How to REX-A guide by L of A

[Lawrence of Arabia]

One of the many strategies which can be used at the beginning of the game is called REX. (coined by me ) It stands for Rapid Early Expansion.

This can work for any civ but works best with Industrious and Expansionist civs. You will see why is an instant

Rapid Early Expansion is a strategy designed to keep pace with the AI expansion in Civ3. It is designed to give you a good chunk of land with which to work with. It is also designed to keep pace, or even surpass the AI in its expansion. More land equals more resources. The more resources you have, the better off you will be. you will be less dependant on other civs to give you stuff to help your empire function properly.


Expansionist Pottery, better stuff from barb villages, extra scout plus ability to build scout

Industrious Masonry, Workers work twice as fast (200%), extra production in city center

These two are very good for a REX start because the workers work faster meaning that you can connect your cities with roads faster, and you start with a scout.

I On you mark, get set, REX!
A. Your first and second cities

You want to found your first city exactly where it is placed, unless there is a very tantalizing resource nearby. Your scout should be out exploring the sourrondings, and tipping barb huts. Start in one direction, and continue that way until you have gone about 4-6 spaces from the capital. If you havn't found a suitable city site, go in another direction until you do. You should find a city site by turn 3 at the latest.

If there is a fresh water supply around, your worker should irrigate, until you have found a good city site, the build roads in that direction. If there is no fresh water, then building roads to a nearby resource or mining hills is also a good option

The city should build a cheap defensive unit. In most cases this will be the warrior. The first one is built to protect the city. If after the first one is built, the city doesn't have size 3 yet (ie. this city is not in an ideal spot) you should build another warrior, or another scout. The first one is fortified in the city, the second one will be used as an escort.

After the scout has found the first city scout, you send him to find the secound. This should be done mostly in concentric circles, so by your 5th city or so, your capital should be surrounded. If (as is the case) the terrain in a certain direction is not appealing (desert, mountains, tundra, ocean) you can earmark that later for colony building or later expansion. These inhospitalble lands usually contain the best resources. While your scout explore city sites, it should also try to find the nearest civilization and try to make contact with them and also try to make a peace treaty.

Now lets assume that this is what was build in your city: Warrior, Warrior, Settler.

The second warrior will first act as a defense for the settler while it goes to the pre selected city site (by now a road should go all the way there) When the city is founded, you use it as the first defensive unit. Your capital will now build a city improvement or another unit. The second city should build first the cheapest city improvement (temple, grainary) and then a settler. (if it hasn't reached 3 yet, then let it build a warrior. Now just repeat.

Construction Queue
Capital: Warrior, (warrior/scout/settler), (settler/city improvement/ unit)
City 2: city improvement, (warrior/scout/settler), (settler/city improvement/unit)

II The End of REX

REX ends in any direction when: (1) Your cities borders encounter another civilizations borders (2) The land is no longer suitable to build cities in or (3) Your cities are too far from your capital and have from 50% to total corruption. If you are aggresivly REX'ing north, and you encounter another civ, then you can continue REX'ing west until you reach the ocean. At the end of REX, your culture should be low, but your infrarstructure should be the finest in the known world. All of your cities should be connected by roads, some should have mines and/or iirgation and some of the known luxeries and strategic resources should be connected to your city.

III The End of an Era-The Start of the Next

After REX-ing to your limit, you should then consolidate. Typically what I will do is build culture producing city improvments in cities which have contact with other civs. All cities should have the basic one (temple) but these outer cities should have the more advanced ones which come with tech improvementsThe cities on the interior and cities which have no contact with other civs will have to build defensive units and offensive units to protect the empire. When you think you have enough defense, then you should start building culture in all of your cities. Ususally your standing army can be upgraded all the way to the modern era, so you only have to worry about build ing more units if you go to war over a strategic resource or city (which is ok. A REX-ed empire is very strong because everything is very developed by the middle to end of the ancient era)

[Monoriu]

Nice post.

Here is what I do (I play on Monarch, large map, 12 civs).

I start with a custom made civ with these abilities:

Commercial: Absolutely essential due to the corruption bonus. This ability alone makes this trait superior to all others.

Religious: The ability to build temples early on at half cost is a really big bonus during the initial REX stage. By extending my borders, I can more easily discourage the AI to build cities inside my empire, and I can gain more passage room for my explorers/settlers. With this trait, building a cathedral will be cheaper than building a colossium later on. During the transition from despotism to republic this will also save me a couple of precious turns.

Expansionist may be an edge for the initial few turns but in the long run its useless.

Industrious is very nice too and I constantly struggle between religious and industrious before I start.

Ok, first thing I do is to look around a bit with my settler and worker. I will found my first city if the location is good, otherwise I am willing to spend 3-4 turns to find a better location. The location of the first city is extremely important. It is important because a bad start will slow down the REX a lot, as many of the settlers will come from here. Ideally, it should have at least 1 food resource, some grassland and some hills/forest for balanced shield/food production. If its in a really bad location like chunks of desert/jungle/mountains then I may as well restart.

Second thing I do is to build 3 warriors. Knowledge of the map is extremely important at this stage and it pays off to hold back settler production for a while just to know the map and get more huts. I usually DO NOT use one of these to fortify my capital. The worst thing that can happen is a barbarian unit come by and steal all of my gold. Who cares about 10 gold. Exploration is everything at this stage.

Meanwhile, the worker will concentrate on building roads, unless there is a food resource near the capital city. If there is a food resource then it will irrigate that tile first for faster population growth. Otherwise it will build roads exclusively. The goal here is not increased science, but faster settler movement. So the road should be built in the general direction of where I expect the settlers will travel, regardless of whether the tiles are used or not.

Then I start to build settlers. As my warriors explore I will form a "city plan" and decide where to build the cities, and how many settlers I need. As a general rule, I start from locations as far away from my capital as possible. If my warriors encounter another civ then the second city will be built as close to that civ as possible. What the second city builds will depend on its location:

If no civ nearby then warrior, warrior, settler.
If a civ is nearby then warrior, temple (rush build), settler. Since I am religious a temple only costs 30 shields. I can get it when the city pop. reaches 2.

The goal is to block off that civ by forming a wall of cities.

The third and subsequent cities don't need to build 2 warriors. Just 1 will do and I often leave them ungarrisoned. Protecting the settlers is more important than protecting the cities. Again, if no civ is near the city it will build settlers right away. If a civ is nearby then I will build a temple first. Since I have temples in many cities I don't need the garrison unit for the happiness.

As the place starts to fill up, its important to build temples in all remaining cities to make sure that the border engulfs all remaining open real estate. Its also important to start building up in the interior, so that the AI can't sneak in a settler (it will if give the chance). As a general rule the cities should be built on areas where the "border coverage" is weak first.

Another thing is, be aggressive. If the AI blocks me off, I just send a settler through his territory and build behind him (usually his strategy against him). Build as close to his cities as possible to tear land away from him and try to leave a passage back to the main empire. If that's not possible, try to build cities to "turn the flank" of the AI cities.

I am only concerned with building 3 things at this stage: temples, settlers, and warriors. Absolutely nothing else gets built, including spearmen and workers. First priority should be warriors: build enough of them to explore, escort settlers, block off choke points, destroy barbarian camps, and garrison if really needed. Second priority is temples. They are essential to extend the border to block off the AI, prevent being culturally taken over, and gain passage for settler movement. Everything else is for settler production.

Another thing to look out for at this stage, are islands off the coast. If there is an island, direct research toward map making and if I am lucky, I can build a few more cities over there.

City placement. Where to build cities?

First priority is to block off the AI.
Second priority is to fill in the gaps within my borders.
Third priority is to make sure there is an even distribution of land among the cities and every tile is claimed by a city.
4th priority is to grab resources.
5th priority is to allow sea access of the city
6th priority is the quality of the surrounding land.
7th priority is the tile where the city sits.

An exception: if you have no iron/horses and you see an open tile with some iron/horses, then this becomes the first priority. This also applies to a luxury resource you don't already have.

This order is very important. If a location abolutely sucks (6th priority) but can block off the AI (1st priority), build it and rush a temple just to gain territory. If I have to choose between grabbing an unclaimed grassland tile (3rd priority) and building next to a river (7th priority) so that I don't need to build an aquaduct later on, I choose to build on a riverless tile just to grab 2 more grassland tiles. Aquaducts can be fixed later on. It doesn't matter if I have to build on top of a forest, jungle or hill (7th priority).

Oh, another thing to keep in mind is, its easy to "go over" on settlers. Keep counting how many cities you can build and don't keep building settlers where there is no more room to build.

Once there is really no more land to build, its now time to enter the development stage of the game. Workers, improvements, trade, wonders etc.

Then, world domination

[narmox]

Step 1: REX
Step 2: ???
Step 3: World domination

"What's step 2???"

heheheheh

it's too late, I need to sleep.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by narmox
Step 1: REX
Step 2: ???
Step 3: World domination

"What's step 2???"

heheheheh

it's too late, I need to sleep.

ROFLMAO!!

[Carolus Rex]

...so I really can't judge your strategy advice.

But let me say this: any strategy that promotes REX is bound to be good!

Carolus

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Expansionist may be an edge for the initial few turns but in the long run its useless.

This is exactly what I think. Expansionist's ability to build scout is marginal. Usually, you don't want to waste shields with that. The good things about this ability is the scout which you start with. This scout is only useful till the end of REX, which can be very short. I want something wich will give me a quick advantage. You want something which will give you more advantage later on. Both are valid in my opinion.

Knowledge of the map is extremely important at this stage

Exactly. Which is why I like the extra scout.

Another thing is, be aggressive. If the AI blocks me off, I just send a settler through his territory and build behind him (usually his strategy against him). Build as close to his cities as possible to tear land away from him and try to leave a passage back to the main empire. If that's not possible, try to build cities to "turn the flank" of the AI cities.

THis is a very tricky maneuver. I've tried it a couple of times with mixed results. If they don't capture the settler, then its beating the AI in its own game. If they capture it, you've just wasted 2 pop points. This can make or break your game and could set you back a few very crucial turns.

You seemed to have grasped the whole issues of REX. Nice post.

[Diety]

I don't know on what level the first poster plays, but REX is a difficult strategy when playing on deity...

Remember : on deity your second citizen is an unhappy one...

You have to use a def unit to keep them calm. An alternative solution that I used first was this : somehow you always start near a luxury resource, so if you don't use a def unit to keep the people calm, you need to get a road from that square to your capital plus a road from the capital to your other cities. The problem is that this takes a worker to build alot of roads and you need the workers to irrigate...

So one def unit in your cities.


Now the problem with REX is not the production, it's the food. You can only expand from a three-city. So food is VERY precious.

There are only two ways to get more food :
- irrigation
- granary

Pyramids you say ? Nope, that's not an option in deity. I played like 20 games with only one goal : to build the pyramids. It never works. They ALWAYS beat you to it. If you can somehow manage to build pyramids, well, let me know !

So there is irrigation and granary.

Irrigation is easy : you start with a worker, well this dude is going to be a MBA-irrigator soon !


A granary is trickier on deity. You can't start building a granary right away because your people will become unhappy once the city pops to two.

So, what I do is this : like mentioned earlier, somehow I always start near a luxury. I research pottery and build a road from the lux to the capital. In the capital I build warriors until I got pottery examined. Then I build a granary, and then settlers.
Why like this and not the warrior/warrior/settler thing ? Because you gain ALOT of food like this... I NEVER ever build a settler (or a worker) in a city without a granary...

(this goes ofcours faster with expansional civs, because they start with pottery. But the problem is that after the REx-fase the expansionist advantage become worthless)

Of cours I can't keep up with the AI in the number of CIVs, on deity he builds at a 60% rate of you. But it's the fastest way to REX that I found !

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I don't know on what level the first poster plays, but REX is a difficult strategy when playing on deity...

I play on Regent.

Irrigation is easy : you start with a worker, well this dude is going to be a MBA-irrigator soon !

Not if there isn't any fresh water nearby.

So one def unit in your cities.

Thats what I said. First unit you build in your first city is a warrior. But then you need another one to go exploring unless your expansionist.

n alternative solution that I used first was this : somehow you always start near a luxury resource, so if you don't use a def unit to keep the people calm, you need to get a road from that square to your capital plus a road from the capital to your other cities.

Won't work until your culture borders expand. If its inside your city radius of your capital, then thats excellent. But if its outside, your gonna have to use your worker to build a colony. That would not be good.

REx-fase the expansionist advantage become worthless)

Exactly. Which is why I chose expansionist. I just want something which will work quickly.

Warrior cost 10 shields
Granary cost 60 shields.

Your first city has a center which produces 2/0/1 no matter what. (f/s/c) If you place your first citizen on a forest, you get an extra 1/2/0. So your total production is 2 and your total food is 3. 10/2=5. The Warrior takes 5 turns to complete. Your city grows every 20/3= 7 turns. So when your first warrior is complete, there is two more turns left before your city goes to 2 pop. In those tow turns, your complete 4 shields of your granary. Then you place the extra citizen on a hill which you have mined. 1/3/0. New food/shield/commerce total is 4/5/1. The city will grow again in 20/4=5 turns. In five turns, you will have finished 5*5=25 more shields. You have finished 29/60 shields for the granery. Your city is pop 3. Now you put pop nimber 3 on a grassland with one shield: 2/1/0. Total=6/6/1. Your city will now grow in 6/60=10 turns. (im not sure about this increase in food box. If someone could please check it. Thanks) There is 31 shields left to build in the granary. 31/6=6 turns.

So if my calculations are correct (and I will revise them) it would take 13 turns to build the granary and 5 turns to build the warrior. Of course, you might start with more production terrain or more food terrain. I'm not sure which is better. To get more pop or more production.

It might still be the fastest, but I need to get my skill level up there before I can say for sure.

[gnomos]

I'm sorry, but your calculations are incorrect.

First off, on diety if you have built only one unit in the city, as soon as it hits pop 3 I believe you will be in disorder again.

Fortunately, you are not subtracting the cost to feed that second person. At pop 2 you are producing your center for 2/0/1, a forest for 1/2/1 and a hill for 1/3/1 (you built roads on them also), for a total of 4/5/3, 4 is enough food to feed your 2 population with 0 growth, you produce 3 tech a turn, and 5 shields to build your granary.

Disclaimer:
I've played civ2 on diety, but haven't messed with civ3 on diety yet, so I'm accepting some of your numbers, such as zero shields in the city square. On the level I am playing I do much better, plus placing a city on top of a special tile adds in the bonus from the special resource, I don't know if this works on diety or not, but it's worth looking at.

[fbitt1]

I think you guys are selling the expansionist civs a bit short. It's not just the scout they get as a bonus.

When tipping huts, you will never get barbs. Ever.
In a recent game as the Egyptians, I had a hut just outside my capitial. When my boundries expanded, out popped 3 barbs, killing my initial worker (game over, pretty much).
So, unless you save/reload when popping huts, there's a huge advantage in the early game.

The scout can also roam through enemy terrority w/o getting asked to leave. It does not become useless after you stop REXing. This allows for more contact with other civs, more recon, or trade sciences. (Usually an expansionist civ will be *far* ahead in tech. However, it can provide nice leverage when trying to get allies against an uppity civ.)
If you're not a warmonger type, the expansionist CA is a lot better than most give it credit for, IMHO.

[eMarkM]

I play Monarch/8-16 civs/Standard settings.

I generally agree with LofA's and Monoriu's anaylsis. I usually start the capital w/ Warrior, warrior, settler, warrior and send the 2/3 warriors exploring in different directions. As soon as they make contact w/ another civ and I see their borders, I send them off in another direction. At some point after this the temples need to go up, but settlers are the priority if I have the pop to support it. Most subsequent cities produce a settler as soon as they hit pop 3.

Blocking off the AI expansion is very important. If done properly, you can box in at least one of them, making them a tiny civ and eventually a later target for conquest or "vassalization". It's important to have at least one civ be your lap dog and boxing them in early is the way to do this. This is a bigger priority than building a concentric empire, I think. Rush cities to the enemy border and pin them in, worry about filling in behind them later. Doesn't make for a tidy, growing early empire, but it becomes very important later on when you've grabbed more land then they.

I think priority two is getting resource cities. No matter how far from your capital, no matter what kind of tiles they're on, get them before the AI does. Strat or Lux, doesn't matter, get it at all costs. In the early game it's iron and the luxuries. I like to discover iron working early and try to monopolize it in my area if I can. A civ you deny iron to is a civ you will be able to manipulate w/ ease later. It's worth it even if the city you found is full of corruption and low on production.

With 1st worker, you all seem to recommend some irrigation early, but isn't it useless in despotism? Why waste time with it until you're near Monarchy/Republic. Connecting cities and building roads to your next city is overwhelming priority. Try to keep in mind if the tile is being used for production before you build your connecting network. Build it on the shield square before the one without, if they both point in the direction you want to go. It's easy to get lazy and ignore this, but every gold counts so always check the city display and see which tiles are being worked that have no roads and build your connecting network on those whenever possible.

When the cities are growing later, you'll have many more tiles being worked that have no roads. When the cashless tiles start to pile up, it's time to build more workers and put roads there. Eventually, you want to start building a road to neighboring civs to get trade rolling, but I work my cities first. I do almost no mining or irrigation during this time--not until all cities are connected by roads and most tiles being worked have a road. Irrigation is pointless this early and mining just takes too long (exception being gold tile).

e

[gamma]

Does irrigating really help? On grasslands, irrigation creates 3 food instead of 2, which under despotism gets knocked right back down to 2. I irrigate plains to raise them to 2, and mine grasslands so I can build stuff faster. Desert is avoided until steam power. I might irrigate grasslands with cows, since they're already at 4 (3 for despots).

(Er. Uh. What eMark said. Sigh. )

[Easy Rhino]

irrigation good if you have bonus food (or flood plain) that would produce 4 or more food. The irrigation will still get you one extra.

I've been playing only my second game, but I've been rush-building with despotism EXTENSIVELY, and it's all about food
production and bonus food squares.

Rush building colosseum's (5 pop) is fun

ER

[gamma]

Aye, game/cow/wheat squares are nice...

I'm playing the Iroquois now. Large map, 12 civs, 7 of which are on my continent. It's pretty funny; I control this huge purple blob on the south end thats twice as big as anyone else, thanks to REXing. Problem is, my palace is at one end, and the other end has really bad corruption. It's enough to make me want to go back to despotism and rush-build everything over there. For now, I'm making do with having my core cities pump out swordsmen, sending them to border towns, and disbanding them for shields.