The "stasis rush"

[AfterShafter]

Brian, you're right that the AI isn't perfect in this regard by a longshot - that this strategy exists is proof of that - but you are exaggerating how bad *big time*. If you hold off with one warrior until you get axemen, your blockade will fall 90% of the time - though, I guess that depends on difficulty. The AI frequently blitzes your stack (giving surviving units experience, which helps secure the stack - but they have to survive), and while that varies a lot depending on who, the AI will kill a single warrior once they get four archers. They usually have three by the time your first unit gets there on my map settings, and produce that fourth VERY fast.. If I'm forced to do an all warrior blockade at start, there's a very reasonable chance it'll drop in a few turns - and I don't start an all warrior blockade with fewer than three warriors precisely because they get eaten for breakfast by a lot of AI's unless you have numbers off the bat. 5 archers *will* take out a woodsman two warrior every time - heck, you're lucky if it will last with three archers in the city.

Oh, and not to mention, woodsemen 2 warriors don't grow on trees early on, and if your first warrior is going into a blockade like this, he isn't going to be spending enough time to nab villages to fluke onto experience... And if you're counting on copper being there every time to get those axemen, keep dreaming. If I could count on axemen every game, I'd use them - but I get archers for this early precisely because A) copper isn't accessible in every starting city, and B) if this is to work, you would not have time to connect it anyways.

In my experience, a single warrior isn't enough to keep an AI choked for a long time - nor are two, and three is a tenuous line that you stand a very real risk of crossing if you don't get archers/axemen out there ASAP.... In fact, a single warrior is lucky to last 10 turns. Oh, and the AI rarely builds more than one worker in this situation, if even that, and never builds more than one settler, so it doesn't just feed you workers like you're suggesting. What it will build is 12+ archers depending on the AI, and I've lost three archer one warrior blockades before. But again, this depends on difficulty, and easy difficulties are supposed to make things easy. Immortal, this can be a bit of a gambit, and absolutely requires that you tailor your start to make it a success. I get the feeling some people think this is a "Oh look, there's sitting bull - I'll go lock him in! Now just to stop researching mysticism and making a worker..." type thing. It's not. It's a commitment, and you have to be planning on it from turn one to make it work.

 

[brianb1974]

Aftershafter, you must be playing a different AI. I play immortal and use the one on the latest HOF mod. I agree that 5 archers CAN kill the woodsman 2 warrior every time. But the funny thing is that they generally don't. If he's sitting on a regular forest, they will go after him with 4 or 5 archers. If he's on a hill, I've seen them wait for 6 or more. If I can find a spot where he's across a river to boot, then he's pretty much never going to be dislodged.

As for making it a commitment, I agree. If I'm doing this, I always build warriors first. Usually 3 or 4. If I start with a scout, I'll sacrifice initial growth by maxing out hammers for the first warrior. (Not worse for growth than having to build workers the hard way). He goes out looking for a worker to steal. After he finds it, he trolls around in forests or jungles looking for experience. If I'm aggressive, I'll attack a lion for 3xp. If the warrior dies, I can make another. They're cheaper than making workers. Once he gets woodsman2, he beelines back to the enemy city to steal more workers and lay down the choke, usually before they can get a settler out. I can almost always get one and often two neighboring civs on the ropes like this.

Also, the map settings I like favor this strategy. I play the biggest map (usually fractal for variety) and max out the number of civs and put in high water levels to pack everyone in tight.

Another blatant AI stupidity is that it never counter-attacks you the first turn after you declare war and steal a worker. You can steal a worker with a badly injured warrior on flat ground right next to a city, and the archers inside don't do a damn thing about it.

 

[Tyrael]

The rest of my posts have simply been to clear up the definition of "exploit".

It's also very arrogant and egotistical of you to believe that your definition is the only correct one and it's your divine duty to inform us ignorant masses of our stupidity. There IS no "correct" definition of something that is 100% subjective. Even if it was possible for there to be a "correct" subjective definition, who's to say yours is the right one? You? Who died and made you God?

According to your PERSONAL definition of "exploit", everything you do in CIV is an exploit. I'm sure you whip much more effectively than the AI- that's exploitive because they're not smart enough to adapt to the game and do the same. You probably have declared war on another civ before- that's exploitive because the AI is flawed when it comes to war, and going to war is exploiting that weakness. Do you trade the same tech to multiple AIs? That's exploitive because the AI isn't programmed to know that tactic and you're abusing the tactic knowing the AI won't do the same, exploiting AI weaknesses yet again. If you bribe civ X to war against civ Y, that's exploitive too, because a human would maybe try to get a bigger bid from civ Y to war against you instead, or take the bribe and go into a phony war and then team up with civ Y against you, or any number of other things that the AI would never think of. Bribing them to go to war is exploiting their single-minded nature. See where I'm going with this?

The only way you can uphold this definition and not be an exploitive noob yourself is to only play civ on Noble (no bonuses for anybody- obviously very unfair), choose a random leader (the AI doesn't get to choose theirs!), automate workers (surely you know more about which improvements to build than the AI- don't exploit that), build everything the governers recommend (the AI isn't smart enough to make better decisions), and declare war on anybody who makes you angry no matter how far away or powerful they are (the AI isn't smart enough not to do that most of the time).

I reject your illogical and ridiculous definition of what constitutes an exploit. Even subjective matters like this one need to be backed with some form of logic or fact, and yours is backed by neither. Even if there was a "correct" definition of exploit, yours would be about as far from the correct definition as possible.

 

[zebomba2]

Agreessive AIs can reach ridiculous numbers like 20 archers, and you can even farm them for GG points once you get a nice enough stack with siege much, much later.
There a a few strategic considerations, of course. Do this on undesirable AIs, because it will certainly make its neighbours get stronger, sometimes too strong, which defeats the initial purpose.
Some people say they like Monty as a vassal because he actually fights with some competence but I don't know. I prefer a vassal that obeys and makes do with whatever resources and techs I want to give them, instead of one that breaks vassalage every time I want their resources.
As for the explotive factor, it sure looks kinda pointless doing this on lower levels but on higher levels you have to give up something, even decency, heh.

 

[paulthebug]

Aftershafter,
Thank you for introducing the 'stasis rush' to me. I tried out a game with Lizzi last night and the results was very satisfactory. The setting was Monarch, Epic, Pangea.

I started out on the eastmost location. To my right was Charmerline. I did what was described and declared war on him with one lone warrior, and eventually backed up by 3 archers.

After further exploration, I found Boudica south of Charmerline and her location was a prefect choke point. So I turned greedy and declared on her also.

Fast forward 3000-4000 years, I had claimed something like 30-35% of of total landmass on the eastern pangea side. Charmerline and Boudica were still stuck at a 1-city empire with like a dozen archers in the city.

I then sue for peace because the blockage to the eastern side of the pangea map is completed. They even pay me to get peace. Hahaha.

The downside of this strategy, as mentioned, (1) is the slight delay of early growth. I basically has to build a 2nd warrior from the start beside my starting warrior. (2) I was also lucky because I poped a scout, otherwise, I have no resources to scout the map properly also, (3) I basically must beeline archery, sacrifying the the optimal tech path to rex.

Good job introducing new way of playing to us!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thread's been dead a while but I'll add that I find this much more effective if you DON'T fortify next to the capitol, but instead just outside their borders. This allows the AI to expand, but only away from you. Attempts to settle in your direction will involve the settler moving near the warrior with the archer escorts, then backing off. Repeatedly.

On the flip side, efforts to actually get rid of your quasi-choking unit (i'm calling this "Qchoke") are much delayed, making it easy to swap a guerrilla archer or two in there (or if no forest hills immediately on the border, just combat in woods is fine). The AI tends to only break such a choke with metal, and it takes FOREVER (like, until 500ish BC) to do so. On immortal. This gives you a lot of time to settle what would otherwise be "their" land, and it generally cripples the target and is MUCH easier to hold than a traditional choke.

 

[Turquoiside]

AfterShafter,

This a version of the Warrior/Archer rush, and unless you kust want crippled enemy, you are doing it wrong. Wouldn't it be better to kill them instead of crippling them? If you move 2 tiles away from a city, the AI will have most of its garrison leave to defend a settler. That is when you go in and take the capitol. Heck, It should work better for you, I use Warrior rushes...

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

AfterShafter,

This a version of the Warrior/Archer rush, and unless you kust want crippled enemy, you are doing it wrong. Wouldn't it be better to kill them instead of crippling them? If you move 2 tiles away from a city, the AI will have most of its garrison leave to defend a settler. That is when you go in and take the capitol. Heck, It should work better for you, I use Warrior rushes...

You must be playing at prince or below, because at monarch and above the AI starts with archers and tends to spam them. that or you are using like 15 worriors which is a serious waste of hammers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You must be playing at prince or below, because at monarch and above the AI starts with archers and tends to spam them. that or you are using like 15 worriors which is a serious waste of hammers.

Actually it's more hammer-efficient than axes early on (15 warriors is way less than say 6-8 axes). The problem is that 1) you need then so fast there's no time for tile improvements and 2) they cost *alot* more maintenance, unbearable that early on. Bye, tech.

It isn't viable to warrior rush above prince. You can still archer rush on monarch/emperor, but it's costly enough to make it less viable than normal expansion (possible exception - TIGHT quarters with malinese).

Chokes that prevent AI expansion, provided you a) don't get killed and b) don't destroy your economy, function very similarly to a rush though. You utterly cripple the AI, so you can finish it off easily later on, and the land you attain in the meantime is quite nice.

The way DOW mechanics work make it risky with some starts though - the AI will consider your opponent's strength as part of its own for DOW considerations, and this means if you're at war with someone spamming archers and shaka is near you, he's very likely to attack earlier than normal...position of capitols and disposition make a big difference in terms of AI DOW checks.

 

[Mikkow]

Exploits are just no fun to play with. You'll win by getting an enormous advantage, yes. But that's not in the spirit of things.

When does the AI truly declare war? I find that on monarch level, the barbarians start entering one's borders on normal speed between 1400 to 1200bc, and the AI never seems to declare war until 700BC. When I play with my human friend (with AI's), we follow the same rules - no DoW until 700BC.

Seems to work out very nicely playing a little bit more on their terms.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Exploits are just no fun to play with. You'll win by getting an enormous advantage, yes. But that's not in the spirit of things.

When does the AI truly declare war? I find that on monarch level, the barbarians start entering one's borders on normal speed between 1400 to 1200bc, and the AI never seems to declare war until 700BC. When I play with my human friend (with AI's), we follow the same rules - no DoW until 700BC.

Seems to work out very nicely playing a little bit more on their terms.

There is no such thing as an exploit. Just pretend rules players place on themselves to make the game harder in SP, or out of a disregard for winning in MP.

Any argument that warrior rushes or chokes are exploits ultimately fail when, upon defining "exploit", unintentionally include a large number of things they actually do. Tech brokering, controlling workers, picking optimal buildings, attacking certain (but not all!) AIs at pleased, and even ignoring the governor in terms of troop mix are all magically exploits. Then suddenly playing the game in a way that makes you competitive at all is an exploit and you need to be at noble just to win 1/x of the time, with x being the number of total civs in the game.

No thanks .