Strategy Discussion and Guides

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Do you ever crank up the culture slider? Or should culture bombs and cathedrals be enough? Also, what cities in Italy do you take and hold (to prevent the italian spawn)? Thanks. Your advice has been really helpful.

Preventing an Italian spawn is predicated by this:
-Are there Independents in Italy? If so, then they are guaranteed to come back.
Prevent this by razing all the Indie cities.

Preventing a European respawn is predicated by this:
-Do you have more than 1 city in their core?
-Are you Shaky/Unstable?
If you said yes to both of those, then aforementioned Euro civ will respawn in no time flat.

About the Culture slider, yes. Usually around 10-20%, but post Lib/Astro, I set it to 70% on ocassion.
Here's my city setup, by the way, I realize I don't have the pics anymore, but this should help immensely anyway:

-Paris
-Bordeaux
(If you get any more cities in Gaul at spawn, reload)
-Burn everything in Italy except for Rome. Ensure that there are no independents.
Germany may try to settle Mailand or Venizia when they spawn but it's okay, just let them.
-Gun after Spain next, burn everything except Madrid; despite being crappy placement for anything except production, it covers the most tiles.
-Take those Knights/Cats and have them board some Galleys which should've been Bordeaux's sole purpose other than a few Knights by now.
-Attack England; if you're lucky, they'll be under siege by Vikings too.
-Burn everything except for London. If Vikings have a foothold in Scotland, wait for a while and DoW them too.
We want to eliminate the possibility of a respawn. I think this is a good point to reasonably settle 1N of Dublin before the Celtic city spawns.
-Manage economy and stuff for now. No expansion for a while except to eliminate the Portuguese. Do not keep any of their cities.
-The timing is crucial; do not switch to Secularism until after you've completed Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel & Versailles. Then you must court the Ottomans ASAP.
Bribe them into attacking and destabilizing Holy Rome. Set your espionage against them if you've made them very advanced. At this point, you should be settling the Americas and garrisoning those colonies with your conquerors, which I'm assuming you would've gotten. Burn Amsterdam after the 10 turns of spawning sickness just to make sure (they hinder the territory goal anyway)

City placement for Americas:
-1S, 1W of New Orleans.
-Fort Orleans (Denver spot, on top of the oil)
-Louisville (Chicago spot) (between the corn & the iron)
Any other cities you want, any combination of 2-3 cities in British Canada, 1 city in Quebec and two cities in California work.

-DoW Sweden and take over Oslo. Try to cap them from there.
-If Holy Rome DoWs you, just fight defensively for now.
-Wait for the Prussia spawn, wait ten turns and then crush them with your Heavy Cannon + Rifles. Keep Berlin. Raze everything else except for Vienna/Budapest.

Congratulations! You win!

 

[skunkpuppy]

can someone tell me how to do the Greek UHVs?
I can do the wonders - build library in athens (great scientist for mathematics), bee-ling priesthood for oracle (metal working - colossus), then aesthetics for parthenon. Along the way build temple of artemis, and found byzantion.

However, I can't figure out how to conquer Egypt, Bablyon, Persia and Carthage by turn 124! It seems impossible to do all of this!

 

[Leoreth]

Found Chalkedon instead of Byzantion and make it your military city. Try to take out Egypt and/or Babylon as early as possible. The cities there can help you with the wonder production, opening your others for the military.

 

[Barbuesque]

Found Chalkedon instead of Byzantion and make it your military city. Try to take out Egypt and/or Babylon as early as possible. The cities there can help you with the wonder production, opening your others for the military.

You can settle Ankara which is just as good, and closer to the targets too, and will deny Angora to the persians.

The problem I see so far in 3 attempts is, like a lot of the ancient/classical civs, it's a complete crapshoot, which is really frustrating. Odds to take out Babylon (because of archers) before Persia spawns are real low.

Attempt #1: I didn't know what I was doing (I expected conqueror events)
Attempt #2: Egypt had archers and I lost my 3 phalanx without taking them out.
Attempt #3: Close enough, but Parsa was still 4 tiles away when the timer ran out. I spawned a great merchant which helped a lot with recruiting mercenaries, but looking back, it's not reliable and it will most likely be the 2nd GP if you want to semi-reliably get one. It's kind of late, around turn 110. I also waited until Persia took Sur, to save troops, and it took forever - like turn 115. It's a net swing of not having an extra 4-5 units to kill, plus no phoenician navy to worry, seems essential to me.

I am really against reloading to get the desired combat results, I see no difference in that and using worldbuilder. The randomness in results early on (failed initial invasion of egypt? lol? Can we prevent them from researching archery before 1000BC?) really doesn't appeal to me.

Not too sure how to solve this without doing something ahistorical like giving mathematics and catapults on spawn. Siege tends to ease out a lot of the variations in classical combat, but it's definitely ahistorical in 1600 BC. As far as I know anyway.

 

[Barbuesque]

Actually solved it SCOUT first, he goes on the galley as soon as it's done unloading 3 phalanx + 1 warrior in Egypt. Get the spain, ireland, scotland, danish, swedish huts. 1 warrior goes to grab the balkan and turkish huts. Between the 7 of them and conquering egypt it will be a sufficient funding for a few mercs.

Settle Ankara as the 2nd city, it will deny Angora to the persians. It's a very good production site as well.

Mercenaries, along with the egypt veterans to take out Babylon, raze every other babylonian city, phoenicia could be next if there's enough survivors (there wasn't in my case). Regardless, it wasn't close after as Persia only flipped Jerusalem, and you'll get 79%+ odds in every single field battle against them.

It's important to frontload all the money ASAP into mercs, because you want them off your payroll equally as fast, as they will cripple your research even by popping gold from huts - it's vital to complete aesthetics on the same turn you finish the oracle as you want to bulb metal casting.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Nobody else does Parthenon => Nationhood Draft? It's fun.

 

[Cosmos1985]

Is that cost-effective compared to just whipping out the military units instead?

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Unviable at Normal speed.
-3 Pop + unhappiness = unit; not worth it even with Colosseum bonus,
even without considering UHV deadlines.
Topkapi Palace or late game draft are the only decent draft options on that setting.
But Parthenon + early draft certainly sounds acceptable on Marathon/Epic.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

-3 Pop + unhappiness = unit; not worth it even with Colosseum bonus,

-1 Pop.

The point of Drafting over Whipping is that you loose less Pop so your economy hurts less. As a trade off you get more than Whipping.

With Odeons + Theatres + Max Cultural Slider you'll have infinite anyway, so you can Draft as much as you want.

Another example is the Mughals with Topkapi. Mughal UP and UB both give , and the UHV requires you to turn up the Cultural Slider. That, plus the insanely food rich cities in India means mass Draft. Your Siege Elephants will be the well-promoted elite of your army. Drafted Muskets protect the Siege Elephants and perform mop-up duty after the Collaterals from Siege Elephants.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Hm, I wasn't aware that regular drafting is just -1 in DoC instead of -3.
I guess that makes it a little better then...

 

[Jusos2108]

BTW, currently Siege Elephants upgrade to Artillery, so when you discover Industrialism (that obsoletes ivory) before the useless Artillery, you can build trebutches and catapults in the 20th century.

 

[Leoreth]

Another example is the Mughals with Topkapi. Mughal UP and UB both give

The Mughal UB doesn't give happiness anymore.

BTW, currently Siege Elephants upgrade to Artillery, so when you discover Industrialism (that obsoletes ivory) before the useless Artillery, you can build trebutches and catapults in the 20th century.

Oh, will fix that.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

The Mughal UB doesn't give happiness anymore.

Ah. Perhaps the Ottomans return as the rightful owners of Topkapi Palace once more.

But still, Theocracy + Vassalage + Harmandir Sahib + Barracks = 5 XP/Double Promoted Drafted Muskets. Not as good as Janissaries, but still very good.

 

[Acmeandco]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting civs to peacefully vassalize to me. Could someone please explain to me (I understand that this might be more appropriate in a non-RFC or non-DOC thread, but I'm interested in the answers in the context of rfc doc) what each "reason for not vassalizing" means?

"We just don't like you enough" - makes sense
"We're doing fine on our own" - once again, makes sense
"Sorry, it's out of our hands" - hm?
"We've got enough on our hands right now" - what?
"You've grown too powerful for us" - WTH lol
"Joining the war on our side is not possible for you" - I got that one

Are there any others I'm missing?

 

[Barbuesque]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting civs to peacefully vassalize to me. Could someone please explain to me (I understand that this might be more appropriate in a non-RFC or non-DOC thread, but I'm interested in the answers in the context of rfc doc) what each "reason for not vassalizing" means?

"We just don't like you enough" - makes sense
"We're doing fine on our own" - once again, makes sense
"Sorry, it's out of our hands" - hm?
"We've got enough on our hands right now" - what?
"You've grown too powerful for us" - WTH lol
"Joining the war on our side is not possible for you" - I got that one

Are there any others I'm missing?

I used to know what they meant in Rhye's RFC, so here are my explanations. Be warned however that I have seen some situations in DOC where my standard explanation did not fit.

"We're doing fine on our own": Power ratio between you and the civ isn't at the required threshhold for said civ, along with (I believe) some hard coded behavior depending on the AI

"Sorry, it's out of our hands" Used to be that you are at war with indeps or natives and they are not. I thought that was removed though. It might also be that they cannot join the war on YOUR side, if you're at war with another AI.


"We've got enough on our hands right now": You're at war with another AI.

"You've grown too powerful for us": You have the maximum number of vassals

 

[BenZL43]

Joining the war in our side : You can't declare war at your target vassal's war.

For example you're just made peace with Viking 3 turns ago, and England is at war with Viking. You'll got that one because you can't declare war on Viking

 

[Leoreth]

I haven't changed anything about that since RFC, so just treat it the same way.

"Sorry, it's out of our hands" means that a certain game rule is preventing them from becoming your vassal. Maybe it's because they can't declare war on one of your enemies or because you're at the vassal limit already.

"We've got enough on our hands right now" means they're either preparing or already engaged in a war against someone, and don't want to get dragged into your wars too.

"You've grown too powerful for us" means that they know vassalizing will bring you too close to victory and therefore they refuse.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

The "out of our hands" often means that you haven't yet researched Astronomy and they're on another continent.

 

[Leoreth]

Really? They should say "you're too far away" then.

Edit: verified it, yes they do.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

My bad... possibly a previous version? Or maybe I was just assuming that a denial was because of Astronomy and not some other reason.