My idea for playing Rome/Egypt/Persia

[futurehermit]

I've been thinking about this strategy for a little while now and the more I think about it the more I like it. But I haven't tried it out yet and wanted to hear what you think.

Basically, the goal is to take a civ with a strong early UU--that is great for a time, but then is obselete--and to claim 15ish cities asap. That is the number that I find works nicely for an earlyish space victory.

But the thing is under normal circumstances your economy would crash with 15 cities and a huge army early in the game.

So, here's the thing...let's assume pangaea map so you have some close neighbours and aren't isolated. Basically, you get your UU online asap (hopefully you have the required resource).

You run a FE meaning farms everywhere and you work pretty much only farms. You whip like a madman to get a huge army, near striking. Then you take as many of your first opponent's cities as possible, starting with the capital if possible. Ideally, you take your opponent completely out, but if you can't manage to take his capital or other strong city(ies) then take a ceasefire and start in on your second neighbour.

All the while you continue to whip troops while beelining col via currency (try and minimize your tech needs...just get the ones you REALLY need). Running a couple scientists in a couple cities if necessary. You should be able to jack up the slider though once you get enough plunder.

Once you hit CoL, whip courthouses in all your cities and then slap it into caste system. Now run max merchants in most of your cities while designating some to work mines and continue to crank out reinforcements. Hopefully your army will be huge enough by this point that you will not need mass whipping.

Tech to construction if necessary to add catapults, but take as many of your 2nd neighbours cities as possible in the meantime. Once you have catapults, finish your 1st and 2nd neighbours and then build a few settlers if necessary to get your 15ish cities.

All the while you are running a pile of merchants to keep your economy from crashing. Any great merchants that are generated (don't build any wonders), send them on a trade mission for extra $$$ to keep from striking.

Once you are done your warring--hopefully as soon as humanly possible--then transition to a cottage spam...one city at a time. Let your other cities grow as huge as possible and run specialists until you get your pile of workers there to transform them.

Disband some of your army or use them to increase happiness under hereditary rule (probably a better option because it keeps your power graph up there).

Then beeline liberalism (doesn't matter if you get the free tech, you want the civics) and democracy and communism (hopefully nabbing the SoL and Kremlin). Grow your cottages under all cottage civics and specialize a couple production centers under state property.

Then rush buy all of your important buildings, starting with banks and commerce ones followed by universities and science ones.

Then set the science slider to max and go for your space race victory.

What do you think???

 

[ShredZ]

I played a game last night that was similar in that I was Rome, and pumped out as many Prets as I could until the slider was at 0% where it stayed for quite some time... only 945 turns till Philo was done! The hardest part is balancing getting the number of units needed as reinforcements vs. striking. Otherwise it was working okay, I just dont like the slider being at 0% science for so many turns, makes me nervous. I think I started building a few cottages to try to hold off a bit longer, but Brennus built to many units in his capital for the taking, so I had to pillage him something fierce.

What do you think of at least having your capital with all cottages, it might allow for another half dozen troops on the front line...

 

[Charou]

!!!!!

Every penny counts here. A lot of micro might be necessary.
Good land is also required at the beginning.
Sounds quite hard to pull off.

Anyone feels like posting a game with this strat ?

 

[futurehermit]

I will post a game if I can get it to work.

I will probably play as Augustus because I think he has the best synergy.

Reasons:

1) Praets are the best early UU and have little to fear.

2) Starts with mining meaning early bronze and iron. Hopefully will start coastal (one of the few times I say that) so can build workboats and not worry about a worker and agriculture/animal husbandry.

3) Creative means can completely ignore religious techs. If I could avoid ag/ah and religious techs and go up to currency-col via wheel-pottery (granaries)-writing-math that would be ideal!!! It would mean iron would need to be in capital or a coastal city with seafood though...dicy.

4) Organized means less money from civics, which will add up over 15 early cities! Plus, obviously, cheap courthouses, which is huge!

5) UB = forum = more gpp. If I'm able to chop some of these quickly in my largest merchant centers that'll mean I'll probably for sure get 1-2 GMs for trade missions, which is HUGE for this strategy. It takes awhile to go through 1000$+ gold even losing a lot of money per turn Especially when accumulating a lot of plunder $$$.


In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think Augustus is custom-tailored for this strategy. The thing is praets are obviously great, but eventually you run up against civs you can't take out. As great as they are, they only last so long. It's possible to win early with them I suppose on pangaea or if you get a large continent, but you'd have to take this strategy and put it on steroids probably...or else just raze everything to the ground...to pull it off.

Once the era of the praets is over I feel like AC doesn't have a lot going for him. Creative and Organized are great early but subpar mid-to-late. Of course that means that it's not going to be as powerful of a late-game economy as a financial leader say, but my hunch is that with a large enough empire early, it won't matter.

 

[Nkot]

Sounds good, only thing I don't know if you've considered is how big your cities can be under an early FE before hitting the limit. Even if you were to get 2 pre-Cal happiness resources (a large assumption), you might get your non-capital cities to 6 happiness (on Emperor), and at that rate, you could probably have only 2 specialists a city with no production.

This is also considering that you would have to atleast have the buildings necessary for the specialist (libraries, markets, forges) which I assume you'll get through whipping, but I think you overestimating the capabilities of whip-driven economy. It depends though on how well you do it. It might work.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

It will be interesting to see if it can work. I suspect only an organized or possibly financial leader could pull off that many cities that early in the game. If you are not playing super high levels you might be best off getting COL before going super aggressive - maybe from Oracle.

 

[Dirk1302]

Interesting idea, i don´t know if it´ll work because i have never played with praets, i think it´s doable on monarch and maybe above, a lot depends on circumstances. NKot has a point about happiness, maybe you have to research drama, i don´t feel you can ever have enough production to attack succesfully and have enough units for HR. AC is creative so the theaters are built or whipped in quickly.Buildings are not the problem, you run caste system for the specialists.

 

[gettingfat]

Sounds like a good plan, but personally I really don't know how to actually implement that. First, 15ish cities ASAP? I really don't know how to pay for the maintainence in early game with such a big empire and so many units WHILE beelining to CoL and currency WHILE what I basically do is building farms. I know I can use scientist specialists, but I also need the pop for whipping, right? And in a lot of maps a lot of food means little production.

Also, Aggressive whipping means I need lot of happiness. Only Cyprus is charismatic and if I don't start with gold and gems, it means I need either Pyramid or research monarchy, or getting calender for extra happiness resources. So how can I keep my focus on beeling CoL/currency, building up big army, while make sure the city are still productive?

 

[JujuLautre]

mwahahahahaha, another thread on merchant economy

I will have to get a patent for it

 

[frob2900]

It's probably a sub-optimal plan. I.e. it will win you the game less easily than with other plans.

How do I know this?

Because I've played quite a few games like that (one particular example: 15+ cities with Cyrus/Monarch at 500 BC) Unforunately it turns out that it is much more effective to get around 8-10 cities in the ancient/classical and then go for 15+ in the medieval. You are almost certainly doomed if you are not careful when warmongering pre-currency. Mainentance costs just get too astronomical.

If your army/campaign runs out of steam (i.e. capturing less than 1 city every 3-4 turns or so) before you've teched currency and major pillage money stops coming in, chances are you will have "strike" in a very bad way. If you've got the pyramids, then OK you might get currency/CoL in short order but otherwise you'll have to run quite a few scientists, which cuts down gold from merchants, which prolongs strike/disbands workers etc. Just a Nasty Situation.

Remember, letting the AI "grow" distant cities (that you dont need ASAP) for you during the ancient/classical era saves you around 5 in maintenance for every turn they spent growing it. A bunch of conquered cities that you didnt really need might cost you a lot. Better to get them when they are juicy size 15s and your empire is financially able to handle them.

Also, even if you get Currency/CoL in somewhat short order, the heavy maintenance you will have been paying from early on will most likely have killed your whole-game tech-rate in a bad way. You will end up teching slower than in more "restrained" games.

On pangea and conquest/domination its OK, I suppose, if you can cripple all the AIs, but on something like Continents/Standard or Large you are going to be leagues behind the other continent by the time they get optics.

You probably also won't be making any kind of early space launch.

Still, even though it is sub-optimal, it certainly is fun It did wonders for my city-microing skills, trying to stay financially afloat while expanding through conquest like a madman.

There also is one possible saving grace for the strategy: The AI might get CoL/Currency or other really good techs while you are busy pummeling them. In this case you can tech trade your way to making it a quite workable strategy (I did that with Cyrus). Basically "conquer" all your post-alphabet/UU techs. Heck, even conquer alphabet.

Also, if you do decide to pursue an early 15+ city mass expansion, build cottages. I can't stress this enough. They are far superior money-makers to merchant specialists, whatever you may think of them. Of course, you can still run specialists in parallel, but at least dedicate a few cities to cottage spamming (since you'll have enough cities anyway).

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, here is my first sample game. It was my first crack at it and I made a lot of mistakes, but I think it shows the general idea. Furthermore, it was with Mehmed who doesn't have a strong early UU and I think that would've made a lot of difference. Next, Shaka was my first opponent--no cakewalk. Finally, I got off to a disastrous start because my starting warrior died to hostile villagers in the first few turns so my early scouting was completely blah. I later found I had a lot of jungle around me so early city placement was less than ideal. In spite of all of this though I think the game shows the gist of the strategy, but I think definitely it would have been a lot stronger if I had been able to take out say Gandhi with praetorians instead of Shaka with regular swords and axes. Without further ado...

I finished my first war against Shaka in 580AD. It gave me a total of 12 cities. This is less cities and much later than I would've liked, but I was still satisfied for my first attempt. Then it was a matter of adding a pile of catapults and going after Louis was my next closest neighbour. HC was the tech and points leader, who was also first to liberalism, so I had a legitimate contender in the space race to be concerned about.

I signed peace when I had Louis down to one city. I wanted to just wipe him out to get rid of motherland unhappiness, but I had no idea where his one city was (I eventually found it waaay to the north of HC) and didn't have paper to get a world map, so I just took a pile of tech from him for peace and dealt with the motherland unhappiness.

I was pretty pleased though because look at how many more cities I had than HC! And this is only 1320AD. My usual target for finishing all warfare is sub-1500AD so I was on schedule, which is nice.

I was behind on tech, but confident that would change. Unfortunately WFYABTA prevented me from more easily catching up to everyone, but it didn't take me long to start having techs they didn't.

My empire at 1320AD.

I won a space race victory in 1884AD. Not amazing, but not bad for a first attempt imo. I waited to rush buy a bunch of buildings until I made a shot at the Kremlin, but I ended up losing the Kremlin race, so that kinda sucked. I should've just gone for the rushbuying spree as soon as I got democracy. I think that would've helped. I also think it would've made a difference if I had been able to pull out a much stronger, faster earlier rush. As it was I didn't really have to run merchant specialists. I put a city or two on build gold occasionally--I was impressed with how well that worked actually--but I never was threatened by a strike. I think if I had been able to go harder on the military early to wipe Shaka out a lot faster I would've been better off. The lack of early scouting and lack of strong whip-factories early on...plus my lack of familiarity with the strat...put a bit of a cramp on what I believe this strat can do...especially with a strong early UU, which I didn't have this game.

So, feel free to try it out yourself and see how well you can do I will attach save games. Cheers.

p.s., unfortunately I forgot the 4000BC save

 

[frob2900]

You got 12 cities in the ancient/classical, you then took out your second opponent in the medieval. While 12 cities in 580 AD is perhaps slightly more than usual, I don't think it illustrates a "super-fast-early" expansion strategy...

Put it this way: How did this differ from how you usually play Monarch games (apart from 1-2 or so extra cities)? I mean: you took out an AI early (standard practice) then did some building and took out yet another AI. As you said earlier: Rome/Persia/Egypt(/Inca) and their early power-UUs are probably the ticket here!

Then again, I might have over-read the extent at which you recommended early expansion.

In any case, nice techs from Louis!

[EDIT] Also, Re: Space Race: Unresearched paper (even Civil Service/ Feudalism/Literature before Louis surrendered! ) at 1320 AD is a big no-no for early space race. To get 1700-1800 launches its pretty much necessary to be getting things like Sci.Meth at the latest at that point (eminently bulbable tech path.. you can shoot right up to biology) then get assembly line in the 1500's.

 

[futurehermit]

I said it wasn't the best example, just the gist of it. It was my first crack at it. Without a strong early unit and with bad starting land and scouting due to first warrior getting killed asap it really slowed me down in the beginning.

I do need tips for space race though. I think I need to integrate a GS-farm into the strategy to lightbulb while I am conquering.

 

[futurehermit]

My second game was a 1900AD space race win with Cyrus.

The early part actually went a helluva lot better, but the late part was worse than I usually do.

The thing that sucked was I started on a river with about 12-13 floodplains. So I had to move my opening settler or else I would've been crippled with health. That really sucked. However, I was able to move to a spot with 2 gold pits which helped my early research.

I also had horses to the N of my capital and Mehmed and Kublai close by. I had taken them both out by 1000AD, which is better than last game. And I went for rushbuying right away, which I felt was better than last game. I also was first to liberalism, thanks to bribing Brennus to attack the tech leader Wang, ca. 1150AD. So, things were going well.

But I think I teched wrong in the late game and that kinda messed me up. I shot for computers first and then industrialism-Apollo-Space Elevator-Fusion.

However, I was much later to fusion that I usually am when I delay computers. I usually am able to use the free GE on the SE but this time my IW city had it pretty much completely done by the time I got the GE.

Any tips on winning early space race would be greatly appreciated. I think I can continue to work on the early expansion (I felt this game went pretty well in that regard to have around 20 cities by 1000AD).

It's just that for so long I've been going domination that I don't really know the ins and outs of early space wins.

 

[carl corey]

I don't know, I've always shot for Computers followed by Space Elevator for a Space Race win. There's not much else to it. If I have a huge number of cities I might even start building gold to pump up the slider to 100% since I usually can keep up in military with upgrades & units from two-three military cities (with Heroic Epic or Military Academies).

The only other thing I can think of is having an army of workers to transform all farms & cottages in watermills & workshops, as you won't need much more in terms of research lately - you can build research/gold if you have no parts to build. That and starting a Golden Age or even two while building space parts everywhere. In my last game on Emperor I nearly failed to win the Space Race because I missed on the Fusion GE for 2 turns and got a GS instead of anything else at very low odds so I actually couldn't start any golden age despite building almost all parts simultaneously. I finally won by just one part when the best AI just got that tech.

 

[frob2900]

Any tips on winning early space race would be greatly appreciated.

Post saves so people can look at your games, its really the best way to comment on gameplay (I tend to like playing peoples 4000BC saves to see how I would have played)

Do you generally play epic or normal speed?

I'd also like to see discussions on later game space-race.. sometimes things just start to slow down after liberalism and I go domination out of frustration..

I think cottages are probably an essential key to improve space launch times, but it would also be interesting to see how well SE can do (I've got 1706 AD space race with SE / epic speed, but thats on prince.. Monarch around 100 years later).

All in all, very interesting thread

 

[futurehermit]

I'll post my Cyrus saves although I don't have the 4000BC save. I really have to get in the habit of saving at day 1 But I reboot a lot of games out of frustration or boredom

I always play normal speed. And when I go space I always start with or transition to a CE and then fullblown production lategame. I think I have the idea down, but my execution is poor. I wonder about my different beelines and stuff.

 

[futurehermit]

Any tips on these save games would be greatly appreciated.

I felt like the game was going quite well actually until later on. If anyone can pick up one of the later (or earlier) saves and win sub-1800 and give me tips that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Why did it take 450 years from liberalism to finish rush buying? I haven't loaded the save, just looked at the description. Did you prioritize other things over democracy - I think democracy and early expansion is probably crucial. Or did you stay rushbuying for too long?

Serfdom or Hagia Sophia might be useful for this strategy. Switch to it after you get liberalism and while you are researching for democracy, cottage everything in sight. Switch to emancipation and watch those cottages grow.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Tech trading is probably key for fast wins too. Ideally you want three patsy's around you who you can kill, and then Mansa and maybe another couple of financial civs for trading next to them. Mansa will be a challenge for the space race, but your greater land should pull ahead. But he will keep the tech rate high which should decrease your research costs both when because you will get trade opportunities, but also because your self research of catchup techs is at a discount.