Kuriotates Early Game Strategy - Centaur Rush!

[jwin]

On the higher dificulty levels, it doesn't work that well. By the time you can get cantaurs, the other civs are advanced enough to at least have some good defenders.

I've been playing Kuriotes (which is a civ I don't have a lot of experience with) lately at immortal, and have been running one city until I have enough to take a capital with axemen if I have gold near my start, or mages or orer priests if I don't. It is slow at the beginning with one city for a while, but seems to cause less problems in the long run.

 

[KingOfLands]

I seem to have abysmal luck with starting resources when I try to start a game with the Kuriotates; I'll wind up with 2-3 cows/pigs/sheep and some grain, but no luxury or production bonuses even once they're revealed. This doesn't really make it any easier to get things off the ground.

Apart from that, which isn't entirely topical anyway, Raiders is definitely a better choice than Aggressive early on. I haven't been trying this strategy - I've been going for beefy scouts and hunters early - and you can end up with a handful of level 4+ scouts very quickly by switching to Raiders early. It should be as effective, if not more, with centaurs. Your defenders will promote quicker, too, which is hard to argue with. By the time the second Adaptive change pops up there shouldn't be as much free experience moving around in the form of barbs and animals, and if you're in a war, you'll have no trouble finding things to beat up.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Game ended as a cultural victory (I switched after cleaning the tree - 3 cities with 500-1000 culture per turn via bards/caste system) - all three cities over 60 population and the capital at 83.

Question: with only 3 cities (and a very large number of settlements), how do you obtain such high hapiness and health levels? I don't think there are even that many health and hapiness resources in this game, even with buildings and bonuses. 60 sounds awkwards to say the least: even in regular civ I have difficulty reaching over 35 health.

 

[Chip56]

how do you obtain such high hapiness

Archmages + law 3

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Thanks Chip56, forgot that (powerful) one, and I was even wondering whether law magics got shafted or something.

What about the health though?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Magic won't help you there, you'll have to rely on buildings and civics like you normally would. (Public healers is a must, switching to the Leaves and adopting Guardian of Nature helps a lot too. Leaves temples also boost health. Of course, you will need infirmaries, aqueducts, etc.)

Now that BtS added the ability to make a building get rid of all unhealthiness (National Park national wonder), I wonder whether a new wonder or a new spell (perhaps a life, nature, or creation III spell) will eventually be added take advantage of this. If it is a creation spell (which seems more likely since the other two spheres already have all their spells), then the Kuriotates will be at more of an advantage (they represent the creation sphere, and so will surely start with that type mana)

 

[Sureshot]

sickness only adds 1 food more per city size, so its more manageable than unhappiness.

even at 3 food per population if you have enough food you can keep growing and benefit from doing so via specialists.

there are 36 tile yields to work with as kuriotates, supposing you ran all farms under agriculture and had sanitation, and lets use grassland, then you have 5*36=180 food, so you can grow to size 60 even if you have sickness from size 2.

now if you run Sacrifice the Weak you double that number to 120 base population you can support. then every Great Merchant you have lets you support another population. every health above 1 up to 120 adds an extra population you can support. every extra food from a tile greater than 2 base of a grassland adds a population each as well (so a floodplain means an extra population, a food resource adds several as well).


So, health isn't much of an issue, its a soft cap, where as happiness is a hard cap (only a few reasons to ever grow beyond your happy cap, like for pop-rushing or feasting).

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

That's so much everyone, I have to try to Kuriotates sometime then. I keep thinking they are a weak civ because of all the bonus traits that their leader gets, including "adaptive". Landgrab early with settlements, gain access to lots of resources, then basically break the game with unlimited hapiness and ridiculously high health, drawing the best trade routes from all the foreign capitals (trade route formula still the same as before right?).

 

[Caradoc]

With Leaves, you can adopt Guardian of Nature, which gives a +5 health (as well as happiness). As a bonus, you will also get Ancient Forests. And Yvain, one of the better heroes.