Praetorians

[HULKsmash]

Anybody got a walkthrough on the Mad Praetorian Rush? Usually how many civs can you take out with this strat on higher difficulty settings (prince, etc) before the Praetorians become "useless"?

And can it perform on maps with alot of civs?

 

[Shillen]

On a pangaea map I have no doubt you could easily dominate the world with praetorians even up to monarch difficulty. Just found your second city next to iron. Hook it up and start building praetorians like crazy. Go after one civ at first. Once you have enough praetorians you can start fighting two civs at once and eventually you'll have so many praets you can just sweep over the rest of the world with ease.

edit: Talking about standard sized maps/standard number of civs in this post as that's all I play on.

 

[HULKsmash]

Thanks for the quick reply.

So i guess you do not need to rush a settler at the start. Also do you set up more cities to pump out the Praetorians or do utilize the captured cities to do so?

 

[Shillen]

I would found a maximum of 3 cities yourself (all in high production locations) and use captured cities for the rest. Enemy capitals are generally extremely high production cities so you won't be lacking in unit production once you capture one or two enemy capitals. You'll need a bunch of workers to connect the cities up, though. But you can generally get those while warring.

edit: Oh and you will want to research to construction depending on how big the map is/difficulty level. The first couple civs will drop like rocks but the later civs will have some decent defensive city bonuses. A few cats mixed in will help a ton.

 

[akots]

Anybody got a walkthrough on the Mad Praetorian Rush? Usually how many civs can you take out with this strat on higher difficulty settings (prince, etc) before the Praetorians become "useless"?

And can it perform on maps with alot of civs?

I'll try to make one but really, it all depends on difficulty level and number of AIs. With smaller maps, you have to grow to size 3 usually and then produce worker and after that settler. Meanwhile you make only warriors to scout as much of the map as possible and build barracks. Because as soon as you discover Iron Working, you will see Iron on the map and then your settler has to go to that Iron to settle near it or may be even on it. The worker meanwhile mines the iron tile and builds road connecting iron to the capital. Worker then either chops some more forest to build the second settler or tries to connect some happiness (always required) or health resources (seldom required because of expansive trait of Caesar) which are required on higher difficulty level for you cities to grow beyond size 4 up to size 6. When the capital has grown to maximal size, hire a citizen to stop growth and make Praetorians and nothing else choosing combat I as a first promotion. Once some new worthy land is discovered which is not settled, it is quite possible to build another settler from the capital to claim a luxury resource.

You can take every opponent out on Monarch difficulty on Standard map size with default number of AI opponents before you need catapults to take cities but having some catapults would not hurt. It might be not possible to capture very far away cities which have to be razed. Also, it is a good idea to not pillage the cottages around captured cities. These cities then can work these cottage tiles (setting governor to maximize gold) and provide with some additional income to help with expansion. These cities will still build barracks and Praetorians.

IMHO, it is not a very good approach if done "mad way" on a continents/Archipelago map because you are not able to research at all due to huge number of cities and sometimes strike still happens. Balancing the budget is somewhat a difficult issue however the game can be rapidly won because the number of Preatorians you have will grow essentially exponentially during the first phase of conquest when you will be capturing most of the cities. It seems that this boost is enough to win the game completely.

Hopefully this can help. But imho, it is rather easy.

 

[syneris]

Just make sure you don't research both civil service and machinery. If you do, then say goodbye to cheap prats and hello to double the cost macemen.

 

[segawang]

Just make sure you don't research both civil service and machinery. If you do, then say goodbye to cheap prats and hello to double the cost macemen.

You must be joking. A Praetorian rush game never goes that far in terms of player's science step... Most of the time, you don't even have construction.

 

[Shillen]

Take combat 1 as first promotion? You're crazy. Take city raider as promotion. 99% of your fighting will be attacking cities. Now a few of them you will want to give combat 1 and medic but the majority of them should be city raider 1, city raider 2, city raider 3.