Lightning Quinquireme Rush

[Ermak-]

I have found great success playing Carthagenians on watery maps. Pretty much most maps have some large ocean or seas. Given that Carthage will likely be on shoreline, you can perform this Ancient Rush with lightning speed. Basically what you do is scout heavily all the shores you can noting any city with 3 or more tiles of sea access. Next, beline to 'Seafaring'. It takes very little research and probably will need it anyway to acquire sea resources nearby. You dont need to make any setters or extra buildings, just start pumping out lots and lots of Quinquiremes. Quinquiremes don't require any special resource, have a higher strength then a swordsman, move 4 tiles and are easy to produce. You will be able to take out an early city-state with 4 of them most times. If you careful , without loosing any of your boats. Keep your fleet together and healed and move form target to target - eventually controlling all the shores you can reach. This can be done extremely fast, setting you up for a nice classical booming period. I ve done that in multiplayer, and dont know if playing single player on diety will does the same trick given the Ai production bonus.

 

[Harthhal]

how is this beating an archer and walls?

 

[Ermak-]

how is this beating an archer and walls?

coz its fast and most people are makign settlers and workers at this time. and seeing a fleet approaching they cant get enough defense in time

 

[bhavv]

Single archers are weak now, and these Quinquiremes have 13 strength which is very powerful.

 

[strijder20]

So, it only works on Multiplayer, where the players don't have hammers to throw at walls in every city, gargantuan armies and other vanity projects.

 

[Harthhal]

Single archers are weak now, and these Quinquiremes have 13 strength which is very powerful.

i get that you have 13 str but if i have a capital on water with an archer idk if your 4 boats are taking that. if it's a 2nd city i can just bring a warrior army to take it back because you have nothing defending it

 

[bhavv]

If it were me Id have some ranged ships to defend them, but im not sure if those exist in the early game anymore, apart from the Byzantine UU.

 

[Callonia]

If it were me Id have some ranged ships to defend them, but im not sure if those exist in the early game anymore, apart from the Byzantine UU.

Correct. I even got confirmation last night on galleys. I captured a barbarian galley last night with a privateer i did that cuz i never got to have galleys before in civ 5.

Galleys is melee now like triremes.

 

[Harv72b]

i get that you have 13 str but if i have a capital on water with an archer idk if your 4 boats are taking that. if it's a 2nd city i can just bring a warrior army to take it back because you have nothing defending it

Your archer & city both have ranges of 2. The q-remes have 4 movement points. So if it's done right he's getting the first shot with his entire fleet, and if you're fortunate you'll kill 1 of his boats before he hits you again & takes the city.

Also, with the low population at that point in the game, it's not a stretch to imagine that he'd be able to buy an archer to defend in 2-3 turns, or about the time a relatively well-prepared player could begin to mount a counteroffensive.

How to defend against that tactic: Assuming you've researched optics (maybe a big assumption), when you see the boats approaching your city embark the nearest unit (including garrison archer if that's all you've got) into the water right in front of the city. Yes, you're going to lose that unit, but at most he's only going to get 2 shots in on your city while all four of his q-remes take damage.