My tactics

[Deathwing]

Hi I thought I'd post my current tactics for my usual mode of play and see if anyone has any thoughts, comments or ideas they might suggest.

I've done the praetorian rush and different victory styles. This is my usual builder style of play, which I realise will not be the same style as that of the next person. Note that I play HUGE MARATHON ANCIENT EMPEROR/IMMORTAL/DEITY maps, which means maintenance etc is an important factor.

*I normally play Bismarck for the wonder building, mining, scout and panzer rush (I tried Roosevelt for the maintenance reduction but just don't like his portrait!)
*Found first city on a plains hill for the production bonus if I can reach it in 1 turn and it looks like a good position; otherwise found in starting location
*Send scout out searching for goody huts, aiming to crest hills on second move to maximise terrain revealed and aiming for most likely locations of huts
*Set research to bronze working
*Build 3 scouts, or 2 scouts and 1 warrior and send them exploring and searching for goody huts (warrior to defend) till I reach population 2
*Build a worker (usually get it turn before I get bronze working)
*Set research to mysticism
*Chop-rush second worker
*Chop-rush settler
*Found second city on plains hill pref near river, approx 8(?) squares from prev city, the reason for this is to claim a lot of land with the limited cities I can build with the maintenance, later on when I can afford it I fill in the gaps with new cities
*First city builds stonehenge, chop-rushed
*Second city builds 2 archers for defence, then when it hits population 2 it does the 2 workers, 1 settler patten
*Research masonry
*Capital chop-rushes Great Wall
*Research Polytheism
*Capital starts on Temple of Artemis
*Research Priesthood
*Capital chop-rushes Oracle while I research pottery
*I use oracle to buy highest-value tech available (usually monarchy, if I'm lucky I can get code of laws or metal casting
*Second city has built settler so it starts on barracks then archers
*Third city follows pattern of second city (2 archers, 2 workers, 1 settler), I try to position to box in other civs and lock in as much land as possible
*Capital finishes temple of artemis and starts pyramids
*Research the wheel, agriculture and pottery so workers can connect resources and improve the land - I've usually managed to research 1 or 2 of these before polytheism and sometimes get them from tribal villages
*Beeline for alphabet
*Adopt majority religion
*Trade techs starting with the lowest-score civ working upwards, generally giving them lower-value techs where possible (being sensible e.g. I wouldn't give horseback riding if I'm about to attack that civ)
*Build all wonders, sometimes using other cities to do this
*Settle great prophet for more cash to keep tech rate at 100%
*Research currency
*Continue trading techs so I have all other AI's techs and their gold
*Aim to get techs that give a unique bonus (free great artist, found a religion) before any other civ
*Maintain as close to 100% research rate as possible and lead in technology with all or most wonders (NB on deity I generally don't get all wonders, but can manage this on immortal)
*Once land taken or reaching maintenance cap, build everything possible in cities in this order (forge, granary, monastery, library, temples, university, etc) going for cultural buildings quickly to expand cultural borders
*When I get compass, rush a caravel and go round the world for the +1 movement bonus
*Great prophets found their special building or settle for cash
*Great artists create great work to expand borders and peacefully take neighbouring cities
*Great engineers finish wonders instantly
*Great scientist builds academies
*Great spy waits till all land taken then starts golden age
*Trading with the other civs generally gives quite good relations
*If war is declared I bribe other civs to declare on that person, reinforce the city and hold off the attack, then go for peace
*Workers mine all hills for resources, generally build 3 farms around a city then the rest mix of workshops and cottages. Lumbermills instead of forest preserves except one city surrounded by forests where I will one day put national park. Every square within my borders gets a road in due course, and every hill a mine.
*If a city has built everything it produces artillery units, as these will be useful regardless of the era
*Around the time of knights or panzers I have some cities which have built everything and plenty of artillery, so I knock out lots of military units, position close to a city at the enemy border and declare war. If it's panzer era this usually takes me through all other AI's to a domination victory.
*In times of war I generally head for the capital and if I'm playing for a fast victory will capitulate the enemy, or if I think it might bring the attitude of other empire's down towards me I'll destroy him.
*I never do defensive pacts, been dragged into too many wars unprepared that way.
*I always open borders for the trade and attitude bonus.
*Civics-wise I adopt slavery if I think I will need to whip, get organized religion for the building bonus, then get representation & caste system when I have both. When I get free market I take that, same with free speech and universal sufferage. I find that shortly before communism my maintenance is beginning to cripple me, so I beeline that and adopt state property, probably my favourite civic on a huge map! Eventually I adopt free religion when I have a good mix of religions in my civ and I've switched from building to military units.

That's a bit of a long post, but it's basically how I play on a regular "let's have fun building a civilization" game, i.e. not going for any specific victory or an early win. Any thoughts, comments or ideas appreciated.

PS What I should do is specialise the cities a bit more (i.e. pure cottage or pure workshop cities), I reckon I'll start doing more of that in time.

 

[Fleme]

I stopped reading at "panzer rush"

 

[Deathwing]

Fairly good going then lmao I didn't know how to condense what I do into a neat section, guess I could have divided it up a bit easier to read. Ah but writing it down helps me think about and organise it

Btw does trade withdrawal still work in latest patched BTS? (Gifting gold per turn, trade a resource for it all, then cancel your gold per turn deals in 10 turns while keeping the resource for gold deal)

 

[Margie Thatcher]

I use oracle to buy highest-value tech available (usually monarchy, if I'm lucky I can get code of laws or metal casting

Monarchy may be worth more flasks, but CoL or Metal Casting is a lot more useful early on, especially since you're going for the Pyramids anyway (which means you'll get Hereditary Rule in any case, assuming you finish them first). I'd prefer to get Writing earlier so I can grab CoL (and maybe Confucianism, too ).

Personally, I'm not too much of a fan of the Temple of Artemis. I'd go for Pyramids first. =/

 

[Gwynnja]

Monarchy may be worth more flasks, but CoL or Metal Casting is a lot more useful early on

Hereditary rule is pretty useful. Mids are never guaranteed, nor are other happiness resources.

 

[Durak]

*Build 3 scouts, or 2 scouts and 1 warrior and send them exploring and searching for goody huts (warrior to defend) till I reach population 2
...
*Chop-rush second worker
*Chop-rush settler
...
*First city builds stonehenge, chop-rushed
*Second city builds 2 archers for defence, then when it hits population 2 it does the 2 workers, 1 settler patten
...
*Capital chop-rushes Great Wall
...
*Capital chop-rushes Oracle while I research pottery
...
*Second city has built settler so it starts on barracks then archers
*Third city follows pattern of second city (2 archers, 2 workers, 1 settler), I try to position to box in other civs and lock in as much land as possible
...
*Build all wonders, sometimes using other cities to do this
*Settle great prophet for more cash to keep tech rate at 100%
...
*Continue trading techs so I have all other AI's techs and their gold
*Aim to get techs that give a unique bonus (free great artist, found a religion) before any other civ
...


PS What I should do is specialise the cities a bit more (i.e. pure cottage or pure workshop cities), I reckon I'll start doing more of that in time.

Somehow between starting your build order with 3 scouts, getting all the wonders, and getting all the techs first without bulbing anything, and all this without properly specializing your cities, i doubt you're really pulling this off on deity. Hell i doubt you can pull that off on emperor (no offense, but this sounds like settler level to me). Getting 4 early wonders!? (henge, GW, mids and oracle) There's no way you can do that on deity, and even if you'd pull it off you'd have such a tiny empire you'd be wiped off the map in no-time. Seriously, if you want some advice tell us what level you're really on, so we can help you accordingly...

 

[Cusanus]

Screen shots! Save games!

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Somehow between starting your build order with 3 scouts, getting all the wonders, and getting all the techs first without bulbing anything, and all this without properly specializing your cities, i doubt you're really pulling this off on deity. Hell i doubt you can pull that off on emperor (no offense, but this sounds like settler level to me). Getting 4 early wonders!? (henge, GW, mids and oracle) There's no way you can do that on deity, and even if you'd pull it off you'd have such a tiny empire you'd be wiped off the map in no-time. Seriously, if you want some advice tell us what level you're really on, so we can help you accordingly...

seconded

 

[Deathwing]

Yeah agreed on hereditary rule, I switch to that IF I don't get pyramids though on emperor I usually do (on immortal sometimes). I usually wait till I just hit unhappiness before switching, so I can try to switch other civics (e.g. to slavery) at the same time.

As soon as I get the early techs, I beeline for alphabet as I said via writing so I can tech trade. Next are currency and code of laws to keep maintenance down and research at (or close to) max.

City-wise the other civs are larger than me but that's fine because any larger and I'd cripple my commerce - my trick is to land-grab within my borders and fill that in later so by the time we're fighting I'm equal-sized and further ahead in tech with all or most of the wonders too.

My desktop has been out of action for about a month now so I've just got a couple saved games on my laptop which I've uploaded. I've been playing multi on the laptop with a friend, so there's one nearly-completed emperor multi game, and one reasonably-early emperor single-player game I did to show her as a demo.

Believe me I've done this strategy on immortal a good few times, once on deity, with success. The reason I ask for advice is because I'd like to be even better you can never know enough - plus I want comfortable wins on deity too.

 

[Deathwing]

NB I automated the workers in the multiplayer game because I didn't want my turns taking too long for the other player; usually I run everything on manual and micromanage a little more!

 

[Sian]

initial thought ... one-trick ponyism

 

[Deathwing]

Not sure what a ponyism is but I think I can gather from the context. I'm not asking for alternative methods of playing the game - see my first post, this is my usual builder style and I can play other strategies but this is the one I find most FUN.

If anyone has any ideas to improve my strategy other than just attempting to bash me for posting how I like to play the game, your comments are appreciated.

 

[Deathwing]

And thanks to Margie and Gwynnja for taking a sensible approach and contributing their ideas.

 

[Sidney Magal]

2 things:

-You realize that your singleplayer save is on noble, don't you?

-There's a password to be typed in the multiplayer save.

Regarding your tactics, I think they're fine if you're having fun. That's what makes people buy their games. Just don't claim to do that in levels you actually never tried playing.

 

[sherbz]

plus I want comfortable wins on deity too.

There is no such thing as a comfortable win on deity. To win on deity requires a degree of luck, even for the best of players. Judging by your posts, it would seem you dont win consistently at this level anyway. Your strategy is too restrictive. The best players at Civ have multiple strategies that have synergy with each other. Then when the time is right, they concentrate on one strategy and exploit it to the fullest extent. An example would be to establish a network of core cities keeping open options of culture and diplomatic victories. Winning liberalism, then teching rifling and steel before the AI and dominating your landmass. Then turtling up and settling on a space victory with a contingency of nukes and ships to beat a stealthy culture victory from a rival civ. In all circumstances you have to play the map. Its fine to discuss aspects of strategy, but these are many and only executed if the map calls for them. If civ was easy enough to just have 1 strategy that lets you beat deity all the time, then we would all be deity players, and the game would suck.

 

[Deathwing]

Haha, no I didn't realise the single-player was on Noble, I must have forgotten to change it!

Password for the multiplayer game is jess, but I can't give the password for my civilization as it's the same as I use on the forums etc! Is there any way to remove passwords once in a multiplayer game?

Although poorly put I understand what Sian is saying, that it will not work often on the highest levels. I just ran a few quick starts on immortal and either I'm out of practice or was lucky with it those few I wonderspammed in a row. I've been playing emperor on multi because it's easy to recycle the above every time. Those times it worked on immortal I got most though not all of the early wonders; aha I'm in the mood for experimenting now and seeing what made it effective!

Just seen sherbz' post too, and yep I agree deity is tougher than emperor back in Civ 1. Although the AI seems to cheat less noticeably on Civ 4 I do keep options open, even just having high culture can flip cities peacefully.

My best time for attack is often shortly after industrialism - with assembly plants (factories) and coal plants in every city, suddenly production is way higher than rival civs and panzers are phenomenal (especially if supported by bombers after researching flight).

I've tended to avoid nukes recently, maybe I should use them more but I normally don't because I find it irritating searching the whole map to locate where the global warming occurred and fix it. (I know there's an indicator but by the time you've done a dozen build screens it might have gone).

Oh and Sidney, if you check my post I never said what levels I've tried playing. All I said was that this was my strategy for emperor/immortal/deity games. As a matter of fact I have played all three and won all three. Emperor is easy enough to win every time with all wonders. I find immortal challenging and the few times I did it I got most of the wonders. Deity is damn hard and I've only beaten it once (although I've only attempted it a couple of times so far) but I'm sure like emperor on original Civ it can become a comfortable difficulty level in the end.

And I never said I get all the wonders in deity. If you read my original post it says that I don't, sorry if it's not clear. I get all wonders on emperor (every time), immortal (a few times), but as I said in my original (long) post it does say that on deity I couldn't get all the wonders. Hence this thread was a request for thoughts and ideas.

 

[Fleme]

I still can't get over the Panzer rush part. I mean, you do realize how bad the unit really is? And that when you claim that you do a Panzer rush on Deity I just lose it. You know what a rush is?

I'm sure the rest of the thread is entertaining and I'm sure I'll get over the Panzer rush thing one of these days.

 

[Deathwing]

Yeah I know it's not technically what we refer to as a "rush" because it's late-game but I just wanted to entertain you JFleme

 

[barbertje]

With these settings (huge map, marathon speed, lots of room), the AI will be severely handicapped by barbarians below monarch. Asoka is killed off by barbs already. If you build the great wall yourself this will play like chieftain level.

Then again, looking at your placement of Hamburg and all the work you did there, mining hills that will be forever unworked, chieftain might be an appropriate level for you.
(Hamburg has 3 gold mines and 2 plains hills mines, all mined and roaded and no tiles with more than 2 food. It can have 3 grassland farms after civil service)

 

[Deathwing]

I'm going to disable notifications from this one because it's just irritating me that I post asking for strategies and ideas, and just get people moaning that I can't really be any good at the game - get a life!

1. This wasn't a boast post or an advice post; read my first post clearly and all I was doing was asking for modifications to my strategy and helpful ideas from people.

2. In my first post I never said what levels I can win, only ones I played, and clearly said I couldn't get all the wonders on deity, so I'm utterly confused why people can't read and instead argue over whether I can win deity with all the wonders.

3. Wonderspamming at higher levels can be done; I've seen obsolete do it, and I've attached saves from an immortal game I just began which proves it can be done. No doubt some clever clogs will moan that in the saves I had flood plains - yes flood plains do exist, get over it. But I had to move there first turn and I was unlucky getting two great spies rather than prophets and I had a volcano explode etc - you win some, you lose some.

barbertj - Mine hills for resources to trade but concentrate on workable squares first. Maybe you'll understand when you're better at the game.

It's like I found on the multiplayer channel, there are so many nice helpful people out there but they get drowned out by a few noisy bashers who just like to argue. Shame on you.