USA : Tiles discount strategy ?

[Magean]

So I'm looking forward playing the USA. The extra Sight is obviously great. However I'm more cautious concerning the 50% tiles discount.
Usually I buy tiles to secure a resource or a good tile when another civ is near, or to lock a passageway... But I think I spend around 500 up to 1000 gold in tiles per game. So with Washington I'd save roughly 500 gold, at most. This is OK, but a bit... situational.

Therefore, I'd like to use a development strategy relying much more on tiles buying, so this part of Manifest Destiny would be much more profitable.

Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Arksa]

Well you could ignore culture a fair bit, and just make large cities that use their land well. You can reach out to all tiles quick, just remember to make them grow fast as well so you can take use of all the resources.

Settling on coast is especially good since culture doesn't want to get the far away fish. Halfing the price on those is nice. Also if you are near a natural wonder that has good output you can buy the tile way faster in early game for cheaper price.

 

[_invy_]

You could try strategy of aggressive settling backed up with decent military. Its still situational, depending on map, but the goal would be to get close to AI, buy best tiles around AI, corner them. They will probably attack you, so you can use your positional advantage now and fight in your own tiles. You could try to get Himeji Castle and/or Great wall wonders. Good idea would be to get Stonehenge and early religion and use some of the religous combat bonuses to further your advantage. Rush to Minutemen units.

A bit later in the game you still get to use your unique units. You could settle aggressively near AI , buy some tiles to stage invasions on other landmasses.

 

[Higgs]

One strategy I do, particularly when I have to purchase tiles close to a neighboring Civ is save my money and buy a bunch of tiles at once. Your neighbor is going to complain if you repeatedly buy tiles close to his border, so I take the hit once, let them simmer down, before purchasing again.

I tried my first games as the Americans and surprisingly really liked them. One nice additional advantage I noticed was the minutemen. That maneuver through rough terrain makes them very versatile and the promotional trait, no terrain cost, carries through to future upgraded unit so if you build a core of them, you will have a powerful future army as well.

 

[Magean]

Ok, thank you.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Yeah, playing as the Americans, you'll want to pick one neighbor (presumably one near you) and get totally up in their face with your city placement, and pin them in. They will DOW you, you win that war with archers/composite bows, and they exit that war as the gimp of the region. You can then finish your national college (which you tech towards/prepare for at the beginning of the inevitable war) and expand away in the other direction.

The key with the Americans' ability is that you can space cities 5-6 spaces away and it's fine. So you just pop down a city where there is reasonably good tiles to work, and you're set. You don't have the tension of having to build two cities just to get the tiles you need quickly. Whether or not you decide to go tall or wide isn't too important (though I think the Tradition opener that's so popular is the way to go for them starting out), the only thing that matters is that you eat as much land as possible and keep your worker count high enough to ensure that your big American cities are always on improved tiles with extra food to grow.

When I play US, I always focus on the lower part of the tech tree for the powerful UU and hammer bonuses from workshops and the two key tile improvement techs after finishing the National College, then double-back through the middle on my way to industrialism. You keep up culture and economy through raw manufactured goods and crop yield output for big productive cities. So keep expanding until you can't, then go to war on the neighbor with the least number of nearby friends.

USA isn't particularly unique or exceptional in the game, but the UA is pretty underrated and does a lot for you that isn't completely apparent, and both UUs are awesome (lategame rushbought B17s w/ building XP make getting logistics and then march much easier on bombers-I am not a fan of getting great war bombers as USA and upgrading them in comparison).

 

[booyachris]

the 50% discount on tiles is situational in the sense that every time you plop a city down you will want to buy up the best workable tiles as a city grows. The extra sight lets you find optimal land before the ai can branch out into it. America is a real warmonger civ and a moneymaker. Play with them a few times and don't forget to find a neighbor to bully up on. I have yet to found religion with USA.

 

[MadDjinn]

keeping in mind that you can only buy tiles out to 3, but your culture goes out to 5, you can always use the UA to claim tiles very cheaply (base costs went down with G&K) out to 3 range and let a low culture output claim everything else.