Overall Strategy Thread

[GoSkins]

Took the liberty of creating this thread. Discuss short-mid-long term strategies here. It's never to early to start thinking big-picture.

Some thoughts to start the discussion:

• 
  What should be our short-mid-long term tech strategy. This probably depends on the land were given. Since the map is heavy water maybe the Compass, Optics, Astronomy route is good. Maybe Economics for Custom's House?

• 
  Are there any wonders we want to grab? I always try to get the Pentagon, but that's a late wonder and who knows by then.

• 
  City Specialization. Big picture, not micromanagement (I assume we'll have a thread for that). Discuss what type of city specialization each city is best suited towards. Where we want to build national wonders etc. Tentatively, the capital looks like either a GP farm or Commerce city. So either farm or Cottage. If we have an iron or copper it could be used as a production city if we want, especially late in the game when we get Dikes.

• 
  Corporations. Do we want corporations? Which would be the best for us given our needs and resources?

• 
  Do want a religion? If we do, which should we go for?

 

[grant2004]

The Collosus looks like a wonder we should think about, with the Great Lighthouse gone it's clear this is a water heavy map, I'd assume that it's made of of small islands, so we'll have a lot of opportunities for cities to work coastal tiles. Of course there will be a rush for the Colossus so we have to figure out how to beat the teams who come to the same conclusion. Hopefully we have copper.

On religion, in my games I always go for a religion, and spread it actively to support a higher tech rate, however all of these games, even the multiplayer ones, include AI. AI will sometimes help spread your religion for you, and are also affected by religious diplomatic bonuses, so this strategy may not be as effecitive against humans. I'd like to hear the opinion of someone who plays human only games regularly.

I normally use the Oracle to get COL as a free tech to found my religion, that requires a fairly agressive strategy, which unless you're willing to chop a heck of a lot of forests can slow down your expansion.

 

[GoSkins]

How about using the Oracle to get Metal Casting? Then we have a head start on getting the Collosus...but on the other hand it will divert us from getting much needed Writing...and possibly stifle our REX. Would be nice to find a high food city to build settlers and workers from in the early game, while one of our other cities tries for the wonders.

 

[Irgy]

My opinion is still to avoid the religeous line of techs early on. This does have its costs; no early religeon, no oracle attempt, harder to get to monarch. No oracle attempt means someone else will get the oracle. There's a good chance they'll take metal casting, and if they do there's a good chance they'll get the colossus.

On the other hand, don't forget that if we do go for that line, there's still a good chance we won't get an early religeon, a good chance we won't get the orcale, and a good chance we won't get the colossus.

No-one is likely to spread our religeon for us I would expect. It's worth getting one eventually to avoid having to spread someone else's though. I'd prefer it was Confucionism or Taoism because they're on the line of techs I'd prefer we followed (civil service and liberalism in particular for those two)

 

[azzaman333]

Capital should probably be a commerce city.

I don't think there's any particular wonders we should go out of our way to get. Great Library if we get the chance, apart from that REX our asses off and use all our land to tech to infantry ASAP, draft and conquer.

Tech path, IMO, should be along the lines of BW, Writing, Sailing, Monarchy, Currency, CoL, CS, Lit, (Optics if we can't trade our way down that path), Philo (GS bulb ideally), Lib (hopefully netting Astro), then pretty much beeline the requirements for Infantry.

Don't aim for a religion as such, but if we have the chance on the path to Monarchy, take it, likewise with CoL and Philo if we can get them.

 

[azzaman333]

Oh, with our eventual victory strategy, Space won't happen because it's too easy to Spy sabotage the parts. Diplo won't happen without some freak miracle. Culture is a chance, but not if any of our 3 cities are coastal. Which leaves Military.

 

[AlphaShard]

It does look like we have some good land for Commerce cities, I think our capital will be easiest to make a Commerce city with cottages on that river. Which brings me to the question of how many of those river tiles will we cottage and how many will we farm(For chain irrigation purposes)?

Colossus would be nice but I think we can survive with out it since were Fin. As for Oracle I DO see a lot of forest to the north so if were to do it the city we found in that area would be prime for a chop for the Oracle and then either to COL or MC. I think if were going to do religion at all in this game were going to have to be aggressive with it, going for University of Sankore, Spirial Miniuret. All to put our founding religion to it's most potential.

I can understand not wanting to go too much into the Religion line but founding a religion with a shrine would be good, especially if we get it in our capital with Bureaucracy.

 

[Irgy]

Shrines can be awesome, but don't forget they're only an improvement over simply settling the priest when you have 8+ cities with the religeon. Without AI's to spread it for us that probably means having 8+ cities ourselves. So it's very much a late-game advantage, and therefore it doesn't matter so much which religeon we get. Beaurocracy doesn't increase shrine income at all as far as I understand.

My vote would be to cottage all of the grasslands in our capital BFC. We don't have anywhere we need to chain irrigate to at all yet, and we can reach the rest from somewhere else.

Everyone's excited about the collossus (not just on our team I expect) because of the implied water map, but personally I don't usually find myself working a lot of sea tiles in the period of the game before astronomy, where it obsoletes. If it didn't obsolete so early it would go well with our UB, but as it is there's not likely to be any overlap between the two.

My (admittedly limited) understanding of multiplayer is that military is going to be very important whether we like it or not, going for a peaceful space victory wouldn't avoid that. No-one's going to let us build space parts in peace simply because we share their religeon in this game

 

[azzaman333]

No need to worry about chain irrigation from the capital, we definitely have other sources of fresh water.

 

[GoSkins]

Azzaman, I pretty much agree with your tech order and that the Capital should be Commerce. I would prioritize trade route techs (economics, corporation, compass, astronomy) due to the likely map and de-prioritize Literature and Philosophy. I also really hope we can be the first to infantry (and of course the pentagon).

Mining Inc may do us some good since we already have the 2 gold and who knows what else. The culture-giving corporations are not as important in my opinion because I dont see us competing for culture - but again, it early and who knows what the map really looks like.

If we end up having a large empire with lots of cities, then I say go for Islam and build the Spiral Minaret and Versailles.

 

[pindicator]

I can't think of any wonders I would want to go out of my way for in this game, especially since we are not IND. That also frees up a lot of shields for extra settlers and the military to defend them.

 

[azzaman333]

Divine Right is a massive waste of beakers more often than not. Not worth delaying anything for unless we're desperate for a religion (unlikely).

 

[GoSkins]

Divine Right is a massive waste of beakers more often than not. Not worth delaying anything for unless we're desperate for a religion (unlikely).

I agree. I dont think religion is much of a priority for our game. I think we should focus on trade routes and naval supremacy.

 

[AlphaShard]

Shrines can be awesome, but don't forget they're only an improvement over simply settling the priest when you have 8+ cities with the religeon. Without AI's to spread it for us that probably means having 8+ cities ourselves. So it's very much a late-game advantage, and therefore it doesn't matter so much which religeon we get. Beaurocracy doesn't increase shrine income at all as far as I understand.

Sorry wasn't clear enough I meant if we found a Religion that pops in our Capital we can use Bureaucracy. That's a BIG if though.

Your right that the Shrine will be more useful later on since just settling a Prophet would get us good gold as well. Maybe we should go for the Colossus so we can get Merchant GP that much easier.

I have found Divine right great to get both Versailles and Spiral Mniret. AT least they are good on Huge Marathon maps anyways.

 

[azzaman333]

Bureaucracy doesn't boost , it boosts Which means Shrine gold isn't boosted by Bureaucracy.

I agree. I dont think religion is much of a priority for our game. I think we should focus on trade routes and naval supremacy.

I don't think we should really focus on trade routes as such. We should maximise them when it is convenient to do so, but building Customs Houses is rarely worthwhile, and building Harbours solely for trade route purposes is too expensive (unless expansive). Also, closed borders = bye bye trade routes.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Corporations and the Pentagon are far too late to be thinking about already. Obviously they're nice to have (particularly Sid's Sushi, especially so given this map), but we'll see when the time comes.

I agree that the Oracle and Colossus are probably going to go together. The team that gets one will probably also get the other. Given our plan for concentrating on other tech paths than the religious techs though, I think we can forget about the Oracle at least. Colossus would be handy, but not necessary.

Capital should definitely be a commerce/hammer city, so it gets the maximum bonus with Bureaucracy. Especially since we're Financial, we want to be building cottages instead of farms wherever possible.

I think, assuming we don't have Marble or Stone, that going for a massive REX strategy - ignoring all the early wonders - could be very good for us. The other teams will likely get bogged down with attempting to build at least one wonder, so by focusing our strategy entirely on REX from the start we'll be getting quite a leg up - especially with our Creative trait. And land = power, after all.

I would only go for a religion if it's convenient and along the way to something else.

In terms of techs, I think I would push for a beeline towards Civil Service as soon as we have all the basic techs from the Ancient era. Head for COL -> CS either through Currency or the religious line. We can conveniently ignore the wonder techs (like Aesthetics/Literature/Metal Casting) to focus on getting CS ASAP, if we're going for REX with no wonders.

 

[Trystero]

I think, assuming we don't have Marble or Stone, that going for a massive REX strategy - ignoring all the early wonders - could be very good for us. The other teams will likely get bogged down with attempting to build at least one wonder, so by focusing our strategy entirely on REX from the start we'll be getting quite a leg up - especially with our Creative trait. And land = power, after all.

The major factor constraining this approach is that we appear to be on a smallish island. I assume there will be small islands allowing us to reach other land masses pre-Astronomy, in which case we might want galleys sooner. So maybe Sailing should be an early tech goal? Over say, Animal Husbandry? Of course we might have enough good city sites on the island that we wouldn't have to prioritize Sailing over other early techs, since we'd want to hook up, say, a second gold city rather than focus on moving off the island.

 

[azzaman333]

The major factor constraining this approach is that we appear to be on a smallish island. I assume there will be small islands allowing us to reach other land masses pre-Astronomy, in which case we might want galleys sooner. So maybe Sailing should be an early tech goal? Over say, Animal Husbandry? Of course we might have enough good city sites on the island that we wouldn't have to prioritize Sailing over other early techs, since we'd want to hook up, say, a second gold city rather than focus on moving off the island.

We have enough good cities on the island to not need Sailing until after Writing (which will likely be after we get Pottery and AH for the 40% bonus on beakers).

 

[Lord Parkin]

Sailing should still be a research goal at some point though. Assuming there's a mainland which all the islands surround, we want to be the first to start founding cities on the mainland. There'll be competition for those mainland sites, whereas we'll have free access to all the spots on our island whenever we want.

 

[azzaman333]

After writing!