how big a garrison?

[WeirdoJoker]

Playing Babylon at Regent on a Small map Continents/60%. Playing for SpaceShip (or 80K, whichever comes first) and not making very many troops ... basically I have one per town and am wondering if I should have more. I'm trying to avoid war at all costs so I can build toward the Ship without worrying about fighting the AI for no good reason. Any ideas? Doing ok so far, but that question is bothering me.

 

[justanick]

Usually one should find a good reason for war. Trying to avoid war at all cost is not reasonble. Just make sure the war is in your favour.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Usually one should find a good reason for war.

Well, it depends, IMO, on what I'm trying to accomplish. I also usually do not do well in early wars (I'm at 150BC right now) no matter what my advantage might be ... the RNGs do not like me in that respect.

Trying to avoid war at all cost is not reasonble. Just make sure the war is in your favour.

Which is where later wars will come in for me - only when necessary if I cannot get a needed resource otherwise, which is a more common occurrence the smaller the map. But by then I've typically been far enough ahead in tech for battles to be one-sided in my favor.

 

[CKS]

You don't need any units in towns that can't be reached in one turn from the border, and you probably want more than one in border towns, depending on relative tech levels. You do need units that are able to respond to attacks, though, and they need to be spread out to cover potential invasions if you don't have rails yet. If your units are relatively up-to-date, an average of one per town is plenty for a regent-level space race. Play a trading game and you can mostly avoid war if you want. If you need to go to war, use your allies, and let them deal with units in the field while you concentrate on taking towns.

On regent you can also often steal resources from the AI by building a town right against their border next to the resource and then building some culture in your town, not trying to flip their town but to flip the tile. Other times, you may find that an AI has two of some resources but they can't trade because they haven't roaded one or both of them. Sending workers to road the AI's resources can be helpful in this case.

 

[jarred!]

A Republic has no Military Police so having units garrisoned in cities that can't be easily reached by the AI is a waste. Culture probably isn't an issue on Regent, but at higher levels you'll want a handful of units in each city whose first cultural expansion is intersected by an AI's city's first cultural expansion (intersecting BFCs, generally when their and your cities are closer than OCP) as this will protect against culture flips. Coastal cities should have some fast units in/around them too, I try to have a small stack available that can defend several cities at once.

I like playing peaceful spaceship games as well, using the AI as trading partners will help speed the game along ("zero turn research is faster than 4 turn research"). On lower levels, you'll probably need to create your own trade routes with each civ, and they'll probably go through unclaimed territory. Keep a unit capable of cutting that route and some workers to reroad it if you can, this allows you to control AI-AI trade (my trade route with the Greeks/Ottomans heads through Byzantine territory then unclaimed territory before entering Greece and the Ottoman Empire, when I finished that road, the Greeks traded all their excess luxes and resources to the Byzantines. I simply cut and reconnected the route to end their trades and allow me to initiate my own.).

 

[WeirdoJoker]

A Republic has no Military Police so having units garrisoned in cities that can't be easily reached by the AI is a waste.

Yeah, and I was so concerned about a land invasion from the Arabs that I forgot to guard my coastal towns from a sea invasion from Egypt (which I fortunately fought off).

Culture probably isn't an issue on Regent, but at higher levels you'll want a handful of units in each city whose first cultural expansion is intersected by an AI's city's first cultural expansion (intersecting BFCs, generally when their and your cities are closer than OCP) as this will protect against culture flips. Coastal cities should have some fast units in/around them too, I try to have a small stack available that can defend several cities at once.

BFC?

Also, since I'm playing for an 80K victory as a backup to the Spaceship in case resources become a problem. So far so good, except there's so little coal worldwide, and in inconvenient places where it does show, that I can't put in railroads without invading somewhere, and I've gotten to the point where it may very well not matter - I could very well win with no rails at all. I could invade the Americans for it, but I don't want to waste my time (this game, anyway ... I've done it before) on a war that ultimately will just distract me from the long-term goal.

I like playing peaceful spaceship games as well, using the AI as trading partners will help speed the game along ("zero turn research is faster than 4 turn research"). On lower levels, you'll probably need to create your own trade routes with each civ, and they'll probably go through unclaimed territory.

Indeed, that's sometimes a problem - especially this game, which is light on both luxury and strategic resources even for a Small map.

Keep a unit capable of cutting that route and some workers to reroad it if you can, this allows you to control AI-AI trade (my trade route with the Greeks/Ottomans heads through Byzantine territory then unclaimed territory before entering Greece and the Ottoman Empire, when I finished that road, the Greeks traded all their excess luxes and resources to the Byzantines. I simply cut and reconnected the route to end their trades and allow me to initiate my own.).

Now that's something that hadn't occurred to me. Of course, since no one has any extra Coal that I can hook up (IIRC), which is the thing I need most at the moment (Uranium's next, once I get Fission 2 turns from now). Hopefully I'll have that ... plenty of Rubber and Aluminum, at least, for the Ship. Now I just have to make war on the Incans to steal their Uranium.

Also interesting in the current game ... I have culture flipped seven towns - 1 from Egypt, 2 from the Arabs, and four from the Americans. That's way more than ever before.

 

[jarred!]

Bfc is big fat cross, the large plus-sign formed after the first cultural expansion. If this area around one of your cities intersects that one an enemy city there's risk of a flip, both ways.

It makes sense you have a lot of flips this game, your cities' cultures are probably a lot higher that those of AI cities since you're probably building both science and happiness buildings.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Bfc is big fat cross....

Ah, thanks.

It makes sense you have a lot of flips this game, your cities' cultures are probably a lot higher that those of AI cities since you're probably building both science and happiness buildings.

True, and that was the point. It just has never worked so unbelievably well before. I'm on track to win the 80K in another 18 turns (which is good, because Uranium is in short supply for the Ship ... still going after it, but it probably won't matter).

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Update: pulled off an 80K victory while winning the space race (I was almost halfway through as one AI was getting started). One of my top ten games, score-wise.

 

[CKS]

I find this 80k or spaceship choice interesting. If you want to win by space, you are wasting a lot of shields and money on cultural buildings. If you want to win by culture, you are sinking a lot of unnecessary effort into researching into the modern age that could instead get you to your culture win much sooner.
If that is just what you like, of course, that is fine, since the point is to have fun. These just seem to be almost opposite ways to win.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

I find this 80k or spaceship choice interesting. If you want to win by space, you are wasting a lot of shields and money on cultural buildings. If you want to win by culture, you are sinking a lot of unnecessary effort into researching into the modern age that could instead get you to your culture win much sooner.
If that is just what you like, of course, that is fine, since the point is to have fun. These just seem to be almost opposite ways to win.

I do like doing it that way from time to time, especially with the Babylonians, just because they so easily fall into both categories. Plus, they are both peaceful ways to win that involve a lot of building stuff (albeit different stuff), so I don't see them as opposites so much.

The biggest problems with the space race aspect of this particular game were: 1) lack of sufficient coal to go around, so I never developed rails at all; and 2) getting uranium. I eventually got the latter through trade (there was more around than I had originally seen) just as I was preparing to go to war for it, but then I won the 80K anyway. Had that not happened, I would have won the space race anyway. But if I had been on a Standard map and going for a 100K, I would have gotten the Ship first.

 

[Spoonwood]

I find this 80k or spaceship choice interesting. If you want to win by space, you are wasting a lot of shields and money on cultural buildings. If you want to win by culture, you are sinking a lot of unnecessary effort into researching into the modern age that could instead get you to your culture win much sooner.
If that is just what you like, of course, that is fine, since the point is to have fun. These just seem to be almost opposite ways to win.

Well there was that one game of the month where SirPleb won by every victory condition on the same final turn. I think it was with the Celts.

 

[CKS]

Yeah, but that was SirPleb, making the game more difficult just for fun. That was pretty impressive, though I think the always war diplomatic victory was more impressive. Reading his posts was always so enlightening. He managed to make everything clear and obvious-in-retrospect to me as a beginner.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Remember to use ctrl-shift-M to temporarily show a "clean" map -- no cities, roads or rails, but will show resources that you can see. Scroll all around, and locate the scarce resources. I've had quite a few AI drop a city right on top of them, so I couldn't see them unless I hid the cities.

Ctrl-shift-M toggles the map back to normal afterwards.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Remember to use ctrl-shift-M to temporarily show a "clean" map -- no cities, roads or rails, but will show resources that you can see. Scroll all around, and locate the scarce resources. I've had quite a few AI drop a city right on top of them, so I couldn't see them unless I hid the cities.

Ctrl-shift-M toggles the map back to normal afterwards.

I always do that (once I learned it), but I also always have trouble seeing uranium, I think because it's usually green-on-green so I missed a lot of it that game in particular.