What would you do next? (War plans)

[JamesCivFan]

I was talking about when they specifically reduced the strength of CKN (but not xbows) to make them less uber. It just proved that Logistics was overpowered IMHO.

Also, I find it hard to hit Artillery by t150 playing peaceful, let alone while warmongering! But I suppose if you take *the right cities* with CKN, a few capitals (with universities and wonders) can really help, true. I just find it easier to play peaceful and trade, plus that way I get a round of RAs to boost me to Artillery.

Also, I second Moriarte's Liberty recommendation. War = production. Liberty = production. Tradition = Growth. Big cities just hurt your happiness during war, so Tradition isn't that great unless you're very careful to only grow the capital. Tabarnak is kind of the expert on that though. I'm not very good at Tradition-based warfare. I know it can be done, I just find it much easier with Liberty. Especially if you get the Pyramids...

I did what Tabarnak did (Open Trad --> Free Monuments, Honor till +50% exp policy, go back to Tradition for Monarchy, etc.)

I am behind in tech now (as expected), but here's how things look like on T89.

Got the GW from Harun (he went and built the GW with these kind of stupid border growth and he tried to turtle with 2 cities... Jeez). I bribed Alex and Askia to DoW him, so I won't get any further penalties. Askia went and lost his capital, though. And it looks like that the civ I don't know must be good, because he is the one who took it. Attila? Genghis? Assyria maybe? We'll see. So, am I on the correct path now?

 

[Moriarte]

Something like this, for example:

Spoiler :

Full tradition. Wasn't sure if i could take Mayans (above Askia) so i played safe with universities first.

 

[Cromagnus]

Nice, T115 Machinery is good going Education first *while warring*.

JamesCivFan: Your tech is behind IMHO

Try for, at a minimum: t60 construction, t70 libraries, t85 NC. Then try to hit t55 construction, t65 NC.

 

[JamesCivFan]

T65 NC? That's really difficult! In vanilla, I'd get it. But now? T65 is just... wow! I have to ask, how exactly? (While warring)

 

[Cromagnus]

Well, it's tricky. Even trickier with Tradition. You have to interrupt your build queue and stagnate to get a settler out. Without a great start location, this stall time can be a lot of additional turns.

Ideally you want a settler out before t40. If you put your settler on a hill *and* go liberty *and* work a 2food1hammer tile, you can knock out the monument in 10 turns. By then the city has grown and you go straight to library. t30 settler vs t40 settler makes all the difference here.

This is why the free settler from Liberty is so powerful. If you're spending t20-30 building a settler, you're *not* building archers.

However you do it, you want a city planted by t35 if possible, on a hill, with a 2food1hammer tile to work. You can't afford to rush-buy that library because you need the money for composite bow upgrades. You can't afford to skip the monument because you want to finish liberty.

And that's for 2-city NC. If you go for 3 cities, it's even trickier. However, with 3 or 4 city liberty, the turns you lose making settlers you get back from having 4 cities building archers.

There are a number of guides showing how to do all this juggling. Moriarte's liberty domination guide is one.

Rule #1: Never build workers. Steal them.
Rule #2: Settle on hills.
Rule #3: Settle on luxury mines, if possible.

You can sell your early resources to the AI for 7g/turn before you need the happiness. If you settle on a mine, and tech mining after archery, you can earn 300g this way by the time you attack. (2g/turn, 3 w/ gems for the tile, + 7/gturn from the trade)

If you do this with both your first and second city, you can hit 500 gold by the time you attack. (From this alone... 300-400g more from scout exploration) This buys 2 archers. (Or a library)

If this seems like excessive min-maxing... well that's Deity for ya.

Liberty:
Monument build time in a size 1 city on flatland: 20 turns
on a hill: 13 turns
working 1 2food1hammer tile: 10 turns

So, a size 1 liberty city on flatland builds a monument as fast as a tradition city on a hill.

Saving 10+ turns on monument build time in the early game will obviously influence how long it takes to build NC, and get archers out, etc. etc.

Now, if you open Tradition (and get a culture ruin) you can avoid building monuments entirely, but if you have to wait until t25, it's bad to skip building a monument. So you have to build that monument. With a 2-city NC, you're only getting one free monument out of the deal. That's 40 hammers. You earn that many extra hammers (base) in 20 turns on Liberty. (+5% while building libraries/NC)

In the long run for a peaceful game, even with no culture ruin, Tradition saves hammers by giving you 3 free monuments and 4 free aqueducts. (520 hammers)

This is a HUGE amount of free hammers, and in 4-city games it's roughly 60% more than you get from liberty by t100. (1/city/turn +5% is 100 from capital + 65 from expo 1 + 55 from expo 2 + 45 from expo 3 + 5% of 520 hammers (25) + 5% NC (6) + 5% Libraries (15) = 311 hammers from Liberty. In a 2-city game where you don't care about aqueducts and don't go past Monarchy, Liberty outperforms though. And turns saved early count for a lot.

Tradition *also* outperforms hammer-wise when you *want* growth. (Because more citizens = more production)

But, if you're not even taking Landed Elite, Tradition can't spit out monuments/libraries/settlers/archer/NC as fast.

This is not meant to say Tradition isn't as good. I'm just saying that if you want t65 NC in a warlike game, it's easier with Liberty. IMHO.

Not to derail, but this is one of my biggest complaints about Honor. Taking Liberty to boost production of archers feels broken. Honor should be better at building my army!!

Also, I don't mean to imply that you *must* hit t65 NC. I just think it's worth doing that at least once, just so you understand the sacrifices/tradeoffs involved. I think t85 is more reasonable benchmark for a successful domination run.

 

[JamesCivFan]

I agree about Honor being really bad. "+15% production when building melee units"? Who the hell does that when they want to do an early rush? Seriously, Firaxis? This buff needs to be applied on every type of unit. Hell, give us free Barracks -in the capital at least- too while you're at it. I'm getting Free cultural buildings (which can go up to freaking Free Museums) and free Aqueducts from Tradition. I'm getting Free Settler and 50% Settler production in the capital, and free Worker from Liberty, but nothing from Honor. Anyway. We're not here to discuss Honor. /end rant

About your point for the early NC. T65 means you can't really do a CB rush, right? You have to beeline Philo to be there at T50. The NC takes about 15 turns to build in a 6 pop capital. (I assume you'll be at about 6 pop by T50 if you never stagnate for a settler). If you wanna go Construction first, you'll get the NC in the 80s. I am tempted to try this map again and go Liberty to see if it's better or not (no Honor at all). I know, it's "cheating". But for educational purposes and direct comparison, there's no other way.

Also, you might wanna try the save file yourself (or Moriarte maybe)?

PS. My science could go 50% up if I annex the two capitals. That's also something to consider.
EDIT: @Moriarte, really nice! Going Education first and getting Machinery on T115 is quite the achievement!

 

[Cromagnus]

I agree about Honor being really bad. "+15% production when building melee units"? Who the hell does that when they want to do an early rush? Seriously, Firaxis? This buff needs to be applied on every type of unit. Hell, give us free Barracks -in the capital at least- too while you're at it. I'm getting Free cultural buildings (which can go up to freaking Free Museums) and free Aqueducts from Tradition. I'm getting Free Settler and 50% Settler production in the capital, and free Worker from Liberty, but nothing from Honor. Anyway. We're not here to discuss Honor. /end rant

About your point for the early NC. T65 means you can't really do a CB rush, right? You have to beeline Philo to be there at T50. The NC takes about 15 turns to build in a 6 pop capital. (I assume you'll be at about 6 pop by T50 if you never stagnate for a settler). If you wanna go Construction first, you'll get the NC in the 80s. I am tempted to try this map again and go Liberty to see if it's better or not (no Honor at all). I know, it's "cheating". But for educational purposes and direct comparison, there's no other way.

Also, you might wanna try the save file yourself (or Moriarte maybe)?

PS. My science could go 50% up if I annex the two capitals. That's also something to consider.
EDIT: @Moriarte, really nice! Going Education first and getting Machinery on T115 is quite the achievement!

You need to plan on chopping forest to finish NC that fast. Which is start-dependent I realize.

T65 NC without AI science caravans does mean philo before construction. That's why AI caravans are critical. Even then, it's tricky. You can pull off t47 construction with 1-2 caravans, and then you're looking at ~15 turns to finish philosophy, unless you get a tech ruin, and 8 turns for NC even with chop. That's t70 NC. Tech ruin puts you at t65. Extra science caravans will also get you there. It's not unheard of to have 12-16 beakers/turn at this stage from AI caravans. (Double normal tech rate)

I'm not saying you can achieve t65 every game. It's not a benchmark I use. I just think it's useful to replay the first 70 turns until you achieve it, just so you get a feel for what it takes. Chop is critical. Workers are critical. cash trades are critical. Everything has to go just right to hit t65, but if you are focusing on achieving all these things, you're pretty much guaranteed to hit t85 every game. But it's a lot to keep track of. That's why practice games focusing on hitting those numbers will help.

EDIT: Also, early NC isn't the only thing that matters. You have to take what the map gives you. If the map gives you KSM, you gotta switch up priorities. If the map gives you 2 cultural allies, you can delay a monument, etc. etc.

I try to think of the early game as a series of levers. There's one for each major need: growth, production, units, buildings, science, cash, culture, exploration, happiness, defense and conquest. If you pull too hard on one lever and neglect the rest you'll be bottlenecked. So, if the game gives you Lake Victoria, you need to shift gears. LV means you don't need to build a granary until later, but you *do* need an early coliseum or extra luxuries. Perhaps you might need to trade lux/lux instead of cash. Perhaps you should improve mines in that city instead of farms. Perhaps you should send all your workers somewhere else. I think this is the most critical step in the early game. Recognizing what the map is giving you, and responding to it.

 

[Moriarte]

Well said, Cromagnus. I will also add that there is one more layer, where you compare your levers to AI levers every single turn. Turn 65 NC and turn 75 NC can yield identical results if in the latter case AI is performing sluggishly. I had games where, having a mediocre start i realized that i am world leader in science before hitting renaissance. Watch out for that.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Yes. I figured that CiV is all about "if game gives you X, you have to do Y". That's why benchmarks are so important to know. Trying the same map again and doing different moves is something I avoided till now, but I truly believe it will help.

Do you guys do that regularly?

@Moriarte, yes. In some games, the AI is just worse than normal. Having Info Addict can tell you a lot about how they are doing. I had a recent "100 turn test" game with Brazil, to see what I could hit on T100. I actually won a culture quest from a cultural CS on T60. That never happened to me on Deity. Imagine how bad the rest of the AIs were doing on culture in that game. It was surreal.

 

[Moriarte]

It might help. But you will probably get different ruins and different city state alliances. So, might as well roll another map. I never do that, because it breaks my immersion, but i can see value in that.

Infoaddict? How about the feeling of the unknown while trying to gauge "intelligence" based on your skill of exploration and reading the demographics screen?

 

[JamesCivFan]

Yes. But if you had a good start, you can at least start "rolling" a bit faster each time, eventually reaching a point (I guess after 2-3 tries for the NC) where you can't really improve anything due to how the map is made. You can for example open with Liberty, or Tradition, or Honor, Liberty/Tradition hybrid. All sorts of stuff and see what works and why it works best.

About info addict. Yes, you can for example calculate how much culture per turn the best civ is making (for a cultural win game) if you look at a CS quest asking for culture and see how it changes the leader in two consecutive turns. Or you can see the "spoiler screen" every 25 turns that says about everyone's military power, etc. But I want the option to look at that stuff whenever I want to, like in past Civ games.

 

[Cromagnus]

I just reroll, because as Moriarte said, changing allegiances and CS quests make every run very different.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Also, ruins, my friend.

In any case, I will continue my China game (haven't found time to play at all since the screenshot I sent) and if you're interested I'll post what happened. I'll probably even restart to get a fast NC and do a CB rush if possible. Like Cromagnus said, if you plan to do CKN rush, you're better off by training your CBs on one Civ and by the time you upgrade, to have highly trained CKN right off the bat.

 

[Cromagnus]

If you want to see a comparison run, I can try to squeeze in the time to play a China map where we all start from the same initial autosave. Maybe others will too. However, I must warn you, my playing time is severely limited nowadays. (Moving in with the girlfriend = death of CIV5)

As a result, I'm still trying to find time for the G-Major right now, and probably won't get to a China game for a while. Also, if you post an initial autosave, make sure to have all mods turned off or I won't be able to load it. You can usually turn mods on after the initial autosave, and that way more people can play the map, so you can get more feedback. Also, I recommend posting it as a new topic like "Deity China Challenge: Cho-Ko-Nu rush" or something. You'll get more people that way, because we're pretty deep in the thread now.

Include an initial screenshot... that gets people tempted to play it.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Fair enough. Yes, you're right. This isn't about a specific game anymore. I'll start re-rolling and I'll post up a nice initial auto-save, without the need of Info Addict, of course. The goal of the challenge will be to win (or at least capture as many civ capitals as possible), without going further than CKN. Even if only the 3 of us will try in the end, it'll be very educational for me to learn from you guys.

PS. I hope you find some time for the "challenge", Cromagnus.

 

[Cromagnus]

I'll definitely try! It might not come until next week. I gotta submit something for the G-Major, and I'm trying some pretty outrageous strategies that probably won't pan out, so I need to leave time for a traditional rush.

 

[JamesCivFan]

Right. I uploaded a save and a screenshot. I hope it's doable (those gems look sexy). See the thread for more info, here in the "Strategy & Tips" section.