The most important tech: Flight

[Gwynnja]

Usually axe rushes are executed against me by the barbs

The barbs usually spearman rush me after I wipe out my continent with War Chariots.

 

[EweezE]

I'm a pacifist all the way to the end, but I can't prevent other civs from declaring war on me. Early game, I simply ignore them and build until the flight era where it becomes easy to end their nuisance.

You could at least try to prevent them from DoW on you by keeping your power level up near theirs. By not building a standing military until you are able to build the game's more powerful/versatile units you are inviting an attack, and I'd suspect you have a lot of restarts because of it. You may have compensated for this with your diplo skills, but diplo sometimes puts you on the spot.. This pacifist gone postal strategy might work for you against AI, but humans would attack with overwhelming forces way before flight was even in your sights. You need a carrier to use your airplanes on some cities. And in order to use carriers properly, you need a navy task force to escort them. Flight is kind of like Engineering, in that it opens up new units that can be used for siege. I didn't want to call a fighter a "siege" unit.. more like an assisted siege unit at times. Castles and Airports both give +1 trade route but are completely different buildings.. I just think Flight is like the Engineering of the next era of warfare.

Flight is a great tech, don't get me wrong here. It is not the most important one though. Flight might however, be the most important tech in your pacifist gone postal strategy.

I might have to vote for pottery too. We're all potters at heart .

 

[thadian]

It is also a great espionage tech by the same means to airlift spies, and fast-drop units into allied territory. in 2v2v2v2 or 3v3v3, a real gamebreaker comes when, instead of "the guy in back" or "the one in the middle" can teleport units all over the front lines where they are needed. You can even take 2 cities and use a set of 3 protected workers to quick-build a fort, airdrop another unit into it then position 2 fighters there.

Now your opponent has 2 choices: Allow you this garrison -or- Commit troops to it. I can prepare for you committing a stack over to it, and move in with a few marines to make a "soft choke". Now your presenting even more threats. theres no bad threats, only bad answers.

If you can get flight first, and hold it for several turns, you win by default. You open a new element. It is late game. Have you ever started on industrial age, or ren? If so, the mid-game easily consists of different modern warfare options, but none of them live up to a control-strategy themed on flight. If you start in the ancient era your right - it might not be at all that useful. What will be? A good navy or first catapaults/trebuchets because you open up a new element.

When i do MP, i like later era starts because rocketry can counter flight with guided missile-control. When i play MP, i use different methods of being in almost continual warfare with borders that are very tough to break through. Against humans, Flight is a great tech, especially in an era where naval warfare is redundant to everyone having the same units.

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

if you run a CE, the most important tech is Pottery.

 

[quiddity]

u can spam as much as u want, unless u have radio before your enemy's got rocketry ( wich will notice a pretty huge tech advantage ) ur air forces will not make a difference against a good old SoD. Or in anyway, it will be less efficient than an equal amount of artillery.

of course get flight first will give u a nice advantage in warfare but not as significent as u said imho

 

[Plinko16]

I think the large amount of resistance to your point is because you're not communicating your idea very effectively as a strategy. This isn't the strategy forum, so maybe that's not your intention to detail out using Flight as a keystone tech to dominate a game in the modern era. Certainly it boils down to 'Fighters and Airports give a giant military advantage over the AI' (Assuming they have neither Flight nor Rocketry and you have sufficient power and production to use it to your advantage). That's not much of strategy, I can see why people knock it down.

And further, to echo the points of other posters, having a tech advantage is more or less the same whenever you beeline a major military improvement that your enemy is a long way from accessing a counter unit. Rifles dominate all units if your enemy is nowhere near Grenadiers or Rifles. Macemen will dominate if your enemy doesn't have Machinery or Feudalism. If you build enough Catapults and Axes/Swords, you'll be able to take any city in the early game.

Maybe you're insisting that Flight itself is an unbalanced tech in that it confers advantages to humans that the AI does not/cannot exploit well even when at tech parity. That's probably true, though in my games I find that AIs at or near tech parity with me will prioritize Rocketry and often have an abundance of SAM Infantry by the time I've built a few Fighters, so the advantage of Flight-enabled units is not great unless I have a significant tech advantage against my enemies.
When I have a significant tech advantage, Flight is not the key to my victory, I could just as easily have used Artillery or Infantry or maybe even Tanks to dominate a tech-backwards AI. Other key techs unlock systems that the human player can exploit in ways to take advantage of the AI just as much or more and earlier in the game, Bronzeworking, Alphabet, Currency, Liberalism come to mind off the top of my head.

Lastly, you say you've won a Deity game, so you must be a pretty good player. However, if you're leveraging Flight to win games at Immortal/Deity, you're obviously doing something else (likely many things) earlier in the game that puts you in a position of advantage.
You choose to use Flight to administer the coup de grace, that's great and I can see how it works. However, you're missing the obvious flaw in your logic - most players of Civ would be hard-pressed to get to Flight in a Deity game and not be in dead last in terms of score/power if they survived that long.

In order to make it to that point, you must be employing strategies and tactics that keep you in the game as a viable player long enough to 1. Research Flight before the AI has Flight or Rocketry and 2. Have enough production throughout the game to build enough Fighters, Airports and combat units to win wars against AIs that had massive production advantages. I would say it's those strategies (maybe you take them for granted) responsible for the advantage, not Flight.

 

[mystyfly]

^^ The deity game he won and posted about here (In the "I am a God !!!"-Thread...) was with liz of portugal on a terra map, managing 3 cities in the Old World...

 

[Plinko16]

Good point, but I must say that many, many players would be unable to win that setting game without a lot of work and practice. I am not sure if I could, I am finishing up the final turns of my first Monarch win, for gosh sakes!

That said, I was trying to not be a troll but offer constructive criticism.

 

[quiddity]

agree plinko 16

that's hell of a good analysis

 

[The Rook]

Whether you are a warmonger seaking to destroy the world, or a pacifist builder (like me) who simply wishes to defend yourself from Boudica, then flight is the most important tech in the game. It is the most unbalancing tech regarding warfare.

Congrats on your Deity win sirsnuggles.

Do you think that Flight would be the most important tech on more commonplace Deity settings (standard, normal, fractal)? It seems that the most common scenario in these settings is:

Grab as much land as possible (almost always less than most AIs).
Trade/tech/bulb to Liberalism.
Follow on with some Rifling/Steel/MS/MT combo, depending on the circumstances.
Crush a neighbor or two, grabbing enough land to turtle for space, or continue the military campaign for domination.

In such a scenario, Flight would arrive too late to make a difference. Of course, you could wait for Flight, but isn't research likely to be a problem? Pre-Industrial era, a small empire can compete well with a larger one very effectively, but there comes a point where size matters, and most situations won't permit you to you to outexpand a Deity AI in the early game. Not to mention bulbs become less effective as you move further up the tech tree, and WFYABTA tends to be a greater factor too.

Flight hasn't been a decisive tech in most documented examples of Deity play. Do you think players are missing a trick?

 

[BYC]

I still think Bronze Working and Code of Laws are the most important ones. Code of Laws even more important than pre-BtS due to spy specialists.

Flight is one of the best modern era ones, but for most players, the game has long since been decided.

 

[thadian]

You choose to use Flight to administer the coup de grace, that's great and I can see how it works. However, you're missing the obvious flaw in your logic - most players of Civ would be hard-pressed to get to Flight in a Deity game and not be in dead last in terms of score/power if they survived that long.

I have never played a diety game, but if i can get that good i will hope my "flight logic" remains true even then, though you have a good point that the winning tech in this case is the "strategy" used to do it. I prefer rennisiance/industrial era starts though i may be of rare crop, so in my games, flight is a matter of when and not if (likewise so is rocketry) - I have learned, and i hope i am right, that the most "powerful" leverage in any strategy game is the opening of a domain that there is no counter or equal to YET. Thus, logic implies that as siege is a blessing if you can get it first then use a few spies to hold your neighbors engineering off several turns, you have just gained an advantage weather you use it for war or peace.

I also thus believe that flight - as you said, as a Coup de Gras - is one of the most dynamic things in the game, because it is the "final frontier" as an espionage tech (airdrop spies), a defense tech (airdrop defenders) and as an offensive tech (bombard) but also as a tech that allows you a viable means of spreading religion and corporations and there is no other tech that gives this level of flexibility and multiple uses.

Early in the game, i really think its engineering, and mid-game chemistry/steel (for naval superiority - i know i know, only on a water-map) but neither of these allow you all of these options. Pottery is also a wonderful tech, but is that not something obvious an unneeded to state? This is like saying "I think spies are the best espionage unit, and the Academy is the best research building" - but when judging an advancement to me, i always look for options, more questions to ask my opponent.

Im sure a human could show me a few things about the proper use of Flight that i haven't seen yet which would cause me to support this even more. And i have yet to see the AI stand up to it before the Sam Infantry come on out. Like with archers and gunpowder units answering prets, the cycle of the game moves on and while the window Flight creates does not live forever it is only obselete by your opponents getting and properly building the right tech.

 

[Plinko16]

I didn't list pottery myself, but in a thread titled 'Most Important Tech' I can see why pottery would be mentioned. I would probably always vote for Bronzeworking in a poll of most important tech as it opens up two key game mechanics (whipping and chopping) that give the human player a big advantage, plus reveal a key strategic resource.

 

[The Snug]

I fully agree with sirsnuggles in this thread.

xxxxxxxxchar

 

[Jerrymander]

I disagree with Snuggles.
This was, however, true in Empire Earth.

If you have a sufficient tech lead on an opponent that he has not gotten Flight and/or Rocketry yet, then why are you not already pounding away at his cities? By the time Flight comes around and I can make bombers, I already have field teams of 20 artilleries ransacking my opponents. Arguably, Flight is a powerful tech to have, but not unbalancing.
Then again, I haven't managed to make many games last to the modern era, so my experience with this tech will be less than snuggles's. :<

 

[Yesod]

From the history of the civ series. Unfortunately, civ4 has become a turn-based version of Warcraft.

Finally some has seen the light.

I think they cut the standard game speed in half when they dropped Civ IV. All to "dumb it down" for sake of instant gratification (AAARRGGGHHH, why is it taking so long!!! ME WANT WIN NOWWWW ).


If youre truly an elite player (i.e. you lightbulb liberalism every game and pop rifling or nationalism and spam cuirasier or draft rifles while the A.I. is fielding longbows, game, after game, after game) then you should step up a difficulty...

WAIT A MINUTE!!! This even works on deity!!!!

Rifling is obviously The Gamebreaker. Just like Military Tradition before they nerfed that. But for people who play on higher difficulties without lightbulbing, or people who don't rush with orcs and zerglings from the get-go; people who play the entirety of the game, air superiority really is the thorough (or newbie/peacemonger/corny if you prefer ) player's ace in the hole. Anyone who plays like that definetly needs to try it.

@snuggles

Air superiority, tactical nukes, marine invasions, "Sirian's Doctrine", etc., are the other half of Civ IV. Most people conquer their standard map or come close too early and have no idea what they're worth. How they can play Civ I - IV without dying of boredom is another thread topic.

I feel you though, my favorite is 8 carriers and 24 fighters + whatever ships you got lying around as cover, on a huge map. 3800 hammers total (unless you had no destroyers/battleships to begin), which equals 25 artillery. 25 artillery unfortunately, will last you 1 war at best. Bomb every improvement in your radius while you build up marines and transports. Strike the units in the largest coastal city and drop 10 or so CGIII marines off. Then go city hopping with marines and paratroopers after the A.I. wastes it's standing army taking back that one city. Cheap, clean, and brutally efficient.

I suggested this in the last ALC game but they decided the space race was simpler.

 

[Yesod]

The only thing that strikes me about the 'flight crew' is that it must be a bit boring. If you only use this strategy, though its a challange and every game is different to some degree, have you mastered the game or just a single route through it. Ages ago someone on here said many people can move up to higher levels with a well practiced strategy and a leader to suite but how good are they actually if they can't win diplo or with an unfamiliar leader, or simply without using the same old tricks.

we can all get a bit stuck iinto what works, especially if it works on a new hard level, but isn't it more fun to then try something different. I am on the Wonder economy now from the rifling beeline and don't often early rush like I always used to. I am playing lots of different leaders on Monarch in the hope such a rounded eduction will serve me well if I move up again, arn't these the players who can win more consitently as if the plan goes astray they know just what to do..

isn't such variability also just more fun...

Yeah, so you see...well it's just that...What I'm trying to say is that...basically, you're still just...BEELINING RIFLING!!!!

You got it backwards. Rifle rushes will win the game on any level in a variety of scenarios, but the "boring" peacemonger strategies emcompass all kinds of neat things, like cultural victories, and rush-buying with the Kremlin. You might even do something crazy like engage in symmetric and/or strategic warfare (I know, sounds kinda queer ). Unless they nerf great scientists, I'm sure these things will forever remain the domain of idiosyncratic players, but if your looking for variety you should give them a try.

 

[Astax]

Nothing is more important than getting destroyers. Compared to the game changing level of Destroyers, planes are a gimmick.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Nothing is more important than getting destroyers. Compared to the game changing level of Destroyers, planes are a gimmick.

Exactly why I fixed that in my Wolfshanze Mod... there's no reason for 100 years of naval evolution and all the world's coal-fired navies between frigates and destroyers to be completely ignored... it's idiotic (and now fixed).

 

[Yesod]

Nothing is more important than getting destroyers. Compared to the game changing level of Destroyers, planes are a gimmick.

How do you figure?