Alzir
Chieftain
Hi guys, sorry for the noobish question here but I'm keeping it simple to try and canvas as broad a range of opinions as possible. It concerns an opponent playing as Greece in Brave New World multiplayer with 5 or 6 AI players and 2 human players (myself and one other). Not exactly a hardcore multiplayer game but the purpose was for more of a relaxed session in a LAN setting where we have a bit of a laugh and more than a few beers, and so the game often comes with a gentleman's agreement not to aggress each other until such and such a year, usually around the middle ages or industrial era.
Out of the two of us I'm definitely the better player but I was surprised by how effectively my friend played Greece during our first game against each other. We were on a standard sized map, playing with continents, and I started on a "3rd" continent about the size of Austrailia on my own, while he was on a larger one with 3 other civs. It meant that by the mid game he was taking out their capitals while I was basically turtling my way along comfortably ahead in science, gold, culture, and city development with my captial blitzing the best wonders in 6 or 7 turns without even great engineers or specialists really to help. This isn't really my preferred style of play but I agreed to the game because it was an excuse to have a few beers and led to a fun few hours. Anyway I digress.
What surprised me was how effective the city state bonus was for him in the mid-late game. We were on opposite sides of the world and he went passive aggressive on me through the world congress, constantly trying to impose his ideology on the world which would have wasted my happiness if it ever passed. I had to spend about a century and a ton of cash just to defeat his votes, while also keeping most of my closest AI civs alive, so I could buy their votes (without which I'd have lost the game). When I figured out how to block his ideology moves he switched tact to embargo my civ, and as the cost of fighting the congress was so high I decided just to invade a city state on his shores, plant a nuke there and threaten that if he didn't stop with the votes, I'd nuke Athens. As it turned out he didn't take my landing lying down, immediately war decced me and 50 years of war broke out to remove me from his "territory". Sadly I didn't realise the range limitations on moving nukes around, so in the end played a defensive war, committing few units and evacuating when his whole army was brought to bear. My navy then comfortably held him at bay while I won the game by virtue of the city states under my control being effectively out of his control because of the war.
Now the problem is that I'm not used to a game going on this long, and also because my strategy doesn't usually involve spending so much on city states, so I wonder what I could do differently in future during the early game to limit the effectiveness of his late game influence over the world congress. If for example I attack and even raise city states, I'll likely push too many of them into his hands, while if I war dec him early it could become very expensive if he's based on the other side of the world again, so what would you do?
Out of the two of us I'm definitely the better player but I was surprised by how effectively my friend played Greece during our first game against each other. We were on a standard sized map, playing with continents, and I started on a "3rd" continent about the size of Austrailia on my own, while he was on a larger one with 3 other civs. It meant that by the mid game he was taking out their capitals while I was basically turtling my way along comfortably ahead in science, gold, culture, and city development with my captial blitzing the best wonders in 6 or 7 turns without even great engineers or specialists really to help. This isn't really my preferred style of play but I agreed to the game because it was an excuse to have a few beers and led to a fun few hours. Anyway I digress.
What surprised me was how effective the city state bonus was for him in the mid-late game. We were on opposite sides of the world and he went passive aggressive on me through the world congress, constantly trying to impose his ideology on the world which would have wasted my happiness if it ever passed. I had to spend about a century and a ton of cash just to defeat his votes, while also keeping most of my closest AI civs alive, so I could buy their votes (without which I'd have lost the game). When I figured out how to block his ideology moves he switched tact to embargo my civ, and as the cost of fighting the congress was so high I decided just to invade a city state on his shores, plant a nuke there and threaten that if he didn't stop with the votes, I'd nuke Athens. As it turned out he didn't take my landing lying down, immediately war decced me and 50 years of war broke out to remove me from his "territory". Sadly I didn't realise the range limitations on moving nukes around, so in the end played a defensive war, committing few units and evacuating when his whole army was brought to bear. My navy then comfortably held him at bay while I won the game by virtue of the city states under my control being effectively out of his control because of the war.
Now the problem is that I'm not used to a game going on this long, and also because my strategy doesn't usually involve spending so much on city states, so I wonder what I could do differently in future during the early game to limit the effectiveness of his late game influence over the world congress. If for example I attack and even raise city states, I'll likely push too many of them into his hands, while if I war dec him early it could become very expensive if he's based on the other side of the world again, so what would you do?
