My Expansionist Troubles...

[tdellaringa]

Hey all,

Love the posts and info, been playing this for months, never played the earlier games.

I play on the second level up, and one thing I have not heard mentioned is how many civs you play against. I always play with 7 or 8. I've seen posts where it seems lots of folks play with only 2-3 to maximize their score. That's fine, but I prefer the challenge of dealing with lots of civs, so I wonder what you all do...anyway.

With that in mind, my problem is no matter how well I seem to do, even if I take out one civ early, you can only get *so* much land before it becomes a bit battle of wits and might.

So the question is - once the land grab is done - what is your NEXT strategy for continued expansion? Because that is the second stage in expansion, grabbing other civs lands. It seems to me unless you get ahead militarily at some point, you are screwed since you are not going to grab tons of land with culture, only the odd few cities.

What are the key techs/wonders for this? How do you handle the military at that point?

Quickly, my best game was this: I started at a choke point on the south, and overtook a civ in the north at another choke point. This gave me blocking cities and gave me a HUGE northwestern area to settle in. One or two civs got in a city here and there but I took them by culture. After this I was able to kill the civ below me and dominate the rest of the game by superior military. Halfway through the game I held 55% of the land or more...but my ending score was still only 1800.

Looking forward to answers...

P.S -- whats a good Civ to play where you want to expand quickly? I played US for awhile with few successes, better lately with Persions and Iroquios...

Tom

 

[God]

I spend the whole ancient era grabbing as much land as possible, ignoring ancient war.

In the middle ages, i start to conquer. First a civ or two with knights. I usually attack a cornered civ(2-3 sides ocean, 1 side me) and take them out. Later i wait for cavalry and try to finish off another 2-3. I combine cavalry with artilery to finsh off infantry.

Then i wait for tanks and finish mostly everybody else. If its a larger map then modern armor and nukes to finish off the rest of the world.

I most of the cities i conquer except those which are larger than size 10. I usually starve the other cities down to a manageable size and rush a temple halfway through.

Your score is also determined by your difficulty you played. If i read your post correctly you play on warlord. If you played the same game on regent you would have a score of 2700, on monarch 3600, if i've figured out the score calculation correctly.

To get a larger score play on a slightly higher difficulty and on a larger map. Also happiness helps determine your score so always have some luxuries and atleast 10% luxury rate under democracy.

 

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by tdellaringa
So the question is - once the land grab is done - what is your NEXT strategy for continued expansion?

Militarily, horseman (horse-riding) or swordsman (iron-working) rushes are very popular in the ancient age. Several threads have given detailed advice on achieving this, but briefly - build a stack of veteran attack units - at least 6, supported by a couple of spearman to defend & hold captured cities, settler(s) to replant razed cities and workers to build roads to the front. Well defended cities (on hills, behind rivers) may need some catapults (mathematics - at least 4) to crack. Protect elites - use them to finish off weakened enemy units and try to get a great leader (GL). If you get one, use it to build the Forbidden Palace - the enemy capital is a good place, as it's usually on a river. You now have 2 'cores' which is more than enough to win the game with.

Non-militarily, I use a strat I call "Lighthouse REX" - or Rapid Expansion Overseas. The lighthouse wonder usually allows the owner unique access to offshore islands. While not immediately profitable, strategic resources usually turn up on these islands, alleviating the need to crush your neighbours for resources. This doesn't give you the immediate power of a successful military campaign + GL + FP, but is usually enough to help a peaceful victory. I just posted this as new thread on this forum - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20894

An alternative is to play the Babs and culture-bomb your expansion. However, on standard maps & smaller this is usually restricted by the enemy capital being only 10 squares from yours -hence the propensity amongst civvers for conquest.