Tech freeze strategy?

[Worm4life]

The more and more I play, the more I find myself asking "At what point is teching not worth it anymore?"

Tech seems to give diminishing returns the farther along the tree you go. I'm going to start playing around with the idea that at a certain point, I just halt teching altogether and put my commerce into gold.

At what point would you say this would be a viable idea? I'm thinking once I get champions (or whatever civ equivalent). Any other later military unit takes tons and tons of research, and most of the better ones you can only have 4 of anyway. Get champions, then put everything into gold and swamp your opponents while they're trying to tech up.

Obviously there are going to be some exceptions. Certain civs may need a certain tech, as do certain victory conditions. But I'm thinking for a pure conquest/domination victory, why not drop the tech and gold rush everything?

 

[Emptiness]

You'll need (in alphabetical order):

• Agriculture, so you can build farms.
• Cartography, so you can adopt City States.
• Code of Laws, so you can construct courthouses.
• Construction, for catapults*.
• Iron Working, for Champions.
• Sanitation, to improve farms.
• Warfare so you can adopt Military State, and for the City Raider promotions.

Once you have those you can pick up some economy boosting techs if you like, but that's just gravy. Cartography + Courthouses should allow you to support lots of cities; if maintenance starts to be a problem then just burn any new cities you capture. I recommend Sheelba, for Warrens + the Aggressive trait, but this can potentially work for any civ/leader. If you don't play on a Pangea map then you'll need a navy, which could be a problem because of the delay caused by extra research and added logistics for your army.

Maybe you could make a modmod that removes all of the other unnecessary fluff. The way some people talk on these forums, I'm sure you'd find an audience for it. I think that would make for a pretty dull game, but to each his own.

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* Unless the civ doesn't have access to catapults, in which case you'll want to build Pact of the Nilhorn so that you have a way to reduce city defenses.

 

[Worm4life]

I was planning on at least researching gambling houses. In addition to the gold boost, they'd be giving each city a whopping +10 . With that the case, I might stick with aristocracy and just plunk down farms everywhere; get the most out of gold income and high happiness levels in addition to at least a partial maintenance reduction.

I might not bother with construction since I'm seeing catapults as less and less useful. Instead just go with Sorcery and use fireballs or shadow magic to take cities.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

or you could get Order and spam law nodes for further maintenance reduction, a sound strategy for large, sprawling empires.

 

[travathian]

Assuming you can sue/vassalize for peace and gain some techs you'll be fine. Otherwise, at some point you're going to face iron longbowmen with flaming arrows behind a wall of stone, and your fat stacks of attackers are going to get pummeled by fireballs and maelstroms before they even get to the city walls. Not to mention that your stacks are vulnerable to horse archers with flanking promotions.

In my games I tend to highly oscillate my tech pushes. When I hit a new key tech I switch to gold production to upgrade my units and support a large army and new cities. Go do some raiding and take some cities and sue for peace gaining some minor/obtuse techs. Shoot for the next major tech while building up my infrastructure, and then switch back to gold to upgrade and advance. Which tech I shoot for depends on what resources I have versus what resources my neighbor has. If a neighbor has archers on hills in cities, fortified with a city defender promotion, even a champion will be facing crappy odds. A catapult or two can make a big difference.

 

[Worm4life]

Assuming you can sue/vassalize for peace and gain some techs you'll be fine. Otherwise, at some point you're going to face iron longbowmen with flaming arrows behind a wall of stone, and your fat stacks of attackers are going to get pummeled by fireballs and maelstroms before they even get to the city walls. Not to mention that your stacks are vulnerable to horse archers with flanking promotions.

Not against the computer. I almost never see them use magic at all. The only spell I see with any frequency is something where giant plant pedals close up around a city. I have no clue what that spell is!

Really wish the AI could do a lot more: be smarter with religions, magic, actually build and use heroes (I might see a hero every fifth game, and it's usually the werewolf, never the civ hero with the exception of Loki), able to launch decent water invasions.

If a neighbor has archers on hills in cities, fortified with a city defender promotion, even a champion will be facing crappy odds. A catapult or two can make a big difference.

That's what shadow mana is for.

 

[JFSebastian]

You could grab festivals early and squeeze out a couple great merchants to lightbulb Currency and Mathematics, or just Mathematics if you held off on Code of Laws.

Perhaps combine a financial leader with Way of the Wicked to whip out the Money Changers. Perhaps even grab Deception and found the Undercouncil to cheapen those Gambling Houses and open up Smugglers Ports. That would be a little more complicated since it would require another civ with Deception..

Regardless, Consumption seems to make sense at the switch (or maybe sacrifice the weak?).

Instead of rushing the champs, you could build warriors and upgrade instead. Ingenuity could be useful here. Though that wouldn't work in the case of Ogres or Iron Golems.

There are a lot of different interesting champion options. Ogres, Iron Golems, Mimics, Vamps, Battle Masters.

While they don't have the most impressive champions, the Lanun get Guybrush at Iron Working and have a ridiculously easy time generating commerce.

Khazad and Illians also get their hero at Iron Working.

 

[Worm4life]

First attempt will be with the Calabim. I figure their "champion" (vampires) is going to carry you for the longest.

Next might be the Khazad both for the iron working hero and vault bonuses.


If those go well I'll try moving on to civs that have no apparent advantage with this approach.

 

[travathian]

That's what shadow mana is for.

Shadow mana just stops first strikes and defensive strikes. And going that far down a separate path in the tech tree is going to cost you how many beakers and how many turns? A fortified archer on a hill with a single city defender promotion defends at a whopping 10 for a cost of 60 hammers, not taking into account city defenses or culture which can easily take it to 13. Your champion costs 120 hammers, and with iron and a single promotion attacks at a 10. Not to mention that the AI actually does build catapults, and a couple of them suiciding into your stack of doom pushes the odds clearly into the defenders favor. Grooming your Champions against barbarians and animals will be key to getting a couple City Raider or Cover promotions. Once they get to Longbowmen the gig is up, especially if it is a capitol on a hill and a unit upgraded from an archer. You'll be faced with a leading defender having a value of 20+ and quite possibly close to 30. High enough that even a well upgraded Champion will still lose quite handily. If you push hard and fast enough you can simply skip conquering cities with longbowmen, pillage the crap out of the countryside and continue moving towards easier targets.

The Calabim start with body and shadow which are good choices, but require two different technologies to research in order to make use of them. Also keep in mind that your Vampires require Feudalism, which it in turn requires Trade, a significant number of technologies outside your comabt path. Huge number of turns and invested beakers, during which your opponents will be advancing as well.

An alternative might be the Sidar. They start with Shadow and Enchantment, meaning with the two magic techs you can gain a 20% to your champions as well as bypassing first/defensive strikes. Not to mention only needing to have an adept convert a single node to body and they all gain haste as well. Sidar also double build speed forges.

My choice would be the Hippus. Skip magic entirely. Free Combat I and Commando is huge. Very useful world spell to call upon once you hit some decent resistance. An option of researching three additional techs grants you horse archers with 4 movement and 45% withdraw chance, with one flanking promotion meaning a 65% chance of withdrawing allowing you to use them in an initial city assault to wear down defenders allowing your champions to finish them off and gain much needed promotions. Not to mention that with all that movement they can really pillage effectively while staying with the stack, providing you much needed cash from the +100% pillage bonus, and you can build them in your core cities and have them catch up to the front lines very fast. And with Combat I being free for your Champions, your next promotion can be Cover or Shock or City Raider as needed.

I think Entangle is the spell you are thinking of.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

he's thinking of shadow 2, which negates city defense bonuses ( although the description has been outdates for ages ) . your point about how many beakers it would take to reach sorcery still holds true though.

 

[loffenx]

What does that mean, exactly? The bonus from size, walls, etc, or the archer-line promotions, or something else?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

the bonus from culture and walls/palisades, yes. it does not negate city defender promos. still, it's very powerful when attempting to crack fortified cities, as you don't have to bring slow siege weapons ( although the collateral damage of the catapults often comes in handy of course )

 

[loffenx]

Ah so in short it negates the defense bonus that is displayed next to / under the city name? Aha! Finally I understand. Thanks

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

exactly that. I find it one of the most underappreciated spells. enjoy

 

[loffenx]

And here I was reaching for fire mana as Svartalfar *slaps head*. Thank you

 

[Bootsiuv]

An option of researching three additional techs grants you horse archers with 4 movement and 45% withdraw chance, with one flanking promotion meaning a 65% chance of withdrawing allowing you to use them in an initial city assault to wear down defenders allowing your champions to finish them off and gain much needed promotions.

Are bonuses added like this? I always assumed they were multiplied i.e. using the above example, the withdraw chance would be 54%, not 65%. Is this incorrect?

 

[popejubal]

Are bonuses added like this? I always assumed they were multiplied i.e. using the above example, the withdraw chance would be 54%, not 65%. Is this incorrect?

Almost no bonuses in civ are multiplied. Instead, bonuses (and penalties) are added together and then applied in one single step.

The only time that percent changes are multiplied is when they apply to two different things.

For instance, the Bureaucracy civic gives a 50% bonus to commerce. When that commerce is turned into Science, a Library and Academy will add an additional 75% bonus to the science (note: 25% + 50% = 75%. They just add.) Because these bonuses are applied in two different steps (once to commerce and once to science), they end up multiplying.

You will not see the withdraw percent chance the way you expect in the combat odds display because it takes into account the chance of winning that battle as well.

Example: 60% withdraw chance.
Enter combat with a 30% chance of victory. Withdraw chance is .70 * .60 = 42%
Enter combat with a 90% chance of victory. Withdraw chance is .10 * .60 = 6%

In either case, it's a 60% chance of withdrawing only if you would not have won the battle.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

And here I was reaching for fire mana as Svartalfar *slaps head*. Thank you

well, you can't go wrong with fireballs. they're always good for the collateral. of course, if you were using them to bombard instead of attacking...

 

[travathian]

That and fireballs arent restricted to being used against city defenders. You can use them on defense against stacks of doom, or on offense to wear down lone units between cities so that one of your units close to their next promotion can take the injured out.

 

[Bootsiuv]

@popejubal

I used to play EB on R:TW quite a bit....and IIRC, bonuses are multiplied in that game, so I just assumed cIV was the same.

Anyhoo, thanks for clarifying.