Sudden economic victory

[vinstafresh]

Get to industrialization, corporation and communism, switch government to communism, build factories in your cities and build the military complex wonder if you can to reduce the amount of hammers needed for a unit. In stead of mass producing tanks or other units, mass produce caravan trains. Have one city build a large wonder so you can switch to the world bank for an instant win.

You have to see if there is a city only reachable by ship. This will add to the train's value considerably. A train can easily do 900-1200 gold. Load like 15 trains on to a battleship at once and lead them all into the city in one turn. I went from 3000 to 22000 gold in a single turn.

You can grow one economic step each turn, so it took 3 turns to be able to build the world bank. My opponents didn't know what hit them!

 

[bonafide11]

My opponents didn't know what hit them!

Except for the person who received all your caravans and got thousands of pieces of gold in a single turn, I bet they knew something was up.

 

[Raw Power]

I've actually thought about this too, but never tried it out in practice so it was nice to hear that it works.

Though it sounds awfully "late" to only do this once you have battleships, even in medieval times it's easily possible to get around 150G from a single caravan, and times 3 that's almost 500 (450 to be exact, but these are estimates). It will take time, but gains increase by time, the whole point is getting the benefits of money early, and winning the game faster.

I actually think that i will try this one game soon.

 

[vinstafresh]

The good thing about trains is that when one caravan does 100 and the other person gets 40, with a train you'll get 300 and the other person gets 40 as well. It hasn't been a bad turn for them, but getting no warning at all while building a wonder already pretty much seals the deal.

You can do it earlier on to gain some money, but use the 'exit strategy' later in the game. You can load all those trains on cruiser fleets as well (just to be sure, you don't want your meal ticket to end up on the bottom of the ocean).

It does seem that revenues are much higher one game than the other.

I was playing the Germans by the way and trading the trains with the Arabs. The Romans would have gotten me about 900-1000 gold for each train. Perhaps if I had played as the Arabs, I would have had even more revenue!

 

[CrimsonEdge]

I was playing the Germans by the way and trading the trains with the Arabs. The Romans would have gotten me about 900-1000 gold for each train. Perhaps if I had played as the Arabs, I would have had even more revenue!

I'm not sure the arabs actually get a bonus from Caravans. My first economic victory was with them and I thought "I'll just spam caravans!" and I never got any extra gold from them - at least that I noticed. I was getting the same amount of gold per caravan in the early game that I did with other civs and the same amount of gold in the late game that I did with other civs.

Dunno if it's just me being glitched or not... maybe I was doing it wrong?

 

[Alexandru]

Dunno if it's just me being glitched or not... maybe I was doing it wrong?

It's not you.. apparently the Arab caravan bonus is broken.

 

[erislover]

As far as I can tell, this strategy is impossible to counter. All-science, beeline to currency, switch science cities to gold and hammer cities, SEV? I'm going to try a straight econ game with little research this weekend. If you're spending your gold all the time after getting banking for free, it would be hard to distinguish someone who sucks from someone who has a zillion caravans waiting for a sudden economic victory.

This strategy won my (diety) game last night. I had terrible global placement as the Greeks and the AI far outpaced me in expansion, science, and culture. With no strong production city I couldn't build wonders, but the benefit was that being behind in every victory category meant the AI wasn't actually trying to kill me all the time. I did have two cities that were moderate producers. I was building caravans for a while, saving up for when I would have a fleet that I felt safe transporting them with. A late game culture push pissed off just about everyone as I flipped some cities, switched to gold production, and sent off the caravans. Awesome.

Excellent strategy.