How to win as Ramesses?

[King Younk]

Hello everyone,

I've been doing well on Emperor after listening to some advice on here, and now I'm playing as Ramesses. I didn't realize how powerful the War Chariot can be, and I've built a few major wonders, and wiped out 2 of my closest neighbors.

Now I need to cottage spam, and possibly vassalize/conquer Korea (nearest neighbor to the north).

My questions for y'all is - how should I proceed? What kind of victory condition should I pursue? I am thinking of a cultural, or maybe a conquest. I want to found Christianity, or some other religion soon.

What do?

(My printscreen isn't working for some reason)

 

[dankok8]

War Chariots are absolute monsters and receive an extra boost since Egypt starts with Agri and Wheel so you only need Animal Husbandry to uncover Horses and build these really badass units. With 5 strength and immunity to first strikes, they will really hit Archers hard. Even against the occasional Spearman they do a lot better than regular Chariots who get pretty much hard countered.

Don't bother with founding religions. It's generally a waste of time. I didn't see the save but if you took out two neighbours you should have enough land to go any route you want.

 

[King Younk]

I know of Boudica and Wang Kon on my continent. Boodie probably won't like me, since I took out two of her friends, and I want WK on my side, which is why I want to found Christianity (plus I can get +10 XP units once I reach vassalage, and get Heroic Epic early to really crush everyone).

Should I focus on Boudica, or just peaceful development? My economy is kinda horsehockey atm.

 

[King Younk]

Update: I'm going for a cultural victory, but feel compelled to subjugate the Celtic people at the same time.

That said, can anyone explain the power number on the leaderboard? Is that just the total number of units, or what, because I upgraded all of my military to be in an epoch ahead of everyone, and the power number didn't reflect that.

 

[dankok8]

Update: I'm going for a cultural victory, but feel compelled to subjugate the Celtic people at the same time.

That said, can anyone explain the power number on the leaderboard? Is that just the total number of units, or what, because I upgraded all of my military to be in an epoch ahead of everyone, and the power number didn't reflect that.

Here is an article on how the Power Graph is calculated:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-inner-workings-of-the-demo-screen-explained.163098/

 

[King Younk]

Crushing Boudica. Got like 3 or 4 GGs out of this war with her, though we're at peace now. Will finish the bird off in about 50 turns when I have a 40 tanks - 25 of which start on level 4, lollersk8z.

 

[dankok8]

I looked at your latest save. Obviously you're in a position to win since you have a large technological edge and biggest and best land to work with. However you're not getting much out of Vassalage right now. +2XP is kind of irrelevant when you can outproduce everyone. Switch to Free Speech. You have so many mature towns that your research will take off and you'll easily get through the tech tree. Also it's not worth running Caste System right now. Lots of your cities are actually running Engineers which that civic doesn't even help with and you're suffering unhappy faces because of not using Emancipation. Switching to Emancipation also means you don't need to run the Culture slider and can focus on research.

 

[Tobiyogi]

You would benefit more from asking "how to win in general?" than "how to win as XY"? The true Civ 4 player is an alchemist, knowing how to transform s*** into gold, not being dependent on War Chariots, Stone, Gold mines, etc, even though they can be very nice from time to time.

 

[King Younk]

I won, and would have won in about 4 different ways (Cultural or Space Race, or Domination/Diplomacy if I chose to send my forces to Conquer the Izzyblock).

It ended up being cultural though. I did nuke Izzyblock no fewer than 100 times, which caused my bud Aggy to vassalize them.

Should I have gone for a cultural victory after taking the continent though, in order to score more highly?

I looked at your latest save. Obviously you're in a position to win since you have a large technological edge and biggest and best land to work with. However you're not getting much out of Vassalage right now. +2XP is kind of irrelevant when you can outproduce everyone. Switch to Free Speech. You have so many mature towns that your research will take off and you'll easily get through the tech tree. Also it's not worth running Caste System right now. Lots of your cities are actually running Engineers which that civic doesn't even help with and you're suffering unhappy faces because of not using Emancipation. Switching to Emancipation also means you don't need to run the Culture slider and can focus on research.

Thanks for the tips! I was running vassalage to get me over the threshold of a promotion in a lot of my cities, as I was preparing for a war. I ran free speech most of the game, except for a little while during my war with Boudica, when she was sending large stacks of 2 era-old units at my cities, when I ran nationhood for the draft.

I don't think I was getting a lot of unhappy faces for that. I think I was the only one who had discovered democracy, so I wouldn't be punished for not running it, and could take the benefit of running caste system instead.

You would benefit more from asking "how to win in general?" than "how to win as XY"? The true Civ 4 player is an alchemist, knowing how to transform s*** into gold, not being dependent on War Chariots, Stone, Gold mines, etc, even though they can be very nice from time to time.

I'm going to play Charlemagne for my next attempt, since he's the hardest. I'm thinking build a settler first, research a food tech or two, then beeline to bw, and build a worker or two once I have some worker techs would be a good start. And to war a lot for GGs.

 

[AcaMetis]

Should I have gone for a cultural victory after taking the continent though, in order to score more highly?

If you're looking to maximize your score I'm pretty sure you should focus on fast Domination (really Conquest) victories. The amount of turns left in the game, the amount of territory you control and the total population in your empire are all large factors of your final score, whereas things like tech and wonders you've constructed don't contribute as much.