Strategy Thread (How We're Going to Win)

[DaveShack]

I saw a comment about the benefits of a team moving its capital to the mainland, to open trade with everyone else. That seems a bit scary, but it made me think of a question. Can you create colonies in MP games? If you create one, do you retain control over it like a vassal? This might be a mechanism for opening up trade routes that would not involve a capital relocation. Or maybe colonies are a bad idea in general -- I don't know, have never tried it...

 

[azzaman333]

If vassal states is enabled, colonies can be made.

 

[1889]

So do you need Feudalism to unlock colonies?

 

[AlphaShard]

If vassal states is enabled, colonies can be made.

I thought those were disabled.

 

[azzaman333]

@1889;
Yes, Feudalism is needed for colonies.

I thought those were disabled.

I'm just saying what's required for a colony to be made. I have no idea whether the settings will allow for it.

 

[1889]

FYI I just double checked and huts, events and vassels are off.

 

[DaveShack]

Caveat: I have never won a MP game, and play at a fairly low SP level. But someone has to give strategy a good kick and it might as well be me.

Checklist of things needed to win (some have been accomplished)

• High production (hammers)
• High GNP
• Obtain resources, deny to others
• Choose friends & enemies
• Choose a target and eliminate
• Raise happy and health caps to level needed for max population with max improved tiles
• Improve tiles ahead of population growth and to allow switching for micromanagement
• Decide an economy type and develop accordingly (SE, CE, mixed, etc)
• Decide optimum #cities and grow to that point
• Settle contested land ahead of uncontested (except when economic impact too high)
• Build a well-equipped military
• Use espionage to its capability
• Choose tech path to enable other parts of strategy
• Win in battle via better units, more units, or more promotions (or all 3)
• Choice of civics to support rest of strategy, or strategy to support civics
• City specialization and placement of national wonders

We seem to have a decent handle on high GNP and choosing friends. Our past tech choices have targeted what we needed but the future could maybe use a bit of work. Settling the copper site supports getting and potentially denying resources, and settling in contested land ahead of uncontested. The horse site gets resources but no need to deny them since the neighbor competing for them is an ally. We need to know what the economy will be and from that how many cities, how many units, what civics to use, and what tiles to improve.

 

[DaveShack]

Anyone with more MP success or a higher level of play want to comment here?

Do we plan to have any GP farm cities? Do we know what each of our cities is going to do?
Do we have a long-term tech plan that will yield advantages, other than use the power of 4 vs 2?
Are we going to try to take out someone (mavs perhaps) and get the lion's share of the spoils, or let the Q have that land?
Can we win long term if we're not one of the aggressors -- or are we better off being strong in some other way while others do the dirty work?

 

[azzaman333]

To my knowledge,
Copper city will be a production city, as will Canopus.
Site B on our home island will be a pure commerce city.
Sirius the standard bureaucracy commerce/hammers hybrid.
1N of Vesta in this screenshot looks like a good candidate for a GP farm (3 5 resources) Alternatively, building the GP farm to use the Banana on the northern spoke could be safer, depending on how we're sharing it with Amazon.

There's no point trying to take someone out this early. However, come Astronomy, we want to fight for as much land as possible. We want to come out of the Maverick war stronger than Quatronia, because they'll be our next target. However, we may want to fight Mavericks for the mainland, as a long, drawn out war will benefit us more than Mavericks, due to our tech alliance.

We have to be big to win, because ultimately the ability to outproduce your rivals wins you wars (unless there's a massive tech difference)

 

[Irgy]

Nowhere really stands out as a GP farm to me yet. All the sites on Bode, including the 1N of Vesta site Azzaman refers to are going to be excellent production sites, and I think we want to use them as that for the time being. We might not want to set up a GP farm for a while yet anyway.

I'd rather save the rest of the cheap great people for later. An academy in the beauro-capital is a good idea, but otherwise I don't know what we'd do with them. I don't want to pump out great people to bulb technologies that we then share with 3 other teams. What else are we going to do with them in the short term though? Burn our cheap golden age? Settle them?

The next great person I'd want after the scientist we're about to get would be a prophet for building the confucian shrine. If we don't build a GP farm for a while then we could even afford to have a city work a priest for 67 turns to produce one.

 

[azzaman333]

A production city can easily be converted into a GP farm.

 

[pindicator]

Hi, just for reference I'm linking to my post about strategy here


Thank you everybody for putting out some ideas!

I would suggest not getting caught in the details of any plans yet. If we plan now which cities are production and which are commerce we may find people have vastly different ideas on what to do with the production or commerce in the first place.

So since we all want to win by military, how do you want to see us win by military?

• Which opponent(s) do we want to attack first? second? ... etc. on to last EDIT: even listing them out to 'last' is probably too much detail for this stage in the game. Just saying 'nearest non ETTT member' is a perfectly good answer
• What point in the tech tree do we want to attack?
• Which units do we emphasize?

Try to find a plan you like that just answers these broader questions first. We can get into more details as we find consensus on the broader questions.

 

[AlphaShard]

A production city can easily be converted into a GP farm.

How? I thought food was needed.

@pindicator I think Mavericks are our first Target. Merlot seem to be Amazons first.

 

[azzaman333]

How? I thought food was needed.

I should've specified the site 1N of Vesta can easily be turned from production to a relatively good GP farm. At size 7 it could have 4 specialists with 3 surplus, just from the clams and pig.


I think one thing we should definitely aim to do is cut Mavericks and Merlot off from each other. The longer they don't meet, the better off our alliance will be.

 

[1889]

Which opponent(s) do we want to attack first? second? ... etc. on to last EDIT: even listing them out to 'last' is probably too much detail for this stage in the game. Just saying 'nearest non ETTT member' is a perfectly good answer

The other alliance members will no doubt have some ideas on that matter as well. If the alliance holds together and it really is a team of 4 vs. 2 I'd think simultaneously declaring on the non alliance members would be best. Also considering the fragile nature of alliances in MTDG’s I’d suggest declaring war as soon as we have some advantage over the other teams. In other words let’s not wait so long that our allies are considering betraying us so they can grab the win themselves.

 

[pindicator]

There's no point trying to take someone out this early. However, come Astronomy, we want to fight for as much land as possible. We want to come out of the Maverick war stronger than Quatronia, because they'll be our next target. However, we may want to fight Mavericks for the mainland, as a long, drawn out war will benefit us more than Mavericks, due to our tech alliance.

The other alliance members will no doubt have some ideas on that matter as well. If the alliance holds together and it really is a team of 4 vs. 2 I'd think simultaneously declaring on the non alliance members would be best. Also considering the fragile nature of alliances in MTDG’s I’d suggest declaring war as soon as we have some advantage over the other teams. In other words let’s not wait so long that our allies are considering betraying us so they can grab the win themselves.

Definitely a lot of common ground in these 2 ideas -- 1889, am I right in guessing you are also throwing your hat in for the idea to bee-line astronomy and invade Mavericks' home island?

 

[Irgy]

Definitely a lot of common ground in these 2 ideas -- 1889, am I right in guessing you are also throwing your hat in for the idea to bee-line astronomy and invade Mavericks' home island?

Add me to that list. In fact I can't imagine what else we would want to do really.

The only question to me is what sort of military units we'll have when we get Astronomy, and I'd rather just see how that pans out than try and force it.

It doesn't matter to me also whether we research Astronomy or someone else in the ETTT does, as long as it's something of a 'beeline' either way. Which really just means that the following techs are researched consecutively:
Metal Casting->Machinery->Optics->Astronomy

This means someone else needs to research Compass and Calendar along the way.

 

[azzaman333]

As far as what units we want when we get Astronomy, I think Rifles are a good target.

 

[AlphaShard]

Won't we get Astronomy long before Rifles?

 

[azzaman333]

Depends how hard we beeline them.