Thoughts on opening with Sitting Bull

[Gwynnja]

I rolled Sitting Bull and thought of how best to utilize his traits (philosophical and protective,) unique building (a monument that gives +3 experience points to archery units,) and unique unit (a 4 strength, resourceless axeman with +100% towards melee units.) A rush before swords are online is out; dog soldiers suck against archers. My idea is to tech bronze working, chop out stonehenge, then rex as hard as I can. I'll settle my first great prophet to further fuel my economy and park my cities on hills as close to my neighbors as possible.

Game settings are Monarch/Large/Fractal/Marathon. I'm close to comfortable on monarch, but waaay to comfortable on prince. My initial strategy usually involves expansion through war in order to destroy at least two neighbors, then a rebuilding phase to liberalism. However, because of sitting bull's UU and UB, I'm thinking about rexing peacefully as much as I can, then I'll have a mid to late game domination push using cannons and uber rifles upgraded from archery units.

As I've already stated, rexing peacefully is something of a foreign concept to me. Starting with Stonehenge has cost me a few hammers early... Should I A. Build worker/settler/escort/worker/settler/escort or B. build settlers and escorts until I run out of room then build a ton of workers? The archers and doggies let me feel pretty secure about my empire regardless of my power rating.

I've got some good jungle land available to me, but taking even barb cities seems like it will be a chore before I have Iron online. Any opinions, suggestions, an criticisms would be appreciated.

 

[ShannonCT]

An interesting opening for Sitting Bull is to try to grab Feudalism or Machinery with the Oracle. Xbows or Lbows will get 4 promos out of the gate and are able attackers compared with 1 promo swords. And nothing gets a bonus against either of those two units.

 

[futurehermit]

Great library to bulb your way through liberalism. Use strong early game defenses to keep your small-to-mid-sized empire safe. Beeline rifling. Draft strong gunpowder units (don't forget theocracy and globe theater) to expand your empire. Win.

 

[slobberinbear]

Tried my darndest but couldn't open your save. Having done the same thing myself before, I suggest you post your saves in a format that everyone can open, and post images for everyone to look at.

I'll have to go by your comments.

Your save indicates it's 850 BC. Your build order ideas suggest that you do not have a worker yet. If this is true, you are way behind. You need to get workers out with each city; settling a new city that is working unimproved tiles is useless, other than for denying the land to the AI.

When I go for Stonehenge, I usually do it before the first city and chop it out around 2400 BC. I usually build a worker and a few warriors while I'm waiting for Bronze Working and Mysticism. You can usually beat the AI if you focus on it right away. I then immediately start on settlers, warriors, and workers for settlement. Since your are Sitting Bull, you have the option of not hooking up strategic resources right away, but you might as well deny them to the AI, and you never know when you'll need a spearman or swordsman.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Axe-rush is out for SB, but early war can be done with swords and cats (iron required, obviously), or if you luck out and get ivory, abuse the ele's. Dog soldiers make primo stack D versus melee in the early game at least, just cover with spears as well if the AI's got HBR (but cats can own chariots so disregard spears if they can't field HAs). In fact an early game pillage stack of a dog soldier and a cat can really do force-multiplying damage relative to the hammer investment. Or dog S and combat-line chariot if you feel lucky or aren't on Immortal (where an AI's chariots will own yours no matter what).

If the map is generous with food you'll want an SE obviously for the philo trait, so if there's stone 'mids may be a higher priority than 'henge. Not critical but very nice to have +3 beaks when you'll be flipping specialists anyway, or the ability to hit the Police State panic button if WW threatens to nuke your economy in a war. If there's no stone you won't build either in the higher levels, so only attempt them as an early-game Wealth, if you need chaching to fund a REX (and there's no aggro like Shaka to worry about).

Expansion will be more expensive since you're not Fin and not Org, so if you early war you'll be razing more, which I hate when the location doesn't suck. And that'll open up terrain for AIs to expand so early war overall may be counterproductive.

At the very least farm it up and then just see what opportunities open up.

 

[madscientist]

Sitting Bull is the BEST at an early rush, even better than Quechuas in my opinion. He starts with 2 food techs, start by researching mining and BW. The early build order is a worker then a barracks. Chop out a bunch of Dog Warriors and you can rush with CR promoted dogs. Kill a few animals to get 1 or 2 to CR II. I have rushed protective leaders on a hill with Dogs starting arround 2500-3000 BC at marathon speed.

Put it this way, are Quechua's bad to rush with (2 strength and 100% versus archers?)? Is there much of a difference???

Dogs never get much respect are early rushers

 

[Indiansmoke]

Sitting Bull is the BEST at an early rush, even better than Quechuas in my opinion. He starts with 2 food techs, start by researching mining and BW. The early build order is a worker then a barracks. Chop out a bunch of Dog Warriors and you can rush with CR promoted dogs. Kill a few animals to get 1 or 2 to CR II. I have rushed protective leaders on a hill with Dogs starting arround 2500-3000 BC at marathon speed.

Put it this way, are Quechua's bad to rush with (2 strength and 100% versus archers?)? Is there much of a difference???

Dogs never get much respect are early rushers

Quencas cost less than 1/2 of dogs....that is a huge difference...

 

[shyuhe]

Quechua's are also available at the start of the game and start with a free combat 1. You need BW to enable dogs. You can quechua rush an AI around 3000-3500 BC, if not earlier (depending on distance).

I'd prefer chariots over dogs for rushing since they'll get to the AI faster.

 

[madscientist]

OK, good points about Quechua. I will agree they are better early rushers than Dogs.

Chariots may move faster but will take longer to produce as you need the wheel, to pasture them, obtain them (unless lucky it's in the BFC), and hook them up.

 

[Feyaria]

But you can still rush with dog soldiers when your enemy has bronze.

quechua vs axe: 2 vs 7,5
dog soldier vs axe: 4 vs 3,33

 

[Skallagrimson]

Sitting Bull is the BEST at an early rush, even better than Quechuas in my opinion. He starts with 2 food techs, start by researching mining and BW. The early build order is a worker then a barracks. Chop out a bunch of Dog Warriors and you can rush with CR promoted dogs. Kill a few animals to get 1 or 2 to CR II. I have rushed protective leaders on a hill with Dogs starting arround 2500-3000 BC at marathon speed.

Put it this way, are Quechua's bad to rush with (2 strength and 100% versus archers?)? Is there much of a difference???

Dogs never get much respect are early rushers

Might as well do a spear rush. First dog the AI sees, he'll switch all unit builds to archers and chariots.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

An interesting opening for Sitting Bull is to try to grab Feudalism or Machinery with the Oracle. Xbows or Lbows will get 4 promos out of the gate and are able attackers compared with 1 promo swords. And nothing gets a bonus against either of those two units.

Horse Archer

-Immune to first strikes.

Mounted can't get cover, so you can win if protective with formation. However, it's still not a good field fight considering everything you have to give up to just hit with longbows. Even with cover longbows aren't particularly impressive against archers in cities with defense (especially other PRO archers). It's nice but to me always seemed a little gimmicky since it's really hard to pull off at high levels (one could use dogs with combat (and if they survive cover) to block strategic resources and then swords on the archers since that's all they'll have for a while. Probably also not good on high levels though unless you're looking at epic or marathon speeds.

 

[Gumbolt]

Back to Sitting Bull xbow debate. Arghhhh lol

if your aiming for xbow early build mids first. when you get GE. bulb part of machinery.

Meanwhile have one city build SH, another the Oracle. Use Oracle for MC. Build forge in mids town to speed up GE arrival. (If you cant get mids just use forge.)

You should be able to get xbows for around 1200bc.

On a side note. You will need alphabet and iron working too. These two can probably be traded from the AI.

You need iron!!! It can be quite depressing after all that work to find you have no iron anyway, Oooops lol.

Overall if you really want to do a xbow rush just play China and use CKN!!! CKN work much better. Although early xbows promoted can knock out a early Ai stack with melee. Then again so can dog soldiers.

As TMIT suggests horse archer will be the bain of the xbow existence. That and long bowmen when they arrive. You still have cats and trebs to weaken defences first.

A drill 4 xbow will be a strong attacker.

 

[assass1n]

Rex and go Oracle --> Col maybe
I think Caste is great for Phil leaders

 

[ShannonCT]

Back to Sitting Bull xbow debate. Arghhhh lol

if your aiming for xbow early build mids first. when you get GE. bulb part of machinery.

Meanwhile have one city build SH, another the Oracle. Use Oracle for MC. Build forge in mids town to speed up GE arrival. (If you cant get mids just use forge.)

This is a good strategy, especially at the higher levels where you will have a hard time grabbing Machinery with Oracle. Metal Casting with Oracle is always doable, and Sitting Bull's Philo trait gives you a fast Engineer from Mids/Forge.

You need iron!!! It can be quite depressing after all that work to find you have no iron anyway, Oooops lol.

If you REX during this period, chances are high that you'll have iron, as it's quite plentiful.

As TMIT suggests horse archer will be the bain of the xbow existence. That and long bowmen when they arrive. You still have cats and trebs to weaken defences first.

A drill 4 xbow will be a strong attacker.

If you can build XBows, you can build spearmen to protect your stack. Or you can always promote some of your XBows with Drill2 + Formation. Stick to defensive terrain when approaching a city and HAs have no hope. HAs get no defensive bonuses so they are poor city defenders.