Noble/Roman/Rush - except...

[Zubbus]

Hi, while I loved bragging about how I beat Transcend in Alpha Centauri, upon playing Civ4, where the cheap exploits like mindworm grabs and buying cities have gone, I made a startling discovery, which is that I actually SUCK at this game.

I never played it with a strategy like rushing or racing to some particular wonder/advantage. So now I seriously need to relearn how to play.

The other thing is, I love playing huge marathon maps. If you're going to build an empire as big as you can, you might as well choose the settings that let you build it bigger, rather than smaller, right? 'problem, obviously, is that there's more opportunities to make a mistake and let the AI kick my ass. Well those are my settings so I only have myself to blame, but now is not the time for assigning blames!

So I tried to do some Praetorian rush in Noble. I grabbed some of the tile improvement techs I need then went straight for Metal Casing and Iron Working and made myself 10 praets.
The problem is, before I even started rushing, my tech slider is down to 60%. I was worry that if I take more cities, I'd actually go bankrupt.
I think I am slightly smaller than my target in number of cities. I have 7 and he has like 8 or 9 ish. And I actually have sealed off room for like 2 more cities - not great ones, they are like tundras but have some useful resources.
What should I have done there? rush anyway and take cities hope the loot money take care of things until I rebuild? Rush anyway and raze cities? Or just built peacefully? Did I miss some crucial techs for holding my economy up?

 

[DaveMcW]

Cottages!!

 

[JonathanStrange]

Often after capturing cities, you do have to stop and allow your economy to recover from the increased city and army maintenance, so it's not unusual for research to decrease as you're paying off other expenses.

Ironworking takes awhile to get to, so maybe you skimped on researching tile improvement techs, civics, and workers. Having the ability to build cottages doesn't mean as much if there are no workers or not enough of 'em. Probably I'd look at my expenses, find ways to reduce them or increase my revenues: that might mean razing rather than capturing, it may mean reduced research for awhile, building more cottages, changing civics, etc.

 

[Zubbus]

Cottages!!

Yes, I have been building those since I noticed my predicament. A bit late now I guess. Ah well, at least I learned 1 thing.

 

[Jamuka]

1) 60% is high if you are trying to expand quickly. More standard is 'expand until 0%, then recover'
2) Build wealth or research in cities to stay afloat.
3) On huge maps, you often have a ton of room to expand, and gain very little by rushing.
4)

Cottages!!

5) What percent the slider is at doesn't matter that much, it's only imprortant because it determines how much commerce is effected by libraries vs markets. Total beakers produced is the figure to pay attention to.

 

[CynicalMagician]

Like others are saying, slider isn't as important as how many beakers/gold you're generating a turn. Download BUG mod and it'll show you how many you're producing per turn on the main screen. Think of it this way - running at 50% when you make 100 commerce a turn isn't as good as running at 20% when you make 400 commerce a turn.

The key techs to get you out of an early economic hole are pottery (for cottages), writing (for libraries so you can run scientists), alphabet (so you can build research), currency (build wealth), and code of laws (for courthouses). If you target those and use them wisely you can climb out of just about any hole.

 

[Agramon]

Metal Casting is too expensive and doesn't help you much in a rush.

For economy research writing, sailing, Code of Laws and currency. Writing to assign scientists to research with 0%, together with sailing for open borders/trade routes, code of laws for courthouses and currency for market, Merchants, trade routes and deficit spending.

If you took MC from oracle you should think about taking CoL. Courthouse and confu shrine with Priest to come should help your economy big time, even if you "waste" free beakers to some cheaper tech ;-)

 

[Zubbus]

Yee, I thought metal casing might be the wrong move. It takes a lot longer to get than ironworking and then I have to build the forges to actually get the benefits. But I went with Augustus who has bonus to make forge so I thought I'd give that a try.

So does that mean Julius is better at the rush in this case?

Also I said I sealed off some room, but I was too late to take them (because I was trying to get a rush going) so now my target actually went through me and set up camp there. So just like Jamuka said, I had too much to do to worry about a rush. At least my target is not creative. I'll culture him into the sea.

The other thing is there were LOADS of barbarians cities around. I took 4 and that streched my borders. And then some more I declined to take. 1 in my back I was going to take later, but another civ beat me to it. So I got a lot of problems at my back at the moment.

I suppose in this picture I should just forget about the rush and grab territory and build it? (and yes, turned out that would have given me a slight lead in this island of 4).

So I did it all wrong I guess, good to know
----------
Do you guys generally chop down ALL the forests around for hammer?

 

[Laurwin]

Julius is aggressive isn't he? always a better trait to have if you are rushing. In prat-rushing it's important to have just those praetorians, they are what counts and the sooner you have a decent stack the better. Since ironworking is a classical era tech and takes a while.

Stack doesn't have to be quite as big as normal rush stacks since they are quite a lot better than normal axmen.

Absolutely minimal worker techs (that improve food resources) + wheel + hooked up iron (a settler may be needed here)

Now I'm no rush specialist but this seems like a good rough game plan. There's no time for those early wonders in rushing, so Augustus's industrious trait isn't really effective here.

(unless you by some divine intervention happen to get masonry from goody huts and stone in BFC with some woods to chop as well )

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Julius isn't aggressive that would be ridiculous with praets

He is organised though which is good when you have a lot of territory.

 

[Laurwin]

oops, well yea, organized is nice for reduced civic upkeep(?) at least. Better for long term warmongering, especially if you by chance manage to either capture or build the pyramids and get police state soon.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

For Rome and you're going for the rush, I'd recommend the early path to be Wheel -> BW -> IW. After that you can grab your iron quick and then go for worker techs. Also, having the praets that quick enables you to run over anything the AI has pretty easily. My 2 cents.

 

[SlipperyJim]

For Rome and you're going for the rush, I'd recommend the early path to be Wheel -> BW -> IW. After that you can grab your iron quick and then go for worker techs. Also, having the praets that quick enables you to run over anything the AI has pretty easily. My 2 cents.

QFT.

Successful rushing is all about speed. If you take the time to research a bunch of other techs before you start rushing -- especially an expensive tech like Metal Casting -- your rush will be too late.

Praetorians are so strong that their "rush window" will last longer than any other such window, so this concern doesn't press you quite as heavily. Still, the sooner you can get those Praets out into the field, the more damage they can do. Follow the above advice; beeline Iron Working. Once you've found the Iron, settle near it. If you're really lucky, the Iron might be in Rome's BFC. If it is, then Mars has smiled on you! Quick, go kill a neighbor!

The biggest threat with a Roman Rush is overexpansion. Praetorians are so strong that you can easily conquer way too much land and go bankrupt from the maintenance costs. That's why you need to follow the advice about which economic techs will stave off your financial collapse. To recap, they are:

• Pottery
• Writing
• Alphabet
• Code of Laws
• Currency

See Agramon's post for what those techs all do, but make sure to get them ASAP. Once you have all of those techs in hand, then your economy becomes much more stable. Then you can send out the Praetorians to conquer someone else!

 

[Zubbus]

Well about a week ago I won that game (slowly).
And then I went with Pericles on huge/marathorn again except this time on Prince and I (just)won it first try! Mostly I used the advice about early cottages and *not* rushing on huge maps.

So I just want to come back and thank you all again. It really cleared up a lot for me.

I will give this Roman rush again some other time (and better with Julius, I guess)

Slippery Jim, so you're saying get Iron Working before Writing? Getting Writing first won't be better? Also, I guess I definitely shouldn't bother with founding a religion?

I am very familiar with all the information in game (or at least how to beeline my way to the civilopedia) by now, so it's just the strategical applications I haven't grasped.

Speaking of Pericles, isn't he just a monster or something? It's quite rare that both of a leader's traits and the UB all stack with each other; and that more than makes up for a somewhat average UU. The 2 different traits give production bonuses to university and library, which are very much the same kind of buildings for a good tech lead (and no other leaders will have it like that because no 2 leaders have the same 2 traits), and then normally 1 out of 4 of the bonus production buildings from Creative *don't* give culture, but being Greek fixes that. What it comes to is other creative leaders have that bonus for 3 buildings but Pericles has 5!

Panned across all the leaders like 9 or 10 times, but I guess sometimes you just don't notice how good (or bad) something is until you get your hands on it.

Anyways, back to rushing. I think I might try Cho-ko-nu soon. It's roughly the same "era" as Praetorian. Anything different I should know about this one? (Obviously, go for Machinery instead of Iron Working).

 

[nbcman]

@ Zubbus

You will need both IW and Machinery for CKNs. Machinery + Iron resource needed.

If you can get an early engineer, you can bulb Machinery. I have seen some games where players build oracle and take metal casting as the free tech. Then build a forge and hire an engineer specialist-if you have stone or a lot of forest for chopping, build the Pyramids in the forge city for additional GE points. If you use Qin Shi Huang as the chinese leader you can build the forge and the wonders (Oracle and Pyramids) cheaper (IND).

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Metal Casting was your mistake. With Rome, I often go BW, Agriculture, Wheel, AH, IW, Pottery. Metal Casting isn't even on the menu (not really necessary for a Praetorian rush)

While researching pottery, I settle wherever iron pops up (hopefully closer rather than further), and start building a ton of Praets. Settle a couple cottage pump cities and go to town on a neighbor. If my research slider is above 40% and gaining gold, it's time for another war (unless, of course, the next victim is tooooooo far away).

 

[noto2]

Yes, I have been building those since I noticed my predicament. A bit late now I guess. Ah well, at least I learned 1 thing.

Actually this is exactly what Dave is talking about. I learned something from Dave by reading the civ fora. You see, in the past when I would build a city I would always focus on food and hammers first, even for a commerce city. I'd build farms and pastures first and work them, then a mine or two, and then start building cottages. For production cities i wouldn't build cottages at all. What this does is it gets your city growing quickly and gets hammer production online soon...but the problem with cottages is they take a long time to grow. One village tile provides the same commerce as three cottage tiles.
What I learned to do from Dave was when founding a city it is often good to work at least some cottage tiles right away, or alternate. Work one farm, thne one cottage, then one mine, then cottage the rest, for example. Sometimes it's even best to just work cottages rigtht away. After many turns even if you only cottaged a few tiles, they will have matured into villages and your cities will pay for themselves. This is even more true when you have the financial trait.

 

[mboettcher]

7 cities doesn't sound like a rush to me. Though I'm glad that you realize that building more cities is leveraging that Imp trait. Rushing isn't necessarily the call of the day with Rome. Continuous methodical war is.

Forges are only useful if you whip them- and whip other buildings/units. In that sense AC can be very effective in getting a strong military economy up for mass scale war. (I.e. Oracle to MC=>forges=> whiptasticness)

Before you war you need a couple things though. Developed cottages in your core/older cities (cottages can supplanted by other types of 'economies' like farms and hammers in newer cities) and you need CoL and Currency helps. When you get Currency whip out markets in the important core cities and whip out courthouses in the newly captured cities.

JC is better for a 'rush' and by that I mean an earlier praet attack than AC requiring less troops because it easier to whip courthouses for him in new cities and the enemy should be a little softer.

Also getting construction is necessary for this late of a campaign (with AC especially) as the cultural defenses will start to mount

 

[mboettcher]

Going Metal Casting is not a mistake for Augustus Caeser like it would've been for Julius. However, I would never encourage taking MC with out the Oracle this early. MC can be a very powerful tech in the hands of an IND leader who not only gets forges for a great whip economy (useful in fielding many expensive and powerful units) but provides a cheap and useful economic wonder that is easy to build (no competition) and can offset conquering expenses.

For that reason I say that AC requires a later and larger campaign. Especially on Huge. JC is more of a rusher as far as praets can be 'rushed'

 

[mboettcher]

There is an advantage to rushing on huge maps as long as they provide you some sort of land blockage. ON pangea and terra this can be difficult but on continents when you are not in the middle it can provide a huge advantage. Also, if you start near an economical leader, preparing to 'rush' by building a large early army and waiting for cats, rexing and attacking when they have several good cities and (ideally, usually) a wonder or two can really give an economic boost.