with using settlers to fill up gaps.

 

[Ringo Kid]

"might be faster if you leave out building the ToA."

I don't think so, because the border expansion from a free temple in each town means you need fewer settlers to settle all the available land.

Also the rapid border expansion means you dont need to use defenders in the interior towns, so your military spends more time taking territory, and less time holding it. No need to build spearmen or pikes - just the faster mounted warriors.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Usually the AI that builds the ToA has been busy building culture and is an easy mark. It is the Wonder I almost never build and love to capture before Education.

 

[NickyH]

I think the idea of capturing the ToA is good, but it might be difficult to steal it early in the game if you don't want to break a RoP agreement.

And for the settlers to fill in the cultural gaps: I think it's better to have the wonder, and not build anything but MW. You conquer, free culture fills the gaps. The sheer amount of MW does its thing…

I'm about to finish a game with this strategy now, and it's interesting to compare to another game I played a while ago.

In that game, I tried to get rid of my habit of building too many city improvements, so I made it a rule to not build one single improvement or wonder. I even used a scientific leader as a scout, since I wasn't allowed to build/hurry any building.

In that game, cultural flips was far too painful. I had two flips on a single turn on a few occasions.

This strategy is fairly similar, although I've built about 6-7 markets and about as many barracks. I've built a few aqueducts as well.

I was lucky to have a SGL, so I got the ToA without effort. The crazy thing is that I got one more SGL on one of the following techs, so I rushed the Oracle to boost the effect of ToA.

Now I haven't manually built one single building that gives culture, but still I haven't got any flips at all in the towns I've conquered. That's kind of a nice difference compared to my no buildings game.

I researched the lower part of the tech tree in the middle ages, since I don't want Theology to make the Oracle obsolete. I traded to get Chivalry as soon as I got Chemistry. After that, I had to make most of my scientists tax men instead of scientists, in order to afford the expensive upgrades to Knights.

Now I'm about to upgrade my Knights to Cavalry, which is cheaper. We'll see how many upgrades I'll do before I win on domination. I have 61% of the territory now, and I'm rapidly gaining territory from the Ottomans. The year is 510, IIRC.

 

[NickyH]

Gaah! Didn't break my highest score. Only got 9k + some. I was about to take Istanbul on the next turn, to see what Glib would give me, but now it was just a big disappointment.

I think I can do much better in my usual builder mode.

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Excellent strategy - and it's definitely made the Iroquois one of my favorite civilizations. It's definitely made me stop and take a look at other civilizations and do some rethinking of my overall playing strategy.

Thanks, Ringo Kid.

 

[Ozymandius]

If you take a look at the HoF you can see which "civ" is picked most often.
I have a preference for the Celts and have managed to get some decent scores.
On anything but a tiny map, I too build the ToA to get the free space filler. Unless you have a lot of cows to produce plenty of settlers I think the ToA is a game breaker for the early finishes. I'm just amazed at some of the early dates achieved.
I don't bother with any improvements except barracks and concentrate on making warriors and settlers and workers to help the troops move.
I have never had a culture flip playing C3C.

 

[darski]

I love this strategy and it is just too much fun to watch the borders pop when you get ToA. It's like a magic Poofff and there you go.

Once in a while I try a different game for a change up but this is My Game for now.

 

[SeriousCaller]

Tried this a couple of times on monarch, once small, once standard. Easy, fun wins both times. Will try it on emperor next. I've not used the ToA before - seems rather powerful in this context.