New Strategy

[Julius Bonapart]

Well i woke up one day and thought..what if I could take over other cities WITHOUT war. I am sure someone has allready thought of it and posted it but since its impossible to look at every single post I Cannot be sure so im posting it anyway. My startegy is simple (and this is how i left the Zulus with only their capital) I make an army of Settlers followed and protected by Not so awsome units but not that horribly bad and i start putting them arround cities say i put 2 cities around one. And i make culture like crazy i only build temples and other Culture related points so that i dont get eated by their culture but take them with mine. This works much better if u have a whole lot of money so u can automaticly buy the temples and stuff, so its quiker. I have no idea how this works on Diety or other modes since i only play in Chieftian. BTW I only play Chieftain couse in Civ2 the comp cheated so bad killing 7 archer units with a single hit from a guess what WARRIOR UNIT! So from then on i decided that the comp cheats on higher levels and never played them again. This way of peaceful conquest is helpful becouse it helped me have varius choices in what to win with. U can win Culturaly (Duh) but also by territory couse u have to make so many cities to take thiers. And maybe others. Although i havent won it yet becouse i so fooloshily made war. And if anyone thinks that this peaceful strategy is bad because they can allways attack u, figured a way for them not to do that i sigend mutual protecion with almost evry1 and since im so peaceful its much easier to make them sign a treaty with some1 peaceful than with some1 in war.

 

[God]

The computer doesn't cheat to its advantage on warlord or chieften. The game is even on regent and the computer cheats on monarch and higher.

A problem with you strategy is that the AI will start bullying you if you don't have too many units on higher levels.

Also don't just play chieften because the computer cheats. THe game is random. Some times wierd things happen like my cavalry not being able to kill spearmen. You said that the computer did that in Civ2. This is Civ3 it doesn't happen so often.

This strategy can work on any level, but the problem is as you go higher the more units you will need to prevent AI from declaring war on you. Also on emperor and diety its almost impossible to out expand the AI so on those 2 levels its better off building some cities and alot of units and fighting.

I have used a similar strategy on regent. It worked, but ofcourse i went to war into the Industrial age to get more land.

 

[Ivana]

Conquering the world with that strategy is not possible imo. Reverting takes usually some time, it's very expensive to build culture and at some point you run out of money because corruption eats into your treasury.

I've had +100 cities densely build but I only reverted 6-7 enemy cities during the whole game (large map, both deity and regent levels). And in every one of those cities I had a temple, library, university and cathedral.

However your idea might work on a small scale - if you desperately wanted one particular enemy city without starting war.

 

[God]

@ivana: I had a really similar game to yours. I put some border cities next to Zulus ones in hope of reverting. They never did! I had libary, temple, chathedral, the works. No reversion.

Its something you should not rely on.

 

[Julius Bonapart]

I dont know about other levels but i know that in Chieftian at least it works. the Africans. Americans, Chineese have like half their cities left. It just takes time and patience. I'll try the one above chieftain if God is right and the comp doesnt cheat. And what u said about it being random might be true but in Civ2 when i did put in a higher mode the comp ALLWAYS beat all my units with inferior units and when i attacks their i didnt even scracth them. It took like 6 horsemen to kill one WARIOR! Again if God is right and that doesnt happen as much in Civ3 i will try. In my experience if u have enough cities and u dont let them expand its very hard to get bullied around although im sure that works in Chieftaion or something low. In Diety i can imagine how imposibly hard THAT strategy outta be. My problem with this strategy has been taking civs on continents that u just arrive becouse if u arive on a certain continent too late in the game that continent might well be totally covered by the enemy civ's culture. So if u want that continent theres no choice but war. What i did. But it is very hard to take it becouse my armies ever reach it, couse i have few ships and the ships cant hold that much people. Btu i have a preety big empire. And what Ivana said that corruption eats up at you, well when u have enough cities u can still make a lot of money. An other good reason to make a lot of cities is that u have more science (Well u also have to high Science a bit) and trade your technology and make money and make more cities and temples and take more of their cties cultureally. Ofcourse a faster way is to just take them over militaily which is more effective too, but at least in this mode u empire build and for some reason your still a "Good guy" plus u dont have problems of the assimilated city rejecting your culture and go back to its homeland (I hate it when they do that)

 

[Julius Bonapart]

I forgot to add this last time but i just rememberd, the person that said that he/she build 1 city with the works on Culture and didnt capture the city, thats not the strategy I use. I build asd many citys as i can AROUND the other city so their cultutre points add up say i have 3 cities around it with only one temple each. they will make way more culture than one city with the works becouse that one city only gets things FASTER not necesarily more. If u have one city with a TEMP and and other with the TEMP and a Cathedral i think that they are equals in Culture exept for the fact that the other gets its points quicker and thus advances faster and eventually does get more than the other city becosue tis getting its points faster but until it actually grows they are still tecnicly the same. Ofcourse this is only in my humble opinion and if i am wrong please tell me so. In the words of Chief Wiggum "Thats the only way i'll learn"
Btw god seems to be in a lot of posts. So if he gets to read this one (again) than most likely hell prove me wrong.

 

[MrBiggBoy]

ermmmmmmm. theroretically it would work, but Civ3 does strange things. In my five months of playing, i've won all games but three yet i've only reverted 1 city. now, 3 cities probably does the trick, but i'd just use cavs and take em over.

good strat tho!!!!!!

 

[No.Dice]

Cities with only one temple in them will be flipped to the enemy's side if they are even remotely near the enemy capital.

Signing MPPs is not a reliable deterrent for war, civs may be more reluctant to declare war on you, but you'll still get dragged into several unwanted wars by the aggressive civs, especially since you signed multiple pacts. This will ruin your reputation as well, making it very difficult to trade, buy technology (not a problem at chieftan), sign ROPs, or win a diplomatic victory.

On chieftan the AI is so ridiculously handicapped, you can't accurately test the success of a strategy there.

This reminds me a bit of an outside-in build, building your cities right against those of your rival, locking your borders with early culture, and hampering AI expansion.

 

[Maccabeus]

I discovered this on Chieftain level when I was playing the Iroquois and was caught on an island with the Aztecs (I think that was how it was). I hadn't even realized cities could defect to me and then suddenly one did. I was in no mood to go toe-to-toe with the Aztecs, so I began trying to swallow them with culture.

Did it work? Well, not really. I took about half the continent this way, but by that time the Aztecs had developed kickass units and their cities were so culturally powerful I couldn't really get ahead of them. And that was on chieftain, when I had the luxury of waiting to produce settlers while I built important things like wonders and temples. Now I can't seem to do anything of the sort, and I'm only on warlord.

 

[Gundam]

ain't gonna be..u can't own culturaly a town whi has the library 20 turns earlier than u..on higher levels u'll have some important things to do ..like stayng alive :O

 

[Maccabeus]

Precisely my point, Gundam. Thank you for making it so cleverly.

 

[God]

On monarch I have yet to have had a city flip over to me. Its so much easier to conquer.

 

[Julius Bonapart]

Yeah your right, its so much easier to expand. Since preety much every seems to be praticing high levels of game play i really have no choice to do so my self, if i want to stand any chance in a Multiplayer that soon will come, although i will allways prefer to expand through peace i am going to practice in Warlord and eventaully the OTHER high levels. If i only practice on Chieftian i will never stand a chance agaisnt more expericed people, although i still will try my stategy on warlord and i am sure that if i ever get to Diety my startegy is useless.

 

[dikwhit]

Even on monarch its fairly easy to get cities to culture flip, and yes the surrounding technique does work, but it has several limitations.
1)map size.... bigger maps too many cities for this to be a long temr winnable theroy.It takes some time for culture flips and there are too many cities the bigger the map to flip enough fast enough.
2)capital location.... as you get closer to a civs capital, the harder to get flips, damn near impossible above regent.
3)#of cities.... once you reach 2x the optimum city number culture flips become harder to get.Why? nothing definate but good possibilities are corruption, distance from your capital,etc etc.
4)civ your trying it on.... zulus,aztecs easy.... babalonians (esp on monarch+) a bit more difficult


now I'm no expert, but I am definatly a culture whore.On huge or custom maps, 30 flips in a game are not uncommen for me, but when theres 3 or 4 hundred cities on the map 30 aint squat.I really believe that even with a concerted effort, a cultural victory will occur long before one could monopolize the board using this tactic alone.

Also, if you even care, i generally turn off cultural victory as winning by culture IMO just becomes too easy when you invest in getting city flipping.

 

[philippe]

dont do it if your cities starting to defect you wil be sorry

 

[Bamspeedy]

This tactic has been done, so it does work, at least on Large and Huge maps. Aeson used it in GOTM6 (Warlord level), just read the GOTM6 spoiler thread. He got domination without firing a single shot. He only had 1 spearman and 1 warrior in his military. Workers count as military units, but the main thing that makes civs scared of you is the Power Rankings. And one of the main points of Power Ranking is # of cities. He does the 'ICS' method. He builds cities only a tile or two apart from each other. Each city building another settler, or a worker. The workers build roads to the next city that will be built. After awhile you end up with a 'settler flood' which is about 40-50 settlers that are on their way to build cities. When you have hundreds of cities and rush hundreds of temples (it's probably only need to rush temples in cities next to your rivals, though), you have runaway culture. Each city, no matter how corrupt will produce 1 uncorrupted gold, which pays for the temple. Of course you should be in Monarchy so you get all the free units (200 towns pay for 400 units).

He has done the settler flood on Deity, but on Deity he of course did do warfare. You don't research Horseback Riding so that you can build chariots to later upgrade to horseman or Knights. You could easily have 50 chariots to upgrade since they are so cheap to build. For more information on his style check out the 'Discussion of HoF Power Plays' in the General Discussion Forum (it used to have screenshots, but they are gone now).

 

[Julius Bonapart]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
This tactic has been done, so it does work, at least on Large and Huge maps. Aeson used it in GOTM6 (Warlord level), just read the GOTM6 spoiler thread. He got domination without firing a single shot. He only had 1 spearman and 1 warrior in his military. Workers count as military units, but the main thing that makes civs scared of you is the Power Rankings. And one of the main points of Power Ranking is # of cities. He does the 'ICS' method. He builds cities only a tile or two apart from each other. Each city building another settler, or a worker. The workers build roads to the next city that will be built. After awhile you end up with a 'settler flood' which is about 40-50 settlers that are on their way to build cities. When you have hundreds of cities and rush hundreds of temples (it's probably only need to rush temples in cities next to your rivals, though), you have runaway culture. Each city, no matter how corrupt will produce 1 uncorrupted gold, which pays for the temple. Of course you should be in Monarchy so you get all the free units (200 towns pay for 400 units).




He has done the settler flood on Deity, but on Deity he of course did do warfare. You don't research Horseback Riding so that you can build chariots to later upgrade to horseman or Knights. You could easily have 50 chariots to upgrade since they are so cheap to build. For more information on his style check out the 'Discussion of HoF Power Plays' in the General Discussion Forum (it used to have screenshots, but they are gone now).

YEAHH!!!!!!!! THATS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!!!!!! Thats the strategy i have been using since civ 2. Well not the cultural part of it, becouse that didnt exist in civ2, but as the easiest way to make a huge empire from the beggining and an other idea i have done in 2 was that everytime a city got made the first thing it produced was a settler so i never ever stopped expanding this is considearably harder in civ3 but oh well.