ScrewYourself Tactic

[European]

Yeah ScrewYourself!

Thats correct!

This tactic allows you to build a massive army within just a few turns!
It requires however the following:

*Iron Source
*Horses Source
*Saltpepper Source
*Military Tradition
*Also it is best used if your owning the Leonardo Workshop wonder, obviously its an important part, but you do not need to hold it exacly!
*A Strong Economy

Therefore this one is best used with Economic SuperPower strategy up here:
Economic SuperPower Tutorial.

How do you do it?
simply screw yourself!

Pillage your own territory!

Check your towns and the shields they produce:
Now-

If they produce more then 70 shields per turn per town then Pillage only Saltpepper.
if they produce less then 40 shields per town shields per turn then Pillage Saltpepper and Iron.

The same turn you do this Slide your research to 0% and hapiness if it was higher then 10% slide it down to 10%. Cancel all the trades! so you have maxed out gpt.

Change the production of every each of your towns to Horseman/Knight depending on what you've chosed before.

Thx to their extremely low costs you should be able to build 1 unit in 1 city each turn, if you have 10 cities that means 10 units in 1 turn! 5 turns=50 units!!!!

Now upgrading Horseman to Cavalry costs 60+15 gold
Knight to Cavalry costs 15 gold

If you have Leonardo's Workshop this costs will fall twice which means Upgrading Horseman will costs you 37 gold!
Upgrading Knight 7 gold!

This tactic got used by my brother in a hotseat game a while back, he . .. .. .. .ed me up completely to be honest..

He was weak toward me, and like 5 turns later, i was weak..
Good Luck Mates.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Now upgrading Horseman to Cavalry costs 60+15 gold
Knight to Cavalry costs 15 gold

If you have Leonardo's Workshop this costs will fall twice which means Upgrading Horseman will costs you 37 gold!
Upgrading Knight 7 gold!

You have double-counted Leonardo I think; without Leonard, horse > knight costs 3*(70-30) = 120g, and knight > cav costs 3*(80-70) = 30g.
But nevertheless, this strategy is still a powerful one when shooting for military victories.

 

[European]

You have double-counted Leonardo I think; without Leonard, horse > knight costs 3*(70-30) = 120g, and knight > cav costs 3*(80-70) = 30g.
But nevertheless, this strategy is still a powerful one when shooting for military victories.

No actually, the upgrade cost was calculated on "Accelerated Production", which doubles the discount, my bad.

 

[Spoonwood]

I would claim that the core idea of the article still can work without having one's own iron and saltpeter source, if one carefully engages in trade route pillaging.

Also, military tradition isn't necessary. One can upgrade horseman to riders with China, and riders produced in the turn time of horsemen can devastate AI empires. So much so that when I used China on a Large Sid 80% pangea map with maximum opponents a few years back, no one even learned Military Tradition!

It also can work potentially with warriors upgraded to swordsmen, immortals, or gallic swordsmen. But, getting up a sufficient economy that early I can easily believe as difficult.

Also, as an addendum, have the game set to "Ask for Build Orders After Unit Construction"

This way, when you have barracks, you can upgrade in the city Garrison:

Here I used 'zoom to the city' followed by a right click on a war chariot just produced (in the Mesopotamia scenario). If one selects "Upgrade to Cavalry", then the Cavalry will stand ready to go when the next turn starts.