Kuriotates Strategies

[Lord'sBelievers]

Was it a good idea to build the Libralus Arcanum since I only had 4 cities?

 

[Schmoe]

Probably not.

 

[BillSeurer]

Actually, yes it was if you were going to build guilds in each city anyway. I was just playing a game with them and the cost was 3x the cost of a single mage guild. Plus you prevent one of the other players from getting and and doesn't it add some culture or great person stuff?

 

[BillSeurer]

Speaking of strategies, the A#1 problem I have with the Kuriotates is being able to produce enough units late in the game. I play on huge maps usually and 5 cities is just not enough to keep up. Wars often consist of me grabbing a couple of cities then running out of steam because my losses and need to garrison are too many to effectively continue. Wait a bunch of turns until some new units are produced. Repeat.

One way partly around this is to produce lower class units instead of the best and then use money to upgrade them. With enough settlements following your faith you can easily run 100% research while still raking in $$$. If you need a bunch of say, centaur archers, just produce normal centaurs instead which (IIRC) cost 1/2 as much. Then reduce your research a bit to pump up your cash and upgrade them as they come out. You can use the lesser units to replace more experienced ones as chokepoint guards and city garrisons, too, and then only upgrade them if you really need to.

Even with this the endgame for them on a huge map can be really slow.

Another way to ameliorate this is to go for the Order religion, especially if it spreads to your hostile neighbors. When you capture an order city and your faith is order you often get some sort of disciple unit for free. You can also produce disciple units that have command 4 and capture some enemy units. If you are fighting against a FoL-faith foe use hunters and rangers to grab their tigers. Anything to get you units so you don't have to produce them yourself.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yep, agreed that on huge maps that's the number #1 problem for the kurios. maybe they should be able to build 6 cities instead of 5, that should even things out..

 

[BillSeurer]

How much larger is a huge map than a standard one?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a whole lot larger. it depends on the mapscript IIRC, but on average I would say it's about 300% the size of a standard one. it IS huge

 

[BillSeurer]

So on a 3x sized map we get 1.66x times as many cities.

Well, there's the problem!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

don't take my word for it, I was just judging based on impression. I'm not really good at estimating distances and sizes so I might be far off

 

[Zechnophobe]

Bill, my friend, I think you need to learn about the Guild of the Nine. Buy units whole sale, instead of building them.

Your commerce can grow astronomically... your production not so much (Though make sure you build the pillar of chains).

 

[onedreamer]

Was it a good idea to build the Libralus Arcanum since I only had 4 cities?

building a wonder is never a bad idea in my book. Now, if it was a GOOD idea, depends on many other things...

 

[onedreamer]

So on a 3x sized map we get 1.66x times as many cities.

Well, there's the problem!

but you only need 3 cities to win

 

[BillSeurer]

building a wonder is never a bad idea in my book. Now, if it was a GOOD idea, depends on many other things...

Building the one that adds that mark that increases the AC is a horrible idea for the Ks unless you are really trying to push up the counter. I did that one game before I knew what it did and I was screwed as it cut off 1/5th of my unit production.

 

[Demus]

Building the one that adds that mark that increases the AC is a horrible idea for the Ks unless you are really trying to push up the counter. I did that one game before I knew what it did and I was screwed as it cut off 1/5th of my unit production.

heh, it's not that bad, just build your T4's somewhere else .

But honestly, in the early fases building a wonder instead of 3 warriors and a settler can be considered a bad idea, expecially if the wonder itself doesn't do you any good (building the great lighthouse on the great plains map for example).

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

OK... since this thread is titled Kurioates Strategies... anyone have any tips?

Erebus map, medium size, monarch difficulty.

I started a game, was in a pretty decent location, built up my capital then 2 others heading north, then found a couple good spots and built settlements with creative (expanding their borders for free).

Now I had my 3 main cities and a whole bunch of settlements up in the northern half of my country. My tech is lagging and my production is lagging because I can only ever have 3 things built at once. Also, it seems wrong to me to put these settlements in nice areas because I can never use them for their full potential anyway.

I'm running agriculture and have maybe 35% farms and 65% towns trying to make sure that my cities keep growing.

I dunno. I thought it would be more interesting but they seem kinda bleh. What am I missing? I think maybe after I get airships, I'll have some new strats with parking an airship on a mountain and attacking adjacent cities...

I assume there's a way to downgrade a city to a settlement if you find a better spot? Or no? Seems like a waste if you do though...

I have 2 highly promoted rangers (my valley was filled with animals) and Valin because I went Order. My original thought was that with Order, I could have 3 high priests at my 3 real cities making them 100% productive pretty easily. I have a couple other Centaur Chargers and maybe 5 mages that I built after switching to Arcane.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

I have 3-4 mages per city, each with Sun2, Air2 ... So no problem with defense ...

 

[Demus]

Erebus is tough on the kurio's, since your cities really need a decent 3 plot radius, which are tough to find in 5 plot valleys. You need about 20 workable plots per city on average. I prefer pangea, big & small or continents myself. As the kurio's, you don't need that many farms, your enclaves should produce enough food to keep going (they take a while to mature though). Airships are great, get your mages upgraded with some air magic to reach your ships full potential (actually using the air 1 spell for a change, and the air 2 and 3 spells to soften up cities). Your mega-cities should have enough production to turn out 1 T3 unit per turn per city, allowing you to keep your military at a pace while building up your cities with buildings aswell (unless, of course, you've got one city purely specialised for commerce, raking in well over 200 beakers per turn). Other than that, try keeping on good terms with your neighbours untill your flying armada is finished, trading techs along the way to keep up with the pack.

 

[heisenberg]

Yep, Erebus is kinda rough on the Kurios, though the multiple peaks later on do mean that you could park your airships on them safely for units to heal etc when sieging cities as mentioned earlier.

Religion-wise I'm a huge fan of FoL, since it solves the happiness problem very early on for you to get huge cities fast. Ancient forests are pretty decent food/prod tiles for you to mainly cottage everything else up and ignore farms for some decent commerce as well.
Since Kurio is sprawling, the amount of happiness/health you get from GoN is simply huge since you have so many tiles/city to plant your forests in.
The military penalty you get when you run GoN shouldn't really hurt the Kurios much as later on you should be able to produce a unit/turn per city.

There seems to be some synergy as well for settlements and Runes/Ashen, if you spread them out to your multiple settlements. Since you don't need to pay maintenance for settlements, iirc you still get gold/beakers from spreading RoK/AV to your settlements, on top of the additional gold if you had the Holy City. If its a slower paced game you could even consider using popping a priest a turn just to build their temples for 3gold/beaker per settlement. It should help to keep the Kurios economy somewhat on par with other civs even though they are restricted in cities.

Early on I find centuars very strong units since they are highly mobile (not to mention sprint) and can also pick up defensive bonuses as well to help defend against some counterattacks. If you went raider for a period of time to build up a calvary army it gives a very decent advantage during wartime on the offensive.
I usually try to rush my nearest neighbour with centuars early on to get a 2nd optimal city spot. I suppose my strat is somewhat different from Demus's, but I do find that the kurios' potential peaks early on before the city-cap starts to hurt, and while you enjoy the benefits of having sprawling. I play pretty aggressive in the early bits to grab good city locations, settlement positions for resources. With the addition of airships the kurios are able to mount cross-continental attacks easily, or simply to launch fast aggressive attacks later on due to their mobility.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

hrmm I think I need to give them another chance. It took a couple games before I learned to appreciate the Elohim.

So... do you guys found your first 3 cities are your "real" cities? or do you keep hunting for the best spots? It seems like you lose a lot if you wait too long (ie too far behind) but sometimes you see perfect spots later on.

Also, any thoughts on Order? My original thought for heading to it was that you could use unyielding order in your 3 cities and have 0 unhappiness and no upkeep for your only real cities.... granted spreading the temple to their settlements isn't really all that useful for them.

Alternately RoK could be good for the free cash.

Seems like one of the key things is to keep track and plan out your uses of Adaptive. I like Creative early for the expanded settlements... then a period of arcane to get some good mages. What next? Financial seems the obvious choice... I don't get a lot of good useage out of the initial philosophical.

 

[heisenberg]

Yea usually my first few are proper cities: first being my capital, 2nd I'll found if I could still find a good spot, otherwise it'll be the capital of my first victim
I don't like looking around too long for city spots.

Well I suppose Order could be a good alternative to create large cities later on, but theology is a pretty high tech though, if you wanted unyielding order. I usually find Guardian of Nature good enough for happiness cap, since you do have some 30 odd tiles to place some forests in for some 1 happiness/forest, and not to mention it does help on the healthiness side too. It also allows somewhat easier placements of your cities, since almost any tile could be made pretty productive through blooming/cottaging.

Hmm... adaptive-trait-wise Philo is good to get the first 2 GPs out fast. Grab mysticism early to build elder councils (cheap with philo) and crank out those Sages early, or maybe a prophet if you founded a holy city. Since your cities are sprawling and each should constitute a huge % of your tech, Academies are really powerful.
Sadly I don't build that many settlements early on to really justify the usage of creative. I tend to use up my worldspell pretty early by midgame after I've knocked out a decently large civ or two and took over some settlements in place of running creative. With the exception of runes, simply spreading your state religion to settlements should give the first border pop in ~10 turns--creative just saves you the time doing so.
Yep for the remainder of the time I usually just swap around my traits abit to grab the promos I want when building up an army, like arcane, raider. I tend to leave it in the end at financial though, to help keep up with the other civs in economy.

mmm... another thing about the kurio are that they are in a good position to rush for wonders since they have megacities full of production. Some good wonders (somewhat mentioned in the thread) are the guild of nine, crown of akharien, Nexus. Spending some effort to grab some of these good wonders could help somewhat.