Key Early Steps for REX

[President_Stone]

here's my .02: alternate between building your strongest military unit at the time with whatever else is necessary to build. Specialize in one particular line of tech. Kill your nearest competitor ASAP while trading tech with the next nearest (or someone else if they're available). Once you've destroyed the nearest competitor, regroup, build up the military some more, and take out the next nearest one. Be very nice to everyone else so you dont find yourself in WWI by 500BC!

Other civs might have higher scores for a while, but this strategy allows for an excellent middle ages/renissance in due time.

 

[Divi Filus]

Okay - I was trying to figure this out last night (on Noble), given many of the helpful hints that this forum could provide and tried this out (and it worked quite well):

REX to 6 cities with the following:
City 1
1. Worker (research to BW)
2. Settler (research Archery) --> city 2 (chop 4 forests)
3. Warrior (or Archer if possible) (research Wheel, then to Writing)
4. Worker
5. Archer
6. Settler --> city 3(Stop Chopping - Try to leave 3 forrests)
7. Barracks, Archer, Archer, Walls --> Development

City 2 and City 3 (Connect Copper/Iron/Horses)
1. Archer (chop 3-4 forests/city, try to leave 3 forests)
2. Settler (-->City 4/5/6 (from city 2)
3. Axeman (x2 (from city 3 -->explore)
4. Develop --> Research Writiing (Oracle --> Alphabet), Code of Laws (religion and courthouses!)

Using this method I had 3-4X the points of the AI teams (using Loius) by the end of the classical age. The Axemen explorers I have found are very good for finding lux resources (and ivory) for city expansion to 9 after a government change to Monarchy (with courthouses). Ignoring early religions not bad if you head straight for code of laws (confucism)...

I think the key is developing the capital and other cities after just two settler pops; this gets your economy started - So in Civ4 maybe FOWEX is a better term:
FOrest Wave EXpansion - selective deforestation to pop 1-2 settler from immediately formed cities to rapidly expand out in "waves"