Indigestion

[floydmcw]

A frequent topic on these forums is what to do when boxed in by the other AIs. But what about the other problem, when you have much more land than you can handle?

I played a game as Churchill, Emperor, in the middle of a big continent with Izzy to my southeast and Mansa Musa to my north. I was in fact boxed in -- Izzy settled the best city site near me, leaving just jungle.

I got mad, I got copper, I got axes, and soon, no more Izzy. Which left me with far more space than I could afford to settle. Founding cities to cover all the space really tanked my economy. I slowly expanded to ~15 cities and was able to take most of Mali with cuirs, though the Moose was pulling ahead in tech and I was lucky he hadn't built much of an army.

What do the experts do in this situation? Do you slowly expand and leave the marginal sites for later? Do you found all the cities possible and somehow recover your economy?

 

[InovA]

In this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=566226
Everyone was Diety or Immortal level and the best tip I saw for a map with plenty of space:

With potentially so many cities early on, maintenance will become an issue, especially on the higher difficulties, so you need a strong economy. Preferably a strong capital with some kind of strong commerce (like silver, gold, gems) but also good land that you can cottage; not only in the capital, but also in other cities.

One thing to keep in mind on these huge maps is that typical "no brainer" play like getting an Academy, Oxford and Buro isn't as strong as it usually is, because the capital won't contribute 50% of your research rate or whatever. So it may be better to save early Great People for Golden Ages or bulbing instead. Oxford itself is still strong if you go that route (naturally only for long games, like space), but all those universities cost a lot of hammers (you need 8 on huge maps). Being PHI of course helps.

Skipping academy and Buro didn't even occur to me because I'm so used to having ~8 cities with a heavily boosted capital, but having ~18 cities with half of them building Wealth does a much better job. Just keep a steady growth rate for your number of cities and make more cottages than usual.

Alternatively you can go for a similar idea to the player in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=568574
When you see the open space, focus heeeeaavily on making Settlers/Workers, rushing the city count up very fast. This will cripple your economy and tech very quickly (so go to 0% after getting you feel safe with your military tech for the next few centuries.) and get those cottages started even sooner than normal. As they upgrade to villages/towns your economy should become unrivaled. Rather than the steady growth rate from before, this path would be much more greedy and should pay off provided you have good diplo with other civs.

If you feel like these styles make your games uncomfortable, especially because you are REXing far more than normal on a Standard map which has higher maintenance costs than on Huge maps, you can just play the way you're used to, ignoring the extra land. You'd be missing out on a free advantage, but so much free land isn't necessary to win Diety.

 

[nate46]

Does anyone else skip cuirrs and go for knights in games like this?

They're a bit weaker but you get them much faster. And if (as suggested above) you're not bothering with oxford or beuracracy, do you really want to tech education or civil service?

Guilds leads to gunpowder which leads to chemistry which leads to steel, so you can skip education and civil service entirely and get cannons through the guilds path. If you skip meditation, you can bulb chemistry with your great scientists.

Also you can pick up banking along the way and switch to mercantalism, which is nice if there aren't enough foreign trade routes to cover all of your cities, and especially nice if you have pyramids.

 

[Izuul]

I'm not a fan of knights except as an addition to a medieval army with trebs and such. You actually can't get Knights much faster than Cuirs and they are considerably weaker (more than just a bit). If i go the other route on the tree I'm building my army around siege units (trebs or cannons).

 

[nate46]

You actually can't get Knights much faster than Cuirs

huh? seems way faster to me. esp if your economy is in the dumps after an axe rush. I mean, all you need besides the basic stuff is guilds, machinery, feudalism, metal casing and monarchy.

Let's work it out.

Guilds (1000)
Machinery (700)
Feudalism (700)
Metal Casing (450)
Monarchy (300)
total -- 2850

cuirrs take --

Military Tradition (2000)
Nationalism (Free with liberalism if you can get it...)
Liberalism (1400)
Gunpowder (1200)
Education (I guess you can bulb this twice)
Paper (600)
Civil Service (800)
Music (600)
Philosophy (800)
Code of Laws (350)

total -- 7750

 

[nate46]

another thing... are trebs really so much better than catapults that you'd bother teching engineering before launching an attack? I mean, they are better, but they're useless in the field and they cost 30 more hammers for the same job. Its not like cats can't damage longbows.

I agree for the really foritifed cities you want some siege to go with your knights but just building a few catapults and cleaning up those cities later seems to work fine for me.

 

[Fippy]

Depends on circumstances, on high levels you usually bulb Philo as well besides Edu.
And Paci gets you more GS faster.
Lib can also be done (by avoiding machinery and getting compass).

Knights are fine on Emperor (long time thou since i last did that, but was easy).
Cuirs are more a high level unit, not sure how Immortal compares here but i think you will struggle with Knights (alone) there as well unless you have a super start.

But anyways, you always need to say which difficulty level.
Knights and Deity for example..does not work, at all.
And Cuirs tech tree makes you tech leader, usually.
Knights line is popular for AIs, you can often trade that.

 

[nate46]

Knights work fine on immortal... I guess I should start playing diety, but OP is talking about an emperor game anyway.

 

[Izuul]

When done well you can use multiple GS bulbs. Typically 1 for Philo and 1 or 2 on Edu, but even Lib can be bulbed if you manage to trade for a couple techs. Take MT with Lib instead of Nationalism unless you are absolutely forced to grab Lib early. The Music GA (assuming you get it first) is typically used to start a golden age in which you switch to Pacifism and generate several great people.

I can't really comment on axe rushes, i never use them on Immortal+, but I'm really talking about a straight Cuir rush, not continuing on to Cuirs after an early game rush. I usually get them somewhere between 600-1000 AD depending on the map and how carefully I'm playing. I think 500ish AD is about my best effort in a single player game, and those are on normal NC/IU forum game maps. I've seen better players do it even faster.

 

[Izuul]

Knights work fine on immortal... I guess I should start playing diety, but OP is talking about an emperor game anyway.

What exactly is working "fine?" Cuirs can frequently sweep the board on Immortal. Knights are only 10 str and don't ignore walls so they are already taking heavy, heavy casualties against cities with castles and LBs/pikes defending. They really need some siege support to be effective IMO. Cuirs get a great window where they can dominate because nothing slows them down until rifles.

 

[nate46]

What exactly is working "fine?"

I don't usually wipe the board with knights on immortal, although maybe i could if i was more skilled at this game. I usually take about 40% or 50% of the map with knights, then finish the job with cannons.

and does it really matter (on this kind of map) if your knights take heavy casualties? We're talking about a game where OP has 15 cities.... he can just build more knights, LOL.

 

[Fippy]

Nice x-post with Izuul i see, the grandmaster of granary mathematics (yep i remember that well)
If you start Deity Nate, you will notice many things don't work anymore.
Some like that, some not and i can understand if not.
Immortal won with Knights is surely a nice achievement already, just a much weaker unit.

 

[nate46]

Immortal won with Knights is surely a nice achievement already, just a much weaker unit.

ehh... but why wouldn't it work on diety too? have you really tried it that much to say it doesn't work?


I should start a diety game and go for a knight rush and see how it works... although i'm not sure if thats applicable in this situation...

i mean i'm not arguing that knights are generally better than cuirs, just that if you're overextended and your economy is crap, they're a good alternative that doesn't require as much tech and doesn't require you to win the liberalism race or the music race.

 

[Izuul]

Fippy used to play a lot of deity games here, although mostly under her old forum name.

Knights just aren't efficient enough on deity. Units are so cheap for the AI that you just can't outproduce them like you can on the lower difficulties. If you take heavy casualties you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed by reinforcements. Also, the AI hammers that Fuedalism > Guilds > Banking line so you are teching the same stuff they are which leaves you with no trade opportunities and you will quickly fall into a big tech hole. Taking a path on the upper part of the tree usually ensures some trades and gives you a lot more bang for your buck on beakers.

 

[Fippy]

Hmm how to explain, let's start with Deity AIs are more than double as strong as Immortal ones.
They expand much faster (starting with 2 settlers and huge bonuses), so they will also have many more units. So they also tech much faster, longbows against knights is already rough if they are many but you can also expect Pikes.

If you go in with Knights you will find that you can attack nothing.
If you use siege, it might still be painfully slow and somewhere else other AIs run away with your game while you fight 1 long war. And while you have no techs to trade.

Imo this does not need to be tested often, they will have counters and you will be impressed by their size. Big difference to Cuirs comes into full play here, they can kill longbows by ignoring walls and castles, they can move without siege and capture you cities alone, and you can maybe attack several AIs cos Rifles take them much longer to research than Knight counters.

 

[georgjorge]

I agree that ignoring walls is a very underrated bonus of Cuirs. I was recently playing Justinian on Deity and going for straight Cataphract war - super knights with the same strength as Cuirs - and was still taking heavier casualties than expected just because they are NOT gunpowder units that can ignore walls.

If you go for Knights/Cataphracts on Deity it MIGHT work if you also have enough spy points on your target to cause revolts in multiple cities, which usually means building the Great Wall. Knights against walled cities with high culture and Longbows/Pikes - not pretty. You should then hopefully be able to trade for Military Tradition in a reasonable amount of time and upgrade your Knights to Cuirs after your first target and keep conquering.

 

[nate46]

Ok, so i played a few diety games to about 2000 bc yesterday to get a better feel for it. Can you actually make an analogous situation to the OP's problem on diety? Like, he says he has 15+ cities and is overextended. I guess a quecha rush that takes over most of a continent? Or maybe some kind of catapult rush would work for this?

I was looking up diety threads and this guy says he uses knights to clean up after a treb + xbow rush: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=438207 So you can't say knights are totally useless, but i think for knights to be better than cuirrs, you need two conditions:

1) You're behind on tech
2) You're ahead or at least close to even in production.

this happens rarely on diety but its not like its totally inconceivable (could maybe happen after a really good early rush, of the rare type that actually work on diety). Eitherway, the frequency of this situation on diety is irrelevant to the OP's emperor question -- i think knights are a solid option if you're overextended.

 

[Fippy]

Yep you can..UUs, HAs, Elepult or sometimes even Swords (if you have weak neighbors and are Agg i.e.).

I think what me and Izuul were saying, is mostly that Knights are bad as breakout units.
While Cuirs are great for that
If you are already fighting for most of your game, then why not Knights as well.

So those are different circumstances, and comparing them will not really lead to much (but this thread is fun, and we can surely use some active threads here lately ).
Sometimes you can fight early, sometimes it's not so good.
Deity is just much less forgiving, if you lose early it's probably game over.
Most peoples win with Cuirs.

 

[rah]

Deity is just much less forgiving, if you lose early it's probably game over.

For me it's not 'probably', it's a sure thing.