Initial Rush - Evaluation of Early Game Wars

[Ramesses-Rules]

Libraries let you run 2 scientists.

See, I have always had this debate with myself about when and where to add libraries in the early game. It's a no-brainer to get a library running early in Thebes, and usually in Memphis (my second city), because they have good locations which will grow up to pop. 5 or 6 and support two scientists pretty quickly. My other cities are smaller and some without great food resources, so it will be some time before they can get up to pop. 5+ and be able to run scientists. Still, the library itself would have some advantages, so should I go ahead and build it anyway in my 3rd and 4th city just to assist my sagging economy from fighting this early war with Monty? This is one of the issues of early war economic recovery that I am unclear about.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

yes but he has obelisk option already.
he needs urgent happy resources now i guess, or monarchy for sure but it must be expensive yet

Well, I backed up and replayed some stuff, so the game is coming along OK. Here is another economics/expansion question I am debating now. Monty is one of these clowns who will spread his first 4 cites WAY apart just to jam your borders. He left a ton of space between two of his cites, and all 3 gem plots are between them, so I had to move a Settler in there just to work the gems. I have other blank spaces between my other cities, plus a new critical barb city that, once I capture it, will totally cut off Capac (who is now the most advanced guy on the continent, as expected, and "annoyed" --but the latter will change when I convert to Buddism and start collecting shrine money from him and Frederick). Meanwhile, I am Judism to keep Qin pleased until I am in position to flip my religion and attack him. I am teching Calendar now, and once I get it, my economy will be solid, because I have a lot of cash crops.

Now, here is my question for you. You speak of "Vertical" vs. "Horizontal" expansion. By vertical, I assume you mean pushing out aggressively toward Qin to compete for land between us. By horizontal, you mean land that is between my cities are close enough that I have no competition. Right? Looking at my map, I can get to 9 or 10 good cities without getting into a land-grabbing contest with Qin. And the those spots are actually better quality. So expanding horizontally would actually put less stress on my economy than going vertical, but I will end up with 9-10 cities rather than, say, 12 or possibly 13, with the last couple being nearly all jungle land if I go max-REX. How do you usually go in that situation?

 

[Wodan]

Vertical usually means make your cities bigger and better by growing them and building infrastructure, while Horizontal means make settlers / more cities or go conquer more cities.

 

[Wodan]

See, I have always had this debate with myself about when and where to add libraries in the early game. It's a no-brainer to get a library running early in Thebes, and usually in Memphis (my second city), because they have good locations which will grow up to pop. 5 or 6 and support two scientists pretty quickly. My other cities are smaller and some without great food resources, so it will be some time before they can get up to pop. 5+ and be able to run scientists. Still, the library itself would have some advantages, so should I go ahead and build it anyway in my 3rd and 4th city just to assist my sagging economy from fighting this early war with Monty? This is one of the issues of early war economic recovery that I am unclear about.

Depends on if you have the food to run scientists in those cities or if you are working cottages there... you need one or the other to get some benefit out of the library. Otherwise, you might consider Building Research.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

Vertical usually means make your cities bigger and better by growing them and building infrastructure, while Horizontal means make settlers / more cities or go conquer more cities.

Thanks. I didn't know that. I used to be more Horizontal at the lower difficulty levels, but now I am retraining myself to become more Vertical. Several very good players on this forum convinced me to stop founding Hinduism at Emperor and building too many early wonders instead of going Vertical. But I have a lot to learn about the economics of Vertical expansion.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

This sucks. I pulled the plug on this game at 1 a.m. and went to bed. Frederick is such a wimp. I hate this vassal concept in Civ4. I am going into options and turn it off for my next game. Arg!!

 

[kivanc]

Thanks. I didn't know that. I used to be more Horizontal at the lower difficulty levels, but now I am retraining myself to become more Vertical. Several very good players on this forum convinced me to stop founding Hinduism at Emperor and building too many early wonders instead of going Vertical. But I have a lot to learn about the economics of Vertical expansion.

hmm founding a religion is generally a waste of time on high levels.
as i try to be fast very much in the start, even which the free techs i will have is important for me.
about wonder building, i used to build both stonehenge and the great wall in nearly every emperor game.
if you build stonehenge
* you don't need religion for early game
* you don't need creative trait
* good for CHA trait
* increases your chance to get a free great prophet instead of a great spy from the great wall

now i'm trying to get used to deity where it seems stonehenge really sucks. building both TGW and stonehenge ruins my early game strategy. on emperor it was ok but deity doesn't let.
as TGW is a way ahead much more important than stonehenge, i pick TGW. still great spies are not that mad neither.
on deity, barb attacks start much earlier before you build the great wall so you still have to spare a few units to defend cities and worker for some time.

VER/HOR expansion: it is just what wodan says. in some parts of the game you need to apply one of them and in some parts both. expanding very much before courthouses is not that good in high levels.
it is not a problem to become late in tech in mid game but not very much late bec guys like Joao may teach u a lesson and attack your axes with his maces. if you have large land, you can be a tech leader after mid game.

whip: yesterday, on deity, firstly in my life i used the option whip the reasons for my 1st whip:
1) i had some cities which
* reached happy cap
* completed all buildings available
* doesn't have any option other than training units
2) i didn't have alphabet to build research
3) i didn't want to increase unit costs
4) i didn't want to build new cities before recovering economy
5) i just found writing and needed libraries for culture, increasing beakers and scientists

i spent 1 turn on them and whipped it. as i had terraces already it was not a big problem. after a few ten turns, i whipped courthouses in some cities as well. it seems it is best if whipping costs for 2/3 pops.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Peacevassal deals are pretty broken, yes. An early game war is hopefully early enough to circumvent them. They would be far less bad if the AI didn't peacevassal, suck in 10-15 techs or more, then break the deal (or never break the deal), all the while happily trading whatever it manages to tech away.

Peacevassal = AIs form permanent alliance in terms of its impact on gameplay. But, there's an option for permanent alliances. We don't need to have 2 permanent alliance types.

 

[AveiMil]

Peacevassal deals are pretty broken, yes. An early game war is hopefully early enough to circumvent them. They would be far less bad if the AI didn't peacevassal, suck in 10-15 techs or more, then break the deal (or never break the deal), all the while happily trading whatever it manages to tech away.

Peacevassal = AIs form permanent alliance in terms of its impact on gameplay. But, there's an option for permanent alliances. We don't need to have 2 permanent alliance types.

Do you have any suggestions on what needs to be changed to fix this problem?

If you would like to post your ideas at the PIG thread I'm sure PoM will be willing to consider changing things around for the better.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=328283

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oooh, PIG has come a long way. I haven't checked it in a while. It's interesting to see that someone actually modded in a toned down version of my "runaway AI" XML tweaks . I wonder if I couldn't make it even more devastating now...

Anyway the #1 worst thing about peacevassals is that the AI funnels techs to its peacevassal automatically. I understand it's good to keep one's vassals up to date, but if you don't have control over it joining/leaving then its kind of artificial. It also serves as a losing function to the bigger AI since they will happily peacevassal someone going culture and therefore be unable to prevent it.

I'd almost advocate pulling it as an option entirely (excepting colonies, which while they suck as a human option could remain), but at LEAST removing auto-giving 10000+ beakers to culture whores.