Multiplayer Strategy

(Sorry if this the wrong place to post this, but I'm actually interested in what people on this board think about the topic.)

So, I discovered multiplayer civ. Several open ended questions.


I play regularly on Emperer, so at least I know what I'm doing.

The settings for these MP games are usually 6/7 civs on a small Pangea, set to quick. You'll have room for 3 or 4 cities.


I've played 4 games so far.

1. Get axe rushed by someone who was really close, die quick. Loss

2. Defend myself for the rush well, and it comes, but the ensuing war (bronze age) gets no one anywhere and fall behind, resign. Loss

3. Same. Loss

4. Manage to REX out to 6 cities, turtle up, Finally send in a stack of Trebs + Maces to a neighbor, the whole board conceedes. Win.


............

So...these games really seem played until someone has an advantage in the Treb-ish area.

Best advice to get there sooner?


My intial thoughts, still really rough - thinking about it...

-SE seems better than CE. (forgive the generalization, I know, I know)
-Longbows fast are important.


I guess I'm primarily interested in tech path. You want Feudalism/Civil Service/Engineering. That's essentially the end game.

Also, you can choose leaders. I'm thinking Sitting Bull for protective/philo.

 

Interesting...
You don't find many people around here who'd say a Protective leader is good, even in multiplayer. I don't really play settings like those anymore but definitely if the map is fairly crammed I would expect most decisive wars to be happening no later than the time of trebs.

Longbows are great to head to because they will more or less guarantee you'll survive til the era of rifles, assuming you are playing reasonably of course.

By the way, I only see one question in your post - not several.
Of course it is going to be good advice to advance in tech sooner. You definitely shouldn't crash your economy as hard as high-level single players do.

The other thing is, and I'm making an assumption about the 4 games you played, MP games hosted from gamespy are normally at Noble difficulty. This makes the game less interesting IMO and less strategic. At that difficulty there is little negative consequence for going to war early and capturing as many cities as possible.

 

Surviving until rifles does not mean retaining a chance to win until rifles. Longbows are good on defensive terrain, but you're going to need to attack to prevent pillaging (if you get pillaged/choked for extended periods you're going to lose). It might also be difficult to defend multiple cities so watch your placement and don't neglect roads.

With reasonably even skill you can't win them all in MP but it can be fun.

 

I'm not sure that the difficulty level (noble or other) is relevant. There are no AIs.

My general thought is that I can outplay your average MP denizen as long as I stay alive. Hence, protective. Phi gets you bulbs through the mid game.

The goal is to get to either Rifles/Cannons/Cav and start scooping them up. You might have to do that against a runaway player who has taken several capitals in the early game.

You probably won't be outproducing them, so drafting is attractive.

The question is what's the best way to get there, given the constraints.

 

The best thing, in this type of game, is just to avoid getting attacked at all. I think protective, especially sitting bull, works well for that reason- players assume they won't be able to capture your cities so they go after someone else.

 

Start there. If you like bronze age war, by all means keep playing games with those settings. I find later era starts more interesting in the multiplayer I've done.

 

You know, I was going to add to the end of my post that someone would soon bring up the idea that you will get pillaged to the stone age if you go Protective. You didn't quite but the idea was almost the same. Of course, getting to longbows doesn't mean you can rest on your hands til rifles. In the end, it's more costly losing a city or two than it is losing a few improvements. As always don't build cottages on vulnerable borders, do build roads, build siege units, etc. I rarely see anyone declaring war only to pillage an enemy. They usually want cities and longbows might deter them from doing that. If you don't have the military to defend from pillaging I highly doubt you'd have enough to defend a threatened city.

Units with high defense bonuses like archers and longbows are there to help deny tiles from your enemy. Usually that's cities but using them on hills, forests and sometimes forts in your territory is a good idea. From these well defended positions, your catapults and other units are safer from counter attack and importantly the archery units will usually be picked as best defenders (in forests maybe not but then the defense bonus for non-archery is good enough anyway).

Your advice about placement and roads I agree 100%!

It most definitely is. Deity level MP games will play out very differently to Noble level ones. There are a number of different handicaps/bonuses that depend on difficulty but IMO the one that has the biggest effect on strategy is maintenance and upkeep costs. As I tried to imply earlier, it's too easy to expand too fast at Noble. It means that at higher levels in MP the size of your empire needs to be more considered and you need to make harder decisions about what path to follow.

 

I host games with 9-11 players online, standard size hemospheres or continets. small pangei is noobs

 

You are correct of course, excepting the very early game before collateral exists. During that window, an army that would be extremely difficult to conquer in a city could also struggle to beat the invaders in the field, ultimately getting pillaged heavily. I've not been able to recover from that, and players I've done it to (especially if I hit with mali before they hook up metal) tend to quit.

Longbows themselves can be potent hill chokers, and it can be *very* difficult to get a mine back from them for little investment.

 

The games you describe are open games where some people usually quit after a few turns making for a very unbalanced game. Also pangea is a very bad map for these types of games as where yous start defines more or less your game.

There are also league games which are played to the end and a ranking system is kept.

http://league.civplayers.com/

These games are definatelly more challenging and satisfying.

I will speak for ffa league games or CTONS as they are called which are usually played on inland sea map or something similar like donut or hub have 2 city elimination and last 120 to 130 turns.

These games are decided on score, so whoever has bigger score at end of turns wins.

Now on tech path some people go for feudalism, other for CS and some for music. Alot will depend on your resources...if you have ivory for example there is no need to go for feudalism...personnaly I will go for feudalism only if i don't have iron and/or horse/ivory.

Music is quite nice as well as you can use the artist to make a strong front and gain land which you can settle later.

CS is obviously good if you cottage capital.

Specialist approach is not good IMO since you need to use slavery so working cottages and using slavery is propably much better than running great people.

Enginnering is an interesting option as well. I have seen people getting metal casting from Oracle, then using forge to get a great eng and bulbing machinery and then going enginnering, using a combo of crossbows, catas and pikes to kill their neighbour.