Hi folks,
General strategy question here... for reference, I often play Standard pace, Standard or Large maps, between King(5) and Immortal(7) difficulty (have experience winning on Deity(8) but do not play it most games as I like to roleplay my Civ a bit).
When I play conquest games, I often go full steam conquest from very early on - make some early ranged units, get at least Statue of Zeus, rush Composite and then Crossbowmen, get Logistics and March (and +1 Range) on 2-3 of them, then press random buttons and capture cities while the whole world denounces me (and all my cities - puppet or annexed - spam nothing but gold and happiness buildings to try to keep up).
Other times, I go my usual semi-peaceful route, amassing tons of science points and production, until I develop a bunch of nukes and can almost capture several capital cities in one turn (often while those Civs are still struggling to finish the Manhattan Project).
However, on some Civs, I want to find a middle ground - the ability to start conquest in the midgame (perhaps even prior to Ideology which can often solve unhappiness problems), without suffering massive happiness penalties or setbacks to science.
The problem: almost until the time Artillery and later nukes roll around (which is too late!), I find myself spamming buildings too much. Usually I have between 3 and 5 cities and pride myself on completely eclipsing my 7-9 AI opponents in GNP, production, and techs. Even if I blow my tons of incoming gold on a new unit every few turns, I still find myself unequipped to go nation-conquering until the lategame when I can steamroll everything with Artillery or nukes.
When do I stop? It seems like every time I say "okay this city has enough buildings," I wind up finishing another tech and now every city needs a Public School (or Bank, or whatever). I realize at some point when I get a lead in every "peaceful" metric I should probably switch over to full-steam military production... but I'm having trouble deciding when that point is. I also end up pausing military production for happiness buildings to counter population unhappiness sometimes, so I'm concerned that I might be allowing my cities to grow too much when I make these strong, peaceful, 4-city-ish starts... aside from micromanaging citizens (which I sometimes do), should I strongly consider "Avoid Growth" in addition to setting a Production focus like I already do?
TL;DR version: I like to handicap myself / roleplay my Civs a bit rather than pursuing the optimal military strategies of "Logistics bows, Artillery spam, or nukes," but I have trouble deciding when I have enough science/GPT/production/happiness buildings and can switch over to cranking out a strong army. To be clear, this isn't a "how can I win" post since I can almost always default to an easy Science victory in these cases, but instead a "how can I win a certain way" post.
Thanks!
General strategy question here... for reference, I often play Standard pace, Standard or Large maps, between King(5) and Immortal(7) difficulty (have experience winning on Deity(8) but do not play it most games as I like to roleplay my Civ a bit).
When I play conquest games, I often go full steam conquest from very early on - make some early ranged units, get at least Statue of Zeus, rush Composite and then Crossbowmen, get Logistics and March (and +1 Range) on 2-3 of them, then press random buttons and capture cities while the whole world denounces me (and all my cities - puppet or annexed - spam nothing but gold and happiness buildings to try to keep up).
Other times, I go my usual semi-peaceful route, amassing tons of science points and production, until I develop a bunch of nukes and can almost capture several capital cities in one turn (often while those Civs are still struggling to finish the Manhattan Project).
However, on some Civs, I want to find a middle ground - the ability to start conquest in the midgame (perhaps even prior to Ideology which can often solve unhappiness problems), without suffering massive happiness penalties or setbacks to science.
The problem: almost until the time Artillery and later nukes roll around (which is too late!), I find myself spamming buildings too much. Usually I have between 3 and 5 cities and pride myself on completely eclipsing my 7-9 AI opponents in GNP, production, and techs. Even if I blow my tons of incoming gold on a new unit every few turns, I still find myself unequipped to go nation-conquering until the lategame when I can steamroll everything with Artillery or nukes.
When do I stop? It seems like every time I say "okay this city has enough buildings," I wind up finishing another tech and now every city needs a Public School (or Bank, or whatever). I realize at some point when I get a lead in every "peaceful" metric I should probably switch over to full-steam military production... but I'm having trouble deciding when that point is. I also end up pausing military production for happiness buildings to counter population unhappiness sometimes, so I'm concerned that I might be allowing my cities to grow too much when I make these strong, peaceful, 4-city-ish starts... aside from micromanaging citizens (which I sometimes do), should I strongly consider "Avoid Growth" in addition to setting a Production focus like I already do?
TL;DR version: I like to handicap myself / roleplay my Civs a bit rather than pursuing the optimal military strategies of "Logistics bows, Artillery spam, or nukes," but I have trouble deciding when I have enough science/GPT/production/happiness buildings and can switch over to cranking out a strong army. To be clear, this isn't a "how can I win" post since I can almost always default to an easy Science victory in these cases, but instead a "how can I win a certain way" post.
Thanks!
I definitely do pre-build a few units along the way and upgrade them, but... usually not enough (and since this example refers to mostly peaceful playstyle, most of those upgraded units also do not have many promotions). My problem is that I'm essentially too building-focused. I forgot to mention that I also build culture buildings (including the Great Person guilds) so that I'm not too susceptible too foreign influence Ideology-wise later in the game.
