Strategy discussion

[coko]

6 seems a little high, you could probably achieve it with 4 if they were upgraded and at least one was healing. But yes the position just south east of the Horses is normally the best bet, though do watch out for the occasionaly assult from Hungary (west of that position).

If you decide to put a fort there, it becomes quite the stronghold!

On other notes, I've recently been doing the Ethiopean UHV, and trying to build a working strategy. Though mine currently takes advantage of the change race ability it seems pretty effective.

Probably been done before BUT, the idea is you start as Egpyt and go straight for War Chariots/Axemen, and once you have 2 chariots you send it to kill Babylon, (perhaps Yury, if you fancy repeating till it is successful, but it is tough and you don't need to yet!, then collect 5 chariots and head off to destroy the greeks. You'll probably lose one killing them.

Then head north and wait just outside the roman boarder for them to spawn, and when they do you rush in to destroy their northern town and force them to camp in Rome for a few turns.

Meanwhile you build axemen and spearmen, destroy Yury and move east to attack the Persians. The whole idea is to cause as much damage as possible and raze everything. If you build correctly you should be able to defeat Persia and make it to India. Declare war on them and anyone else you meet.

Around this time you move to Ethiopia, in a world where the only likely person to get Christainity is the Romans but they have spent too much time rebuilding, or will be crushed soon by Barbs.

Basically you are a show-in to get Christainity and will probably be able to trade a few techs with the Romans/Carths/Egypt to get the basics before going for Feudalism to get those all important Longbowmen.

At that stage you'll be able to ward off the Natives and start to expand south, VERY SLOWLY! Stability seems really tough there, so the best option is to only build a few, and all with Courthouses.

I love to get golden ages and clear up my stability. But otherwise continue to build longbowmen (you'll be behind in tech anyway) and ensure those pesky Europeans do not appear in YOUR africa!

(the main part to build is an almost exact starting build for Egypt to maximise the speed to get chariots will maintaining enough research (ie: pottery) to get axemen out quickly! But I think once that is done the UHV for Ethiopea because easily do-able. Though perhaps watch out for Indian going for Christainity?)

 

[sk8er AG]

trying to beat Japans uhv and have had little success, few questions...
1.Know i should take Seol, but should i take the 2 chinese inde cities as well? will it collapse china?
2.What should i colonize in the pacific if i do at all, have tried two cities in california and two in eastern austrailia.
3. should i choose a state religion, went w/ buddhism last time
4.Is it better favor empire or science more, have to be at top in 1930 which seems hard to do with only the home islands
5.Which cities in general are worth building?

 

[BurnEmDown]

Jayakarta (sp?) is really good, and maybe some cities in Australia. You should basically take the eastern coast of china including Beijing, Ghuangzhou, and Shanghai. Then vassalize either Aztec or Inca and develop peacefully. This should ensure the score UHV, but if you see someone threatening your place on the score list just take their 2 or 3 best cities and they're gone.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Agree with burnemdown, the only change I would make is just build 1 city in California (2 north of the cow, 1W of the mountain hill pass which eventually becomes rice), because a. this location catches all the resources when it expands twice culturally, and b. maintenance is less with just one city. I would concentrate more on mainland China, Jayakarta and Australia for your colonies.

 

[coko]

Has anyone gone for an aggressive Japanese style, where you destroy your opponents who are near your score level?

 

[BurnEmDown]

I personally didn't have to, but I guess if I would try it again it'd be fun to pursue a militaristic expansion for my high score

 

[pku_dwest]

Has anyone gone for an aggressive Japanese style, where you destroy your opponents who are near your score level?

Japanese is too easy. It is the easiest of ancient and classic civs in 1181
and the second easiest in 1184(behind China).
Put 2 cities or 3 on Japanese island then send a group swordman to China. I would like to sit the captial on rice and build the other city on the east of pig.
After a few turns, you can train a group of swordsmen and catapults to push China down. you can put 6 cities on china land. Now you have 8 powerful cities, each city covers plenty of resources. Your score will be twice of the second one.

 

[coko]

By aggression I meant actually got for conquest or domination victory with Japan.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So somebody said that why build chariots when you can build horse archers. When you're trying to colonize the Americas, all you see are dog soldiers (weakened axemen with 100% against melee). Their perfect economical and effective counter is the chariot which has 4 strength but 100% against axemen, i.e. 8 against 4, or better like 8.8 against 3.6 if you promote them with 10% strength and they are barbarians. Civs that don't know horseback riding (like Aztecs or Incans) or civs that lack iron (Ethiopia, Portugal in particular) can use chariots really well. Even though the Portuguese start with horses and guilds, it can still build chariots and horse archers, and even if you get the conquerors, some chariots will give much cheaper protection than the longbows and catapults until you secure the iron in South America.

 

[dragodon64]

This seems like the best place to ask, so I will: I'm currently playing a game as France, and I've seen on the wiki that "Paris" has to be the tile that the French start on. Well, I started a game as the Mayans, planning on switching over to the French, and I did so.
But in 760, the first turn of my switch "Paris" had been founded, but 1 tile east of where the French started. So am I done in for the UHV already because of where the AI founded the city? Or am I alright as long as the city is called Paris?

 

[monolith94]

I thought that one tile east of Paris was called Reims?

 

[dragodon64]

Nope, its still Paris; 2E of pigs for reference.

 

[blizzrd]

or civs that lack iron (Ethiopia, Portugal in particular)

Or France if they are an AI civ.

 

[Hangly Man]

If your cities are sited properly it's not all that difficult (albeit quite tedious at times) - you can channel them into attacking hill tiles that have forts on them, for instance, and if the tile in front is flat so your catapults can hit them as they come in, so much the better. I had to do this when Rome built the wall, and they all headed my way...

But certainly the Wall is easier.

That's what happened to me. Rome got the wall first and aaaaaaaauugghh!

I've played easily 50 games as Persia so far and I keep running into the same problem. My economy.

I stuck fairly close to the strategy guide. Babylon first, India next, Independents, then Greece/Egypt, and I do it fast fast fast to keep under the time limit.
That gives me about time to research two techs, max. I start with mathematics and then usually oracle-bounce to either currency or construction. Midway to the next one though is when my economy crashes.

If I pick currency I can limp along at 20-30% science, but I'm so overwhelmed by barbarians that uninterrupted war against Greece and Egypt is pretty much impossible. If I picked construction I can whip out the wall no problem, but my economy goes to poop before I can get currency. (Last game I was literally at Athens's doorsetep when my troops started deserting me.)

Not enough time has passed for me to get a great prophet, and the Hindu/Buddhist shrines aren't generating that much cash at this point anyway.

Does anyone know a way around this?

 

[Hangly Man]

I easily manage to hold off the barbies as Greece - nothing cats/axes(phalanxes)/cats can't solve.

Heh. This was different. Rome had the great wall, and I was literally fighting off 12 horsemen per turn. I had a pretty big army in Byzantion behind walls (5+ elephants) and they all got worn down.

 

[Hangly Man]

I should tell you all how I won with the Arabs on Monarch.

First, the 600AD start is a drag. Mesopotamia is empty, there's no Persia or Egypt, and whatever civs there are initially are far away and won't trade with your Muslim butt. Also the Byzantines are there with there cataphracts and pikemen and lord knows what else.

It takes longer, but the 4000BC start is far more interesting. Often there's a superpowered Persia or Babylonia. That's good because deep down these civs really want to be Muslim too. Spread Islam to a few of their cities and they will convert and become strong friends.

In the game where I finally won, Rome was the strongest nation on Earth (though a little on the shaky side) and Iran and Mesopotamia were dominated by Persia, the #2 power. Persia had pikemen and elephants already, so attacking it would have been suicide. (This kind of messed up my initial plans to go after the Buddhist/Hindu holy cities in India.)

So I snagged Egypt (no problem) then opened borders with Persia and started pumping in missionaries. After the third city they converted to Islam and stuck with it for the rest of the game.

After that I sent my army north across Persia to take independent Greece. Wow! After so many games trying to make Egypt and North Africa productive in the face of constant barbarian attacks it was so pleasant to have such fantastic cities. With Byzantion and Athens I built the greatest camel and cannon army the world had ever seen, and proceeded to roll over Rome.

By this time Spain had spawned so I took it, too. After that all it took was one settler in a boat to re-settle the ruins of Carthage and my expansion goals were satisfied. And Yerushalim, Rome, and Makkah make three holy cities.

After I got my arch the third goal was easy. I liberated the Spanish cities to Portugal and the Northern Italian ones to France, who then both converted to Islam and helped me spread it to the rest of Europe. Two missionaries in caravels successfully converted the Inca and the Aztec, too.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So as 600 AD rolls by, all techs become significantly cheaper, so that the first few moves after that techs can be done much quicker. I've been doing Divine Right (usually bulbed first then half researched) in time to found it in 610, then Feudalism (usually down to 2-3 moves due to the accumulated research) or Music next, then it's back to business as usual. Does anybody have any other combinations that work? E.g. is it better to wait for the Euros to show up before getting Feudalism?

 

[Hangly Man]

Did something interesting with the Aztecs last night. I didn't win, but that doesn't mean the strategy is necessarily flawed

In the newest versions when your cities flip the units around them flip too. For the Aztecs that means anywhere from 3 to 6 dog soldiers will join you. That's great, and it makes some strategies possible that I was never able to work before.

Here's what I did different:

- I founded Tlaxcala on the coast as my capitol, and sent my second settler North to found New Orleans. You can't get there before the dog soldiers start pouring in which is why having 2-3 of your flipped dog soldiers to shepherd it along is so useful.

Here's why New Orleans is an awesome location, especially for the Aztecs.
-With the fish and a harbor (and a human sacrifice temple thingy) it grows insanely quickly and you can whip a lot out of it.
-It diverts about half of the dog soldiers away from Mexico.
-The conquistadors (whoever they are) will find this city first, and will have to attack it from across the Mississippi.

When the Portugese declared war on me they first got tangled in a mess of barbarian dog soldiers. That gave New Orleans time to whip out 5 (yes five) Jaguars to hold them off. That plus three dog soldiers and two archers was enough to do the trick. Bam, three enslaved Europeans, more than half my quota.


After that I made a dumb mistake. I rushed to build Denver. In retrospect I should have waited a little, because this absolutely killed my economy for about ten turns.
It's well worth having though. If there's a better city location in the whole world than Denver I'd like to know what it is.

The killing of my economy ensured that UHV #2 was out of reach. Still though it was a very good start, and I'm going to try to develop it some more.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Hangly man, that's always my strategy with the Aztecs. I never found Tenochtitlan because it cannot grow beyond 9 pop. The next city you should found is Chicago (boxes the Americans in), and then Denver.

Haven't you sent a workboat out to meet the Europeans?

 

[blizzrd]

If there's a better city location in the whole world than Denver I'd like to know what it is.

For production, Denver is the best that I know of. For food/population though, Chicago is hard to beat (once all the late-game resources appear).