Neolithic loitering - delaying ancient age to cover more ground?

[EscapedGoat]

Even HK level is pretty easy to get ahead on if you have 20 scouts at the start. It should probably get nerfed, probably by stopping the respawning food bonuses.

I really like that curiosities respawn as it adds something interesting to already explored areas, but I agree it can get silly. Another solution is to implement a "scaling" mechanism in neolithic where the first tribe costs 20 food, the second 25, the third 30 etc... This will mean that at some point it's simple more efficient to settle and get the free city yields in ancient rather than keep on "cloning" your tribes at a steeply inclining cost.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I really like that curiosities respawn as it adds something interesting to already explored areas, but I agree it can get silly. Another solution is to implement a "scaling" mechanism in neolithic where the first tribe costs 20 food, the second 25, the third 30 etc... This will mean that at some point it's simple more efficient to settle and get the free city yields in ancient rather than keep on "cloning" your tribes at a steeply inclining cost.

Maybe have a Tribe limit (comparable to a city limit)... if you have too many tribes they cost 1 influence/turn, if your influence goes negative, Tribes will separate from your armies and become IP.

 

[Taefin]

So clearly the Harappans should go ancient ASAP, and they benefit from having 6+ runners from the start to go conquer a neighbor, most efficiently by softening up your neighboring Neolithic tribe. What about the other cultures with an early EU.

Should the Mycenaeans start by getting 4 EU or is theirs still better suited for building up an industry base and having a later ancient war with a swarm of them? The Olmecs? Assyrians?

 

[Siptah]

I think Harappans and Assyrians are the best early rushers, because their units are so cheap and fast. With the Mycenaeans, I feel it's easier to put down some Fortresses first and have your military peak slightly later. If it's just about early wars though, I feel the overall weak Hittites can field a rather scary unit. If you beeline for wheel and have the necessary resources, they can stomp. But I'm not the best to judge this probably, as I fight much more in classical than in ancient, at least when we speak about full blown wars and not skirmishing around.

 

[Taefin]

I think Mycenaeans got hurt the most by the nerf to forced labor. If anyone, they would love to take masonry on the way to organized warfare and sacrifice everyone for more fortresses, but that tech is so useless now.

 

[Siptah]

I think Mycenaeans got hurt the most by the nerf to forced labor. If anyone, they would love to take masonry on the way to organized warfare and sacrifice everyone for more fortresses, but that tech is so useless now.

They are still the strongest ancient civ in my opinion though

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

They are still the strongest ancient civ in my opinion though

Any Ancient Faction that requires Resources is going to be Situational: if you have no early access to Copper, Babylonians, Zhou, Hittites are less attractive, because you'll never get their Emblematic Units. No Horses, kiss goodbye to the Assyrian, Hittite, Zhou, Egyptian Emblematic units. Because they require both Copper and Horse resource, the Zhou Zhanche chariot and Hittite Gigir are the two Emblematic units you are least likely to see or be able to build. In fact, I have never seen either one in a game yet.

All of which means that the Emblematics that do not require any Resources: Harappan, Mycenean, Nubian, Olmec are the only Sure Things in the Ancient Age. And while Harappan Runners are Instant Upgrades out of the Neolithic, the rest are all available from the (usually) first or second Tech you research if you are not looking to exploit Horses or Luxuries right away: City Defense or Carpentry. That gives the Harappans a pretty narrow Window of Opportunity to use their Runner Rush. Of the other units, Olmec and Nubian ranged Emblematics are just not that scary: without somebody to run interferance (Civ's "meat shields") they get massacred in melee. The Mycenean Promachoi, on the other hand, is only 1 - 2 points lower Combat Strength than any other Emblematic or regular unit, has a ferocious initial Charge bonus, requires no Resources (which all the stronger units do), and can be built very early.

The only downside is that the AI seems to like to take Myceneans almost as fast as they take Harappans, so the Neolithic Linger strategy is practically incompatible with Myceneans.

 

[Taefin]

Oh yeah, a delayed Mycenaean charge is about early ancient and a build up phase. But I feel you have to commit to rush with them, since it will take 3 turns each unit. You can still get this while some are just entering Neolithic. I guess their main benefit is staying in the 5-25 damage window on all hits and being able to fight, even uphill on the first round. But that bonus also suggests the value of having a larger army, to capitalize on it. I think Nubian and Olmec range should be very effective with scouts as the meat shield. A defending 1-star scout can hold its own, and that extra 2+ strength on the archers probably means getting out of the 5-25 chip damage much of the time. I haven’t tried them yet though, just speaking from my early-mid ancient archer-runner-and-a-few-warrior wars.

 

[fortydayweekend]

In terms of early rushes don't discount extra scouts' ability to build a free army from curiosities- in my current game I got 4 warriors which were able to win the first war by themselves.

Also it seems you can buy an early non-aggression pact for around 100 gold which makes a later rush more viable with all but the most aggressive AI/cultures.

And the ability to maintain a 0-maintenance standing army in the form of scouts and then convert them to your UU wherever they are most needed is huge.

 

[Taefin]

Ah yeah, in my current game as Mycenaeans > Aksumites every scout and citizen got emptied from my empire onto the battlefield. Aksumites EU really help with that

 

[looorg]

I have recently started to take the neolithic age to the extreme. I wait as long as is just humanly possible. Usually I won't swap over until around turn 40, give or take a turn or so on slow speed.

This is when all the AI have already picked. You can no longer attack their actual cities since you can't declare war on them since you don't actually have contact with them or know them. But you can skirmish them and burn all their outposts you can reach.

When I changed I have usually accumulated about 500 score, compared to the top AI that have swapped and is usually around 150. I will more or less instantly get three stars of the ancient era due to pooled overflow from the previous era stars you gathered.

I have an army of scouts, usually 30-40 of them (usually also a handful of free warriors from various events). Due to extreme hunting/gathering. I go in as a group, split up and each scout takes a thing (curiosity sites, food sites, sack things or hunt animals) and then merge to pool the food again. That way you won't have that annoying thing with one scout unit having 10-15 food etc. When scouts merge they pool their food, when you split they leave the food with the group. So you just split, merge, split merge repeatedly and you can crank out a lot of scout units quite quickly. It would be lovely then to be Harrapans but that is never really an option.

All your outposts, usually three of them will be max pop (4) and all will have instant access to more land to attach. Normally there is enough spare * to make two cities and attach another region to them. You can feed in your injured, or non-veteran, scouts as needed. It really kickstarts the empire.

This also totally cripples at least one or two AI cultures. As you will continually have killed their scouts, burned/sacked their outpost. So at best they'll have one city, and one extra region, or so when you do. Your scout army can just stomp them more or less instantly as you move to the next era and kick them out of the game. Independent nations just fall to, drawback is you cant buy them out to get all their troops. It's no problem to take a city with a stack of veteran scouts at this stage, no units or defenses to speak off.

The only drawback is that you never get to really pick culture, you just pick something from what is left over (The Z have been quite common in my testgames) but you'll rocket thru the era so it won't matter and you'll be the first to pick the second one if you like. I don't really see the need to go early in the to era unless you want to play a very specific culture for a bit. Progressing early have just become worse and pointless.

(edit: tried to fix some weird middle of the night spelling issues)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The biggest problem with the Neolithic Loiter strategy is that the AI absolutely will not use it: they advance as fast as they can every time. IF the AI would on occasion try the same strategy, it would make the game a great deal more interesting, IMHO.

 

[looorg]

There is a lot of things the AI won't do, not necessarily because it should or should not. I mainly tried it cause I found it somewhat odd that everyone (or a lot of people) appeared to be rushing into the ancient era in say 10-15 turns or so at most. Like it was then the game actually begun or something. Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance, not that you so far appear to be be needing much planning and preparation to play this game. They are rushing for the ancient era and then the game just takes an abrupt slowdown due to a massive lack of resources. Compared to stay a bit longer and prepare and then just stomp the competition.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I have recently started to take the neolithic age to the extreme. I wait as long as is just humanly possible. Usually I won't swap over until around turn 40, give or take a turn or so on slow speed.

That's hilarious! I don't know what that equates to, but something like turn 30 on normal i guess. My gut feeling tells me that it may be a bit extreme, but I may be wrong . Without any solid evidence to back it up, something tells me you should probably transition before turn 15-20 on normal speed to achieve a balance of exploiting Neolithic yields to the fullest and and starting to progress the city yields, science and influence.

To me, it also looks like the "size" of the curiosity yields are linked to your age, so upon transition to ancient, the culture and science curiosities become more 10 influence and 10 science? which is a significant increase from Neolithic.

What annoys me a lot about going ancient are the hunts. A mammoth is 20 influence, 20 food in Neo, while just a measly 20 gold in ancient, not really worth the trouble. Same with deer, already a low yield at 5 influence 5 food goes to 5 gold. Sacking a sanctuary is 20 food in Neo (a tribe/scouts worth) something like 12 gold in ancient (can do nothing with 12 gold). Very weak!

 

[fortydayweekend]

I'm thinking mammoths are the key - at 20 influence each, if there are enough around you can earn enough influence to found 2 x 2 territory cities. If the meat runs out then there is a clock on how long staying in Neolithic is worthwhile.

Your capital earns 9 influence with 3 pop, or 13 with pottery. Hunters getting 1-2 mammoths every turn is 30 influence - more than twice as much.

 

[fortydayweekend]

I played through a couple of different options to see what difference loitering makes. There's a bit of a tradeoff between say a 10-pop T13 switch to Harrapans and a 20-pop T21 switch to Egypt.

Pangaea, normal, 5 AI, HK - mammoth-poor start (I only saw one and didn't attack it). The city sites were pretty average, but I don't think it makes a huge difference.

Turn 13 - 10 tribes, 2 outposts, 30 influence (+25 spent). Have the science star and legacy trait (industry).

Early Switch - to Harrapans
T14 - founded capital and settled 2 scouts to work industry
T16 - attached outpost that had just finished and settled 2 more scouts to work research (should have claimed it 2 turns earlier - but only 8 influence missed, not consequential)
T17 - Took Natural Right and claimed 3rd outpost (10 inf)
T21 - founded 2nd city

Still have 10 pop (6 in cities, 4 runners), have spent 170 science to get 3 techs + most of BW. Capital has pottery, one FQ, and one MQ.

Delayed Switch - to Egypt
T21 - 20 pop, 100 influence (+25 spent)
T22 - found capital, attach outpost, already has 3 pop

Total 20 pop (3 in city, 17 scouts), 45 science. 80 influence stored, which means 2nd city will come earliest on T29 (need 20 for outpost + 160 for city = 180, cap can generate 17/turn with pottery from next turn).

So the delayed start means 10 extra pop but 135 less science and 2nd city comes 8 turns later.

Hard to say what is better overall?? Those extra pop will be useful but the T13 switch isn't obviously worse.

The big caveat here though is mammoths. If I had hunted 5 mammoths, that would have been 100 influence which would enable founding 2nd city immediately on T22, which I think is clearly a better position - 10 extra pop and only behind a little on science and infrastructure.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I played through a couple of different options to see what difference loitering makes. There's a bit of a tradeoff between say a 10-pop T13 switch to Harrapans and a 20-pop T21 switch to Egypt.

Very interesting experiment, and mirrors the things I am trying out these days. So I also want to try to combine staying in Neolithic as long as possible, but to still grab Harappans. That means transitioning around ~turn 10-11 in my experience. I find that I can usually get 9-10 pop and most of the time get the knowledge star also (but not reliably in such short timeframe, which i consider a real loss). I find the mammoth population can vary considerably depending on luck, so it's hard to really rely on it for influence.

My last game I went ancient turn 11, second city was up around turn 18 which is pretty fast, but I focused on second city before attaching any territories (so ~50 less influence required). Not sure if that is optimal, but the yield I really want to maximize after establishing a city is influence. One thing you are perhaps leaving out of the equation here is influence from curiosities in ancient age. With a horde of scouts or runners moving about, you're bound to find rather a lot of them at 8 influence each? That does, IMO, shift the balance a bit in favor of transitioning earlier (to get better results) but of course you need enough scouts to cover the ground.

So I think for Harrapans, you need to transition around turn 10, no way around it, but you can still grab a decent size pop and the knowledge star if you play tight and have some luck. For a delayed Egyptian transition, it might be that turn 20 is a bit on the late side? The real payoff probably lies between the accelerated influence gain from having a city + pottery + increased curiosity yield (favors quicker ancient) vs. gaining more pop/scouts (favors neolithic).

It's a good thing for game balance that there is a tradeoff What we probably can conclude definitely, is that going ancient before turn 10-11 usually is not optimal, as that means you are not exploiting neolithic enough for pop and the legacy, nor are you likely finding the optimal city sites. Turn 20 might be on the high side as then you are not exploiting the ancient bonuses early enough, and turn 10-ish is the goal to grab Harrapans.

 

[fortydayweekend]

My last game I went ancient turn 11, second city was up around turn 18 which is pretty fast, but I focused on second city before attaching any territories (so ~50 less influence required). Not sure if that is optimal, but the yield I really want to maximize after establishing a city is influence. One thing you are perhaps leaving out of the equation here is influence from curiosities in ancient age. With a horde of scouts or runners moving about, you're bound to find rather a lot of them at 8 influence each? That does, IMO, shift the balance a bit in favor of transitioning earlier (to get better results) but of course you need enough scouts to cover the ground.

Yes, in ancient the curiosities seem to be less frequent (?), and they can give either higher science/inf yields, or gold, or units. If you wait longer you have more scouts so more popping, but if you go early you have more turns. I think going later giving means more though - once you have 2 cities up you might have settled 5 of your initial 10 scouts as Harrapans, and another 2 or 3 very quickly after that because you have the food to do so (settled pops mean industry/research but also 2 influence each if stability > 90% so I think settling the maximum is better than relying on slow growth). So you'll very quickly run out of scouting turns. With the late start you can be popping curiosities with a few units until the end of Ancient around turn 40.

So I think for Harrapans, you need to transition around turn 10, no way around it, but you can still grab a decent size pop and the knowledge star if you play tight and have some luck. For a delayed Egyptian transition, it might be that turn 20 is a bit on the late side? The real payoff probably lies between the accelerated influence gain from having a city + pottery + increased curiosity yield (favors quicker ancient) vs. gaining more pop/scouts (favors neolithic).

I think it comes down to what you can do with the extra scouts. If you're forgoing Harrapans there's limited food for settling in cities, so you're probably going to have 5-10 units still running around at the end of Ancient. Some will be scouting for resources, meeting the other AI for trade, and popping curiosities, some will be skirmishing, which are all beneficial. But the main advantage I think is being able to convert them into an army for an early rush. So that means picking an Ancient culture with a good unit for attacking, or Classical with a good early one. Egypt is actually pretty good for this if you have 1 horse / 2 copper - Markabatas are like mini-huns. Obviously Huns are also a good choice if you want to go that way - 4 scouts become 4 hordes in a single turn with no industry cost. Or Persians or others also good depending on who you're fighting. If you think you can get away with a peaceful start then switching earlier to get infrastructure up might make more sense.

It's a good thing for game balance that there is a tradeoff What we probably can conclude definitely, is that going ancient before turn 10-11 usually is not optimal, as that means you are not exploiting neolithic enough for pop and the legacy, nor are you likely finding the optimal city sites. Turn 20 might be on the high side as then you are not exploiting the ancient bonuses early enough, and turn 10-ish is the goal to grab Harrapans.

It's very situational which is great. I get the feeling that mammoths are the key variable, if you have none then you start to fall behind on influence from ~T13 onwards which will stunt your city growth. You'll have pop to make up for it but they'll be scouts, and there might not be a lot of useful things for them to do. If you can hunt a mammoth every turn though you'll be doing better on influence than a capital city, as well as massively increasing your population, and you'll be able to kickstart your growth by settling 2 cities immediately on going into Ancient and filling them with scouts for a long time.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Mammoth-rich start: 28 pop and 410 influence on T20

Spoiler :

The downside:

Spoiler :

It actually took me that long to find a good site for the capital. I put down an outpost near the starting location for dye/horse/copper but yields were very average. So first city is going to go in bottom left with sage/marble/horse/copper and much nicer yields. It's pretty aggressively forward-settling 2 AI (one territory buffer SW and SE) but looks very defensible with all those cliffs. Might even build some archers for once.

Spoiler :

410 influence means I can do 2nd city, attach 3 territories and claim another 2 outposts by T25.

 

[Taefin]

Are folks having any luck (or trying) on HK to capture a city or two off the AI with scouts without Harappans? Runners make it so easy, especially with another +1/2 strength, but I’m wondering if late start that is possible throwing 4 scouts at a time into cities with units and districts.

With 410 influence I’d take Phoenician rush harbors and influence buy them everywhere. My last game with them was mostly unattached territories until halfway through classical, but still tons of gold.