ICS vs. SP Balance for a Warmonger

[jvidmaar]

I'm a long-time lurker and a king level BTS player. When Civ5 came out I found myself knocking out immortal games without much trouble, even though I don't do a lot of micro and am pretty mediocre strategically. I like to play fractal and continents games on epic/large maps.

When I try to move up to Deity, I just get hopelessly out-teched, even if I rush the first couple neighbors early. My instinct has been to build two cities and puppet everything else, but this obviously hasn't been working. The solution to keeping up on tech would seem to be an ICS approach, but there are so many tangential ICS threads that it's hard to get a sense of the fundamental optimal tactics.

Without being stuck playing France every game, what's the consensus strategy for the timing of the rex versus waiting for social policies for a warmonger? I don't feel a need to win in an early era. It's so hard to pass up on the honor tree (esp. military tradition), but obviously meritocracy is key, and if tried to get both, I'd be so far behind by the time I rexed that I'd get rolled over, right? Should I be signing research agreements as much as possible?

Also should I be buying cultural CS early, and if so, how early? Even at the expense of maritime? How many workers per city, early?

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[Slowpoke]

Probably the best way is to go pure ICS but build monuments in every city. Make sure you get theocracy or meritocracy, and then just explode without monuments. If you want communism, you gotta plan it out better, but chances are if you're on deity you need to explode before communism.

But personally I just play france XD

 

[DaveMcW]

Meritocracy is equal to a free colosseum in 25% of your cities.

Just build the colosseums if you really need happiness.

 

[Martin Alvito]

You can run a pure warmonger game on Deity settling just two cities (capital and strategic resource), but you have to beeline military techs and largely ignore everything else. There are several tricks that will help you:

- I find that the Iron line is better than the Horse line for everyone but Greece. You can get three walkover conquest wins: one with Warriors, one with Swords and one with Longswords, all by turn 85 or so.

- Don't kill civs all the way. Leave them a city or two. They will go out and found more cities for you to steal once your Happiness cap can absorb them.

- It's very important to get Construction and Writing quickly. You want to get the techs to hook up luxuries and these two techs after you pop Iron.

- Your puppets will build Colosseums if you stay perpetually unhappy and delay Philosophy. This will enable you to continue the conquest spree.

- France with delayed SPs gets pretty silly. I've taken to getting Libraries around turn 50 in my two cities and immediately staffing them with Scientists. That will yield up three Great Scientists in 67 turns. If you do that and beeline Dynamite, you can unlock Industrial as early as turn 125, get Police State and Communism, annex everything and never have to build Courthouses. It's like playing ICS, but much more fun and yields absurd manufacturing capabilities.

 

[TheNoodle]

Well, I just had a babylon renaissance on turn 38. Will try to reproduce, but prince lvl quick pace, all std. Writing then build great library, bulb theology, education and acoustics. one lone city, unlocked freedom (and 2 other freedom politics, 2x wonder culture and 25% less SP cost) . Will now explode ICS wise. Had 2 wheat tiles and build Babylon on Ivory (that I sold to rushbuy the library) 1GS from UA, 1 from great library 1 from library (Bab is huge) Never was even close to that. Normand