How to make it in America

[Remito]

Hi all

Posting to get some general advice on how to succeed with America.
I play in Emperor, all kind of games, and will generally win 75% of my games. I tend to have difficulties with late-blooming civs, and in particular America. Their bonuses arrive late and I'm generally too far behind to catch up (although to be honest, I usually just quit the game when i think I don't have any more chance).
Last time I had a nice land with Arabia (peaceful and friendly to the west), and Denmark and Sweden to the north (less friendly as you can imagine but not too close). Having enough land I decided to play a peaceful Science game so I settled 4 additional cities (eventually 5) and could secure 2 NW wonders, including Mount Sinai so was comfortable with a religion before T100, which i successfully spread to Denwmark and Sweden. Yet those 2 bastards attacked me soon enough (as well as each other). The war did not cost me any city (i even captured a Swedish one) but surely penalized my development and by the time i got to meet all the remaining civs I was comically behind. I quit around the end of Industrial era, already 6 (SIX !!) social policies and 12 (TWELVE !) technologies behind the leader (Maya).
I had gone Progress > Feodalism > Rationalism and feel like I had no culture and really not enough science to catch up (despite a strong religion).
I'm really lost here. I'm totally ok with the AI having advantages (otherwise I would be playing at a lower level) but here I get the feeling I can never get things going : low culture yields, not enough science...
Should I have gone artistry ? Should I be warring proactively ?
Besides, their UB cost a fortune to build (The Smithsonian was a delirious 16 turns in my capital - that may have been a bug).

Any advice would be welcome because I'd love to be able to try their bonuses (apart from the great Production from buying tiles, which is beneficial from the onset).

Thanks !

 

[Stalker0]

Hi all

Posting to get some general advice on how to succeed with America.
I play in Emperor, all kind of games, and will generally win 75% of my games. I tend to have difficulties with late-blooming civs, and in particular America. Their bonuses arrive late and I'm generally too far behind to catch up (although to be honest, I usually just quit the game when i think I don't have any more chance).
Last time I had a nice land with Arabia (peaceful and friendly to the west), and Denmark and Sweden to the north (less friendly as you can imagine but not too close). Having enough land I decided to play a peaceful Science game so I settled 4 additional cities (eventually 5) and could secure 2 NW wonders, including Mount Sinai so was comfortable with a religion before T100, which i successfully spread to Denwmark and Sweden. Yet those 2 bastards attacked me soon enough (as well as each other). The war did not cost me any city (i even captured a Swedish one) but surely penalized my development and by the time i got to meet all the remaining civs I was comically behind. I quit around the end of Industrial era, already 6 (SIX !!) social policies and 12 (TWELVE !) technologies behind the leader (Maya).
I had gone Progress > Feodalism > Rationalism and feel like I had no culture and really not enough science to catch up (despite a strong religion).
I'm really lost here. I'm totally ok with the AI having advantages (otherwise I would be playing at a lower level) but here I get the feeling I can never get things going : low culture yields, not enough science...
Should I have gone artistry ? Should I be warring proactively ?
Besides, their UB cost a fortune to build (The Smithsonian was a delirious 16 turns in my capital - that may have been a bug).

Any advice would be welcome because I'd love to be able to try their bonuses (apart from the great Production from buying tiles, which is beneficial from the onset).

Thanks !

Funny enough, America's bonus is actually one of the earliest in the game. With aMerica you want to hit wonders hard in the early game, you can buy tiles and convert that into raw production to push out wonders. I've often managed to get both pyramaids and stonehenge as America.

Then after you have done that a bit, you expand to reset your border growth costs, so you can do it again!


In the late game, your UUs great power is actually the free promotion. Use it to push up the barrage tree with the goal of getting to range promotion. And once you have military academies, you will be able to get to range with your immediately produced units. Eventually you will have a large army of UUs with range or close to it.

Then....you get to gatling guns. Upgrade all of your ranged units into g guns. You now have a large army of g guns all with range that can move across rivers and forest pretty freely. this is quite frankly.....unstoppable in most plays I've run, if you are smart with your units you really shouldn't ever lose to any other late game army, even if they have teched quite a bit ahead of you.

 

[hokath]

Haven't played America in a while, but I'll give it a go and get back to you how it went.

 

[FinMc]

Funny enough, America's bonus is actually one of the earliest in the game. With aMerica you want to hit wonders hard in the early game, you can buy tiles and convert that into raw production to push out wonders. I've often managed to get both pyramaids and stonehenge as America.

Then after you have done that a bit, you expand to reset your border growth costs, so you can do it again!


In the late game, your UUs great power is actually the free promotion. Use it to push up the barrage tree with the goal of getting to range promotion. And once you have military academies, you will be able to get to range with your immediately produced units. Eventually you will have a large army of UUs with range or close to it.

Then....you get to gatling guns. Upgrade all of your ranged units into g guns. You now have a large army of g guns all with range that can move across rivers and forest pretty freely. this is quite frankly.....unstoppable in most plays I've run, if you are smart with your units you really shouldn't ever lose to any other late game army, even if they have teched quite a bit ahead of you.

How does expanding to reset border growth costs work?

 

[Hinin]

How does expanding to reset border growth costs work?

Basically, whenever you buy new tiles, the gold cost increases for all cities ((base value + x times you bought tiles) * diverse modifiers = gold cost to buy tile). The thing with America is that, each time you settle a new city, the cost increase from tiles you already bought is reset, meaning you must balance the timing of your new settlements so that you can always keep the gold cost to buy tiles at an acceptable rate while also avoiding overexpansion. That's the main unique gameplay element of the civ in term of day to day ability, more so than the "buy tile from others" part, which is very costly, quite situational and diplomatically dangerous.

 

[msw1]

Haven't played much America but I've noticed the AI takes authority 100% of the time with it. Kind of makes sense since most of what you want to do is expand and conquer.

 

[Lifeordeath]

Haven't played much America but I've noticed the AI takes authority 100% of the time with it. Kind of makes sense since most of what you want to do is expand and conquer.

That is absolutely a valid way to play America but imo they aren't super suited to early war. Mid-game warfare definitely but early game is about relatively peaceful expansion and building up infrastructure. I think that suits progress better

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Not really related to America in particular but AI tends to do very poorly after industrial era; do not get intimidated by the score board of the tech gap; an Authority/imperialism civ can be over 10 techs and 5 or 6 policies behind and still win a war against a more advanced civ by the raw power of numbers and smart warfare.
On Immortal and even deity in my experience the score board and tech gap is pretty much a non factor after industrial era; i usually conquer fusiliers with my muskets and tercios, cannons can still take downs cities with bastion forts and frigates & Corvettes obsolete very late in industrial that it's pretty advisable to just do the first real overseas conquests one you get a sizeable number of them.

 

[msw1]

6 policies and 12 techs behind at the end of the industrial era is pretty hard to come back from. Yeah I guess you could make a comeback with war but you'll be fighting tanks and bombers with fusiliers and Gatling guns. Not to mention your economy and ability to produce units will probably be much worse. I haven't played out a situation like this before but based on how the AI is pretty decent at war earlier in the game I would think it would be able to win this?

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

6 policies and 12 techs behind at the end of the industrial era is pretty hard to come back from. Yeah I guess you could make a comeback with war but you'll be fighting tanks and bombers with fusiliers and Gatling guns. Not to mention your economy and ability to produce units will probably be much worse. I haven't played out a situation like this before but based on how the AI is pretty decent at war earlier in the game I would think it would be able to win this?

That's every Deity game for me and it's really really doable; the AI navy does not really stand a chance against a well organized navy.
You do not have to force a K.O. with one war, mostly the first war would be like trimming the sharp nails of a beast by taking their satellites and hurting their economy as much as possible

 

[hokath]

I followed your pattern of Progress->Fealty-> before some weird bug killed the game in the late Industrial (just built West Point... damn)
I didn't do anything special with the UA, just focused on getting gold to buy tiles for development.
It worked nicely, I was dominant first place and fighting multiple wars.

Perhaps you needed to pay more attention to the cost-resetting part of the UA. It sounds like your 4 extra cities went down quite fast and you should have spread them out more?

 

[Remito]

thanks all for the comments.
I started a new game - still targetting a Scientific victory. Went Progress > Fealty Opener as I love monasteries and had an opportunity to push my religion early > Artistry > Ratio just unlocked
I indeed spread out expension cities a bit more, and the game is going on relatively well despite a very aggressive Shaka as neigbour (god those impis are powerful, I'm lucky he is so cautious about healing them rather then ramming them onto my units to overpower me - he has tons of them). With Minutemen i feel more relaxed on defense.

Question about expanding all game long : for roleplay and for fun i want to keep settling, however it does impact Tech / Culture. Is there a rule of thumb as to when to stop ?