Tradition Egyptian Wonder Rush.

[Lalabunny]

Hi guys, I am a veteran Civ IV player but I am relatively new to Civ V. I play on Kings level and this strategy works out pretty good for me. I would like to know what others thinks and the pros/cons of it.


The goal is to have get a very strong capital in the early. Together with Egypt unique traits and aristrocracy, we can get a few early wonders with ease.

The plan is to go Pottery => Calendar .

Your capital can build Scout => Monument => Granary => Worker .. or whatever

Once Calendar is done, build the Stonehenge. The +8 culture will allow us to race through the Tradition tree pretty fast. You can get Aristrocracy before Stonehenge is done.

Try to time Stonehenge complete date with Writing. In between you will have time to research about 2 or 3 techs. Go for worker techs (Mining/Masonary) and Archery for defense.

Once Stonehenge is done, Writing should be researched, immediately build the Great Library. While building the TGL, research up to The Wheel, the free tech we wanti s Mathematic. At the mean time research Philosophy. You should have plenty of gold now. You can buy a settler for a second city, although you have to make sure you can buy a library there fast.

Once you get TGL, choose Mathematic, start the Hanging Garden. +10 food + Monarchy is great synergy. After the Hanging Garden, start the National College. If you have a 2nd city by that point, buy a library in that city.


By early medival era, you will have completed the Tradition tree, that allow for break out expansion. You have a very strong capital with National College, The Hanging Garden and Monarchy to power you through. You should have enough gold to buy out a few settlers/workers. You can use your next Policy in the Piety or Patronage tree.


What do you guys think?

 

[That nerdy kid]

interesting. Egypt is potentially useful, but its UU doesn't come in at a good time (don't use for very long, and very circumstantial.)

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I've actually played a game or two remarkably similar to this on Immortal difficulty. So it scales well. It doesn't really work too reliably on Deity, unfortunately.

But yes it is quite powerful. I've tried a few other tricks as tack-ons too. I usually get a second city up via full cost settler purchase. However if you push it (via stonehenge and oracle) you can actually grab that Mercantilism policy quickly making your settlers and workers for your 3rd city and beyond cost 25% less. It's a fairly powerful strategy. Alternately I've also tried saving my policies (just taking the key 4 in tradition) and using them to jump into rationalism. That also can be quite a powerful route.

So yeah I think it's a pretty good strat .

If it could be make workable on Deity I think it would be good there too... but there's just really no way to get stonehenge, GL, and HG unless you are extremely lucky. Even using the GL to grab mathematics I've found tricky (except as babylon but that kind of defeats the whole Egypt thing)

 

[vexing]

i'd do tradition -> liberty -> worker -> aristocracy -> settler
beeline writing, GL -> philsophy -> nc -> 2 settlers
when you have four cities with monuments, hit up legalism for +8 happiness.
chariot archers pwn now so on anything but deity you could also start a puppet empire.

also i'd recommend rerolling till you have marble and settle on it if reasonable. might as well go for +50% for wonder building if you're going to be pushing this at all.

 

[Lalabunny]

i'd do tradition -> liberty -> worker -> aristocracy -> settler
beeline writing, GL -> philsophy -> nc -> 2 settlers
when you have four cities with monuments, hit up legalism for +8 happiness.
chariot archers pwn now so on anything but deity you could also start a puppet empire.

also i'd recommend rerolling till you have marble and settle on it if reasonable. might as well go for +50% for wonder building if you're going to be pushing this at all.

Thats sounds like a better alternative. I'm going to try it out!

 

[Vo01985]

If only wonder hoarding worked on Deity

 

[RealHuhn]

Thats sounds like a better alternative. I'm going to try it out!

I'm not too sure about that. Getting a free settler is nice but you lose the early tradition finisher (+2 +15% growth) which is a huge production bonus in every city.

Given the fact that you won't hard-build any settlers in your capital (in early game), I'd rather buy a settler for 500 than wasting two policies.

4 burial tombs for free is nice but they can be built fairly quickly.

 

[MadDjinn]

i'd do tradition -> liberty -> worker -> aristocracy -> settler
beeline writing, GL -> philsophy -> nc -> 2 settlers
when you have four cities with monuments, hit up legalism for +8 happiness.
chariot archers pwn now so on anything but deity you could also start a puppet empire.

also i'd recommend rerolling till you have marble and settle on it if reasonable. might as well go for +50% for wonder building if you're going to be pushing this at all.

IF you're doing that, then after Legalism, head to Organized Religion for another +1 happy per monument/temple.

Now you're at +4 happiness per city from 2 culture buildings you should make anyways. ICS away.

(tried the Egyptian UU... 7 range, 4 defense. still not that interesting, but at least it doesn't require a horse)

 

[vexing]

I'm not too sure about that. Getting a free settler is nice but you lose the early tradition finisher (+2 +15% growth) which is a huge production bonus in every city.

Given the fact that you won't hard-build any settlers in your capital (in early game), I'd rather buy a settler for 500 than wasting two policies.

4 burial tombs for free is nice but they can be built fairly quickly.

the trouble with tradition is there are two awful policies, landed elite and oligarchy. the finisher is good, but i'm not sure if it's too policies good. the further plan would be to finish off liberty, then reevaluate where you are; rationalism may need to be opened at that point if you've been using RAs, or monarchy may be looking pretty if you built HG in capital.

i do like that you mention you should buy a settler instead. the free settler ends up being closer to two free settlers when you hard build two as my plan outlined. for the price of buying two settlers you could buy two maritime alliances.

(tried the Egyptian UU... 7 range, 4 defense. still not that interesting, but at least it doesn't require a horse)

it's like archer++, a horde of chariot archers can do major damage, especially in open terrain

 

[Furycrab]

I don't mind playing with chariot archers with Arabia, because they upgrade later into a really good boost to your mid game...

As Egypt, I love how they cost no horse, but they really have a limited scope. I'd sorta be inclined to Beeline the Wheel, and just smash a quick city before any walls show up with something like Tradition/Honor. Scout, Monument, Warrior, *worker, then you should pump chariot archers. Get enough gold barb hunting and such to have 3-4 Chariot archers around turn 40ish with the Warriors and kill your closest neighbor with the help of Honors GG. Once you started the offense you build the NC, which should finish as you start taking cities. Once the NC is finished, start annexing what you took while you could take this time to build any leftover wonders. GL and Stonehedge might be gone, but HG/Hagia is usually available. Not sure how good the timings would work out, but I'm willing to test it out later.



There is some merit to the build though, since Egypt is the one that is most likely to steal wonders from under your nose, playing AS Egypt gives you the bonus that you aren't playing against someone who will steal PT at turn 90, and the hammer bonus is decent.

 

[LostInTime]

awful policies, landed elite and oligarchy.

No protest for landed elite, but oligarchy is good. A free unit pr. city can save you a lot of gold early on and the extra damage is awesome against early rushes. (which you in most cases will get since you are wonder spamming) If you play on a difficulty where some saved gold and early rush defense isn't useful, you should consider moving up

And I'm not impressed with war chariots either. If you had regular horse archers to upgrade them to later, they might be more interesting. Egypt is mostly about the wonders and the burial tombs in my opinion.

 

[vexing]

oligarchy is good. A free unit pr. city can save you a lot of gold early on and the extra damage is awesome against early rushes. (which you in most cases will get since you are wonder spamming) If you play on a difficulty where some saved gold and early rush defense isn't useful, you should consider moving up

i'm able to play on any difficulty, thanks.
it's +1 gold per city early and requires a garrison. the double city damage is useful but it's not in any way required to defend. if you're having trouble vs early rushes, you should consider moving down a level =p

 

[Vo01985]

Trying this on deity, turn 30 the GL was built with me being 4 turns away from it (including chopping a forest)... meh

edit: I also had 2 culture ruins
edit2: got it at 2nd try, turn 34, settled on marble, got a pop ruin, stagnated at size 3 and went for tradition->aristocracy(no culture ruins found), and cut a perfectly good plains forest oh well lets see how this pans out

 

[Vo01985]

Yeah I cant see this working on deity, ever. Your empire will be too small and no army to defend any attack. Also, since you wont have time to scout you do not know your surroundings nor will you have cash from city states. Will probably work on immortal and lower

 

[Furycrab]

Yeah I cant see this working on deity, ever. Your empire will be too small and no army to defend any attack. Also, since you wont have time to scout you do not know your surroundings nor will you have cash from city states. Will probably work on immortal and lower

Oligarchy can do wonders at saving you from early rushes (you turn warriors into mincemeat), but ya, the main issue is mostly getting the GL which won't be a surefire thing in like more than half your games even when you get it first (and he's suggesting you get it second)

It helps that you are playing the civ with the highest "wonder" score, but probably not enough deity, certainly not to get two early wonders every time.

But like I posted earlier, I could easily see Egypt mix very well with my tradition honor build, currently playing one with Polynesia so I'll have to save it for later (otherwise I never finish games). However if I swap archer rush, with Chariot archer rush, I probably increase my effective range by a little and the effective speed at which I take the cities. My current game I was on turn 60 with two capitals spots, 3 cities, a good army, the NC, and a large amount of options.

 

[Lalabunny]

I am really glad there's a discussion going on.


This strategy is something that just pop up in my head. I gave no careful thoughts or any calculation to it. Tried it on King/Emperor and it served me well.


Appretiate those who tested this on Diety level.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Unfortunately there are very few purely peaceful strategies that work anymore on Deity with standard map settings.

With regards to your strategy, if you drop stonehenge from it and really focus on the GL ASAP as Egypt with Aristocracy as your second pick, I would be wagering you might have a 66% chance of getting it... without ruins on maybe 90%. I'm not sure you'll be able to research up enough to get mathematics from it for free though as there just won't be enough time. If I get the GL on Deity I'm usually happy to get any classical era tech and be glad for it.

The HG on the other hand is significantly easier to get than the GL. So it you want it you can probably get it .

@Furycrab

One civ you might want to try, too, with the Trad->Honor start are the Iroquois. I played a game as them recently and it went very well indeed. I skipped the archery first, teched towrads writing while building 4 warriors. Sent them off in pairs for barb hunting, culture and experience. After a few worker techs was able to go for iron working, upgrade those warriors, and very easily take out an enemy civ without a GG (generated one during the fight). It saves you an extra policy you can use for whatever purpose you wish. Further those mohawks remain useful for a lot longer.

EDIT: Forgot to mention... the Longhouse (which I have mixed feelings about sometimes) really paid off marvelously. It combines very, very well with the HG. I was using production focus in my captial, had like 30 hammers, and still +16 food working lumbermills with a longhouse.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I find there are two conditions under which peaceful approaches still work on Deity:

1) Isolated start. If there's enough room between you and everyone else, or if you have a single neighbor early and can get a DoF, you can still win if you expand slowly.

2) Rough terrain OCC. If the bad guys have to march through a bunch of Hills or over rivers to get to you, it's possible to hold off large armies with a large city. Build defensive buildings and the Hanging Gardens, get the city strength way up there, and hammer down ground-pounders with Oligarchy and a garrison. AI ranged potshots don't matter if there isn't a ground unit available to capture the city. Be sure to keep some on hand to buy DoWs in the event of emergency. That can get enemy armies to withdraw and leave your battered city in peace long enough to heal up.

 

[RealHuhn]

i'm able to play on any difficulty, thanks.
it's +1 gold per city early and requires a garrison. the double city damage is useful but it's not in any way required to defend. if you're having trouble vs early rushes, you should consider moving down a level =p

Well, with oligarchy, you definately need less units to defend against a rush, no matter how good you are. So you can build more important stuff. It's a decent policy.

On most maps/civs/strats, liberty is better but for this particular strategy, the tradition tree is a good choice.

 

[Lichgate]

I find there are two conditions under which peaceful approaches still work on Deity:

1) Isolated start. If there's enough room between you and everyone else, or if you have a single neighbor early and can get a DoF, you can still win if you expand slowly.

2) Rough terrain OCC. If the bad guys have to march through a bunch of Hills or over rivers to get to you, it's possible to hold off large armies with a large city. Build defensive buildings and the Hanging Gardens, get the city strength way up there, and hammer down ground-pounders with Oligarchy and a garrison. AI ranged potshots don't matter if there isn't a ground unit available to capture the city. Be sure to keep some on hand to buy DoWs in the event of emergency. That can get enemy armies to withdraw and leave your battered city in peace long enough to heal up.

I've found what Martin said to be the case as well. I've won a diety cultural vic with Monty due to an isolated start. I kept ONE city, which ended up a population 49 at the end. Because I didn't expand, didn't DoW anyone, and continually traded with all players throughout, no one DoWed me, and I had a good trader's market throughout. I didn't get any of the early wonders though (Stonehenge, TGL, Oracle), but I did grab the HG, Hagia, Sistine, etc. However, I went straight for the HG, but I've never had any luck getting the earliest wonders on Diety. I finished the Tradition Tree first.