iroquois help

[bryanwallace]

im stuck in my ways and usually play iroquois on diety .

anyway i always find the timing of the golden age problematic,especially in that i tend to leave it too late and by that time the ai has moved into pikeman and attacking with longbowmen
im always afraid to start ga too early as worried it is a waste..

anyway question is when abouts would be optimal timing for the iroquois ga??

(i usually play with least 8 civs mostly 16,and i spose this makes the tech progresson go faster thus affecting when i should start??)

 

[vmxa]

If you are on a huge map the tech cost is much higher. More civs will lower it a bit, but the map size is the bigger factor.

At higher levels or in AW games you often will need to get a fairly early GA to allow you to compete. I have trigger it from MW with 3 towns and glad I did. So it is all relative to the game.

If you are in good shape, then delay it. You can take down any unit, if you ping to 1 hit point.

 

[bryanwallace]

but surely if you only have 3 towns then its effect is reduced and you are too far away from the opposition to benefit anyway??

 

[bryanwallace]

also why does the huge map raise the tech cost??

 

[Spoonwood]

Huge maps have less corrpution, so it comes out easier to get an equivalent number of beakers to a standard sized map with fewer cities. In general, you want your GA sometime after you've exited despotism. If you build the Great Library, or capture it, try to trigger your GA right after the Great Library expires. With the Iroquois... especially on Deity... try to find some relatively weak tribe who doesn't have iron, or has only spears in the city you plan to attack. If you can't find anyone, I wouldn't sweat that too much... you only need one mounted warrior victory to trigger a GA. Maybe train some trebuchets, red-line a pike down to a single hitpoint, and then finish it off with a mounted warrior. I think the key lies in finding the weak civ to attack, and perhaps also signing military alliances against them. I did this in a recent deity, huge map game, with the Iroquois and I couldn't trade *for* horses until I had monotheism or thereabouts.

 

[vmxa]

also why does the huge map raise the tech cost??

Cost Factor is a function of map size and level in the main.
Tiny 160
Small 200
Standard 240
Large 320
Huge 400

On an SG I just finish my turn the cost of Currency would be 389 for the point we were on a std, but it was 1272 for our map (650 cost factor). True OCN is increased for map size, but it is not that important.

As to GA, for sure you do not want a GA so early in all but extreme cases. My point was that if I was not in a GA, I could not have gotten enough units out in time to survive the attack.

What good is a nice fat GA in 300 turns, if you are dead? I also recall a Persian AWDG on a large map that I won with a 4 town GA. I went back and avoided the GA and I lost the game soon after. I just wanted to see if it was that critical.

In any event, I am not recommending an ultra early GA. Just saying the best time is when it does the most good. That may be when it can save the game or when you have a very large empire and want to boost research.

It is all situational.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

That's the way mapsizes work - a larger map size increases the cost for each tech. As Doug says, corruption is lower in your core and you get more cities that aren't as corrupt, so that helps even it out some.

MW aren't all that great vs. pikes, but they do the job and are much less expensive than knights - when the AI starts getting muskets in force, it's tough to make a lot of headway against them with MW.

I generally (depending on what's going on) attack with the iroquois when:

1) I'm out of despotism, either in monarchy or republic
2) I'm out of room to expand or almost there
3) There is an AI nearby to whack

But I'll attack in despotism if I need - you just need to set it up. Nice thing about the iroquois is that you can get the UU with 3 techs and it can reach a long way.

 

[bryanwallace]

thanks all-
theres a good point bout the mwarrior reaching a long way-is it better to start it earlier i wonder ot get max use out of it or does this just waste the ga by triggering it early..