Greetings CivFanatics! This might be old news to some of you but I thought I'd open a thread for discussion regardless. I've been browsing this forum for a while and very often come across posts saying the imperialistic trait (and protective, but that's for another time) is almost worthless. I have to disagree. Recently I've been playing games with Genghis Khan (AGG/IMP) and he turned out to be a much better leader than I had thought in advance. Why you may ask, well, I'll get to that below.
50%
boost on settler is very powerful in the beginning phase of the game. Some might frown and say that it doesn't matter much as food is a huge part of the production, but my discovery/usage of this bonus is basically to chop settlers while growing my city and amassing an army to fight the barbs. One of the big problems of early expansion is the fact that settlers halt growth, but if you research bronze working and get a worker out you can simply chop some forests (BTS often has starting spots with many many forests) and switch to the settler production the turn the chopping completes. This all sounds good in theory, but when I put it to practice the results were even better than I had imagined. I found myself expanding at the pace of the deity AI, and much faster than immortal AIs.
At higher difficulties waiting for that population of 5 before producing settlers might not cut it as the good spots will already be taken on crowded maps like for instance Pangea. You will also be able to start growing your cottages sooner. This has a lot of micro-management to it, but I like that personally. For extra boost you can switch to every hammer tile (especially if your capital starts with bronze and several hills) and go to starving mode during the settler turn only to switch back to food while producing an archer or an axeman.
The reason why I went for Genghis Khan is the aggressive trait which has a lot of synergy to this strategy and the fact that he starts with the wheel which is a requirement for pottery (cottages) and to hook up bronze but also starting with hunting (scout) which will map out your land faster and know where to put your cities. Building such a huge empire makes conquest a very viable option. You can start by razing barbarian cities and gain a lot of cash to hold the upkeep for your military.
You might say that this strategy will become less efficient as the game progresses and that's true. However there's the other part of the trait, the 100% bonus to great generals. By having all this land you're very likely to be able to out-produce your opponents throughout the game and able to war a lot. This means that you'll have even more of those GGs which is a good bonus for the entire game. You will probably suffer a little in tech early on, but don't worry too much about that - "land is power", and those cottages will get better and better. Some traits require thinking outside the box and are not as obvious/straightforward as for instance financial.
Feel free to agree/disagree and discuss my ideas. I hope I didn't scare you all away with the lenght of my post I was planning on making it short but it seems I got a little carried away on the small stuff.
50%
boost on settler is very powerful in the beginning phase of the game. Some might frown and say that it doesn't matter much as food is a huge part of the production, but my discovery/usage of this bonus is basically to chop settlers while growing my city and amassing an army to fight the barbs. One of the big problems of early expansion is the fact that settlers halt growth, but if you research bronze working and get a worker out you can simply chop some forests (BTS often has starting spots with many many forests) and switch to the settler production the turn the chopping completes. This all sounds good in theory, but when I put it to practice the results were even better than I had imagined. I found myself expanding at the pace of the deity AI, and much faster than immortal AIs.At higher difficulties waiting for that population of 5 before producing settlers might not cut it as the good spots will already be taken on crowded maps like for instance Pangea. You will also be able to start growing your cottages sooner. This has a lot of micro-management to it, but I like that personally. For extra boost you can switch to every hammer tile (especially if your capital starts with bronze and several hills) and go to starving mode during the settler turn only to switch back to food while producing an archer or an axeman.
The reason why I went for Genghis Khan is the aggressive trait which has a lot of synergy to this strategy and the fact that he starts with the wheel which is a requirement for pottery (cottages) and to hook up bronze but also starting with hunting (scout) which will map out your land faster and know where to put your cities. Building such a huge empire makes conquest a very viable option. You can start by razing barbarian cities and gain a lot of cash to hold the upkeep for your military.
You might say that this strategy will become less efficient as the game progresses and that's true. However there's the other part of the trait, the 100% bonus to great generals. By having all this land you're very likely to be able to out-produce your opponents throughout the game and able to war a lot. This means that you'll have even more of those GGs which is a good bonus for the entire game. You will probably suffer a little in tech early on, but don't worry too much about that - "land is power", and those cottages will get better and better. Some traits require thinking outside the box and are not as obvious/straightforward as for instance financial.
Feel free to agree/disagree and discuss my ideas. I hope I didn't scare you all away with the lenght of my post I was planning on making it short but it seems I got a little carried away on the small stuff.
). The UU is meh ,but the UB is not....
