Please help a wannabe warmonger NOOB!

[peddroelm]

This is the situation at T254 ...

Check out the monster Beijing become after annexing ...

Spoiler :

Augustus & Harun took out Monty

I manged to conquer Athens (late - LS) - Beijing (very late - artillery) {because the city had such huge pop - it tool 23 turns of revolt before it came online } - and narrowly sniped {artillery with logistics} Moscow before I was forced to declare peace before crippling Catherine {she had a swarm of fighters and I was behind in tech}. Her wonders were built on other cities ... She then soon completed Manhattan Project and started to rain Nukes on Augustus & Harun

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

WHILE ALSO building spaceship parts at an accelerated pace ...


Had she actually bothered to send a unit or two to conquer their capitals I would have still had a shot at winning the game -> by using some of my stealth bombers[T250 late late] to snipe Istanbul (Suleiman had most soldiers - and probably more nukes than Catherine )

I almost had the most land - and still 0 uranium and 0 oil ... 0 uranium from my 8 CS allies [going for stealth seems safer]...
========

On my next attempt will try crippling one AI faster and also try to figure some early RA not to get so behind in tech ....

 

[terminus467]

There are some really crazy gambits for that (see first reply). If you use Rome on Pangea and you do it right you should have your work cut out for you. And by do it right, I mean don't do it wrong.

Spoiler :

If you are Rome, do not attack another Rome (if there is one). Do not get iron late and do not miss out on conquest in the classical era.

My Roman strategy is very straightforward. Everyone who is a decent and mainline player will tell you to produce a monument or a scout on your first build. I do a worker and I'm almost always glad that I do. Liberty is good for expansion due to settler (and also because meritocracy is no longer pointless). Every policy in Liberty is good. If you think Republic isn't good (plus one hammer? Who needs that?) then just activate it once and see the enormous difference that it makes; especially in your not-so-developed cities.

The real reason that I like Rome for the expansion strategy (especially on Pangea) is because of their UU's and UA. They get both of their UU's early and at the same time. If you rush to iron (as you should) and pump out four legionnaires and a ballista then there should be a span of at least 5-10 turns where you can absolutely blow away an enemy civilization. In multiplayer you should be able to capitalize on this to conquer one enemy civilization, maybe two. In single player on any difficulty below emperor you should be able to conquer two, maybe three (leaving their capitals unconquered of course). AI's just tend to not build enormous militaries until later eras and their tech advantage doesn't really start to kick in until a bit later.

Essentially, legionnaires are thirteen strength compared to a swordsman's one strength. Ballistae are (I believe) two strength above a catapult and also have a much higher critical hit ratio (I've really lucked out a lot on that one). Archers are almost superfluous as your legionnaires should be kicking butt pretty quickly. Spearmen would be more useful if you wanted to build a non-iron unit as horsemen are the biggest threat to your legionnaires and ballistae, but it of course depends on the situation. The kicker for legionnaires is that they can also build roads. This is nice for a couple reasons. It has a good economic impact: You can build roads faster, without having to protect the road-buiders (just you wait and see if those barbs dare attack a legion) which also means that your workers can busy themselves developing your cities. But also this allows your army to build a road towards its target while it's moving there or even connect your opponent's cities to your empire's network immediately after conquest. Essentially, legionnaires are good enough to be called OP by many many players. But hey, as long as the Chu-Ko-Nu is still around they should be fine. The Chu-Ko-Nu is like the canary in the mines for the legionnaire, as long as it's still around, the legion is safe .

Rome's UA is nice for expansion because it gives you a significant discount on buildings that are already built in your capital. That's awesome for the development of new cities as well as recently conquered ones. If you are looking for an ability that will have an enormous impact, this isn't it. This is an ability that you can always rely upon to deliver a consistent, moderately sized benefit to you. Low risk, low reward. Then you've got your abilities like Germany's, the Ottoman's, and even India's that may not come into play at all... but when they do... they are really awesome.

Essentially for rapid expansion as Rome you'll want to go (science-wise) mining-bronze-iron, get to your iron and then go animal-wheel-archery-math and start building ballistae. Yeah you'll have a bit of unhappiness. If you got some mining luxes then you got lucky and your happiness is probably alright, if you didn't well research pottery and calendar then... or trapping. By the time you finish calendar and trapping and maybe one more tech, you should have an army of legionnaires and ballistae built up (having settled at least one city now, preferably two). You should never have to go over ten unhappiness, but even if you do you should only be unhappy for a brief period if you settled your cities correctly.

And then you conquer people with your army... in multiplayer it's really important to have a road built to your opponent. As much as you can afford at least. That lets you move your army in really quickly and attack with very little warning (don't build the road with a legionnaire). Now you're probably thinking: If they see me building a road right to them, won't they be suspicious? As long as you don't build it too close, NOPE . If it's not within a couple hexes of their borders they probably won't even notice it and you should time it properly so that when the road approaches their borders your army is already en route so any warning they could get from that will be practically useless. AI's are oblivious to this strategy altogether. I hope you found this helpful... and if you didn't, well then. Eh.