Sufficient expansion on all levels

TMIT on the save you posted second page, were you in state property when you went to war with rifles? What about when you went to war with infantry?

 

In your Justinian walkthrough, you were building markets/courthouses early, like in 300AD. I was just wondering if this was simply because of the land you had and you new that you had block off the AI enough that you could build these building.

 

I got communism in between the two wars.

 

I started a new game last night, fractal, Noble, medium sea...I tried to apply the guidelines TMIT mentions here. I have to say that I have never teched as high as I have until now.

I had 3 other civs on my land mass: Sitting Bull, Qui Shi, and Darius. The only problem I had was getting my settlers and workers out and mixing that in with military. At 1AD, I probably had 6 or 7 cities, so I didn't do as good as I wanted. I don't know if producing 6 warriors off the bat to rush Ramsees (instead of a worker) slowed things down, but I did get a city out of it. It may also have something to do with the available land as well. Sitting bull was also settling in my direction. Anyways, at 680AD, I have 9 cities and don't have a whole lot of room to expand further. I think I focus on military and take some of Sitting Bulls cities that are a bit too close to mine.

Also, when I did produce my settlers, I was sending them a bit further than usual to get gems and nice riverside land to my south.

Anyways, all and in, this generic start works pretty good.

I must admit that I did cave in and I am building the GL in my capital and Statue of Zeus in another city. I figure I can produce any more Settlers right now.

 

I too, inspired by this thread am trying a game above my usual level. I'm going for Monarch. Two full levels above Noble. Following TMiT's guidelines I got off to the fastest start I ever have had. My research was through the roof. I was only able to found 6 cities on my own. My landmass has Izzy and Toku. I let Izzy spread the religion and adopted it. This is where I hope I didn't screw the game up. I bribed Izzy to DoW on Toku. She immediately asked me to join in and I did. He had as many cities as both of us combined. I need to get him conquered or vasselised so I can go after Izzy. Soon I hope. Conquering my landmass won't give me domination but it will give me enough cities to tech. Especially with my new understaning of specialists.

 

You can skimp on units if 1) you don't need them to stay alive and 2) you have a viable, hammer-efficient alternative for raising your cap.

 

Yeah, this also was pretty big for me. I mean, I would always settle the academy in my capital, I would always run buro. However, as I was getting additional GS, I would simply just settle them in my capital or other commerce city. Probably only 5% or 10% I would bulb a tech. Why? Not too sure. I guess I always assumed that in the long term, a settled Great Scientist should be more effective.

 

Thanks.

In my current game, I have 10 cities on a landmass with 4 other civs (Sitting Bull, Darius, Quin Shi, and Lincoln). The first civs I going to take out in Sitting Bull because he's so close to me. I had to run artists in my border cities to make sure I keep my tiles.

Quick question: In the Sully game, you waited until Democracy to attack Ghandi, so that you could rush-buy the cavalry. Did you do this because you didn't have the to produce units effectively? I am just asking because I am thinking of going to war with Sitting Bull. I just don't think I have a true production city to get units out quickly and effectively.

 

Yes, I wanted production. Getting the kremlin + gold buildings meant going from a below-average production base to one of the best setups for production in the game.

 

What I find that keeps me from expanding isn't cap but the maintence costs and keeping money in the bank.

 

cap IS money in the bank.......but only if you actually have enough workers to make tile improvements.

 

With revolutions on this strategy would cause your empire to be torn apart by civil war. Of course with vanilla BtS I agree that workers pretty much trump all, but I don't really find the game that interesting without Barbarian Civ or Revolutions.

 

Typed yanner39:

I saw that and wanted to mention your post because I thought it showed fairly similar results from using alike strategies. I somehow forgot to type it. Maybe I'm getting an early start on Alzheimers or something. Like you I had no true production city. I don't know, maybe I was too focused on getting cities that would be food heavy to run specialists. I was teching like crazy with my science slider at 20. Maybe my city placement just needs a lot of work. I think I should have built Heroic Epic earlier to have at least one city that could crank out units at a fast rate. My attack on Toku stalled because I ran out of cats/trebs and Longbows and they took over 10 turns (Marathon) to produce. So I vasselised his last 3 cities. Fortunately his capital, or should I say my newest city, turned out to be a production monster and I did finally build HE in my best production city. So now I have two that can crank out units every 2 or 3 turns.
I can't stop here. I'm playing a fractal map that produced 2 continants and 3 big islands. Saladin on the other continant has vassels and will out tech me badly. I have one city that can produce galleons fairly rapidly but I'm sitting next to Isabella. She's pleased with me now. What are the odds of that lasting the rest of the game. Conquering her would give me 5 religions. Plus her capital is full of wonders. I would think she would be an easy target but I've not done a good enough of a job of building military. As usual I'm struggling with the desire to build infrastructure vs. units. I'm trying, though, while my economy recovers I'm building up on trebs and muskets. Plus I'm not too far from having some CR III riflemen and airships. I almost can't believe I'm here at such an early date. Its only around 1500 AD game time.

Oh and I forgot to mention. I've popped 10 great scientists. So many that I'm not even sure what to do with them anymore. Now that I'm mid-game I wish I had set up a city to pop great engineers.

Monarch might become my usuall level now. I have to stick with it until I beat it anyway. I got comfortable with Noble and developed bad habits. Simply because I could. Noble is forgiving enough. Thats why I would cringe at some of the advice given to lower level players.

 

This is something I always try and do. Unfortunately in my current game, I didn't have any level 4 units. Barbs were not a big issue at the beginning, which is what I usually use to generate a level 4 unit. Once I have a unit early at level 4, I garrison him in one of my cities until I can unlock HE. If there is another way to get a level, that would be great.

Anyways, I am thinking of moving up a level.

 

If you're really stuck in the midgame without a Level 4 unit ...

One trick is to generate your first Great General, attach him to a unit, and - presto! - Level 4+ unit. Of course this depends on fighting to generate that GG in the first place.

Privateers preying on Caravels is pretty late to be getting a Level 4 unit, but that's always an option too.

 

Funny, before I read your post I was playing and a few turns after I DOWed, I generated a GG and did just that.

Thanks.

 

Yes, changing the game rules will change the effectiveness of any strategy and/or canned approach.

If for example units were modded to cost 5 or 6 times what they do in , the buildings would look a LOT more attractive and there would be minimal incentive to build units since getting enough to actually take cities without a disgusting tech lead would be very hard.

But generally if someone doesn't point out a mod, it's assumed no mods .

 

Yeah I've noticed that as well In my current LoR game I've fought several revolutions, and because of my expansionism and religious unrest, lost (and retaken) several cities.

"We want to join our motherland" and city Resistance is nothing in comparison to having new civs with a bunch of units spawn and take over the city. I've even used the Inquisitor unit once to rid myself of muslims - evil but very effective to remove a cause of recidivism.

But to be fair, this article is about bts vanilla.

Although I think the mod makes the game more interesting as the strategy used is more intuitive and require less understanding of the game. Courthouses will help stablize a city, going all "Russia" will make your nation burst like a baloon, and beelinging certain techs (like liberalism) is not always that effective.

Still there are points in this article that also apply to LoR - the 5 first points pretty much applies. Courthouses and some other buildings become more imortant to avoid revolutions, a more stable economy with less warmongering/rexing might also be necessary for the same reason. Culture in general also help (thus libraries are almost viable in several cities, although mainly for leaders who can build them faster.

Still having a huge garrison becomes twice as important. Even if you're not really closing on happy cap, garrisons can deter the city giving you the finger or start suggesting that you step down to make your ******** younger brother take over (also known as Mr. AI) for 20+ turns.... one of the many amusing roleplaying aspects of LoR

 

If you have a plains wasteland in your backyard settling it can definitely wait but is letting the AI get contested land such as those really a good idea? If you need to find some grasslands you might have to go through the civ that settled the trash site and take down an additional city as opposed to controlling it from the beginning.

Of course it depends on a lot of factors.
Mostly on if you don't want to take anything from the settling civ forcibly before Biology, or at all (culture etc), why hurry.

 

True, but normally most of the strategies you provide would work fine with the standard Revolution game options on. And personally I wouldn't want to play Civ without Revolutions anymore, it would be like going back to vanilla civ4 after playing BtS to me. But the rapid expansion strategy as proposed here is one of the few times where a viable and effect BtS strategy would cause your game to tank with Revolutions on; basically you'd end up in charge of a small section of your balkanized empire, and probably at war with a few rebel groups. The strategy is so disparate from what I consider viable that I had to comment on it. But your point is certainly accurate.