Tips about Huge, Pangea Maps

[siberian_wolf]

I'd like to know how do you play in this kind of map.
I usually play as the Japanese for the cheap temples and barracks, and of course, 'cause I love the Samurai.
I guess huge maps are very difficult, specially if you're a warmonger, which is my case. Pangea, worse! It's very difficult to be in a war against a civ in the other side of the map, having to cross it by land. I always won cultural victories, but I want a military victory! And I don't wanna give up, cause I love this kind of map!!
So, what do you guys think I should do???
HELP!!!

 

[viper275]

Conquer your neighbors first and expand up to the next AI, then it'll be easy to conquer them. In the Industrial Age and beyond, railroads and airlifting can get your troops to where they need to be quickly.

If you are mainly using 1 movement units, it may be faster to sail there... Especially if it's 80% water or there is a lake in the middle of the map.

 

[Turner]

Yeah, go for your neighbors first. Doesn't make sense to wage war across civs. If you end up conquering them, it's a pain in the butt to do it with a civ between the new territory and old.

Gang up on the AI. Get them in a multifront war. That would make conquering your side a bit easier.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Cripple your neighbours first before the all out war.

Meet all your neighbours as early as possible.

Don't get dog piled.

Keep a strategic reserve to able to be swiftly redeployed.

Have allies in your wars.

Choose your allies carefully.

Learn to suck it up while building your military.

 

[Bartleby]

Build lots of workers

 

[jeffelammar]

And if you end up at war with someone far away, don't sweat it. They will send a few units over to you. You kill them and make peace. Then You slaughter your neighbors. When you have troops right next to the original offender, now you make him pay for his prior insolence.

Remember: Revenge is a dish best served cold. Let them think that you've forgotten, and then ...

 

[IbnSina]

One last thing: it makes your life easier if you have your back to a coast, where it can't be easily stabbed. On a pangea map I always try to minimize the amount of border I have to defend strongly, and that means not being surrounded by AIs. If you start surrounded, make AIs that are between you and a nearby coast your first targets.

 

[Hugin]

One strategy I've found relatively effective for protecting my flank is to build a wall of defending units and literally block my borders with them. 2-3 units on a defensive terrain with a bunker is usually enough to stop any enemy attack (for some reason, when the entire boarder is sealed off the enemy doesn't seem to attack it very much). You can then also pull defenders from cities near the center of your empire, if needed, to resecure portions of your border when the enemy does break through (usually it weakens them so much than a small counter attack force can deal with them effective). A few artillary units fortified on your boarders (along with your defenders) can make it nearly impervious.

Needless to say, this is an expensive strategy. If your boarder is very large it can quickly eat up a good 30 or more units. As such, this is really only a strategy of convenience when you are already winning the game (or have an ungodly huge military). This can also enforce trade embargos with your enemy if they don't have a port city/airport to trade with other civs.

 

[Hero]

You can also just bribe one or more of their neighbors to attack them. Then you won't have to worry about any units at all coming at you and the AI civs will waste their production throwing units at each other.

 

[crazyluke2001]

This is a strategy I find to work extremely well, especially after railroads.

Keep a large regiment of artillery and your best attack units in your core city.

Keep in mind that the AI will only attack if it has a decent chance of winning, and almost always goes for what it thinks is the weak spot, so block all your borders with high defense units, preferably in mountain, fortified and in bunkers.

Leave a small gap, one square apart, which the AI will now almost invariably try to shove itself through.

When war's declared bombard all the enemy roads near the gap to slow down their mobile attack force.

As soon as they are inside your territory, through "suicide pass", as I call it, send in all your artillery along RRs, and bombard the sh*te outta them, then sending in the cavs, tanks, MAs, whatever you have to massacre em all. This works brilliant with AI SoDs (stacks of death), which they like to make on higher levels.

In fact it works so well, I would almost consider it an exploit.

And remember, hopefully the AI will have RRs, so after a few turns their offensive resources will be completely spent, attacking this trap in your lines.

You can then pump your mobile attack force through unopposed, along with artillery. Go straight for the resources they need for building the most dangerous units, e.g. oil or horses, with meh infantry or infantry, pillage and foritify. Any nation that has surplus oil, get trade embargoes against your target.

Your mobile attack force can now roam the enemy territory almost completely unharassed, as the AI will keep all their units in cites for your arty to kill (how nice of them)

Enjoy, and I hope this helps your war strategy.

 

[dexters]

OT as this probably won't get you a military/conquest victory, but I like to let people know about a fun way of playing

Pangea maps are notoriously fun for the geopolitical implications it presents any interested world power. There's no vast oceans or bodies of water to cross so you can pretty much play world police cheaply, although you can do the same with water maps, it just takes a lot more time.

This also means you probably want more than 2 or 4 Civs on your Pangea. Depending on Map size and computer speed, 8, 12, 16 and even 24 makes for fun games. On a technical note, since all trade routes are probably directed through land and the coastal trade is simple, Pangea maps run much faster even with more Civs than say, continents maps, where the game needs to calculate sea based trade routes each turn.

I like to play as the sole superpower, which ususally means keeping a strong, efficient but marginally smaller (than most people would recommend) core empire and follow the doctrine of keeping everyone else feeble and weak.

I still wage war, but mostly to take key resources, establish far flug bases, cripple neighbours and the like. In games like these, it is impossible to cripple everyone at once and 1 or 2 or more Civs will emerge overtime as military, economic and a strategic rival to you and that's where the fun is. Instead of taking the straight route of wiping them off the face of the earth, a long term, 30+ turn plan to contain, cripple them is what gets my blood pumping.

While you're doing all this, you will be trading resources, Luxuries and Technologies to the smaller civs that don't have them and make a mint. You can avoid the pesky corruption in a big empire by letting the other civs pay you gold from their low corruption empires. Basically Vassals.

Check out more on this link here onthe Machiavellian Doctrine . I really should update it but it gives you a good idea of what I'm getting at.

 

[Darkness]

Build lots of workers

Most important piece of advice for just about any Civ3 game, IMHO.

 

[James I]

One strategy I've found relatively effective for protecting my flank is to build a wall of defending units and literally block my borders with them. 2-3 units on a defensive terrain with a bunker is usually enough to stop any enemy attack (for some reason, when the entire boarder is sealed off the enemy doesn't seem to attack it very much). You can then also pull defenders from cities near the center of your empire, if needed, to resecure portions of your border when the enemy does break through (usually it weakens them so much than a small counter attack force can deal with them effective). A few artillary units fortified on your boarders (along with your defenders) can make it nearly impervious.

Needless to say, this is an expensive strategy. If your boarder is very large it can quickly eat up a good 30 or more units. As such, this is really only a strategy of convenience when you are already winning the game (or have an ungodly huge military). This can also enforce trade embargos with your enemy if they don't have a port city/airport to trade with other civs.

You should ask my friend Sparhawk 59 about this one.....

He blockaded the Sumerians from about 1000bc until about 1200ad..... Man did they have a SOD when a badly planned MPP turned sour, and he was forced into declaring war on them......

The Barricaded forts did take their toll, but the AI concentrated on taking key ones and isolating others, and ultimately the threat they posed to his cities with a 170 unit stack forced him to pull the survivors back.....

I think they did discourage the AI, but remember that eventually they will build up and take you on.....

And i think the AI feels you are actually preparing for an invasion.....because they always get annoyed etc when you use this.

my 2 cents anyway

 

[Rem]

If you want a military win, i'd suggest going with either the zulu or mongols, both who are expansionist and militaristic. neither of them have a very powerful UU but the expansionist trait will allow you to explore and expand quicker, which means more land and more resources, more commerce, more unit support, more everything! then when your done expanding and you have plenty of territory, build up your army and start kicking some AI arse

 

[siberian_wolf]

Thanks for the tips, everyone!
I only disagree with Rem... I just hate the expansionist trait, and, besides that, the Japanese are great because of their UU, specially because it only needs iron.
Religious works for me, cause of the cheap temples, and I think I can build lots of warriors/chariots/horsemen to do the scout's job.

One more question... what government should I pick? I always used Monarchy, but I'm considering to use Communism...

 

[Rem]

and I think I can build lots of warriors/chariots/horsemen to do the scout's job.

It's not the same having warriors or horsemen to explore, especially on huge pangae maps. The expansionist trait allows you to pop goody huts and receive only good things like techs or the occasional settler. This will give you a tremendous tech lead, especially on huge pangae maps (more huts to pop). But, however you like to play is fine, this is just my opinion

 

[siberian_wolf]

Sorry if I ofended you... I only think that the Religious trait suits better for me, but Expansionist can be really good for people that can explore their advantages...
I prefer Religious because of the cheap temples, and they usually give me a high culture in the start. Besides that, the easy temple building allow me to use all the 21 tiles quickly, and this can make the difference sometimes. And there is the 1 turn anarchy in the government change...
My apologies if I offended you, it wasn't my intention. And thanks for your opinions... ok?

 

[Rem]

No offense taken, and I totally agree with you on the religious trait, IMO, its the second best trait. Just thought you might wanna try expansionist and see if it would work for ya, but it seems you can get off to an excellent start without it. Good luck in your future games

 

[Octavius]

The Japanese are a really good civ to pick for warmongering imho. The samurai is one of those units that improves 2 things above it's original unit, requiring only 1 resource and gaining a defense point. Personally, i'd expand as much as possible early on, then quick research to chivalry, build many many samurai, and go for a conquering session. Samurai also have 2 move, useful for covering long distances. The conquered enemy cities coulod be induced into pop-rushing more samurai, then keep conquering. I think this will work (i'm a tiny map conquest person myself, so i don't know for sure).

 

[Rem]

Your strategy would work on tiny maps for sure, but it would probably be harder on huge maps. It would be really hard to pump out enough samurai to take over the world. You will have a bigger empire on huge maps, but you would also have a lot of corruption. It could work, but it would be a lot harder, imo.