Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[Velociryx]

Quite right Dave....quite right! And for that reason, I choose to set these "training centers" up as temporary measures. I don't wanna conquer the world under Despotism...UGH....that would make the game too much like a slowed down, turn based Command and Conquer type game....but, in the face of overwhelming production advantages, I DO wanna be able to get myself up to critical mass without getting squashed, and the long-term plan is that when I am able to compete head to head via traditional means, the training camps will be unbuilt.

But yep...I totally agree with that quote....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Arrian:

TOTAL agreement! The Iroquois/Persians would be HEINOUS menaces using this strat, and come to think of it, the Romans would be no slouches either, with their solid UU.

I also agree that the problem is MOSTLY centered on the sheer power of population sacrifice in Despotism/Communism, but some late game corruption tweaks (putting a corruption fighting element in, say, Police Stations) would prolly make Dem/Rep more "user friendly" and capable of supporting some sprawling empires of their own.

Also....one thing I was thinking about (for Civ4??), if you can get a great leader via combat, why can't the peaceful Civs get "Great Artists/Statesmen for having a HUGE culture?) They could only be used to rush wonders (cannot build armies with them), and if you have not had a golden age when you get one, the Artist/Statesman should automatically trigger it.

::shrug:: I guess that's not the sort of thing they can introduce in a patch, but it'd certainly rock!

-=Vel=-
PS: You're right....despite the added risk of the MPP, that's a HUGE "price difference." Certainly too big to ignore......:ondering that::
-V.

[Quurgoth]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Quurgoth - EXCELLENT approach! And 35+ cities on a standard map sounds like you're pretty much already doing the pseudo ICS approach! LOL....as it stands now, after fighting two wars back to back in my latest game, I still don't have that many! I will tho....I will....

-=Vel=-

I use my initial unit(s) to explore the map until I find the nearest other civs... then I build a city just outside the AI's culture range, camp a few units there, and make sure the AI doesn't get any warrior/settler pairs into the virgin territory between my capitol and the frontier. Unless, of course, I'm ready to go to war with them, and I have a couple/few units handy to take a new city...

This has led to some fairly large civs on the standard map, especially when I'm able to utilize choke points to maintain my grip on larger areas. The main bonus of my approach is that I can nearly ignore military development and focus on getting as much cash as possible through trades and city improvements. This makes rush-building for $$$ an easy proposition, and I wind up with well-developed culture fairly quickly, even in the farthest frontier areas.

The key has been, thus far, to go to war with only one enemy civ at a time early on, and to FREQUENTLY give things to the defeated civ after I've taken what I want and made peace. It takes awhile to go from furious to polite or gracious, but it's worth the effort later on.

[Velociryx]

Yep....I couldn't agree with you more about Gracious Civs! If they're researching along a different tech path than me, my gracious allies will often call me up and offer me the new tech for a song, even if it has a wonder associated with it!

I also tend to get REALLY favorable trade deals for luxury items from gracious civs!

Definitely worth the trouble and time to get them to that point! 'specially with those trade deals....even if they become "polite" later, you're still raking in that GREAT money from the trade deal!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

"I also agree that the problem is MOSTLY centered on the sheer power of population sacrifice in Despotism/Communism, but some late game corruption tweaks (putting a corruption fighting element in, say, Police Stations) would prolly make Dem/Rep more "user friendly" and capable of supporting some sprawling empires of their own."

The problem I see with late game corruption tweaks as a balance against despotic pop-rush is that a republican/democratic builder wouldn'd SURVIVE until the late game. Perhaps a cultural penalty to despotism, ala "mobilization" would help the early game balance? That encourages a switch to another form of govt.

I totally agree about the idea of high-culture civs spawning "Great Artists" or "Great Statesmen" or something along those lines. I also agree that it's surely a feature for CIV IV.

-Arrian

[Libertarian]

Wow, Vel. What a fantastic strategic resource you've shared with us! Thank you for all that effort.

One tiny nit. It's been my experience as the French that captured workers do not enjoy the premium industriousness of my own workers. In fact, I discard them when I capture them, either by adding them to a city, disbanding them, or just throwing them away.

[Velociryx]

Thanks man! Hmmm....and it seems like some conflicting reports re: captured workers and their effectiveness.

Someone care to run a few tests for us so we can verify one way or the other??

And....in the meantime, I've prepared a little sneak peek of the "Analysis of the Civs" article I'm putting together. Each of the sixteen Civs will get a similar treatment....lemme know what you think....

OoO

Note: It goes without saying that the Despotic Rush will win each and every game for you. Because of that, the strategies covered here may reference periods of Despotic Rushing, but do not revolve around the concept, in the hope of providing strategies that provide a more entertaining and enriching game experience. Sometimes, it’s more about the art than cold efficiency!

America (Industrious/Expansionist)
Starting Tech: Pottery/Masonry
Special Unit: F-15 (8/4/-, bomb: 4/6/2)
Jet Fighter with extra bombing range and rate of fire, plus radar (sees two tiles), and precision strike capability (not working pre-patch).

The Goods:
The advantage of Industrious workers is simply HUGE and cannot be understated (an advantage which carries through the entire game)! The production kick that all Industrious Civs get is a mid-late game advantage, which makes this group quite interesting in that it’s abilities are evenly split between early and mid-late, with a late game UU (that will be awesome as soon as we get the patch!). Simply put, with a new advantage waiting for them at the dawn of every era they enter into, this Civ is amazingly balanced. Early on, they can rely on their fast, diligent workers to lay the foundations of an Empire, while their starting scout gets a much faster than the norm picture of just what the surroundings look like (meaning that settlers will be assured of heading off toward the choicest terrain first!), and of course, there’s the advantage of being the first to get at those goody huts, and the Expansionist perk of having only good stuff in them! Also, their 2-move Explorer makes it much more likely that the Americans will be firmly in the driver’s seat, diplomatically.

By the middle game, with all their cities up and running good, the industrial “shield bonus” will kick in, doing at least a little bit to offset physical production lost to corruption, and making to speedier builds in general, and by the late game, they get an awesome unit to throw into the mix! That’s a pretty tough act to follow.

Strategies From One End of the Spectrum to the Other:

General: An interesting dilemma is presented to the Expansionist Civ off the cuff. Use Pottery to build Granaries and help speed expansion, or save the time spent doing that, hoping to snag the Pyramids first, thanks to where you begin on the tech tree?

To answer that question, you need to determine how important REX is to your overall expansion (and your level of play is also an enormous factor). If you’re playing Emperor or above, then you must carefully consider whether you can afford to pop-rush the Granary to completion. You can if either of the following conditions are true:

You have three garrisons
Two garrisons and a Luxury tile inside your borders

Temples cannot be factored into the equation for two reasons. First, in the very early game, you simply lack the tech to build them, and second, REX is about speed. Since you’re not a religious civ, you cannot afford the time it would take to build said temple! That would work against your expansionist strategy and weaken your position!

So….consider your level of play and your garrison/luxury situation carefully, and decide based on that, and your overall plan for the game.

Rivers: Are, of course, important to everyone, but especially important to Commercial and Industrious Civs. Why? Because your bonus production kicks in at size seven, and rivers mean one less bit of infrastructure you have to build in order to grow beyond size six! Keep that in mind when planning your Civ-Layout! If you get more production than your rivals AND have to build less infrastructure, you can all but guarantee that you’ll be consistently ahead of the pack!

Pure Builder: Played this way, you want to focus on finding the very choicest in city sites, regardless of how far apart they might be. Let your Industrious workers build road out to city sites to speed the settlers on their way. Once in control of the best resources that the continent has to offer, you can set yourself up nicely in the trade business, swapping out your surplus luxury items and strategic resources for techs and money. Under this approach, don’t be shy about swapping world maps! You want to find as many people as you can and trade with them all (and to that end, when you get a spare worker or two, in addition to building roads to city sites, start building toward rival Civ capitols too….trade routes = money in your pocket and techs learned!

One of the implications of this too, is that, all this map-swapping is an open invitation for your rivals to come along and plant cheesy cities in among your borders, and if that happens, let them do it! When you’re not building settlers and workers, you’ll be building Temples and Libraries, so while the culture game isn’t necessarily your strongest suit, you’ll not be a slouch in that department either. So…let the AI build a city or two for you and absorb it, selectively rushing cultural improvements near the interloper till you simply overwhelm him. Also, since roads, and a city’s connection to its capitol are a part of the equation, if your rival DOES build a road to connect his interloping city to his capitol, part of that road will, no doubt, run through “no man’s land,” which means you can send a unit out to pillage the road, severing the tie, and making the city that much more likely to defect. (and note that you can do this without affecting your relations with the civ in question!) Good use for all those “spare” warriors you’ll have milling about after you map the continent! GREAT use for your starting scout, assuming something doesn’t kill him off!

The essence of your game will revolve around wheeling and dealing with the AI, using your generous quantities of luxury and strategic resources to keep your rivals not only happy, but also dependent on you.

Tech-wise: Skip Monarchy and beeline for Republic once you’ve got all the early game infrastructure techs in hand, and the techs for whatever wonders you’re interested in. This will enable you to peacefully trade and research, while your industrial bonuses enable you to complete peacetime infrastructure like nobody’s business, freeing your cities up to begin cranking out troops (your “big stick” should anyone try to rain on your parade).

Pure Momentum: Simply put, your speed at scouting out the map is very nearly unmatched. Of the potentially 15 rival civs you face, only 5 others can keep pace with your explorations in the early game (it would be four, but the Aztecs can keep up, thanks to their UU). Meaning that fully 2/3’s of the Civs out there are proceeding at a snail’s pace when it comes to mapping out the world around them.

Find them first, find all the critical resources you need to make their life a living hell, deny them those resources by settling first, and then smash them hard.

If you’re playing to this style, then you want to do a complete about-face where maps are concerned. If another Civ has your map information, that’s as good as an open invitation to attack. If the bad guys know where your cities are, they can reach out and touch you, so keep them in the dark as much as possible, while taking advantage of your fast-moving explorer to find out where everything important is in their empire. And don’t wait until you have completely mapped out their Empire before you start building your attack force! As soon as you see borders, start churning out troops at your first possible opportunity! The faster you can get an early game battle group together (6 units or so), the faster you can begin subjugating his cities!

Tech-Wise: Beeline for Monarchy but stay in Despotism while fighting early battles to keep the advantage of pop-rushing your best troops. Once you have handed your early foe a punishing defeat, you’ll be able to switch to Monarchy, get out from under research-killing corruption, and still maintain your large standing army for free!

Drawbacks: On small maps, or high-water maps, the Americans will be penalized because many of their native advantages are nullified by these map settings (can be used in hot seat game—if such things are introduced in a patch—for handicapping). Also, they get no breaks whatsoever where cultural improvements are concerned, having to pay full price for temples, libraries, and their ilk. This means fans of America looking for a cultural win will face more of a challenge game. Finally, their starting techs do not lend themselves to rapid government switches OR to the swift location of critical early game resources, making early game contact and critical tech trades all the more important.

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....good points, brother Arrian....tho I suspect that even the most diehard "Republican-Minded" Builders will have made some pretty hefty use of the Despotic Whip to speed their initial infrastructure in place.

If I'm playing an MP game, and am in a position of relative isolation that facilitates easy defense (island, peninsula), I'd be inclined to run periods of Republicanism/Dem for the research kick, with an eye toward switching back to Despotism/Communism if I saw trouble on the horizon.....I guess you could say that my finger would be on that proveribial trigger....there's no way I'd even *attempt* to fight a human player while running Republic, and definitely not Dem!

But now that I think about that....Police Stations probably come too late in any case to really make the difference that'd be needed to offset Despotism's current dominance. As it stands now, I could see running Despotism without interruption till Communism, and then switching right into it!
Ohhhh! And I *like* the notion of applying a cultural penalty! Although....that would make using pop-sacrifices to rush in early temples (something done waaaaay often in history) work against itself....still....on the surface of it, I'm inclined to say it'd be excellent as a partial balancer!

-=Vel=-

[eMarkM]

I thought a lot of pop rushing would cause unhappiness later on. Doesn't all that slaughter add up? I use it, but not as a crutch because I thought unhappiness would be an issue. Is the effect on happiness negligible? Has anyone tried to quantify this? Obviously when you're killing off all your citizens there's no happiness problem

Maybe that would be a way to deal w/ it. Just make unhappiness obscenely horrible at some point--whatever the government. I haven't noticed real ill effects from it. Though I suppose that would just encourage people to stay pop killing despots all the time. Maybe it should make corruption even worse. Would that put an end to abuse.

e

[Velociryx]

The real problem with Pop-Rushing is that it provides a predictable, static result.

I think the easiest solution would be two-fold

First, introduce diminishing returns.

1st rush - max of 40 shields
2nd - max of 30
3rd - max of 20
4th - max fo 10
5th - max of 5
6th + - No gain or 1 Gain

Second, introduce a randomizing factor in the specific amount of gain you get back from pop rushing. After all, the guys holding the whips can't watch the workers 24/7, and when the cat's away....

Thus, the actual RANGE for the first rush would be defined at the lower limit by the second

1st Rush: 30-40 shields
2nd Rush: 20-30 shields
And so on, until it simply no longer "paid" to do it.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Vel,

I'm not saying I don't use the whip. I do. I use it for temples and libraries. After that, I'm going republic. In one game (only one) I stayed in despotism long enough that I whipped out a few cathedrals, too (captured cities... size 6 ->size 3 with a cathedral, it was beautiful). That was my Iroquois mounted warrior rush game (and when I say rush, I do NOT mean I used the whip for the units... I built them).

I'm saying there should probably be more of a limit on just how much whipping you can do. Your military buildup, unless I'm misreading, was largely based upon whipping those "training camps" into pumping out swordsmen. As it stands now, so far as I can figure, the negative effect of forced labor on the city's mood lasts 20 turns. But, if the city is size 1 or 2, it's pretty damn easy to control it as a despot (either garrison 1/2 units or have a lux resource or two). Only once thus far have I had civil disorder in a city that was even PARTIALLY attributable to my use of the whip (50% it's just too crowded, 50% we cannot forget the cruel oppression...). And that was right when I switched over to republic, and thus lost the garrison unit's power of "persuasion." It could use some tweaking, though I think only on the higher difficulty levels. If people want to use the whip like crazy on chieftan, so be it, it's chieftan.

EDIT: I just saw the post you got in before mine. Good idea... I like diminshing returns. Better than cities revolting - that way, it just doesn't work anymore. Even if the shield value remains static (probably easier to do the mod that way), it still works. 40, 30, 20, 10, nada. Maybe a reset after each 20 turn period (say you pop rush a temple - you get 40 shields out of the pop point, right? Well, if you WAIT 20 turns and rush again, you'd get the full bonus. If you're an impatient sob, you get 30. But eventually, the effects drop off and you can do it again). This way, millenia later, you can do some whipping under communism and you aren't penalized for stuff you did in 2000bc.

On corruption: I've said before that I hope they tweak corruption in such a way that the overall corruption rate caused by # of cities stays the same or even maybe increases, but the distance-to-capital corruption should be reduced with the advent of certain technology or city improvements. The # of cities corruption, if they tweak it so that it effects your core cities more, may hamper a despot rush. Thus, if you have tons of cities & "training camps" your capitol could get up into the 50% corruption range (under despotism, early on this is). That might just hurt ya.

Anyway, I think I should probably start playing on the higher levels (I'll start Monarch tonight) so that I've got a better idea of the problems and solutions... maybe there is another way.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Yep....I think we cross posted again btw! LOL...and the more I've been thinking about it, the more convinced I am that it is genuinely broken....know what you mean tho about the beauty of pop rushing cathedrals. Sac half the population in a size six city, and the survivors are just insanely happy....

As to the "Pairing" thing, you're exactly right. I was whipping those swordsmen out like there was no tomorow, and you're right....absolutely no downside to it, as far as I can see. I essentially had my own little captive breeding farms to pump out swordsmen for me.

Cruel and tyrranical to be sure (especially with no discernable downside), but so far, stackin' those cities deep has been the best-working idea I've had to offset the AI's production edge. My first game, using "traditional means" I got utterly SPANKED by the Emperor-Level AI...which got me thinking about why....which led to...this....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

::nodding:: completely agree about the "reset" feature! And, that would certainly add in a VERY strategic element to it! *When* and *How* to Pop-Rush for maximum effect.

As it stands now, the answer is: as soon as the base grows to size two.....not very strategic....

But yes! If that's a moddable attribute, we could fix that ourselves! (Anybody know??)

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Along the same lines, I agressively starve captured cities in order to reduce them to size 1 (or thereabouts). This, coupled with rush-built culture-producing improvements, prevents them from revolting back to their prior owner (9x out of 10). That 1 remaining citizen is happy as a clam. The rest of my enlightened democracy has absolutely no problem with this starvation tactic. Hell, they don't even get pissed if you starve THEM, let alone foreign nationals. This has been true of all of the CIV games to date. What if you actually had to feed your people (starvation = unhappiness) instead of starving cities back down to controllable sizes? The twisted logic never really bothered me until we started discussing the poprush. Of course, when conquering, you would simply make sure to bombard every target city to size 1 first so that you wouldn't have to starve it, but at least that requires more effort.

-Arrian

[absimiliard]

I can attest that there is definite happiness effects beyond just 20 turns. It looks to me like you add the turns up for EACH rush & you have unhappiness for that long.

My example was a magnificent game I had as the Indians. I had a city pop-rushing Settlers constantly, it had 3 cows on floodplains & just was impossible to keep from growing too fast. Even with rushing Settlers it was almost too much. Anyways, that city was still unhappy when I won by launching my spaceship. Nearly two-thousand years of stable Republican & Democratic government and the city still required entertainers to deal w. it's unhappiness. Clearly they remembered my cruelty thousands of years later!

What it really means is that there's no such thing as a short-term opportunity cost for rushing. If you rush, you are paying the long-term cost, always. No reason not to rush mind you, just a good reason not to rush too many things. Nowday's I'm rushing Temples & Libraries and normally not rushing much at all beyond that.

[Gamer at heart]

About the industrious worker thing, I'm pretty sure that as every worker keeps its original nationality, it also keeps its industrious (or non industrious) nature. I did not test this, but it's the feeling I get from the games I've played thus far.

Vel , I now officially despise you and any of your future postings for even thinking of that "pseudo"-ICS tactic... Well, of course not, but I really don't like it, even if now that I know of it I'm bound to use it, even if moderately . I have played 16 civ emperor level games (well, up until it took more than 10 minutes per turn to wait for the AI to play...::sigh:: ) and I don't feel you need ICS to keep up. It *could* help a lot however.

very excellent way to limit forced labour as well. diminishing returns would be great!

On another note, I'm beginning to understand why it is taking you so long to write that article about all the civs...colossal job indeed!! keep at it, it's always intersting to read that new stuff you somehow keep writing up!

[eMarkM]

Nearly two-thousand years of stable Republican & Democratic government and the city still required entertainers to deal w. it's unhappiness. Clearly they remembered my cruelty thousands of years later!

When you click on one of your unhappy's little heads, what does it say the reason for unhappiness is? Still complains about the whip? I'm actually relieved that unhappiness in enduring for continual pop rushing, though I think the technique is still too powerful.

e

[jed]

I consider the despotic population rushing an exploit that leads to ugly games. Judging by the reports posted here and in other threads, it appears to be clearly overpowered. I recommend a simple solution to keep it under control:

Do not permit yourself to rush a job under despotism or communism unless 20 shields have already been committed. (The number 20 might be modified to 30 or whatever.)

This should make ICS and despotic war rushing much less attractive.

On the subject of not taking advantage of exploits, I have another suggestion. The AI seems to give too much gold/turn for techs. For the particular AI it might be a good deal, but when you can sell to many, the science brokering strategy is too powerful. Other diplomatic exploits involve e.g. giving gold/turn for techs and then turning around and declaring war. I suggest the following simple self-control rule to avoid exploiting the AI diplomatic weakness:

Only trade per/gold for things that naturally go for 20 turns. E.g. luxuries for per/gold is fine, tech for per/gold is not. Also, only sell one-shots for one-shots. I.e. you can buy or sell techs for a lump of gold, but not for gold/turn.

This self-imposed rule will get rid of most of the diplomatic exploits out there.

Another idea along these lines is to forbid giving cities to the AI, because of the sell the city then reinvade exploit.

Of course people should play how they want, but I for one want interesting games, not exploits. I think Firaxis did a great job giving us a fun game, and would much rather play the game the way it was intended at Regent or Monarch level rather than try to exploit it at Deity. I don't use the million dollar bug exploit and I don't think these other exploits are all that different.

[jed]

About captured workers: I believe (but am not 100% certain) that captured workers always work at one half of your normal workers' rates. They are slaves and don't work as well as native paid workers. This brings up the issue of whether you should add them to your cities, where they can ultimately be assimilated, and replace them with better-working natives. Of course, the natives cost a gold to maintain, while the slaves are free.

[Arrian]

Jed,

I would argue that there is indeed a difference between a bug and an exploit, but I agree with the general intent of your post. I will not be able, in the interest of fun, to bring myself to use the strategy/exploit Vel has uncovered. I will, however, still whip up temples and some libraries in my cities early in the game (before I have republic) to get those borders expanding. Usually, I will use the whip 1 to 2 times (temple/library) per city in the ancient era. I have never used the draft, and have never used communism.

Forced labor is a tool that Firaxis put in the game for a reason, but it appears that they made it too strong. I haven't abused it yet, probably because I've been playing on Regent and I haven't had to. I can probably win on Monarch without it as well, as I've creamed regent the last two times I've played it. But once I'm in a situation where the AI, due to its production/research bonuses, is just killing me, I may start looking for a way to compete - just like Vel did. Hopefully, there are other ways.

-Arrian

[Gadmund]

Velociryx,
I have been reading up on most of your post about the Civ3 Strategy-- Thanks for taking the time to help newer players! I have also read many other post that have been quite helpful and I tip my hat to all of those who have added.

I do have some aspects of the game that I'm having trouble figuring out.

A. Expansion and reading the terrain. I've been playing at Regent lvl and I seem to always get behind the AIs in expansion. I usually start my production like: warr, warr, sett, city impr, worker... but it seems that I fall behind as the turns progress. I look for the food bonuses as well as the fresh water (lakes/rivers) to help. Maybe this is just one of those topics that will come with practice.

B. Taxes. How do they work? Is it that I just change some of my pop to taxmen or is there something else? Usually, I add a taxman and my town gets pissed--as I understand their plight! Is there something else that I need to know as I create more of my special pop... Along these lines, the pop in my towns swell to very large numbers and start to starve off a couple of people...

C. How do you get so much Tech so fast! Win the Space Race by the 1700s--Wow! I have a couple of wins (by culture) but they were nearing the 2050 mark.

These are issues that if anyone could offer any assistance with feel free to jump in. I am new to the games that Sid has created but I'm really addicted to this one for sure!

Thanks for all of the help!
Gadmund

[Velociryx]

Jed: Good points all around, though I think I'd slant the argument in a slightly different direction.

IMO, it's not ICS, but the pop-rushing concept itself that is skewed. ICS is merely a preference in city spacing (and I would say that it's ICS, but not pop-rushing, that makes for some relatively UGLY games). Some guys like them close together, some like lots of room, however, there are some pretty sound game mechanics driven reasons for favoring close city spacing.

First, is a simple matter of defense. With cities spaced three tiles apart, your infantry units can "hop" from one city to another, always ending their turns inside the cozy confines of your cities (where they have a defensive bonus), rendering them less likely to be killed in the event of hostilities inside your borders.

Second, there's the matter of specialists in Civ3. They're ::searching for a polite word:: Not very good. At all. Thus, there are good reasons to want your cities to hover at a maximum population of around twenty or so....about all the extra population points do is generate more pollution for your workers to clean up. Thus, by packing cities a bit closer together than some would consider good taste, you forcibly limit the number of workable tiles each city has, limiting maximum size by default.

For those two reasons alone, I'd be inclined to say that the game, by its own design prompts city spacing three tiles apart, which is in the range (2-3 tiles apart) of what most folks would consider ICS-Style spacing.

As to pop-rushing though....I agree. The concept, in its current incarnation, is overpowered. Setting self-enforced limits will work until it can be patched or modded into some less-easily-abused form, and by setting diminishing returns on doing so, will make pop-rushing a MUCH more strategic enterprise than it is now....

-=Vel=-
PS: Ahhhh, I think you're right about those captured workers. And if that's how it works, then in the case of an Industrious Civ, they'd still be "twice as productive" as the captured workers of other Civs (in fact, on par with the workers those civs are paying for), but only half as productive as your "pay-per-turn" workers. Very cool!

[Velociryx]

Hey Gadmund! I'm glad you're readin', and hopefully, this thread, as it continues to evolve will go right on being helpful to everyone, and churning out consistently innovative ideas as everyone discusses various aspects of the game.

As to your specific questions:

Expansion:
First thing, take a look at how fast your city is growing. I mean, exactly how fast it's growing. Generally, you'll want your first and second builds to be warriors, that's true, but then....depending on how fast your city is growing, you may want either a third warrior (relatively slow growth, high shield city, like one that's working a game bonus on a forest tile), or go ahead and start your settler.

As soon as your settler is done, again take stock of how long til your city grows again.

Assume that when your settler pops out, your town goes from size three to size one. Check to see how many turns it will take for it to grow to size two. If it's five or less ('bout 80% of the game circumstances you'll encounter), start another settler immediately. If it's more, build something that can be finished on or about the time that the "time to grow" from 1 ---> 2 is five turns. Generally, that'll be another warrior.

As a side point, if, when you're founding cities in low-growth areas of relative safety (no barbarians lurking around and relaltively friendly neighbors), and if you're playing a religious Civ, give *strong* consideration to making the temple your first build. The cultural impact is greater the longer the temple is in place.

But...back to growing your empire.

Your scouts should be out specifically looking for more bonus food tiles, cos at least for your first city or two (sometimes 3+ if you can find that many close bonus food tiles), you'll want to found towns on or near those kinds of tiles, and when you do so, use the same general build order/technique that you use for your first city. 2-3 Cities founded near bonus food resources, building in that manner, should see you keeping up or out-stripping the AI, and to that end, don't build infrastructure in your settler farms! I think that, more than anything is what's slowing you down. You want them to focus on settlers....their temples, libraries and such can come once you've secured enough territory for yourself!

Taxmen specialists in cities don't work very well, IMO. You only get one gold per specialist, and if you have a worker in the field working a tile with a road through it, you get at least one gold, plus whatever else the tile produces.

Tax Slider though, that's a different beast, and accessible on your "Diplomatic Advisor's" screen, where you can adjust your tax rate relative to your research rate.

And finally, the A #1 method of getting faster tech is to trade for it! Trade relentlessly!

Contact A and trade what you must to get his techs. Then trade those to B, C, and D, and if you pick up any new stuff that any of the others don't have (and especially if they still have stuff YOU don't have, go back through and trade some more!). Excess luxuries can do more for your tech-research than setting science to 100%

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Gadmund,

I know you posed your questions to Vel, but I think I can help too.

A) Expansion. My build order is (generally) warrior, warrior, settler, spearman (or two warriors), settler... however, if I make contact with an expansionist civ early, I can buy pottery. I then take some time to poprush a granary. This speeds things so I can usually go warrior, settler, warrior, settler.

B) Taxes are controlled from the F1 screen. There is a slider bar at the top which you can move around to adjust your science vs. tax spending. There is also a bar for luxury spending. I find that early in the game, due to the fact that there is a hard cap which guarantees research on any 1 tech cannot take more than 32 turns, setting science to 10% is a good idea (for a while, anyway).

B2) You sound like you are letting your cities grow too large. Early on, punch out settlers and workers. Later, you're gonna need cathedrals and luxuries to keep those cities happy. Also, along the lines of what Vel is talking about (re: specialists), letting your cities pass pop 20 isn't really benificial. In my most recent Regent level game, my approval rating was 98%. This, of course, had a lot to do with providing my people with all 8 luxuries, coupled with temples&Cathedrals&marketplaces (markets increase the effect of luxuries resources) everywhere, with the Sistine Chapel and Bach. However, if I let them grow to 25+, I would have had some unhappy people, or at least would have needed some entertainers. edit - with a 10% luxury rate.

C) Science. Big topic. Early on, trading with other civs is the way to go. Everyone starts with 2 techs, and thus there is quite a bit of trading that can happen. I also tend to buy techs off of civs for a while in the ancient era (pottery for 30 gold is worth it, as far as I'm concerned). Expansionist civs often get tons of tech from huts. Later, it's all about increasing your total commerce output. This means roads, of course, and city improvements. Not just libraries and universities. Marketplaces and Banks are huge, as they will bring in extra cash and allow you to up the science rate. Adam Smith's and Wall Street will also help. Speaking of Wonders, if you can get Coperincus and Newton in the same city, you will pump out quite a few beakers.

Hope that helped.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Yeah....what Arrian said!

Good post, re: the Despotic Rush....and you're quite right...the probably are other ways to compete with the AI's production bonuses. I hope so, and I definitely plan to keep on looking....but for the moment, I can honestly say I've found a means of keeping pace with the AI's troop building program (and those bonuses must be absolutely HATEFUL if it took 36 Swordsmen, 14 Warriors, 2 Spearmen, and 4 Bowmen to finally have a "strong" military relative to the Persians and their dozen cities (vs. my 21!). That, plus being eight techs my senior when I attacked them makes for an uphill climb indeed, and one that I freely admit to not being able to cope with via "usual developmental means," which, of course, is what prompted the somewhat frantic search for an alternative.

As it turns out....the alternative seems a bit like using an Atom-Bomb to kill a housefly....lol...but it DID have the advantage of saving my sorry hide.

I'm definitely not gonna give up the search for viable alternatives tho....having found one "different" way of going about it, I'm certain there must more....

-=Vel=-

[vmxa1]

I don't think you can assume that pop rush is the cause of unhappy citizens later on as in many case they will be unhappy in a large pop without it. In my larger cities they are often unhappy and I did not pop rush at all. You would have to select them and see what they were upset about. I would like to know if that is the reason. In cities I did use pop rush (diff game) every one was still happy even right after the fact. I had not done it but once in that city so that may be why. I will have to mess around with it to see how they fare, unless some one knows.

[vmxa1]

Vel, the last game I played was as the Chinese and I stayed in Depotism until I got Communism. Commies rule if you are at war most of the time.

[Thoth]

Regarding Mods to pop rushing:

Currently you can change the number of shields generated by a pop rush (default setting is 20), and the number of turns unhappiness endures. A possiblity for re-balancing pop rushing would be to set the number of shields to 15, the unhappiness to 30 turns, and to make Rep/Demo a little more competetive, increase worker speed by 50% as a Rep and boost the Democratic bonus to 100%.


(Completely unrelated)

I've seen in a few posts about selling cities that you should move your units out of them first, then sell them. Well, I decided to try out what happens if you leave your units in the city. They are instantly transported to your capital with no loss of movement points.

I used this trick to get a GL home from the front lines, gave Bombay back to the Indians after taking it from the Chinese. Poof. My 1st GL of the game (it's 1640 AD....grrr) home safe and sound. (The Indians still aren't very happy with me, I think they're a little upset after I torched Delhi in a previous skirmish.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Arrian
I noticed something a little odd in my latest game that I think is worth mentioning. The Persians declared war on me (totally out of the blue). I contacted our common neighbor, Chairman Mao, and asked for an alliance against Xerxes. No dice. I mean, I offered Mao something like 3 techs, a resource and 4000 gold. "They will never accept such a deal." Hmm. So, I ask for a mutual protection pact. For horses, they did it. Next turn, I got what I wanted - "China has declared war on Persia." Now, I do realize that the MPP carries with it more inherent danger for me than a straight alliance, as the Chinese could have gotten me into another war (which, in this game, would quickly have exploded into WWI). Still, why the HUGE disparity between two options that essentially meant the same thing?

Think about it this way.. If China wants to attack somone else, or gets attacked by someone else, they have you to back them up now. If they only sign an alliance against the Persians, then they are fighting for you in your war, but not recieving aid from you in any of their own wars that may arrise. By signing a MPP with you, they have an ally in all wars that they may get involved in while the pact is in effect. It is a big difference in some cases, though I agree that a 4000 gold, 3 tech difference it is not. I've noticed that if you are fighting a war that will benefit another civ directly, that they are much easier to convince into signing an alliance. I'm not sure what they look at specifically, but it seems that shared borders with your enemy, and having a larger army than you (and the enemy) helps. This gives them more of a chance of expanding their territory than if you're likely to be the one taking all the cities. Of course this might not be the reason, they certainly seem to place an obscene value on ANY city anywhere, even if they have no chance of holding it.

[Velociryx]

....and I mean waaay back, to my SMAC-ing days.

The game was Standard, Monarch, 8, Iroquois

Tried a little trick that I lobbied heavily in favor on IN SMAC.

Bases three apart....or in this case, Cities three apart.

Combined that with a "4-apart" scheme for Border Towns (towns established specifically to cut the AI's expansion off.

It's a strange, hybrid mix of the two concepts.

Expansion runs normally, with initial cities cast out around food tiles for early growth to fuel expansion. The next cities I found are on the periphery of my "natural borders" to stake a claim on the land stretching from those outposts back to the capitol, and then backfilling with cities three apart. No need for "pairing" under this scheme, and no room for it besides, and in this case, my settler farms get granaries, *some* (determined by the needs of the current game) of my other bases get granaries, but I'd ballpark it at no more than 4-6 for a standard map), and the rest run without.

Everybody gets a temple/library in the early game, one rushed, one not, and everybody builds a token garrison, worker, and rushes two attack troops. That way, you minimize the long term damage caused by compounded rushing (assuming that the 20 turns of unhappiness is on a "per use" basis), you get all your essential early game infrastructure in place resonably quickly, AND you build a pretty heinous army to compete with the AI's forces.

Wound up settling in an area that I normally would have built about a dozen cities in....using my SMAC-methodology, I ended up with 22, generally three apart, excepting for the three towns I used as "blockers" against the AI's expansion, which were four apart for efficient use of starting town borders.

With a minimal amount of selective rushing, I was able to blow everybody's doors off culturally AND put together a big enough force of swordsmen/mounted warriors to fight both the Americans and Aztecs at the same time (who both started out comparable in size, territory wise, but who BARELY matched me in total # of cities when combined. (results were: wound up capturing 3 American cities and trading one back for all of Lincoln's money and tech, and captured one city from the Aztecs (after killing about twenty of his Jaguars) and getting all his cash--he had no techs I needed, since I got them all from his favored trading partner, the Americans.

This solves the problem that some folks have with excessive rushing to put yourself back on par with the AI, but it does so by stacking cities closer than I realize some folks would prefer.

I think though, at the higher levels of play, you're simply gonna have to make some strategic tradeoffs. You can either run with fewer, widely spaced cities and pop-rush like there's no tomorrow, use temporary "pairing" to make cheese bases exclusively for rushing troops, or build a ton of permanant "3-apart" cities and make significantly less frequent use of pop-rushing to reach the same end. The AI simply doesn't give you enough room to expand into, and even if it did, with their production bonuses, you need to have more cities cranking out units to stay competitive in what amounts to the Ancient Era arms race, *especially* if you wanna limit the number of times you pop-rush.

Anyway, I saved the game at 210 AD, after trouncing a combined American/Aztec force (I attacked America, being the marginally stronger of the two powers I was on the continent with, and they promptly called their Aztec Attack Dog to jump me, so I beat them both, essentially ignoring/defending against the Jaguar horde until I forced America to submit, and then turning my MW's on the Jaguars.

The Iroquois early GA is actually kinna nice in the sense that you can almost completely build your FP during the GA, sparing your Great Leader (if you get one during Ancient Era battling) for other purposes. Pretty good stuff!

So....that's where I am now on it. I've got three pretty viable approaches in hand, to beat the higher levels of play....tested them on Monarch, will perfect them on Emperor, and then try my hand at Deity with 'em....

Of them all, I think the two easiest to use are the "standard city spacing" with rampant rushing or the hybrid 3/4-apart scheme....the "pairing" idea is cool, but takes a hellish lot of micromanagement.... Still, it's devastating....

Considering the exceedingly agressive nature of the AI's expansion, I just don't see that there are gonna be too many other choices where that's concerned.

This (taking my old SMAC approach and applying it to Civ3) streamlines the whole process. There's less micromanagement, since every city winds up getting the basics to enhance culture, and every city also contributes to the Empire's offensive punch.

Thoughts? Ideas?



-=Vel=-
(back to civing....)