Strategies

[zappara]

I got a question for you: What kind of strategies you've developed while playing Rise of Mankind?

Note: I might use any info from here to make mod harder/easier and fix possible "strategy bugs".

I'll start sharing my own starting strategy. Depending on how many food resources my capital city has near I eather start building first Fishing boats (if I have tech) or warriors/scouts. If food resources aren't near, I build worker immediately. After all fish resources have been gained, I build warrior or worker. I will start building settler once the city has increased to size 2 or 3 since new food resources really increase the speed you can build your settlers. Meanwhile I use my scouts/warriors to explore the continent and try to grab as many tribal villages as possible.

New cities usually build first warrior/monument. If my capital has built enough warriors so that they escort my settlers, I build monument and then worker in new city since it has already warrior defending. When I've built 2 new cities, I'll make a decision if I should build great wonder in capital or 1 more settler - I usually build 4-5 cities, let them grow a bit and get those improvements made to resources. If I got stone/marble resource, my capital is going to try build Wonder. After that it's just adapting to the situations that occur. Barbarians have given me headaches in few games so in those I've had to make Axeman armies and conquer/raze nearby barbarian cities. In huge maps I tend to send out my scouts/warriors/traineddogs to patrol the areas near my cities and the locations where I plan to build new cities. I set those units to hill squares so that they see larger areas (it's like lookout tower). As you know, barbarians can't appear in squares that you can see, only to squares that are in fog.

I don't usually aim for religious techs but I've often managed to found at least one of them.

 

[Kalimakhus]

Good start for this thread Zappara.

I actually like to talk about how RoM forced me to change my game starting strategy.

My usual strategy is to build worker-worker-settler with chopping forests to make it faster to settle my second city. I get BW as soon as possible while building my first worker. I then chop to rush my second worker and a settler. Usually a warrior also will need only one extra turn.

With RoM BW is a little far with pottery and metal casting required (maybe the wheel for some civs as well). However I still build a worker first. It always make a difference to improve a food resource or at least build a mine. If on coast and have fishing it is a work boat first. It has the advantage of keeping my capital growing while I build it.

Now what is next is what is really different. I usually setup my commerce cities first by spamming cottages on every eligible tile in the fat crosses of my first three cities. First of all it helps catching tech lead. Even one extra commerce in early game turns makes a difference in tech advancement. Also cottages take time to evolve so they better be built early.

In RoM it seems more difficult to go this way. Green tile (Grassland) don't support a population point on their own. This is bad for cottages. Usually a grassland tile is quite good for a cottage as it will pay for itself and it doesn't need a supporting food rich tile. When such a food resource is there it usually meant that plain tiles especially on a river will be cottaged as well. Now farms are needed to pay for both grassland and plain tiles with cottages. Cities are preferred to be built on rivers or they won't grow well early in the game and they won't support cottages either.

In RoM however buildings come to the rescue and they give you money to support your research later. I am now more keen to grab gold, silver, or gems resources. Being able to build jewelries early is a great advantage. bazaars are also good gold buildings in the early game.

For now how to build cottages early in the game is my only concern with RoM. I still can't get a clear proof whether it needs some tweaking or not. Maybe a village should give +1 food with or without some tech. Maybe some tech in the early middle ages.

Expansion is adapted actually to the fact that in BTS the AI expand faster. I find myself obliged to build more cities quickly and drop my research to 70% then maybe to 50%. Otherwise I will be boxed in and deprived from strategic resources.

Advancing through the tech tree is another RoM feature that I find controversial. You can advance quickly through eras if you choose so. But you will be missing many side track techs and their units, buildings, and promotions. I tried doing this aiming to be one era ahead of my rivals and then build forces good enough to take some of them fast. Now there is more than one risk in this. First you might get jumped on by a rival or two while not yet ready. Good defending units are available on the main tech path so your cities can be defended well but you will be pillaged harshly. Second you will miss many buildings that can make a real difference in your income or cultural growth of your cities.

Now I take the alternative path. Lurking for some time before going to the next era and trying to get the most profitable techs early to use them well. This proved to be a better strategy. I still get confused once I hit renaissance. This was mentioned else where already so it is not part of the discussion here for now.

Edit: By the way, I am an average player who likes to enjoy the game more than winning it! I still love to win so I always look for better players to learn new approaches and tricks. I know some RoM players are quite good and I'd love to see their posts here.

 

[Ironmann]

I only play on Noble but still.
Here's my strategy

If I get the capitol nearby water with some fish\clams I build about 2-3 fishingboats to use those resourses. Then I build a settler, Stonehenge and in the new city Oracle. After capitol have made the stonehenge I build settler\warrior for about 3-4 settlers before I begin to build workers.

Maybe I should get a new strategy:/ I allways play with bischmark

 

[Adam2]

Well I changed Sitting Bull to Philosophical and Industrious, and have Ritualism and Fishing as starting technologies. Then I build Petra/Great Library/Nation Epic (or whatever it's called, thing that adds 50% to great person rate). Meanwhile I go for stone (bonus to building Petra) and marble (great library/nation epic I think). Civic-wise I go for anything that gives a free specialist/great person bonus (though mostly I don't get pacifism). The result is alotttttt of great people

 

[iyyillius]

i am currently playing my 20th RoM game. (BTW thanks from another Rise and Rule junky Zap!!!) I really love that you put so much effort into forceing players to change their strategies with every new game. Of course this isn't true for peeps that always play the same few rulers so I'll talk about my settings first. I play: Random leader personalities,the one that makes it so u can play any leader civ combo, permanent alliances, Huge map, 18 civs,cyndrilical, normal barbs, random everything else.

Now that i've got a few games under my belt i've started to notice some standards that i usually do. First of all my build order is just like those mentioned above.Boats if fishing is possible if not workers scout blah blah blah. but shortly there after this game gets interesting. I normally try to get mining VERY soon as it's cheap and the resources that can be revealed can acount for a fully grown cottage/town. So typically i try to get the resource techs first so i can see where i need to expand first. getting archery early is my next priority because barbs can be a real pain early. Ideally if there are elephants nearby i'll go for elephant riding as elephants can stop anything the barbs throw at you for quite some time.
Once I've set up 3-4 good cities i then make my rush to buddaism. Sad but true buddaism is the best religion in the game because of palace of portala.(looking forward to Zap nerfing that or coming up with similarly powerful wonders for other religions).
Next is the part where civs start aligning themselves with others hopfully they are very buddist. a series of wars usually break out as the barbs are sqeezed out and breathing room starts to be an issue. This is where i normally try to take an adjacent weaker civ with macemen and cats.after i take this civ i keep a GP available to start a golden age to help assimilate this civ more quickly. Hopefully i have mausoleum as well.
As far as wonders Pyrimids are a must have for early capitalism. i also like to grab the oracle to grab BW for free while on my way to buddaism. If i get this early i'll probably chop a couple of early wonders. another key wonder is the marco polo embassy for global market. This combo will win every game for you.(again ihope this gets nerfed a bit in forthcomeing versions). Potala in your money city along with it being your buddaist religios capital is also important. recently though i've had a couple of game where i missed out on parts of this combo and they proved to be my favorite games.
What i normally want out of a game is a good end game i like to have at least 1 or two strong rivals left in the modern age. I would really like to have a decent future age war where the outcome isn't allready in the bag but that hasn't happened yet. (VERY RARELY happens EVER on any mod or version of CIV IV)
Anyway i have to get back to work I'll add more later.

 

[Unseelie]

I turn off all victory settings, so as to keep the game running ad infinitum...so there's no winning in my games, just surviving...I have been forced to play prince or monarch (one level up from my general desired difficulty) because of my tech increases...but anyway, I'm not running for a big civ, just a populous one. I ignore any chance for commerce increases on my plots, and build straight farms, boosting my growth as much as possible...I recently had 5 cities above 20 population(which is when I start using specialists and creating commerce) a 33, 28, 26, 25 and a 22 by the year 1200, with 12 cities total. By the time I've a maxed out city (harder now with all the new buildings) there's generally no space left, and I'm using and spies to squeeze any city bordering me to something that can barely produce and spamming troops for the gangrape wars that I'm eventually going to be the target of...Shaka seems to have a penchant for getting half the civs to be his vassals and then attacking...OUT OF NOWHERE...while pleased or friendly with me..when my 20 square city plots are filled with improvements (mostly food producers) I start sticking forts next to rival cities, because thats where my culture is by then..seige units are a must, because I cant otherwise fight the 40 some stacks the gang rapes send, even if I've put machine guns against the musket-men...in the late game, everything starts producing in one turn, and I try and get my armies to match the opponents in size, and just litter my terrain with them...again, mostly collateral damage units, because stacks are prevalent...Attaching great generals to cannons can get you something with insane damage capabilities...in a defensive war...and I'm always on the defensive.

 

[CMKMStephens]

I usually have my starting warrior hang around the closest enemy capital until I can steal their worker and thus not need my capital to loose population growth time

 

[Matt0088]

I generally do the same as Kalimakhus but try to make all my cities production centers. This leaves me felixable for anything, war, research, commerce. What I usually do when I get a good base area and rush to next level of units and then go to war and defeat a civ, then research another unit etc. Although I haven't completed a single game of RoM 2.0 as the only computer I can play it on is hacked. (Been trying to fix for a week) So I might have to change Strategies.

 

[Dewion]

yea, free "slaves" are great, just spam warriors and steal workers..

 

[Maatissi]

I usually have my starting warrior hang around the closest enemy capital until I can steal their worker and thus not need my capital to loose population growth time

- Not to mention that with the Inca Quechua, you may be even able to take the whole city itself early on. Just churn out a pack of those instead of scouts, and enjoy the free Cover I promotion...

---

And for the game I'm playing right now. It is about 1860 AD and I'm playing as Vikings, got a 500 point lead in score, and about 50 turns until cultural victory. I also have a nice edge in tech, too. (Thanks to those superwonders, mainly.) Arcologies make the continent look like a place from some scifi-epic.

For some reason, the two leading civilizations have not founded any religions and even the civ with (much criticized in RoM) Judaism didn't seem to challenge the technological edge of the others in any phase of the game... They didn't seem to have early contact with many civs, so perhaps thats the main reason for their backwardness. Of course those Amun-Ra temples provided some income for the big continent civs, but spreading the religion was very tricky, because Hellenism and Hinduism also originated there...

The setup was: Large map, Monarch difficulty, 13 civilizations, Hemispheres, 5 continents of varied size and shape (almost every time resulting in one big and four smaller). Space race disabled, city flipping after conquest on. These are the most common settings I play with.

On Strategy (basically):

I scout my region as quickly and as diligently as I can early on. The first city I found after the capital I try to found in the direction of my closest neighbour, think of it as the opening moves of an i-go/wei-chi game to "claim territory/board".

Second effort is to build a road/trade network and find horses to create a fast, mobile defense force against the barbarians. If I can't find horses, fortified archers have to do.

I try to specialize one of the first cities to emphasis on military unit production, but basically I favor growth and commerce as soon as I consider that the borders are fairly safe.

Besides these points, I regard the overall strategy as very much depending on the situation in the game. I rarely wage early war, though.

 

[gruffydd]

I play on Noble or prince mostly, large maps, epic speed. My strategy is similar to what others described as far as starting out goes... either war/work/scout/settler or boats/work/war/settler as appropriate, new cities get monument/worker/etc.

I really try to do optimum city packing because I'm old and attached to ideas which obviously don't work but can't seem to change ;/ It's always fun to try that... it actually makes controlling my civ without revolutions (I play with RevDCM only) a lot easier... found religion, make sure that my colonization stack is defender/settler/missionary/worker when possible, concentrate on having workers build trade routes as fast as possible.

I try to avoid warfare up until after the middle ages, just because I find it irritating to watch enormous stacks of soldiers either die horrible random deaths against 2 archers or watch enormous stacks of axemen/swordsmen appear in sneak attack from a smiling happy friendly neighbor and wipe out my city defenders ;/ I try to garrison my border towns heavily, but concentrate mostly on developing pop and research/production in my main cities.

Around 0AD usually, I start dominating the wonder-production market, starting with Great Wall and making sure I always hit Sankore, Minaret, Encyclopedia. I also try to make sure I get Optics and round-earth bonus first. What I've found is that if I manage to get those 3 wonders and +1 sea movement, I always win (assuming CTD doesn't get me first, which it always does). So really, I always would win if the game didn't crash around 1970. I play without cultural victory so I can try to get modern era warfare going.

And that's pretty much it... expand rapidly, shore up defense on perimiter, get great wall so I can tell the barbarian hordes to go stick it in the eye, then dominate wonders and win... sounds pretty simple actually.

 

[gruffydd]

Actually, I just thought of two weird gameplay quirks/strategy adaptations that are unique to RoM and RoMRevDCM+Bug (can we shorten that to RRDB?).

I've found myself starting wars in late middle ages in order to sustain my ability to build new wonders! I.e., after my first 4 colonies are maxed out at 4 each, they can concentrate on building massive stacks of units, which allow me to go conquer hapless neighbors so I can develop their cities to build new wonders in the next era... Anybody else finding themselves doing this with the drop to 4/city?

Because of the stability issue, I've found that before police stations/courthouse/police units and Secularism in modern era (which works great til CTD), I pretty much have to send missionaries with my armies when conquering cities or they start civil wars or revert almost instantly to previous ownership. So, my war strategy = kill my religious compatriots or include missionaries in order to maintain empire stability til its time to get rid of state religion around industrial era to capitalize on happiness/secularism/resource bonuses to stability.

On this note, perhaps Crusaders should a) be available through event/quest/something other than KRC wonder and b) be able to spread the state religion