Slow Start Strat

[Maugan]

A pretty interesting strat I was playing around with is moving your first settler quite a ways before building your first city. It seems counter-productive, I know, but the idea is to get your capital closer to an enemies big fat juicy cities.

I wandered my german setteler north about 8 squares, and built on a decent spot. I had a slow start, and the Russians were building cities all around me. Lucky me, I had Iron, they didnt, so as soon as their cities were ripe for the picking, I waxed them all and suddenly had about 8 fat cities all geting full or partial bonus from my capital. Then, I spend forever building the forbiden palace on my southern most city with more than 1 production, (3 in this case) and I have a capital in right next to the spots the French swarmed in to take advanage of my absence. Now I am ready to storm in on the french and have a capitol that will give the cities at least some help close by.

Any comments?

 

[RAL2000]

I can understand that if everything works out just right it might be an ok strategy but it sounds pretty risky to me. Eight turns of no production, no tech, no nothing during the earliest part of the game might more likely put you far behind the eight ball and playing catch up.

 

[RAL2000]

I can understand that if everything works out just right it might be an ok strategy but it sounds pretty risky to me. Eight turns of no production, no tech, no nothing during the earliest part of the game might more likely put you far behind the eight ball and playing catch up.

 

[Maugan]

Yeah, it is definatly quite easy for this strat to go bad. I did it with Germans who can research Iron Working first thing. Iron is key to this strat, if you pull it off with spearmen then your enemies aren't developed enough and you aren't going to be gaining enough to justify the waste of time at the begining. Generaly I would wait to move untill some good enemy cities were around 5-6 pop and I have 10-12 swordsmen, which ever comes last.

This strat is worthless if you don't plan on going to war as soon as physicly possible with your closest neghibor. The nice thing is though, since you can count on holding and taking advantage of your first victim's cities due to the proximity of your capitol, the loss of tech/expansion in the begining is quickly negated by your new holdings. You can usualy get the AI to give you all their tech for peace before taking that last city also, so when you are all done with your first war, you are right where you would be tech and expansion wise, if not a little further. And you also have the added bonus of 1 less threat on your boarders early on. Also, it is good to have your neighbors disapear early so there is one less person to compete with for resources later in the game.

 

[Sman]

The thing is that I need my neighbours, they are my main sources of money in the begining.. since no once else has harbours I'm forced to trade with the civs on my continent, if these civs were to be fought with then it would be hard for you to keep your units without going into the negatives. And another thing is that if there is no money then say bye bye to science and if u r behind in sceince then say bye bye to your game.

 

[Maugan]

As long as you take out that first opponet, you are nearly gauranteed to all the tech they have with some timly diplomacy. I have yet to have a loosing opponet not accept a peace treaty with all his tech attached. Even when they ask for a straight up peace deal, and I demand all their tech and cash added to it, they nearly always accept. At this point, there is no need to trade with them, for you control all their resources and any harbors they had that you needed them for. With your capitol being so close to them, you can immediatly take effective control of your captured cities, and as soon as the resisters are quelled, put them right to work. I am not 100% sure about this, but it seems like proximity of your capitol helps citys from reverting back to their former nation also.

It is a silly but affective way of dealing with CivIII's absurd corruption rules and still wage successfull conquest.