request for help with early conquest strategies

[TCO]

I would like to try an early conquest visctory. DaveV had a good strategy. Anybody have it? Any ideas out there. Would like a pretty mechanical process to follow.

[War4ever]

what size map..... small world is nothing more than suntzus and knights.....(crusaders too pick your poison)

med map..... if you crush the first two civs quick its pretty much the same thing ..... maybe with muskets too.... (perhaps a few dragoons just to be certain)

Large map can be anythng from calvalry - howies......

I would be willing to write a strat for a larger map but not for small one as all you really have to do is keep the lads charging

[Edward]

GP,

Can't remember the thread where DaveV first spelled out his ICS strategy, but the Great Library led me to this webpage:
http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk/wittgenstein/davev's_ics_strategy.htm

[TCO]

I'm talking about the small map.

1. Is Sun Tzu's the only wonder you build?

2. what is your tax/science/luxure behavior?

3. What order do you go after science? Do you stop researching after monarchy/writing?

4. How many cities do you build? When do you switch from r switch over to conquest?

5. What city improvements do you build if any.

[DaveV]

During the last "fast conquest" phase, the best strategy on a small map proved to be just tipping lots of huts and using the resulting units to find and kill the AIs. No need to build wonders, improvements, or even cities .

[TCO]

Is this a high risk strategy that sometimes works or a consistent strategy for early conquest that always works?

[War4ever]

GP you can do what Dave suggested and that works fine provided you get a few units from the huts

Generally though i go for about 8-12 small cities..... Monarchy..... HG.... then beeline to chivalry for Suns.......

Many will tell you that you can conquer quicker than this and you can.... but i keep research going to the max like a normal game and build units as i need them to conquer.

Small map strategy for conquest is really a joke. The map simply isn't big enough for the ai to expand properly unmolested.

Every once and awhile i see gunpowder on a map this size...... i like larger maps though as you need to develop a better more efficient strategy (Trading) to win.

If you really want a strat GP i will play a small map game and log all my moves and post it so you can see what i did!

[Smash]

heres' a copy and paste of a post I did about 100 years ago


So you want to conquer a deity small map by no later than 500ad?

Ok to explore a little and try to get some free units and locate good city sites.In fact it is highly recommended.Give yourself
up to 10-15 turns.Any units found before you build are guaranteed to be NON supported units.


You get 2 settlers at deity so build 2 cities.Both build warriors first.
Capitol will build 3 warriors.Rush the 2nd one if you can.Send that one out for a short exploration mission.Complete the 3rd
warrior before size 3 and have the 2nd make his way back before size 4.After the 3 warriors are built start a
wonder.NOTE-you can build a higher quality unit if you have the technology and/or gold.

City #2 builds at least 2 settlers after 2 warriors.Send the first one out garrison the other then send the settlers out to
found new cities.Repeat.You want 4 cities down ASAP.After Monarchy,you'll want to have 6-8 cities before you start your
Jihad.

After 6-8 cities build 1 more round of settlers and start connecting your civ with roads.You can also road towards civs that
you hopefully have contacted.Since this is a small map,contact should be fairly easy.

Your tech path should be something like 1.a wonder tech-might as well be map making as you may need boats.
Your next goal is monarchy of course.Alpha,Burial,Code of Laws
Next goal is Fuedalism-switch from the Lighthouse or whatever to War Academy.
At this point you may want to adjust taxes to 70%tax and 30%science.The idea is to time finishing the War Academy with
the discovery of Chivalry,which is your next goal.

When you meet civs demand tribute.Do this every few turns to raise gold for your wonder.And hopefully you get some gold
huts.
If you can't time Chivary perfectly,no matter.As soon as you can finish the wonder do it by buying up whatever is left.

After Chivalry there is no more need for science.You may want to get Writing(diplomats) if you havn't picked it up.

Now you are ready to start building up.Get 3 defenders in your cities then start building nothing but vet knights.Use
incremental rush building to speed up the process.

Start out with 4-8 knights and go after whoever is closest.Vet knights are the early tanks.The best you should see is
phalanx and archers.Look at the target city's icon.Does it have walls?Dedicate 1 0r 2 cities for diplomats and use them to
sabotage the walls where necessary.Attack in a coordinated manner.Not 1 unit at a time.Use the terrain wisely.Your vet
knights have a higher defense to start so they are pretty tough to kill on hills,forest and mountains.

As you conquer cities you will see extra disorder.Since you need no more science gradually increase luxuries as your city
total climbs.At the end you will probably be running 30%tax and 70% luxuries.

Expect and accept losses.It is the way of the warrior.You should be able to clear the map by 500ad.BC finishes are possible
with luck.Your easiest games will come when you start out in a corner with 1 way to go.

tip-When you open up a city,on the left there is a box of supported units.By clicking on units in this that are in the "feild"
you get a message with:Location-near XXXX.Use this to help locate cities.

Huts come in patterns.Use the map editor the make an all forest or plains map.You will see a definite pattern.Study it and
familiarize yourself.Now if you find 1 hut,you know where all the huts are.Or should be.(water)

BTW-same apllies to terrain specials.Come in patterns also.Knowing this can help to "mine" specials from grassland.

[VetLegion]

GP, my advice is probably outdated (dont have much time for civing now) but some thruths are universal.

1. your AI
You adapt to your AI, not to the game. Half the tech, units and buildings dont get used in early conquest. Find AI early (lots of triremes) and tease them with ocassional city near them and few units on chokepoints. Extract some money if you can. This will hamper their growth a bit. See what they have - if cities are walled build diplomats, if not dont.

2. the geography and the sea
You will need ships in most games, so get adapted to use them. Early settler or trireme dillema - go for trireme sometimes. Settler is not always your best investment. Lots of ships = lots of information gathered. Always try to load something to an exploring ship. Nothing more sad than an empty trireme.

3. how many AI?
If the map is small or medium you can always just kill AI and kill its reincarnation when you find it (and due to map size that should be soon). It adds some micromanagment and almost no fun - when you do eventually find them, they are too weak to be a challenge.
There is another way, at year 1500 the civs stop restarting. Even on largest of maps, you can by then have chopped everyone down to one city (the starting civs, dont eliminate nobody). Next turn - kill.

I dont know if it is a mechanical process or not to play a certain way, but here is an attempt:

1. Tech - go for monotheism for crusaders. Adapt tech exclusively to map size. If large map you may want seafaring, but on small you dont. Dont strand away - iron working, warrior code, feudalism - not needed. Forget Trade (we are speaking early conquest here, not AC, right ).

2. Cities - no improvements, no wonders except lighthouse (if a lot of sea) and happiness wonders. But unlike ICS, keep a decent number of them

3. Units - warriors for pacifying, crusaders for attacking the trireme for transport. Few exploring horsemen loaded to triremes do wonders for huts, but warriors are as good.

Observe what defense tech your enemy has. If possible to build, Sun Tzu wont hurt

Attack strategy behaviour: adapt your target to the most advanced civs (so they dont AC while you are busy with the small ones ). Adapt number of attackers to number of enemy cities. Plan approx 3 attackers per city - minus those you will build in conquered cities. Add 50% of that to unpredicted field losses. Strategically build roads to connect bad AI roads - units travel faster on ground! use road network if possible.

Attack tactical behaviour: attack from sea, take city (usually three crusaders per city), hop to another, again from sea if possible. Avoid open field battles - AI is in advantage because of fog of war. Always attack cities, not units - units die with their city.

there, I know you know most of that and perhaps think I talk rubbish, but it makes sense to me