Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Three

[Velociryx]

'k....in the interest of getting this new thread up and running, I decided to go ahead and post the notes "this way" rather than via file upload....will plan to do that for next time, but for the moment, allow me to present the current body of knowledge....

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Topical Index

Notes on the Civs

Growing your Empire

Corruption

Battle Strategies and Notes

Metagame and Other Essays

Game-Engine Exploits

Unsolved Mysteries

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The following material has been culled from previous “Vel’s Strategy Threads” and has been compiled here to prompt further discussion on the growing body of work which will serve as the genesis for the eventually emergent 1.0 version of the Strat Guide. Please download, print, read, and discuss! The only way they’ll get hammered into fully refined shape is through our continued discussions!
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NOTES ON THE CIVS
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The Civs (Factions) – A closer analysis (Part One)
Before we can begin picking apart the factions (and that’s in the works as I type this….it’s just that the article wound up taking far longer to type than I had originally anticipated, and I wanted to get something out today), it would be insightful to take a close look at one of the key aspects that define Civs. Their tendencies, and the advantages of those tendencies. With that in mind, here’s a quick survey of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tendencies that define Civs:

Expansionist
Starting Tech = Pottery (Granary)
Free Scout at game Start (2 Move/ 0 Attack Exploration Unit)
Goody Huts = More good stuff & no barbarians; can easily dominate the diplomatic scene via controlling early contacts

The usefulness of this trait is directly tied to world size and the amount of water you have selected for your planet. Small worlds, or worlds without much land will GREATLY disadvantage this trait’s strongest points. Conversely, the larger the planet/more land to be had, the stronger this trait becomes.

Keep in mind too, that this is an almost entirely early game trait. It’s only useful as long as there are huts to be “popped,” and land to be explored. After that, it becomes largely useless (save for the fact that you start with the tech for granaries, which essentially allows you to double your growth rates in cities, thus expand even faster!). The lesson here: Expansionist Civs live and die by their early game! A strong opener will set you up for an even stronger mid-game. Falter once during the Ancient era though, and you’ll spend the bulk of your time playing catch-up.

Militaristic
Starting Tech = Warrior Code
Military units gain morale faster, higher chance of generating a leader, Barracks, Coastal Fortresses, Walls and SAM batteries are half price.

A good trait, but not a great one. Even with a militaristic civ, it’s frustratingly hard to generate leaders, and with even moderately active barbarians milling about, most civs will not have any great difficulty in training elite warriors of various stripes, thus limiting the impact of two of the strongest selling points of this trait.

Armies too, are a good bit weaker than they should be, further limiting the power of the Militaristic trait.

Still, it does have its advantages. Long-term, you WILL gain more Great Leaders than your non-militaristic rivals, which is essentially a free pass at wonder-building (and don’t bother to build a small wonder with a GL….save them for major wonder-building to steal a juicy wonder out from under a Civ that has been hard at work on it for half a century or more!). And Armies, while not the powerhouses we initially envisioned them to be, are still useful in certain situations, and the creation of your first army (actually, the army’s first victory) leads to minor wonders that cannot be created otherwise.

To a lesser degree than Expansionist Civs, Militarism’s usefulness is tied to world size in reverse. Cheaper barracks means faster barracks, and on Tiny maps, the several turns faster barracks construction can make or break your game. As world size increases, and with it, the distances between Civs, this ability begins to diminish in impact, though not nearly to the extent that Expansionistic Civs suffer under tiny maps.

In all, the Militaristic trait is a collection of decent abilities, none of which truly stand out, but when combined, make a sturdy-enough Civ Trait.

Commercial
Starting Tech: Alphabet
Less Corruption in cities
1 Extra Gold in each 7+ City

A powerful trait by any definition, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, with Corruption such a killer to city productivity, ANY means of combating it is a good thing, and Civs with this trait come with a built-in advantage. Thus, you can expect to see Commercial Civs with larger, more productive empires on the whole. Larger Empires = More production centers. More production centers = more territory controlled, more access to resources, and more places that units can be built in a reasonable amount of time.

As you might expect then, the Commercial trait doesn’t really come into its own until the mid-game.

After all, when you’ve only got two or three cities, and they’re all pretty close together, corruption isn’t an issue at all! But, as your Empire matures and grows….as you expand and begin to flex your muscles a bit, you’ll find this trait moves from “helpful,” to “invaluable” in its overall value.

As an added benefit, the Commercial Civ starts with a VERY attractive tech, along the path toward Republic and the Great Library!! This fact simply cannot be overstated, and is hugely important in planning your Civ’s future!

Scientific
Starting Tech: Bronze Working
Free Tech advance as you enter each new age, lab-enhancing infrastructure is half price.

By itself, the free tech is a NICE boon for this ability to have, but when added to the fact that everything that enhances your labs (libraries, universities, research centers, etc) is half price for you, and you’ve got yourself an EXTREMELY attractive Civ trait! (mostly because there are actually quite a number of lab-enhancing facilities!).

No matter how you look at it, “Scientific” is a tough act to follow, but they have yet one more ability that the casual player may not have thought of, and it relates to their starting tech.

No…the ability to build Spearmen from the get-go isn’t it! LOL…true, that’s a nice boon, but even MORE important is the fact that the Scientific Civs are exactly one tech out from Iron Working.

He who discovers where the iron deposits are first can play a resource denial type of game with regards to city placement and find himself in an absolutely unbeatable ancient-era position very quickly! (How hard do you suppose it would be to defeat your opponent KNOWING that you had a monopoly on your continent’s iron supply, or at the very least knowing that your opponent had no iron at all for the foreseeable future?).

The proximity to Iron Working is what makes the Scientific trait a true gem….the free tech and cheaper facilities are just a wonderful bonus!

Industrious
Starting Tech: Masonry
Double-speed Workers
Extra production shields in large cities (1 in ea. 7+ City)

The production bonus is minor, and though it’s impact will be felt for the better part of the game, it is not this trait’s strongest selling point by any means.

First and foremost is the double-speed worker ability. This simply cannot be overstated! And the first time you have to clear out jungle tiles, you’ll be eternally grateful for your industrious workers! In the early game, those workers can really be a godsend, allowing for lighting quick road construction to speed your settlers on their way, and bulking up your mineral counts at selected bases faster than you’d ever have believed possible! Worker speed alone would be reason enough to favor this Civ trait, but that’s not all you get!

Have a look at your starting tech, and the GREAT early game wonder that comes with it! (and with rapid expansion, your Civ can be working on this project well before the others even THINK about starting it!) No matter how you look at it, Industrious is one of the strongest traits in the game!

Religious
Starting Tech: Ceremonial Burial
Happiness-producing builds are half price, anarchy only lasts one turn.

This trait is all about control of your citizens. You get a LOT of city improvements for half off, and they ALL help keep the masses content. When you want to switch from one form of government to another, forget decades of turmoil. One measly turn, and you’re back in charge and churning along like nobody’s business.

Considering that most Civ’s will make 3-4 government switches during the course of a game, and that a city totally shuts down when unhappy citizens riot, and the advantages of this trait become clear.

It’s all about turn advantage here. Your cities will be among the happiest in the world, and switching government types is a piece of cake, enabling you to take advantage of mid-game political situations, declare war (switching to communism and using population to rush….well, anything you want), then switching back when your objectives have been reached, and reaping the benefits of instant Democracy!

And, considering how many happiness-enhancing buildings there are, you can all but guarantee that you’ll be one of the leading contenders in the Culture war!

Your starting tech is on a direct path to Monarchy, which is good….the more government types you have to choose from when you go to make a switch, the better for you, and playing to your natural strength in starting tech, you’re fairly well-suited to go ahead and beeline for Monarchy in any case.

The next installment of this piece will take a look at the various factions in the game, in terms of their Civ-Traits and Special Units, and offer up specific in-game strats for getting the most out of each.
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[Velociryx]

The Civs (Factions) – A Closer Analysis (Part Two)
Having taken a look at the various traits that define all the civs in the game, it’s time to have a look at the Civs themselves….the various civ-traits in combination, and with the effects of various special units acting in concert to create a number of totally unique playing experiences.

The notes you’ll find below mostly relate to single play, though some notes have been added with the eventual hope of MP in mind. Also, keep in mind that the combat notes you find in each article is not an endorsement by the author to go out and subjugate all your neighbors! Sure, you can play it that way, but I find the game to be much more enriching if you do something (anything!) besides simply rush every other civ in the game. Still, if you DO find yourself at odds with them, observations on how they fight and how to best deal with them can be invaluable.

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 that allows them to see two spaces regardless of terrain, and precision strike capability.

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).

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: Considering your nearest neighbors, you need to get The Wheel ASAP (both for denying horses to your probably Iroquois neighbors, and securing a goodish supply for yourself). If you plan for early warfare, then considering who your neighbors are, you NEED horses! After that, 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!

In the Neighborhood
You’re likeliest neighbors are the English, Russians, Aztecs, and Iroquois. (Tech-Wise, this gives you three civs with Pottery in common with you, two civs with Ceremonial Burial (temples), one with Alphabet, and one with Bronze Working (Spearmen). Limited trading options here, since three of your likely neighbors share a tech in common with you).

English & Russian: No big threat to you, though as the game grinds on, you may find them to be slightly more advanced with their commercial/scientific leanings. Still, a steady diet of trade should see you keeping up. Unit-wise, they’re no threat until the mid-game, and even then, the English Man-O-War has a short shelf life, and Cossacks are an attack unit with extra defense. Nothing much to write home about, though you will surely see slightly closer battles when you clash cavalry vs. cavalry with Russia in the middle game.

Aztecs: In MP, they’re your worst nightmare, but thankfully, the AI does not seem to fully appreciate what a powerhouse it has in terms of the Jaguar. If you find yourself near the Aztecs, take them out first, at all costs (making the acquisition of some or other advantage absolutely vital to your survival. Whether this advantage manifests itself in an alliance, Iron Working, Horseback Riding…something to give you an edge!) The last thing you need is a gazillion little Jaguar warriors mucking your terrain improvements up (and they will). Choke them off with aggressive expansion and crush them before they get big enough to overrun you with their cheap, awesome units. Combat-wise, if you have to fight them, fight fire with fire, secure horses and build horsemen, defending them in the field with spearmen. This will necessitate building at least one barracks, since you’ll want most, if not all your spearmen to be vets to fend off multiple Jaguar attacks. Remember that the Jaguar is a 1/1/2 unit, and your horsemen are 2/1/2, so you’ll do much better to fight the initial wave in your territory with access to roads. Place spearmen spotters to watch his approach, arranging your horsemen so that the Aztecs cannot reach them on the initial attack, but putting you in range to strike back. Beat the initial wave and then ransack the Empire.

Iroquois: Again, thankfully the AI doesn’t seem to know what a gem of a unit he’s got! Additionally, it’s been my experience that the Iroquois expand pretty slowly for an expansionistic civ. Still, don’t delay in expanding toward them in an effort to deny them territory and especially horses! If you DO deny them horses, they’re no different from you, except they’ll likely have better culture. If you don’t….be careful. The Aztecs rely on mass to overwhelm their opponents, but the Iroquois don’t need to. They have one of the finest ancient-era units in the game, so you can’t very well fight fire with fire. The ONLY way to fight the Iroquois is to take their cities. Don’t try to fight them in the field. You will lose. True, you can get lucky against the AI, because often, he’ll leave his MW’s exposed, and your own horsemen can slip in and kill them, but if/when MP is ever released, against a human opponent, NEVER fight the Iroquois in the field! If you do, you’re just asking to lose your army. Instead, play nice and quietly mass your troops, then hit suddenly and take 2-3 cities in one shot. If needs be, burn them down and move on, always sticking to the best defensive terrain you can, and bring along a number of spearmen to take the hits of the attrition attacks that will surely follow (and the spearmen, even in good terrain, will quite often die).

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.


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[Velociryx]

Aztec (Religious/Militarist)
Starting Tech: Ceremonial Burial/Warrior Code
Special Unit: Jaguar Warrior (1/1/2): Warrior with an extra movement point that you can build from turn one. Same stats as Chariots…cheaper (50% cheaper!), and you don’t have to research any techs to train them!

The Goods
The Aztecs represent the first of a handful of “Triple Threat” Civs in the group we’ll be discussing, and let me start by saying that all of the “Triple Threat” Civs should be considered extremely dangerous customers! In the case of the Aztec, they fall into this category because the extra movement point of their special unit gives them the rapid exploration capabilities of Expansionistic Civs (more chances to get to goody huts than the norm, and a potential tech lead (or at the very least, higher morale Jaguars) because of it! This, combined with the fact that their special unit has the weakest overall stats in the entire game, makes them very heavily focused on the early game. And what an early game menace they are!!!

Like all religious civs, you’re definitely a cultural contender, and cheap temples means you can easily control the population and make heavier use of early game pop-rushing techniques than many of your rivals. Use that to your advantage! Also, quelling discontent in conquered cities is generally easy for you, again, thanks to those cheap temples. Likewise, your militaristic trait plays VERY well with your aggressive early game style, as your Jaguars (the ONLY 2 movement unit available at game start) will have a very high survival rate, netting you an elite core in no time, which will see you generating a good many leaders (effectively giving you the ability to instantly relocate your palace or build the FP, and if you get multiple leaders, you can have your pick of Ancient Era Wonders!) If you’re not an aggressive player, odds are good that you will not use this Civ to its fullest early game potential, and by extension, you’ll have a tougher time moving into the later ages when much of what makes your Civ unique is gone, and many of your early game strengths have faded.

Note about the Jaguar Warrior: True, your special unit has the weakest stats in the game, but you also have the only special unit that I, as a fan of the civ, would consider building even in the late game. For the money, you just can’t get a better value, and even in the modern age, the unit makes an ideal “terror unit,” capable of penetrating deep into enemy territory quickly (and forcing your rival to divert his expensive unit(s) away from your true objectives while your cheap Jaguars rip up rail lines, sever communications, and strip out terrain improvements. In short, they’re awesome long after their lose their combat potential!

Strategies From One End of the Spectrum to the Other

General
No matter how you slice it, you’re going to have to be aggressive in the early game as the Aztecs if you want to excel. Even if you have the heart of a pure, die-hard builder, get over it long enough to take out or severely weaken your nearest neighbors, and then build to your heart’s content!

Fortunately, early-game swarming is what these guys do better than anyone! Played properly, it is entirely possible that you can wind up with the whole continent to yourself, having simply overrun every bit of opposition on your continent, and doing so with a minimum set of cities.

Here’s how it works: Expand in standard fashion, using whatever basic expansion scheme you prefer.

Use your speedy Jaguars to scout the area (again, putting you in the position of making much more informed city placement decisions in the same vein as the Expansionistic Civs), and when you find a rival Civ, immediately set all your cities to cranking out Jaguars. When you get a fistful of them (eight or ten….certainly no more than twelve needed), swarm the poor, unsuspecting fool. You’ll have him begging for mercy in no time, and if you’re in a generous mood (and your rival has been sufficiently “pruned,” by all means, let him live. If not…finish him off and lay claim to all the land he would have taken from you…then move on with your (now mostly elite) force and keep scouting.

Repeat till you’re either alone on the continent or in the dominant position, and you can ride those early game successes to victory!

Pure Builder
Again, and with the Aztecs I can’t emphasize this enough…do not try to build peacefully if you have not yet “tamed” your rival civs on your continent! You OWN the early game! Get out there and kick some serious butt! And, when you’re finished, win the captured populace over by way of your speedily constructed temples (which will also bump up that culture, inoculating your Empire against the Cultural effects of surviving neighbors and boosting your score in that category!).

Tech-wise: Your Civ does not lend itself to the rapid discovery of either horses or iron, but then, you don’t need either! With luck, and on anything less than a huge map, you won’t have any continental rivals after the ancient era in any case, so don’t bother to research iron working or the wheel….simply trade for it whenever it’s convenient to do so, and focus on the “second tier” of ancient era techs (those that your starting techs are pre-requisites for). Alternately, if you have a juicy, culturally rich Wonder in mind, beeline for whatever techs lie along that path. All the early game combats you’ll see, you’ve got an outstanding shot at getting a couple of leaders, and if so, any project you put you desire is yours! Your main goal is to get out of the ancient era with all speed, utterly dominating your starting landmass in the process, then, settle in to build to your heart’s content!

Momentum
Your early game won’t be terribly different from the Builder’s game in the sense that the Aztecs NEED to be aggressive early if they want to remain viable into the mid and late game. However, you’ll part ways with your Builderesque cousins once your continent is tamed. They’ll be content to settle in and do the cultural thing….BAH! You want to reach out and touch people, so your tech choices will be largely dependent on the type of map you’re playing. If you’re on an “uber continent” (the favorite of many Aztec players), and if you didn’t get it before, you want to bulk up on weapons techs now, with an eye toward replacing your Jaguar force (which is, after a couple of quick conquests, verging on obsolescence). After that, keep an eye out for any tech that might have a wonder attached to it, and if there’s water around, grab the Great Lighthouse with a spare Great Leader, get Map Making, and hit the high seas! If you’re fast enough (and if the “other continent” is close enough, you just might be able to terrorize one last Civ with your trusty Jaguars, and if not, then at least you’ll have early contact and can use that to potentially widen your tech lead and keep an eye out for a potentially weak member of the heard. Even if you can’t take them with Jaguars, attention to keeping your army up to date, and the fact that you’re probably the largest Civ as you leave the ancient era should see you in a position to dictate terms to your rivals across the sea.

Tech-Wise: Iron Working if you don’t have it already, Map Making, and of course, the requisite tech for any wonder you have your eye on. Monarchy is probably better for you than republic unless your neighbors across the sea are too entrenched, in which case, you’d be better served research wise by Republic….at least until you spot a weak herd-member to cull…and of course, being a Religious Civ, you can instantly switch to a war footing (including a different government form) and get to it!

In the Neighborhood
Your nearest, most likely neighbors are the Americans, Russians, Iroquois, and English. Tech-wise, this gives you FOUR civs with Pottery (somehow, you attracted the Expansionistic crowd!), one with Masonry, one with Bronze Working, one with Alphabet, and one with Ceremonial Burial. Good mix, and you’re all but guaranteed to be able to trade for pottery, so don’t bother to research it!

Americans and Russians: Generally in the same category, since neither of them have ancient era special units. Put them on hold and deal with them later. They’ll only be confronting you with swordsmen, spearmen, and horsemen. Nothing you can’t handle, and conventional swarm tactics should do just fine.

Iroquois: These guys are dangerous, but much less to you than to anyone else. Yeah, their mounted warriors are good, but they’re also expensive compared to your jags! Meet them in the field, let them (the mounted warriors) come out and kill a couple of your warriors, and then jump them! They can’t run, since you’ve got fast troops, and you can wear them down, replacing your losses two thirds faster than he can replace his! Once he loses his expensive special unit, he’s just like everybody else, and subject to swarm. Still, this does make the Iroquois more dangerous than your other likely neighbors, so mark him for destruction first!

Drawbacks
The Ancient Game is yours to command, but once you move out of the game’s first era, you’ll be “just like everyone else,” meaning that your late game performance is very much tied to how dominant you were in the ancient world. Sit on your hands, and don’t let your Jaguars do what they’re best at, and you’ll struggle. Also, such a fantastic Ancient Era unit just BEGS to be used immediately, but doing so will give you a (largely useless) Golden Age. Eat it and move on. Nothing to be done about it if you want to get the most mileage out of your awesome unit!

[Velociryx]

Babylon (Religious/Scientific)
Starting Tech: Ceremonial Burial/Bronze Working
Special Unit: Bowmen (2/2/1) Archers with extra defense (requires warrior code to build).

The Goods
If you’re going to talk about the Babylonians, you’re going to talk culture. Period. Sure, they can hold their own in a fight, but what makes them strong is infrastructure. There’s just no stopping a determined Babylonian player from running away with the culture game. You get temples, libraries, cathedrals, universities, and research centers on the cheap…half price what the other civs have to pay! That’s just a crushing advantage. Add to that the raw power of your scientific trait (one step from iron working, spearmen from game start, free tech advances), and the advantages of religious civs (temples from game start, one turn anarchy), and you come away with a group that has all the important advantages on its side. Especially on the higher levels of play, where your half price city builds enable you to keep pace with the AI, “The Babs” are awfully hard to beat.

Your special unit is a bit of an odd bird, requiring a tech you don’t have at game start to build it (no big deal there, and not terribly uncommon), but what you get for your money is a unit with a VERY short offensive shelf life (though for the shield-cost, it’s the best value in terms of defensive units till Pikemen). Consider that the required tech (Warrior Code) is probably not high on your wish list in any case (quite likely you’ll want to run for Iron Working as a first choice, given the strength of your scientific trait, and the ability to lock down as many sources of iron as you can, denying your near neighbors one of the twin sources of Ancient Era power (Iron and Horses)). And of course, by the time your first swordsmen hits the table, the Bowman begins to fade in importance as an offensive unit. Not to say that the Bowman can’t be used to good effect (see below), just understand that it’ll take a bit to set that up. In short, a good rule of thumb to use with regards to your Bowmen…think of them as a handy “escape hatch” in case you get stuck someplace without iron.

Strategies From One End of the Spectrum to the Other

General
Whether you take the path of the conqueror, the statesman, or anywhere in between, the veritable HORDE of cheap infrastructure builds you have available to you will make ramping up stellar research and/or controlling newly conquered cities really, really easy. Cultural warfare makes a strong addition to the Warrior-King’s bag of tricks, and of course, it’s entirely possible with the Babylonians to rip a deep wound indeed into a rival civ’s Empire on the strength of culture alone. Why bother to build much more than a token (defensive) army when rival cities are flocking to you like bees to honey!

The overriding question to ask yourself as the Babylonians is: When do I want my Golden Age? With the Aztecs, there’s no choice or question….the Jaguars are simply too good to pass on, but your special unit is of the “take it or leave it” variety…you can work with it if you choose, and have an early Golden Age, or….not. The point is, as the Babylonians, you have an almost exquisite amount of control over when and where your Golden Age happens. Use that to your maximum benefit.

Battling: When doing battle as Babylon, take the strength of your culture into account, and make it work for you! On one side of that equation, you can rely on the fact that your enemies will have a very difficult time actually keeping any city of yours that they capture. Most likely, you’ll see rapid cultural reversion (so in MP, don’t be surprised if your opponents simply burn your cities, rather than risk trying to keep them and failing), and on the other side of that same equation, it means that you can capture enemy cities, and worry relatively less about losing them back to the other guy’s culture.

Also, it allows you to set up fairly linear attack forces when designing a force to capture an enemy city. Odds are good that your borders will be pushing hard against your enemy’s borders, and that one tile all around the city you’ve targeted for capture is all he’ll have available. That being the case, and considering what an extremely good value swordsmen are, you can actually get away with constructing an all swordsmen force. Step over the border, and you’re adjacent to the target city. Doesn’t matter if you’re slow or not! Of course, when facing units in the field from other civs, a balanced approach is still superior (read on to find out more!).


Pure Builder
This is easy. Found a number of cities fast, and if you’re idling, waiting for your population to build up so you can pump out another settler, build a temple. Do that with every city you build that doesn’t have insane food production (wheat on a flood plain), and you’ll pull ahead in the culture game by default. Repeat that, making liberal use of the Despotic Whip to rush in your cheap infrastructure, and the cities of your rivals will soon be flocking to your banner!

Played in this way, you take on the Mantle of the Merchant Prince, plying what luxury and strategic resources you have in abundance, and parlaying those things into an unbeatable tech lead, with your army kept small but serviceable (another good use for your versatile Bowmen!), in case anyone wants to spoil your good time.

If you’re looking for an early Golden Age, use the exceedingly well-balanced Bowmen as Garrisons and drop a trade embargo or two on a near neighbor. Soon enough, he’ll come demanding satisfaction, and the Golden Age you requested is yours! Use it to snag your choice of early Wonders. Of course, there are a few that make a better “fit” than others, and some of those would include: Pyramids (rapid growth = more rushing improvements = more culture), Great Library (free tech is always nice, and you can use your trade goods to bleed your rivals of cash), and the Great Wall (enhanced defense, makes your bowmen/spearmen almost unbeatable in the Ancient Age).

On the other hand, if you’d rather wait, then skip everything in the Ancient Age and snag both Copernicus’s and Newton’s. If one doesn’t get you started the other will, and it will serve to enhance your tech lead in any case (or, if you’re looking for a little bit later, go for Newton’s /Theory of Everything, which should put you in the thick of your Golden Age while you’re building The Hoover Dam….nice!

Tech-wise: Hands down, Banking! You have to be able to pay for all those cheap buildings you rushed in during the ancient age! In fact, that’s the biggest risk you run…not paying enough attention to your finances can get you into trouble very quickly, and with this faction, your ability to produce culture FAR outstrips your ability to pay for it. Banking is your best friend!

Momentum
Think two-front war. Your goal…your objective is to take on two (or more!) opponents at once. Culturally on one front, and militarily on the other. You are the Civ they had in mind when they thought of Culture Bombing. Build a city in the face of your rivals and pop-rush in every (cheap!) culture-producing enhancement you can.

And, where colonization is concerned, you should probably give some serious consideration to simply leaving the territory in and around your capitol completely open and available. Let your rivals build cities for you and leave them space to do it….free cities are always nice. Of course, if you don’t want to go to quite that extreme, colonize normally…you’ll still wind up with quite a take.

Tech-Wise: Iron Working is a much stronger choice for you than Warrior Code, simply because the swordsman tends to be better at taking cities than your special unit, but after that, you too, are going to be almost magnetically drawn toward banking whether you want to or not, and perhaps even more strongly than your Builder cousin….after all, you’re fielding a vast Babylonian army AND paying for all those wonderful culture boosters….that gets expensive very quickly!

Note though, that if you get boxed in, and are denied a source of iron (which shouldn’t happen! You’re a scientific Civ, damnit!), you can still swarm reasonably well with Bowmen. Don’t expect to conquer an Empire, and in fact, don’t even try for a WALLED city, but you should get by well enough to snag a city with iron in its production radius.

Your Nearest Neighbors
Your nearest, most likely neighbors are the Zulu, Egyptians, Persians, and (oddly), the Aztec. Tech Wise, this limits your options, as three of the four share a trait (and a tech) in common with you. You have Two civs with Warrior Code (your special unit pre-requisite), two with Masonry, and one with Pottery.

Zulu: These guys are a pain to fight, but not terribly difficult. Their Impis are annoying but not dangerous to you. Still, they are a 2-move unit, and should be treated with a bit of care. Their 1-attack means that you should let them come to you, break themselves against your ranks of spearmen, and then let your horsemen hunt down the wounded.

Egyptians: Have what amounts to a cheap horseman, who needs roads to get through nasty terrain. Use terrain to your advantage when fighting them, to minimize the advantage of their special unit. You’ll want to make a balanced swordsman/horseman force, and probably make it larger than you think you’ll need (to counter attrition attacks, with horsemen again hunting down the wounded). Still, keeping their captured cities should not be a problem.

Persians: Yes….the Immortals are an awesome unit. No, you don’t have anything that compares, but…the Persian forces are only awesome if they attack! If you attack them, they’re just “regular” swordsmen. You’ll need horses to beat these guys, and you’re just insane if you send an Infantry-based assault team against them and expect favorable results. The AI is smart enough to use terrain to its advantage, and will eat your initial assault, then dismantle your army. Horsemen. It’s the only way to keep those pesky Immortals at bay!

Aztecs: Not really sure why the Babylonians start near these guys with great frequency, but if you are a fan of the Civ, you’ll certainly find yourself with Aztec neighbors more often than no. In any case, they’re certainly a civ to watch out for! Rapid expansion toward them to choke off growth, and acquisition of horses to compete with the Jaguar movement rate. Standard Anti-Aztec tactics apply, with a slight twist. Odds are good that you’ll not actually LOSE any captured cities, so don’t bother to burn them down, simply bring enough troops to fend off the predicted counter assault, and include liberal numbers of horsemen in your attack force to pin those Jags down! (again, try to arrange it so that the Jaguars cannot actually reach your horsemen, and use them to clean up against the wounded).

Drawbacks
Your special unit is a good value for the money (eventually upgrade to Longbow), but works somewhat against the natural flow of your faction, requiring a tech to build that is somewhat off the beaten path from techs you’d likely be interested in, and making it somewhat difficult or unnatural to use. This weakness though, pales in comparison to the strengths that show through with this faction. In MP, give this Civ to your best micro-managing Builder and he'll make it shine like few factions can.

Sophist on The Chinese
The Chinese have quickly become my favorite civ. I view Industrious as a little bit of a benefit of Commercial, Religious, and Scientific, because (when played properly), you can leverage this trait into building everything more cheaply. Random thoughts on the Chinese:

The Rider: too bad it's not 4/4/3 like it's stated on the website. As it is, 4/3/3 is a nice bonus, but nothing great. The major advantage I see is its timing. Usually when my Riders start kicking around, I'm ready for my second war. I'm also probably building the Sistine Chapel at the time. This makes for a well-timed Golden Age (as compared to, say, the Zulus or Aztecs). The first war is the one where I establish that I'm not a whipping boy and catch up a little to the AIs, but the second war is where I try to make some serious conquests to get near the top of the charts. One more thing to bear in mind is that with a well-designed road network (see the Military Road Network post above), the 3 move can be a 9 move. This is especially potent when combined with Industrious (below). The extra point means two things:

1) you need fewer units within your borders because they can a) get where they're going faster b) generally stronger because you're Militaristic

2) you can blitz your enemies. This is handy against a culturally strong civ with deep borders. Generally, at the point in the game where Riders are most useful, enemy civs will not have cities with borders further out than three squares. So you stage in the chopped off corner (if there is one), and can usually attack the city in the next turn. This will almost definitely be the case for the border towns that you will strike first. Finally, the extra speed means you can wreak havoc behind enemy lines by going after key resources that might be deep within the borders.

Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade Horsemen to Riders, but you can upgrade Riders to Cavalry.

Industrious: This is key for my style of play. It allows your single worker early on to develop around your capital resulting in increased production and food, and therefore a city that can pump out more sooner. Admittedly, you cannot leverage these improved squares much as a despotism, but it does help. I generally head for Republic after getting Literature, Iron Working, and the Wheel. The opportunity cost of building workers ("lost" production, one less population point) is an issue into the medieval period, while you can switch to a republic while still in the ancient period. You can also get a serious road network going earlier, which will help with your early wars. It's been previously stated that Industrious workers are like twice the worker. You have one worker doing the same work as two workers that 1) cost twice as much 2) take twice as long to build 3) take twice as much population.

Militaristic: the advantages of this trait are clear; easier leaders and more experienced units. This is especially handy since the Riders are a mobile unit and can retreat, so when using the UU you have a better chance of scoring a leader. Cheaper barracks mean it's easier to place them in distant cities with high corruption, which is probably where they'd be most useful for healing.

Starting techs: Warrior Code and Masonry. There's not so much to work with here. Masonry means you can get a jump on the Pyramids, but by the time you're ready to start those (either for themselves or as a placeholder till you get Literature), you could have easily traded for them anyway. It puts you closer to Mathematics, in case you believe catapults are useful (slightly). Warrior Code in and of itself isn't great, but it puts you a step closer to both Horseback Writing and Monarchy. Plus exploring with Archers in the early game is clearly better than exploring with Warriors (assuming you're willing to wait a couple more turns) because you can generally overpower escorted settlers and will just about always win when attacking barbarians as opposed to just most of the time.

Other stuff: Since you don't have the ability to create happiness wonders as easily, despot pop-rushing seems a less viable strategy in your primary cities. However, the training camp idea is gold. And your Industrious workers mean better production earlier (to hammer that point again).

It seems you'll always start near the Japanese. The other civs in the game tend to be a bit more random, from what I've seen, though the Indians and the French also seem to appear frequently.

[Velociryx]

GROWING YOUR EMPIRE
***********************

Here’s a brief outline of the things you should be doing, and the order you should do them in if you want to excel at the game (based on “Current Best Practices.”) You’ll find details of much of this material in the pages that follow, though it should be pointed out that not everything has been completely fleshed out at this point, leaving plenty of room for “the next big idea.”

I. Land Grab Phase, which includes:

*Expansion (currently favoring REX-style expansion)

*Initial City-Specialization (certain specific cities allocated to performing certain specific functions for the Empire as a whole….defense (barracks/troop cities), research (libraries), trade (resource patches and “future investment” cities, etc.

*Construction of a basic road network to “luxury connect” all cities

*Construction of a Military Road Network for rapid, efficient troop transport

II. Establishing Local Dominance, which includes:

* Gathering intelligence (esp. maps) about neighboring civs

* Development of a decent Ancient-Era army

* Launching selected strikes designed to grow your Empire at the expense of at least one neighboring civ

* Increase your resource base, both in terms of strategic resources (Iron and Horses in the Ancient Age, and by increasing your lands in general, you increase the chance of acquiring additional mid and late game strategic resources).

III. Cultural Development and the Bid for Empire, which includes:

* Mass-construction of Cultural-Enhancing city builds

* Selective strikes against rival civs who have cities rich in luxury or strategic resources you find yourself lacking

* The establishment of a vast trade network with friendly civs

* Growing your research capabilities


IV. Going for the Win – The type of victory you’re aiming for will, in large part determine what sorts of activities you persue


OoO

Early Game Expansion – Keeping Pace with the AI

The AI expands brutally and relentlessly (REX-style, per Lawrence of Arabia!). If you don’t, you’ll find yourself rapidly falling behind in every meaningful category. To that end, the human player must become the T-REX of the REXers, meeting that fast expansion point for point, racing to choke points with settlers or warriors to limit the AI’s opportunities and stake out a largish tract of land for yourself.

And, as recently pointed out elsewhere on this thread, do not simply limit yourself to traditional “good city spots!” Late game resources can be found in rugged hills, jungles, and deserts, so if you want your fair share of late game resources, don’t be at all shy about founding cities in what would be almost universally regarded as lousy terrain. Consider them long-term investments.

So….if you’re looking to establish yourself as an Empire, how best to go about it? Obviously, founding cities in food rich tiles MUST be given top priority in the very early game (to fuel your further expansion into those “long-term investment” cites.

What follows then, are the current “best practices” to get yourself up and running in record time:

The Needs of the Empire
If you’re going to build an Empire, then you have to have at least the basics of a plan in order to proceed. What is it you want to accomplish? Survival, obviously, but then what? Are you going to play the conqueror’s game early? If so, then thinking in terms of where you want a barracks (troop training center) will be of relatively high importance to you. Got your eye on an Ancient-Era Wonder or two? Then you’d better start thinking now about where to found a city that can be set aside to begin work on it, and the sooner the better!

So….let us start by making a list of things your Empire will need to get in order to start really flourishing.

1) Settler Farms: You need two high food production cities if you want to keep pace with the AI’s expansion, and these should be founded with all speed, before anything else is given consideration. These are, after all, the cities that will drive the expansion of the rest of your Empire.

2) Worker Farm: In the early game, you can get by with just one of these….should also have good food production, but with a granary installed, pretty much any city can do this effectively. This city’s overriding goal is to crank out a minimum of one worker per city (more if you can afford it, by all means!), and start mapping out extensive road networks, irrigating tiles that will net you a Despotism food bonus for doing so, building mines and so on. This is absolutely essential to your long-term growth, and should probably be the third city on your list. Very high priority here!

3) Barracks/Wonder City: If you have the conqueror’s eye, then once you get four cities established, you’ll probably find yourself with sufficient mass to begin churning out troops everywhere and simply rush your nearest opponent, but if you’re looking at a more Hybrid stance, then one ancient era barracks town is probably sufficient. Such a town need not have stellar food production, but should get a granary in case pop-rushing troops becomes necessary, and the town should have access to numerous hill/mountain tiles for good early game mineral production. In the case of a city you have earmarked for production of an Ancient Wonder, keep the granary and skip the barracks. In both cases, the city in question should get a temple, both for culture and population control, and if time permits, each city should produce a worker of its own, to be specifically assigned to improve terrain around that base. Garrisons are optional for the Wonder City, as they can, no doubt, be provided by some other town nearby, and of course, if the town in question is a troop center, then the garrison will be arriving shortly.

4) Luxury item(s)/Ancient Era Strategic Resources: Once you get the basics up and running, it’s time to start thinking about your mid-range future, and in the ancient era, that means Iron and Horses. Savvy trading and attention to the appropriate areas of the tech tree (The Wheel/Iron Working) will reveal the location of these ancient era resources to you, and these should get your immediate attention! The same goes for luxury items….any that are close by (especially if there’s a “patch” of 3+ tiles!) should be raced for! Not only are the luxuries themselves tradable to other Civs later in the game, but the individual tiles net you extra coins when worked, making them excellent indeed!

5) Long-term investments: See that patch of desert over yonder you’ve been sending settlers across to get to juicy city sites? Or that wide swath of hill country to the north? The jungle along your southern border? Once you get yourself established as outlined above, now it’s time to start thinking in terms of long-term investments. Cities founded in any of the places mentioned above won’t grow much during the early game. They won’t be paragons of productivity by any stretch of the imagination, but….they WILL increase your chances of securing those rare and valuable mid and late game strategic resources, and for that reason alone, they’re worth founding.

Pulling Double Duty
Of course, it goes without saying that if one of your early settler farms/worker farms/wonder-building towns also happens to be sitting astride luxuries or strategic resources, then so much the better for you! Anytime it is possible to do so, found your cities so that they can achieve multiple goals and serve multiple purposes for you! Doing so will bring a kind of efficiency to your Empire that you’ll be hard pressed to top.

Run your expansion along those lines, and on Monarch-level difficulty and below, you’ll find yourself keeping pace with the AI, if not surpassing him.

Local Geography and You
Prevailing local geography can really cinch the game for you, or hinder you in unbelievable ways, especially given the effects of corruption. The starting spot of your first city can and will quite literally define the character of your early game.

Two examples, at opposite ends of the spectrum:

First, let us suppose that you start land-locked, on a medium sized or larger continent. Your capitol (by default, your first city) will be centrally located to the rest of your empire, no matter how you choose to expand. Quite likely, your expansion will be in all directions initially (a city founded along each of the main compass points), with resources determining the exact city placement.

Thus, as you expand, cities that are “additional layers” away from your capitol begin to feel the burden of increased corruption, making the eventual addition of the FP a necessity. Note though, that in this case (a centralized starting point), relocating your Palace is NOT required, as you can simply control the direction of your expansion.

At the other extreme, would be a start that places your capitol at the tip of a peninsula, or adjacent to a wide swath of desert you have to “jump over” in order to start founding good cities.

In this case, your early game is going to be MUCH different from the initial start described, because the majority of your cities will face corruption due to distance from the capitol.

In game terms, this means that while you may grow and expand as quickly as the AI is, your cities will not be nearly as productive, forcing you to seek out more high-food producing centers than you’d otherwise need to, in order to speed build based on population sacrifice (a thing which most people will be doing in the early game anyway, but which you will be REQUIRED to do in order to remain competitive, in the absence of decent production from cities very far from your capitol). Of course, the ultimate solution to this problem is that once your Empire reaches critical mass is to relocate your Palace AND toss up an FP, but, unlike the first case mentioned, you face a steep challenge (having to do both). There ARE, however, some things you can do to help your position.

First, you’ve GOT to be aggressive if you start with your capitol in a poor position (read: NOT centralized to your natural expansion). By aggressive, of course I mean expansion-wise, as odds are good that your capitol will serve as one of your “settler farms” for much of the early game. A poor opening position will mean that each settler has to travel further to found a new city, making a good road network (one that does NOT cris-cross over rivers, for example) even more important, because you’ll need every bit of speed you can muster to keep pace!

As to the rest, there are a great many different possibilities….a great many TYPES of aggression you can use as tools to further your position, and I’ll cover some of them below to get your mind turning on the subject: (keep in mind of course that anybody, with any sort of start can make effective use of the following….it’s just that if you DO start with your capitol in an isolated position, the items below become less of a luxury and more of a “must-do.”

1) Military Aggression: This has numerous advantages in that it frees you up from having to worry about going for Early game wonders. Let somebody else get them, and while they’re building the wonders, you’re building an army to relieve them OF their wonders. You’ll NEED to start thinking in terms of founding a base near forests (preferably with a game tile in the radius) to be used as your troop training center. The reason for this is that if you start with a poor geographic position, you NEED to get a Great Leader sooner, rather than later, in order to speed-build your Palace where you want it. In the early game, with so many of your cities producing next to no minerals (mostly lost, due to corruption via distance), you’ll find yourself hobbled if you don’t make relocating the capitol happen in relatively short order. A Great Leader can do that for you, in addition to netting you a handful of nice cities (keep them if they fall in a nice position relative to your soon-to-be-moved Palace, burn them down if no).

2) Palace Bounce: This is especially useful if you find yourself on a peninsula and hemmed in by numerous rival civs. Odds are good that they’ve intentionally settled the headlands of the peninsula in order to stifle your growth, and if so, then rushing in cultural improvements and then relocating your Palace in their face will almost assuredly cause rival city defections, enabling you to “bounce” your Palace again, this time closer to where you want it (and probably cause a few new defections, prying deeper into the Empire(s) of your rivals.

3) Map-Making: Especially vital if you find yourself alone on a smallish continent, or hemmed in by a rival with a bigger and better culture than you that’s preventing defection. In this case, you NEED to build a galley and get the heck out of there! Find a new place to settle, and do it quickly….remembering that the AI is expanding like a mad rabbit on Viagra…if you don’t find a place to build a few new cities, there soon won’t be anyplace left!

Final thoughts re: Implications of starting position:
A centralized start….even a centralized start devoid of any sort of bonus resource (food or luxury) is generally superior to a more isolated start (at the tip of a peninsula, for example) for a number of reasons: First, it limits the natural size of your empire and increases empire-wide corruption effects in your game. Second, in order to maintain long-term competitiveness, it all but requires re-location of your palace AND the building of your FP, where a player starting with a centralized location will probably be able to leave his palace where it is, and simply build the FP. This of course, implies that you’ll be hard-pressed to net any of the ancient-era wonders, and if you do, it will be a much more difficult proposition than if you’d had a more centralized start.

It (isolated start) also may require a much more militarily aggressive stance from you and/or make the technology “Map Making” much more important to your game than it might otherwise have been. Regardless of the specifics of how you choose to deal with it though, the fact is, an isolated/peninsular start for your civ will VERY MUCH determine the flavor and character of your early game, and can have implications that will carry through well into the mid-game.

OoO

Arrian on the Early Game

Vel - The early land grab is so crucial to the rest of the game that I find myself pondering the best strategy often (also b/c it's probably the most exciting, nerve-racking, and frustrating part of the game - and I've been playing Regent. I'm sure it's a lot harder to compete w/the AI in expansion on Monarch and up).

Food, due to the value of despotic forced labor, is the most important thing early on. I would go so far as to say that if you do not start next to a river (no need for aqueduct for 6+ size) with some decent food-producing squares (at the very least grassland - and, in that case, you better have some other benifit, like hills w/gold or something), you should probably restart - unless you find the game too easy and want that type of disadvantage to overcome.

As with all things in this game, a good portion of your strategy must be developed based upon 1) who you are, 2) where you are (local geographical situation) and 3) who is near you. To follow up on my present game example:

My recent decision to concentrate my core cities up first rather than shoot straight for lux. sites in bad terrain was made easier by several factors. First, I was the Babs, and their crazy culture virtually guaranteed that my empire would gain border cities due to defections - thus expanding outward to cut off the other civs and backfilling later was not as important. Second, I had the benifit/curse of a LARGE jungle that started near (just to the sw of) Babylon and ran east to the sea, with a large desert above it (starting n of Babylon). To the north of the desert were the Japanese... this created a bit of a buffer. The Zulu were just south of the eastern part of the jungle, with an inland sea due west, Persia to the south and the sea to the east... they were screwed. Once I saw this, I knew I had a little bit more time to put down my outlying cities. After all, those cities you build to grab a luxury early on are often useless for anything else for 1000s of years (not to say the luxury isn't worth it, but...). Third, I had two lux. resources very close to my capitol - and a lot of them (5 or 6 spice/2 dye)... which meant that later on I could trade them all over the place.

Now, if I had not been playing the Babs, would I have been as comfortable with not aggressively cutting off the AI? Given the exact geography of this particular game... probably, but maybe not. The culture creep of the Babs is extremely comforting (I see the AI build a city in the general vicinity of one of mine and I think "thanks, guys, that will be mine soon enough" and I'm often right). Say I was playing as the Chinese (all other things being equal). I probably would have felt more vunerable, as their culture takes much longer to ramp up. I probably would have fought an ancient war.

In short, aggressive expansion to hamper the AI is less important for civs which have early culture bonuses (basically: religious, as scientific's culture power shows up w/libraries, which require literature, which takes a little while to get to). The quick expansion of your borders to influence 2 hampers the AI, in that there is that much less available terrain for their settlers. If the AI builds a city on a site that you really wanted, fine, make sure that your cities closest to that one build temples, libraries, cathedrals, and universities as soon as they are available. If the city isn't too close to their capitol, you should get it (particularly if it's a zulu city or some other civ with terrible culture early on).

A note on capitol isolation during a war: if you are fighting a limited war (your goal is to take a couple of cities and then go for peace), this is particularly valuable. Cutting the roads to the enemy's cap. will prevent them from importing resources (whether luxury or strategic) from other civs. Also, many times it will be easy to cut off the cities between his cap. and you, thus throwing them into disorder. Capitol isolation will not cut off all cities from all resources, as any city that is connected to a resource by road can use it. Still, it will hurt the AI badly.

A note on armies: Their value lies in the combined hit points of the units you put in the army. You don't gain attack or defense power, just the ability to keep at it longer. I recently built an army of knights. After usuing it twice on the attack (killing defending pikemen but going down to 1hp both times), I stopped that, and used it as a defender for my offensive units and bombard units. Just imagine the defensive potential of an army of mech inf. You could send that, along with with a bunch of artillery, deep into enemy territory and bombard the hell out of anything you want, wreaking general havoc and mayhem on your enemy. On the attack? Just mass your offensive units... no need for an army.

OoO

[Velociryx]

The Military Road Network
If you more or less follow the advice in this thread, then when your "land grab" is all done, you'll have a goodish number of cities established, with roads connecting most, and your workers workin' on connecting the rest.

So....what next?

Well...two things.

First, you're still running Despotism, so irrigating tiles won't net you any immediate benefit (unless it's a bonus tile - floodplain irrigation nets you +1 under despotism...stuff like that). Spiking your shield counts is always a good thing, but in general, you wanna confine that to the cities that you know will be working on wonders or slow growth cities that you've set aside for non-pop-rush troop building.

Okay....so that'll keep a few workers busy, but you've got something more important for the rest of those guys to do.

Namely, constructing a good Military Road Network. That's a very different beast from a road network that simply connects your cities together for luxury purposes.

A Military Road Network is constructed with one goal in mind, and one goal only: Rapidly getting your troops where you want them.

Note too, that in the Ancient Era, this does NOT always mean road-building along the shortest path! Why not?

Rivers.

They stall your movement for the turn when you cross them, in the Ancient Era, and this MUST be taken into account when planning your MRN. It also must be taken into consideration when determining which cities you want to have Barracks (ie - KNOWING the effect of rivers on movement, it's probably not a good idea to build Barracks in cities you have founded along rivers, especially if they'd have to cross said river to get moving toward that rival civ over yonder).

How big a deal is this, in game terms?

Consider two civs of more or less equal size and productive capacity. One has a willy-nilly road network, and a unit from his Barracks city can reach that city and get to "the front" (wherever that is at present) in about 5 turns.

The other guy has a cunningly constructed road network that shaves three turns off of the travel time (2 turns).

Both of these guys start cranking out swordsmen and massing them.

Thirty turns later, guess who's got more goods? (by a wide enough margin to *really* be telling!)

So...plan the matter carefully! If you have your Swordsmen crossing three rivers as they make their way to the front, it'll take you forever to get organized! A bit of advance planning will eliminate this as a problem and enhance your game.

Resource Depletion and Strategic Reserves
If it indeed proves to be the case that a resource with a road running through it has a % chance of running out, then, if you find yourself with more than one source of a given resource, it would behoove you to NOT road that tile until and unless your initial source ran out….thus, prolonging your total supply of that resource….strategic reserves….

Blc’s Scouting Notes
During the early exploration stage of the game, stay on the mountains and hills with warriors (if you're not playing expansionist).

This makes your initial search for resources and huts much more efficent. I usually will try to send one warrior on every mountain I see, then send one after him in order to pick up the goodies.

GaH’s Worker Notes – Use ‘em in gangs!
i want to talk about workers. i think it's a better idea to have them move in stacks and do one improvement at a time. for example, 2 workers building together a mine and then a road will complete both tasks at the same time as one building building a mine while another is building a road. however in the first case you will be able to use the mine a couple of turns earlier than in the later case. that can make a noticable difference in a really tight situation. i go the same way when clearing jungles or forest, cause then you can see your work actually having an effect much sooner!

CousLee on Workers
I like to maximize workers, and something to keep in mind. There are odd turn numbers. Playing the Egyptians and lumberjacking: 3 regulars and foriegn will harvest and replant. If you use 4 regulars, you are losing potential. 7 foriegns will also do the trick (if you have a lot of them). Only thing you have to make sure of, is you use 2 regulars for the chopping, and 1 reg + 1 foriegn for the planting. This will free up an extra worker for every two lumberjack crews. It allows for either less workers to support, or more crews. I like to have one crew per town to supplement with the 10 shields. If you set it up right, and start with a forest, you can LJ and still work to forest in the city window. Since the game does tend to cycle through the workers in order, mm is minimal. Once I was done with all normal work up to railroads (in the current game). I used goto to put every worker I had in on on of two tiles. then used the wait option to get the cycle to the begining of the worker sequence. Then it was only a matter of goto, chop/goto, chop to set up the clearing part of the team, then send one of each to plant. On subsequent turns, they when in proper order when cycling (reg,reg,reg,for). I like to build. I have almost every imp in every city, and am kicking culture butt, and lead in the tech. If I need to clean up pollution, I simply divert a harvest crew to do the job and spacebar any not needed. I have come across that the worker order has gotten screwed up diverting them, so I have to watch and make sure the one foriegn don't try and chop tress, but it simply a matter of using the "w" key. And it don't matter if the foregin does the plant before the 3rd regular. it can be adjusted based on how many free workers you have available. 2 regs and 3 foreign work just as well, or most any combo. Just keep in mind it's 4 turns to cut, 3 turns to plant. (currently under demo).
OoO

Ramping up your Growing Empire
(The Despotic Whip)

The basic premise here is that under Despotism, sacrificing one or more population points in order to strategically speed build critical early game infrastructure can put you light years ahead of the pack, either in terms of culture, or in terms of building a massive early game army. In either case, if your opponents are using the strategy and you are not, you will fall hopelessly behind. It’s one of those things that’s simply too powerful to ignore.

Specifically, each point of population can be sacrificed for 20 shields of production (40, the first time you do it), so bear that in mind when you decide what to rush and when. Also, keep in mind your civ’s native strengths when pop-rushing (the Babylonians, for example, have a HUGE advantage in this regard, being able to rush in most all cultural-enhancing stuff for half the normal price). In other words, in the early Middle Ages (if you are still expanding and have not yet dropped out of Despotism), it may be wiser to rush a Cathedral first—more expensive, but you get 40 shields for the first pop-sacrifice-- at a recently founded city, and then follow that up with a rush of a Library or Temple (note that this assumes you have at least one basic build already in place (Temple or Library….perhaps completed by other means….a combination of lumberjacking and unit disbanding?), and are in the position of being able to use your first rush to complete the bigger, more expensive build). In any case, no matter how you go about it, the fact is, it’s a powerful tool to put in your “Empire-Growing-Toolkit!”

OoO

The Culture Bomb/Palace Bouncing
Related to the above, if you’re looking to wage a “Cultural War” on a neighboring Civ, then the faster you can get your culture enhancing goodies installed in border towns, the better for you. With that in mind, when you target one or more towns you’d like to absorb, you NEED to immediately start thinking in terms of rushing in as many cultural improvements to towns that surround it, and you need to do it as quickly as possible. If possible (and especially if there are a number of rival Civ towns nearby, all fairly distant from that Civ’s capitol), begin thinking in terms of re-locating your capitol closer to the border, even if only for the short term. Proximity to the capitol is a big factor in deciding if/when a city joins the fold, and the loss you may take in higher corruption rates in your empire while the capitol is “out of position” are well worth it if it enables you to scarf up half a dozen rival cities without hurting your reputation or firing a shot. What’s more, if your culture is significantly higher than your neighbor’s, you can always re-locate the capitol once the cities are yours, and they’ll stay in your fold.

To speed this process, another thing that has been found to be helpful is to have any excess workers (or settlers produced from nearby towns) join the cities you’ve established along the borders. It seems that size matters after all….

Cultural Kudzu
The concept of the “Culture Bomb” applied Civ-Wide, causing the steady, outward crawl of your borders, and, if your capitol in anywhere in the vicinity, causing rival civ cities to simply melt into yours when borders begin to touch.

blc’s Culture Capture – A different twist!
I started my last game with my capital directly on the tip of a north/south penisula. The next civ was aproximately 20-25 squares directly north. My idea is to build 3-4 cities 12-15 squares north of my present position. Leaving a lot of room for the AI to come in and backfill. Push the culture on 3 of the cities and move my palace to the 4th most centrally located city.

My reasoning behind this is that the culture effects of the capital drop off with distance. If the AI has 2 or 3 cities with my capital between them and his, I should manage a cultural takeover of the cities. I need to move my Palace anyway and this might give me some free cities.

I would like to try to keep my Forbidden Palace in reserve if I find an unsettled island. Then I use lumberjacking and build a viable colony. Ed: Note that post patch, lumberjacking a new city’s infrastructure in place has been severely limited.

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Sophist’s Note on the Cultural Win
One thing to point out is that you get no culture from captured improvements. Zero. Zip. Nada. Building Great Library in 600 BC means that by 400AD, that city is generating an extra 12 culture points. That's not too shabby.

Which brings up an interesting point that the REX-happy players in this thread might want to consider (caveat: I've only gotten to Monarch level). If you are going for strong culture, you should only build one settler out of your capital and then build every culture-enhancing improvement as soon as possible. A temple built in 2000BC is generating 4 points of culture in 1000BC. A cathedral built in 500BC is generating 6 points of culture in 500AD. And so forth. If you're going for a cultural victory, it seems to me the only reasonable way is the 20,000 point single city, and that almost has to be your capitol.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Building Wonders
Long before the wonder you want becomes available, select a town and have it start building a Palace. Post-patch, you can no longer have a number of towns set to “building the palace,” however, you can hold one or more of your minor wonders “in reserve” specifically for the purpose of pre-building wonders.

Then, when you get the tech that has the wonder you’re looking to build, make the switch with no loss, and you’re well on your way! Note here, that this means your capitol is probably not the city you’ll be building the bulk of your wonders at, which is why I build my barracks there….while the cities all around the capitol are building and pre-building wonders, the capitol can churn out troops when it’s not building infrastructure, lending a bit of synergy to the growing empire.

Most of the Wonders are of only marginal value (though there ARE exceptions!), but build all you can anyway if you’re going for a cultural win. They all generate a bit of culture, and if you have them and the AI doesn’t, you’ll only further your culture lead.

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Early game tech advances
Your rate of discovery is abysmal in the early game….but there are a number of things you can do to improve your lot in life, and some of them are:

1) Explore like crazy!!! Not only do you stand a better chance of popping a goody hut and getting tech, but you’ll also be more likely to meet other civs and trade with them. If you get it in trade (or free), you don’t have to research it, thus, circumventing the problem entirely. And while we’re talking about trading tech with other civs, milk them for everything you can! Make as many separate transactions as possible if you have lots of information of value to them. Do they want tech? Make a trade! Maps? Another trade! Communication with other civs? Another trade still! Of course, when they have information YOU want, try to get as many goodies in a single deal as you can…. The thing is….they’re GOING to find out about the other civs anyway….you may as well make them pay you to do it! (note! If you’re planning on an ancient era-war, shoot for monarchy, otherwise, skip it, trade for those techs later, and go straight for Republic…again, depends on your game style).

2) Get the HELL away from Despotism! Monarchy isn’t much better from a research standpoint, but it IS better….make the switch (just milk Despotism for all its worth while you’re under it)!

3) Build roads! LOTS of roads! Why? Yeah, it looks tacky, but hey….roads = money and money can be used for research….but be smart about it…..after you’ve got a basic road network connecting all your towns and their special resources, haul a bunch of workers back toward the capitol and start road building there, where corruption is not an issue, and slowly work your way out. And while you’re at it, spike those mineral counts!

4) Build the Great Library!

Arrian’s Notes on the Tax/Tech Slider
This has been mentioned by others elsewhere, but I wanted to bring it up here. If you are willing to do some relatively minor micromanagement of your budget, you can REALLY benifit from it.

Early in the game, tech is probably gonna cost you 32 turns no matter what you do. I get most of my early game tech from trading with other civs (and buying from them). I set science to 10% and make as much money as possible. Periodically, I check to see if changing the science rate will speed up my research considerably... if it does, fine, I do it. If not, keep raking in the cash and buying tech from others (while researching straight for literature for the G.Library). This builds a cash reserve for the switch to a non-forced labor gov't such as republic or monarchy. You're gonna need it.

Later in the game, you bump into the 4 turn cap. This, like the 32 turn cap, can be used to your advantage. Often, you can get a tech in 4 turns with a relatively low science %. More importantly, I've noticed many times that when I'm 1 turn away from a tech, I can lower science (sometimes to 10%) and I'll still get it the next turn, while I get a TON of cash. Then, switch back to 60-70% for the next tech.

I used both of these strategies in my most recent game and by the late industrial age I had built up a treasury of nearly 8000 gold, which was useful as I was upgrading 40+ riflemen to infantry to mech inf. and rushbuilding temples, libraries, cathedrals and universities in all captured cities (only 1 out of roughly 15 reverted, and it was no biggie).
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Aeson’s Note on Workers in Capitols
Anytime an AI Civ has a worker in their capitol city you can trade for them. It also works the other way around, as you can give any worker in your capitol to the AI Civ of your choice. I think trading units would be a great addition to the game, but currently it only works with workers that I've noticed.

Bblue’s Strategy Notebook!
1) Early Tech Research
Although nothing is absolute but given a normal/good starting location, the first techs I reserch are the Wheel and Bronze/Iron working. Reasoning that these reveal the location of the Horse and Iron strategic resourses, this in turn allows me to concentrate my direction of empire expansion. This seems to be most useful when there are multiple directions of expansion and/or when you need one of these reasources from your civs UU (ie. Persians/Iroquis ... Indians; feathers, not dots) Just don't want to be left out in the cold without my ancient era UU.

2) Culture Warfare
Having a more peaceful/hybrid style of by I've found I can make tremedous gains (sometimes up to 3/4 of an Ai civ) with nothing more then cultural expansion. Key to this is the civ specific trait of Religious. This trait has quickly proven itself the most useful for my playstyle. Only fleeting glimpses of anarchy and cheap Temples/Cathedrals is a tremendous advantage. Unlike one of the more recent posts where they consider letting the AI civs backfill gaps in thier Civ then aquiring them through culture, my stadagy is more of an ever-marching wall of cultural assmilation.

I'll position city locations on my frontier as close as possible to neighboring civs cities (2 spaces if possible/ but a minimum of 3). Then rush build cheap temples, libraries, and later cathedrals. Assuming you've managed to get an overall cultural advantage, which you should with cheap temples, my borders experience a steady, though not lightning fast expansion, doing nothing more then building things in cities that I'm going to build anyway.

Some more sutle points to this that I have found effective, is if an opponents city is 'culturaly pressured' from multiple cities, they defect faster, so I consentrate rush building around the oppisition's cities that form recesses into my borders. With the relegious trait, it is extremely nice the drop back to despotism for a turn or 2 so you can rush build with population instead of shields. Palace/Forgotten city placement also plays a important role, I tend to build my FP fairly early in the game and typicaly not a great distance from my Palace, this allows 2 things; fairly fast production of the FC, since corruption is not totally crippling near the Palace and that when I do move my Palace my older more developed cities don't take a huge courption hit. Palace moving is also somewhat key to this stradagy.. once the FP is in place move the Palace as near the advancing cultural front as feasable, thus keeping your new cities out of nightmare couruption and putting additional pressure on oppisition cities.

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CORRUPTION
*************

Combating Corruption
Even in the “post-patch” world, corruption will no doubt need addressing, and there are a number of approaches you can take to deal with the issue:

1) Under Despotism, sacrifice your population to further your own glory. Doesn’t matter how bad the corruption is, you get the same benefit, production-wise (see the Despotic Whip article, elsewhere in this thread).

2) Assign a worker or two to each town you’re looking to hurry production in and chop down trees. Post patch, you can no longer use IFE to replant and repeat, but ten shields is ten shields!

3) The old standby….cash. Use #2 above till you get a good start on whatever you’re building, and rush it with coin for the rest.

4) Troop shuffle. Build troops in towns with good production, shuffle them to the fringe and disband. Won’t help you with wonders, but….


Capitol/Forbidden Palace placement on a standard sized map:

Under the following grid layout, you'll find your empire to be VERY productive!!!

Key:
F = Forbidden Palace
P = Palace
_ = Nothing (space marker)
0 = City

0____0____0____0____0
0____0____0____0____0
0____F____0____P____0
0____0____0____0____0
0____0____0____0____0

OoO

[Velociryx]

DeafHawk’s Triple-Ring Plan
Build cities like this: Exactly 5 spaces away W, N, E, S. 4 spaces away, NW, NE, SW, SE. only like a ring of cities around my capital. It is similar to city placement grid plan with palace and FP described earlier in this thread that showed cities placed abstractly as squares of cities around your capital and FP. But in my opinion, better to think in a circle, rings not squares of cities. I had workers building roads running from capital to the first ring city sites built as soon as possible before the settlers are built, with two horsemen units stationed in capital for easy rapid deployment to protect settlers or workers as necessary defense agaomst pesky barbarians (or a hostile civ for that matter) call it my rapid response defense team. Then after first ring is built, I proceed to build a second ring around the first ring about 4 spaces away, if possible. 3 spaces if i have to if the other civs are too close. In no time I had 18 cities fairly close to my captial, not too bad but I did not get my second ring fully completed. The other civs grabbed seven sities I wanted to build cities as part of the second ring there oh well, nothing that a little military solution can take care later. I think I could be much better. I need to work on my REX strategies and work around having no luxury. There was absolutely no luxuries or iron to have in the whole midwest! Only horses to be had. About having no luxury I did not realize how that really got to hurt on reagant level. If you use the whip to force build ganaries it is not possible without temples to have past size two without having third citizen become entertainer and you still will have to use two garrisons to keep size two cities full productive. You would have to build temple and two garrisons to have size three cities full productive. The citizens have a long memory! I used the whip and because of that, I had to build second garrison and a temple beside a ganary and I believe this slowed me down. Maybe it was just better not to use the whip and so I do not have to build second garrison and temple and I can have size three cities churn out the settlers fast enough for the land grab race for my second ring area. I did have the cattles and wheats and rivers to irrigate, plenty of them indeed, to help me. Another thing I think I should have was to build less workers as I am playing an industrious civ and my workers build more roads faster hence needing less workers at start.

But anyways this brings me to think of a planning theory I will call the deafhawk triple-ring plan to propose as an aid to visualize what you want to do with city placements and whether you should trouble to keep your conquests or just raze or sell them. This is an optimizing plan to use prime circle of land ( area size depending on factors determining extent of corruption) near your capital best you can to place the most possible potiental productive cities in that area and a long-term defense plan. This is only good I guess for larger maps if you are lucky enough to start in a central location in a huge landmass with no other civilizations too close by and if land area is relatively flat ( not too many mountains) you can have unbelievable a lot of productive cities ( read: cities that actually produce some commerce and shields as opposed to fully corrupted cities) than you would ever think is possible with just the palace and not the FP built yet if you expand aggressive like I did, hopefully with help of luxuries! You can squeeze 8 cities or more five squares or less from your capital in a ring around it and having roads connecting capitial to ring cities so you can station your horsemen in capital for rapid response defense. These will be your good productive cities. They will be churning those needed workers, military units, and settlers for the second ring of cities. You use those productive cities to build the second ring, 3 or 4 or 5 squares if you can get, just grab those area 10 to 12 squares from your capital and make sure you use close to every square 10-12 squares from your capital. Those second ring cities would not be much good as producting cities as due to corruption problems. But they are potiental good or decent producers later on when you tackle the corruption problem . For this purpose of this rant I am using this term to refer in relation to corruption, the ablity to produce without waste commerce and shields, and not general infrastructure) You can have like 24 cities nearly optimal spaced relatively close to your capital, 8 cities in the first ring plus capital already good producers and about 15 cites potiental decent producers (potiental to be realized later). And while you are racing to settle the first ring then the second ring area, you should be researching straight as possible to code of laws for courthouses and then on to republic. By this I mean when you get them road connected to your capital, courthouses in them and you switch to republic, presto, you have 15 extra good or decent productive cities. And WLKD helps too. 25 ( or more depends how you space them?) productive cities to churn all those military units eh? This is the general REX plan and the point you step out of the land grab is when you get the second ring of cities built. At this point you should be preparing for the republic switch, that means building courthouses, temples, and ganaries and getting your cities big as possible as republic works best when the cities are big. Use the whip liberally and switch only after you got those improvements in place and after that, wait until cities grow back to decent sizes if they are not already. Your workers should be emphasizing on irrigating any squares that get you more than two food and building those roads then mines lastly. Under depotism your food growth is the real producer not shields if you use the whip effectively and that is especially true for the second ring cities with their corruption problems.

After you are done with all that, switch to republic and presto! you have nice 25 productive cities, not very bad thing to have in civ 3! Oh, , in any time during the expansion phase or preparation phase you have to wage war ( pray a short war and you survive!) and you conquest some cities or you culturally assimalite cities. Do keep the cities in the second ring only if they are good placed to use effectively the second ring area squares ( like 8-12 squares from capital) Remember in this plan you would want to space to squeeze most potiental productive cities possible in that area (but not squeeze too much of course). If they do not, raze or starve and build a new city instead. If the acquired cities are in the third ring (liek more than 12 but not much as more than 16 from capital) you keep. Why? they probably will be worthless ever as productive cities unless you build the FP near them and I do not recommend that. Yes, but you keep them as "buffer" cities. You do not build any improvements except for barracks and walls and just set those cities on wealth and forget about them and do not bother to improve the land excpet for military roads. The third ring cities are to be your fodder cities, merely cities with walls and barracks and some place to station your armies. In other words, a ring of defense, your frontline defense. Remember the plan assumes a huge landmass whereas you are in the middle and surrounded by potiental hostile civs, meaning no chokepoints to block out civs, and making defense much harder if you get ganged on. So you need kind of a early warning system. The cities are better than a lot of fortesses and your troops are more concrenated and more effective and if you get nationalism you can take advantage of the third-ring population for draft and not have to resort to draft from your productive cities. IF you ever get your third ring cities up and you are attacked and you lose, no biggie. No major blows. you fall back to your real cites and counterattack later. That is for the third ring cities. Any cities you acquire that are not of the triple rings area you just sell or raze unless of course they are close to resources you need.

Of course, this is all abstract, and have yet to be implemented in real practice, and only in certain maps and situtations. But modifications and variations can be derived from the general idea. This plan is based on assumption on standard maps ignoring FP for now, you have a limited range from your capital where cities within the range can decently produce (whatever in your judgement) in republic with courthouses and that cities beyond this range will not be any good use as producers. I do not have an idea how far this range extends yet. Maybe someone would figure that out. And this range creates a limited circle area of land that you should focus on how to better use this area for your city placements and get them set up quickly. And that in peaceful or relatively peaceful race of empire-building, the civ that focus only on and finds the best use possible for that limited area and set up their potiental producers soon as possible not just their actual producers and try to realize the potiental as quickly as possible will be way ahead of the others that do not.

OoO

[Velociryx]

BATTLE STRATEGIES/NOTES
*****************************

Combined Arms
Okay….there have been a TON of threads about how twisted, bent, and broken the current Civ3 combat system is. There have even been some well-presented arguments about how and why to change it.

I’ll not be discussing any of that in my post today for two reasons. First, because that particular horse has been thoroughly beaten TO DEATH in the Civ3 General section and I’d rather not rehash it here, and second, because it doesn’t matter in terms of the game we’re playing AT THIS MOMENT. Like it or not, the combat system in Civ3 right now is…well…the combat system in Civ3, and if we’re going to talk strategy, then we need to talk about it in terms of what IS, rather than what should be in one group or another’s opinion.

So….yes. There have been reliable reports of skewed combat results. I’ve seen a scant handful of them myself, and if you’re looking for ways to minimize, or even eliminate those skewed results from your game, then keep reading.

There are those who argue that late game units are not powerful enough in relation to their ancient era counterparts, and in fact, Soren Johnson, one of the programmers on staff at the company (and the one who brought you that truly WICKED AI!) said as much in a recent chat. Design decision, pure and simple.

So yes…in terms of raw firepower, modern units are not overwhelmingly powerful vs. their older counterparts, but I contend that raw firepower only tells part of the story, and to that end, let’s take a look at one oft-cited example of combat to find out more about that.

Da Big Matchup
Cavalry vs. Longbowman

Stats (and I’m at work, so if this isn’t exact, someone lemme know and I’ll correct it)
6-3-3 vs. 4-1-1

Results:
Cavalry attacks Longbowman – Regardless of the terrain, it is almost inconceivable that the Cavalry unit will lose. You MIGHT see a loss if the Longbow unit was fortified in a town on a hill (are those bonuses cumulative?), behind a Wall, and if the Longbowman was Elite and the Cavalry a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, but even then, my money would be on the Cavalry. The fact is, the Longbowman is pretty much toasted.

Longbowman attacks Cavalry – On open terrain, the Longbowman will, more often than not, DRIVE THE CAV UNIT OFF. Note that the Longbowman will not kill the Cavalry unit, and this is the telling point. The best that the more primitive unit can hope to do is to simply weaken the Cavalry unit and drive him away. Unless the field commander OF the Cavalry unit chooses to fortify, the Cavalry unit CANNOT LOSE this fight, even if on the receiving end of this attack! Of course, in hilly/mountainous terrain, a fortified cavalry may be able to fend off the assault, but even still…why run the risk of hunkering down when one of the main strengths of a Cav. Unit is its mobility?

I submit to you a few points for consideration regarding the match-up mentioned above:

1) Under the current combat system, technological advances do not bring overwhelming firepower to the more advanced society, but they DO provide combat advantages that are less obvious to the eye, including an ever-widening array of specialized units.

2) Proper use of these units and their abilities will result in outdated armies not being able to significantly harm your forces, while simply moving your units “in the general direction of” your opponent in the same fashion as Civ2 AI will result (predictably!) in the case of a Longbowman killing a defending Cavalry. The point is that a good general will never allow the Cavalry into that position to begin with.

3) The biggest, most telling advantage that modern armies have over their older counterparts is two-fold. First, mobility. A modern army can hit harder AND pull back from an older army. Thus, the out-dated army finds itself continually “just out of reach” and unable to effectively counterattack. Second, combined arms, and by this I mean, bombardment from land, sea, AND air, fast (3 move) units, capable of slipping in and taking out the enemy stack’s best defender and then retreating back to a point of cover and safety (and without the enemy stack’s best defender, how likely is it that they’ll continue to advance??? And if they do, are there any doubts as to what the outcome will be?), and stout short range attackers to grapple with units as they close, while the mobile units guard the flanks and hit targets of opportunity.

The above three points can be applied to ANY BATTLE IN THE GAME, and doing so will result in your almost never having “silly” combat results. True, planes can’t sink ships in this game, but they CAN reduce them to a single HP. And doing so WILL make your naval battles easier, no?

Likewise, bombing the $hit out of a size 14 city (metropolis defense bonus) to reduce it to size 6 before the attack and weaken the defenders inside will make it easier on your attacking forces….probably easy enough that you’ll not take any losses.

Of course there are times when you hit the wrong button or when situations demand that you use a unit for something other than its intended purpose (Cavalry being the only defenders in a hotly contested city). But again, if you’re a good commander, you’ll have already made plans to relieve and reinforce the unit(s) in question, and they won’t spend too long in the hotseat.

On the other hand, if you have NOT made any contingencies….well….how good a commander are you? At that point, I would submit that it’s not the combat system that’s broken at all….

Anyway, all that to say that combined arms are amazingly powerful things, and available in limited form as far back as the ancient era (Catapult, Horsemen, Swordsmen). USE THEM unless you just like losing lots of men in battle!

Just like in SMAC, yes, you can construct a linear attack force (all swordsmen, for example), and you WILL win lots of battles, but….the first time your swordsmen get picked to death by a zillion Iroquois Mounted Warriors, backed up by strategically placed catapults guarded by fortified spearmen, and never even get to attack will be the LAST time you design such a one-dimensional attack force!

Tech advances DO bring combat benefits into the game. Not the “run over all opposition” type that many seem to be looking for, but the advantages ARE, in fact, there. All that remains is to….well….use them.
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EmarkM’s response to the essay
No combined arms strategy is complete without thinking of how you'll take out enemy resources. Here's a late game example. Once tanks come on line your un-updatable cavalry becomes outmoded, but you often have a ton of them left around. It's pure folly throwing them against fortified infantry behind a city wall--that's what tanks are for. But, I've been using them as pillaging units and they're fantastic.

Pillaging was something I almost never did in Civ2, since you could use enemy roads. Why take them out when you can take them over? Pillaging takes a whole new meaning in Civ3 when you can't use their roads and roads must connect resources. While your combined arms of tanks, artillery and navy are pounding their city, send the masses of now "useless" cavalry to pillage their roads and improvements. Especially access to resources. Their 3 movement is perfect for this sort of behind the lines action. Use transports to get them deep in enemy territory for guerilla activity.

Sure, bombers can accomplish the same thing, but you often have a lot more cavalry sitting around garrisoned doing nothing than you have bombers online. Since cavalry is rather expendable at this point anyway, it's worth it if a bunch get killed if you can take out access to their rubber to prevent infantry, oil to prevent tanks, or luxuries to cause unrest. If you can, take out all roads surrounding their capital and they're really screwed. I found the enemy concentrating so much on defending their cities that I was able to destroy whole swaths of improvements almost completely unmolested using cavalry deep behind enemy lines.

It's all part of a real PLAN you must make to win, as opposed to just cranking out the Civ2 Howitzers endlessly and just mowing down the opposition. You have to actually sit there for a few minutes at the start of your turn and plan where to cut their roads, how to get your units there, etc. Something you rarely did in the mindless tank/howitzer rushes of civ2.
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Comrade Tribune’s Response
I have noticed at least two strange things:

1) Industrial Era Longbowmen

You can stack Longbows with Rifles, and use the Longbows for attack. Why? Because Longbows are much cheaper, and have the same AV. So Musketmen become obsolete long before those timeless Longbows. Why did no one tell that to Napoleon and General Grant?

The problem is that Muskets and Rifles are very expensive, and for their price they should both have a slightly higher AV.

2) FLASH

(Forced Labour Rush): Under Despotism, you can mass-produce Horsemen (or, even worse, Mounted Warriors) with Forced Labour, and rush everybody else for a short, pointless game with the highest possible score.

What´s broken here? I think it´s not the Horsies. It´s a) Forced Labour, and b) Walls.

a) Forced Labour should cause Unhappiness. But, afaIk, there is, unlike in CivII, no 'Ultra-Unhappiness'. You should have, say, 4 unhappy people, but if, after Forced Labour, only one guy is left in your town, only one will be unhappy. One soldier is enough to keep him in line. I believe they didn´t intend that, it´s a bug, plain and simple.

b) Walls/Cities give now only +50% DV. That´s not enough. That´s the second reason why FLASH works. Walls should stop Horsies. In real life, they stopped nearly everything. Or Hannibal would have conquered Rome.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Army Notes
Armies. Most people don’t care for them, but I think we’ve been looking at it in the wrong way/not thinking about exactly what they CAN accomplish. I’ve been experimenting with that, and I’ve gained a whole new respect for armies.

First, consider that each unit fights till it gets till its last HP, and then withdraws and a fresh unit comes up. Thus, an early game army consisting of Swordsmen has the MAJOR benefit of cavalry (ie – retreats when badly injured, increasing survivability), and has three times more HP than anything it’s going to normally come up against.

Which means….

Armies can’t blitz, so don’t bother putting blitz-troops IN an army. They’re more useful to you separate!

Armies shine the brightest when composed of grunts. Infantry. Ground pounders.

An army consisting of three different units MAY be useful in a specialized situation or two, but my experimentation has revealed that a homogenous army does better than a mixed, and you’re gonna LOVE what an army of Longbowmen can do during a Middle Age assault on a town, or an army of Mechanized Infantry can do for you defensively in the modern era.

It’s a given that in every battle, the computer presents his best defender, so present your best attacker! Let your army lead the charge against those city walls and see if the sturdy spearman can chew through 15 points worth of pissed off swordsman….

Defensively, there’s no unit that the computer can bring to bear on you that’ll top a full-strength army, so if you’ve just taken a city and want to use it as a forward base. Plop an army in it and laugh as he tries to take it.

Hell, plop two down, either in the city or in mountain forts approaching it, and just let him come (and by the way, tell him to bring friends….LOTS of friends…he’ll need them!).

So…all that to say that I have changed my mind about Armies. No, they’re not going to ever replace the standard battle group….too tough to get, and maybe that’s for the best, because my experimentation with them has revealed them to be a lot more useful than I first gave them credit for.
OoO

Kinjiru On Armies
I have seen a few people make remarks about saving their leaders to create armies with Mech Infantry. In my experience, a far more potent army consists of two tanks and one mech inf.

The tank hits harder than the mech inf so the punch delivered is quite a bit higher and adding in one mech inf ups the defensive value to a level where I have never lost an army. I have been tempted to wait just a bit longer and build using all Modern Armor, but have never been able to make myself resist...

In last night's game I saw a serious weakness in the AI strategy. Mother Russia and I were allied in a war against Hammurabi. Cathy was getting leaders about every three turns, whilst I got none. But, they battles were far away from Russian land so as soon as she produced a leader she formed an army with whatever was at hand. End result: every third turn Russia had a new army, every second turn beyond that said army was killed. And this was in the medevial and industrial periods, not modern.
OoO



Stiel’s Capitol Isolation Theory (Stiel)
-Determine where rival capitol is (found embassy & RoP agreement)
-Look to see if you can reach it with units in one turn
-Make plenty of units to attack the capital

When you have an army of sufficient size,
- Attack all roads that are directly connected to the capitol!

Why?
1. The rival civ won’t acquire strategic resources (cannot build modern units any more)
2. The rival civ won’t acquire luxury resources (which will cause civil disorder in whole civ)

But keep in mind that you do not want to actually TAKE the capitol! Doing so will simply cause them to relocate it and will have the effect of enabling them to once again build modern units.

If there is a HARBOR in the city destroy it!
If there is a AIRPORT in the city destroy it!

OoO

gnomos’ Worker Worm
I've been having a blast with the french on chief level with a huge map, in early industrial ages.

The cavalry unit roxors, especially when backed up with about 20 workers (you need to be able to build railroads too).

The 3 movement on cavalry is key, you need to be able to rush through the culture zone and be able to attack in the same turn. You blitz a city, and capture any nearby workers. Raze the city if you don't have enough troops to properly garison it to quell resistors. Then quickly build a rail line through your newly conquered territory, right up to the far side (captured workers help add to your labor force). You leave behind a trail of workers on each tile. Then you motor the next wave of cavalry down the rail line, charge the next city, and conquer it. Once you punch through the defensive perimeter, the going gets really easy. The occasional amphibious landing can help crack any older cities with larger culture radiuses. Generally, you need about 4-5 cavalry for each city you want to conquer, the enemy civs need their own road network because your workers have 1 movement, and you need enough workers to lay track (french workers make great rail builders). If you do this right, you can take 15+ cities in one turn, leaving behind a "worm" of workers on your new rail line. After your cavalry have attacked, they often still have movement points left; when you've exhausted all your units you can then slide them along your new railrod to garrison the cities you have captured and decided to keep.
OoO


Notes from Gatamelata’s War Journal
I have some experiences to share in response to some of the
comments I've read here. Some background: I've been playing
the huge earth map that shipped with the game on Regent with
16 civs. I played one with 8 civs, but the rush of dealing
with 16 potential opponents - I haven't found anything yet
that beats it.


Making War:
I haven't thought of warfare in terms of ancient vs. modern. Mostly
I see warfare as an opportunity that may arise. Depending on the
flow of the game, who I've talked to, whether contact has been
made between the New and Old Worlds, etc, there are usually periods
in my games where many of my cities have all of the possible
improvements. During those times, I prepare for war by pumping
out a nice balance of defensive and offensive/support units.
Once I have a surplus of units, I take stock: are there any
inviting targets nearby? Are there any luxuries outside my borders
that I don't yet have, and that I can reasonably expect to hold
once I've taken them? Or wonders? Or chokepoints? Especially
chokepoints, since it is so much easier in this game than in
SMAC to manipulate the flow of the game by brokering between AI
civs.

If there are such valuables to be had, then I try to take a page
from the computer AI's book: the sudden, surgical strike. Drago
Sinio was exactly right on this point - you almost always, no
matter your government, want to avoid a protracted war. Know
your objectives, know your capabilities and limitations, and know
when you're beaten! Finally, take stock of the enemy and try to
get a good idea of what it will take to make him want peace, and
factor that into your objectives. Assemble a sufficient (overwhelming, if possible)
force just inside your borders nearest to your objective, then
strike without warning. Once your objectives have been taken,
offer peace, fortify, consolidate, and connect it via road to
your empire. You may have to offer gifts in order to secure
peace, but hopefully not - you should have hit the AI hard
enough that he doesn't want to fight you again.

It is very important to have an exit strategy when you plan a
war. If you just attack, take a small chunk of his empire and
sit on it, then he will strike back hard and where you least
expect it. Trust me, the AI won't waste troops on futile
counter-attacks. Once I had Joan on the ropes (4 cities left in
the Modern Era) and she was still sending units into my interior through our
neighbors to disrupt my infrastructure. If this kind of surgical
strike is executed well, it can be over in one turn, which leaves
no opportunity for counter-attack.

Any of this can happen in any of the eras, in my experience. It's
been very likely to happen in the Ancient era, when expansion is on the brain and
one can reasonably expect to be able to take up to 5 cities from
an enemy civ. I've also seen this kind of opportunity come up
in late Medieval/early Industrial eras. I find that quite a few
mid-game conflicts are fought with knights, cavalry, pikemen
and musketeers. During the modern age, I am usually kept hopping
upgrading my obsolete units, filling out my towns with all of the
by now rapidly-appearing city improvements, and cleaning up
whatever wonders I can grab.

OoO

Resource denial:
Heh, this was an area the AI excelled at. When the Zulus conned
the Persians into attacking me, the first thing Persia did was
sever my mesopotamian incense-gathering cities from the rest of
my empire, throwing many of my cities into unrest. It works well
the other way around, too. If you can deny an enemy essential
luxuries, it can be more crippling than denying strategic
resources. I was able to precede my aforementioned attack on
France by severing her wine and incense supplies - that threw
most of her empire into disorder. Joan eventually regained control
of her cities, but at what cost? Either she burned quite a bit
of cash generating the requisite improvements, or she made some
specialists. Either way, her productive capacity was significantly
reduced, and she never recovered. While she struggled to contain
rebellion, I swept into her heartland and smashed her standing
army. Since she was unable to field troops, and since her
outlying cities took advantage of the unrest to defect to my
side, there was little she could do to prevent France's demotion
to the level of a third-rate power. This is the power of Civ3's resource system - it is now
possible to attack all of the cities in an entire empire at once in a way that I
haven't seen since the days of Civ2 and later-version Civ, where
taking an enemy's capital could split his empire.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Inca’s Battle Notebook
On Armies:

It is extremely important to remember that the principle of Combined Arms must be applied to Armies just as it is to other units. To achieve their true potential, Armies must be supported minimally by Bombardment units and must not be used without those critical defense-crushing members when sacking a city. An Army is not intended to achieve victory if improperly used! An Army is simply a very high-powered attacking unit and if you recklessly throw it against a fortified position, it will break apart. Additionally, as the paramount high-power attacking unit in the games, Armies have best served me in ripping a pathway into the heart of an enemy so that my other supporting units can rush in and secure resources, destroy infrastructure, raze cities, etc. It is very satisfying to fire the fields of my enemy and destroy 1000s of years of their development in a matter of a few turns.

On Combat Concepts:

I have seen many complaints about stone age warriors defeating mounted Knights. If people did not use the labels of Archer/Tank/Cavalry to personify/describe the units and instead viewed them in the cold mathematical world of probability and statistics as 1.2.1 or 4.3.3 units, then combat would be viewed in a much more pleasing and rational manner. The act of rendering Civ3 combat into the picture of a stone age warrior with a spear facing a mounted charge of armored Knight gives a much different expected outcome than the math indicates. Combat = Math = Probability. People win the lottery all the time and statistically this is no different than some of the less-probable outcomes that arise from Civ3 combat. Think like the combat engine if you want to keep some sanity.

All Wars Must Have Objectives:

Remember that all wars have finite objectives and one must plan accordingly for the successful and unsuccessful conclusion of wars. Securing resources, denial of resources (my personal favorite), Wonder acquisition, genocide (aka no more cultural defections!). All these must be clearly defined to avoid an over-extension of your capabilities. Waging war for no good reason only leads to your civ being behind in tech/wealth/culture. Many posts that I have seen throughout the forum cite specific targets and objectives and I hope that the better combat style of the AI results in better player strategy for wars.

On Pillaging:

If you have little likelihood of keeping a town, and a successful siege is equally unobtainable, do not forget the power of pillaging! There is no real reason to attempt to capture a fortified, walled city in the hills when you can pillage its mines, destroy its roads, cut off its access to vital resources and luxuries and move on to a more obtainable objective (or just more pillaging!). Crippling the production capabilities of a town is often better than needlessly expending valuable units attempting to capture it. The AI no longer wars against solidly fortified and garrisoned targets and one should follow their lead in this matter. Imagine if they did this more actively to you! It takes many, many years even after the war officially ended before you would be back at pre-war production levels. That in itself should be a good indication that a war who's sole purpose is to destroy unprotected infrastructure can cripple the long-term productivity and advancement of a once powerful civ. Even better, you can accomplish this with more obsolete units and you never have to engage the enemy on it's terms. If they wish to stop the firing of their fields, they must move to engage you!

OoO

Inca on the Value and Power of Ancient Era Wars
I am a firm believer in Ancient Era wars because of the immense power of the Great Leaders that you obtain and your ability (as a victor) to extort the technological advances you may have delayed due to focus on military matters. As soon as you have a slight advanctage in military options over a neighbor civ (preferably not a
militaristic one or one with a great defensive unit), warfare in the early age(s) is a fairly predictable exercise in troop deployment and safety in combined arms and superior numbers. Rushbuilding a few of the advanced attackers means you pit your archers against the AI fortified warriors before they can react. By picking towns that lie on unfavorable defensive terrain for your attacks, you will win these early wars.
Generating a Great Leader(s) easily compensates you for the loss of production that you sacrifice to build your army. Rushbuilding a Barracks in the nearest town to the front allows you to rotate healthy troops in for injured ones and protects your Elite units. Additionally, when you are ready to negociate a peace treaty, you will catch up in technological advancements as part of the peace treaty terms when you demand them from the AI. Cultural reversion is less likely since nobody has much culture to work with and suppressing the revolt of small population towns is a snap. The AI is indeed much improved in terms of warfare, but it still does not properly protect it's units and towns. It also simply doesn't appear to have the capacity to consider population sacrifice for rushbuilding. That is why Rush Building under Despotism
works so well for the human player. Once better defensive units exists, warfare is much more dicey.

Your Science and Production must really be diverted and the tech loss can be steep. There also seem to be some breakpoints in the overall offensive and defensive units that indicate a good time for war. When everyone has fortified infantry in large, walled, high-population cities, then warfare becomes a lot more tricky than when it's warriors v. archers. Artillery opens up a new floodgate of offensive options,
especially when your opps don't have Infantry! In my next game, I play on playing a militaristic civ with early warfare to use Great Leaders for Wonders. Even as the Chinese, I gained many Great Leaders (I think 4) and got my Forbidden Palace, Newton's, Copernicus', and the Sistine Chapel as a result. The early Forbidden Palace is an incredible boon to any geographically dipolar civ. In my opinion, Great Leaders are the most powerful tool in Civ3. Almost too powerful.... Want the Pyramids? Just wage an early war or two. Protect your elite units and attack weakened defenders. Your Leaders will emerge and that tightly contested Pyramid race will be over before it even starts. Late game on Monarch/Regent it appears that the human player nearly corners the Wonder market by starting palaces and switching to Wonders as the techs become available. I have yet to spy on an enemy civ's city that was using a Palace for shield storage, and I've paused play, saved, and checked 30+ cities at a time to get a feel for the AI's priorities and I don't think it can consider the option. Anyway, in many circumstances, early wars give easy Wonders, new cities, technological equality, and weaker opponents all with little long-term risk. So
sharpen up your Clovis points and go take some cities!
OoO

Hastus’ Worker Revolution
This is something I am still experimenting with but its a good idea that may become useful.

I like to win by Conquest or Domination in the Modern time.
If you start a war in industrial time or modern time it could usually drag on for a long time if your goal is total conquest or domination.

At those eras I have already built all the mines,irrigation roads and railroads in my empire and the workers are only used for the pollution patrol. I sometimes use them for lumberjacking/planting to speed up city advancements in total corruption towns but I find it very tiresome. So most of the time my large work force (including many captured workers ) just are at sleep.

So what I decided to do is before I declare war against any civilization I have a built up a strong force ready to strike at their capital. That way I will be able to take it at one turn after war is declared. However what I also do is call up my target civilization just before I declare war and give them around 20 workers for free (This takes them from polite to furious btw,no idea why ).

That way I am able to take their capital the at one turn,and have a workforce of 20 man being able to build fortresses etc or join the city. Often I also rush in airport as the first improvement effectivily making their own Capital a landbridge to the rest of their empire.

I find this strategy a good way to securely relocate my workforce to hostile lands.

Another thing that I have thought about but do not know if it works is the possibility to give a huge mass of workers to a civilization that have already built all the improvements around their towns,railroads etc.. And that also already got a a good workforce themselfs. The question is..will the AI add my workers to their citys if they got around 30 extra workers? This is just a theory but if that is the case would that not cause a revolution in his towns? Making war alot more easy and perhaps even defecting towns? Anyway,that is just speculations. I need to experiment with that.

OoO

Raging Mouse on Defeating Superior Culture
I don't know if this has been said before, but if not then I hope it helps.

In the game I'm currently playing, I decided to conquer India's luxury resources, but ended up having to kill the entire country. Why? Because it was late in the came, and india was my equal, culturally. Initially, my target was only one city right behind the border, with dyes right next to it. Since I didn't want to switch away from Democracy, I figured anything more would be a waste of resources.

Easy peasy. I went in, and my combined horde of cavalry and cannons were able to take the city without losses. I garrison the city with three cavalries and a cannon while the rest fan out into the countrside to break India's retaliation. 11 indian citizens remain in the city when the turn ends.

Next turn, I get the heartwarming message that my newly conquered city has defected back to india, together with my three cavalries and my cannon. Making getting it back a true pain.

A small analysis showed that I was quite close to their capital, and two other cities of India had spheres of influence that would have gone past the conquered city, had it not had any influence of it's own. VERY probable cause of defection, in other words.

Solution: First I took my remaining three cannons, plus another four coming along later, and bombed the crapola out of said city until only one citizen remained. That took three turns. Once I reconquered it, I wanted to make sure I could keep it, so I had to conquer both the other cities to nullify their cultural influence.

Next problem: Now I had two new cities, and each of them had two Indian cities with huge spheres of influence threatening to eat them up.

At this point I figured I couldn't conquer the cities fast enough to prevent cultural defection. So; I cooked up this winning recipe:

1) Never ever garrison a city you think will defect to the enemy.

2) Starvation Schmarvation! Keep them happy, not well fed! Every single citizen should be an entertainer!

3) Strike back! As soon as there's no resistor left, rush-build a library. Not a temple, as they're more expensive and produce less culture.

4) Do some preliminary work. Bombing a city down to it's last citizen dramatically decreases the difficulty of keeping it from defecting, since that single citizen will likely be either content or happy.

And with these four golden rules, India was gone. And all it cost was... ehm... the lives of tens of thousands of potential civilian defectors. There's a lesson to be learned here; Cities are valuable, but not the population in them.

There. Hope this helps you beat those culturally superior nations.
OoO


Sophist’s Note re: Militaristic Civs and Mobile Units
Something I've not explicitly read in the talk about militaristic civs is their utility in conjunction with mobile units. Consider: a mobile unit will retreat (if possible) when down to 1 HP. So if you have an elite horseman, it will retreat after 4 hits where a regular horseman retreats after 2 hits. Effectively, the elite is twice as useful as the regular, before even counting the hero business. Just like someone pointed out being industrious is like having twice as many settlers, being militaristic (can) be like having 50% to 100% more army just by virtue of easy promotion. Well, numbers are fudged, but you get the picture.

Arrian’s reply
Yeah, that's something that's clearly very important. This is why I nearly ALWAYS build barracks before I build anything I intend to use in a war, so they're vets. I have tried using some "regular" horse units, and man, they suck. 2hits, and run away. Defenders tend to get that free "1st shot" at attackers, so regular attack units suck, unless you have them in overwhelming numbers. But if you're gonna build that many, why not build barracks?

As to the advantage that Militaristic civs get from promotions, I think it's kinda hard to quantify (does the editor, which I've never even looked at, provide any hard numbers on that?). For me, though, the real advantage to more promotions is all about leaders. As I said, I generally avoid "regular" units like the plague, so the only promotion I'm concerned with is vet -> elite. Once I have an elite, his task tends to change to that of a mop-up unit. He fights battles he should definitely win, thus upping his chance of survival and producing a leader. This is one of the reasons why, in a recent (regent) game, I had 11 cavalry still sitting around next to my 50-odd modern armor. They were my elites. If I had fought again (didn't), they would have been used.

Anyway, to make a long post have a point, I think the bonus Militaristic civs get toward leaders (isn't it something like 1/12 chance of popping a leader vs. 1/16 for "normal" civs) is actually twofold. They will have more elites, thus more chances at leaders as well.
Hmmm.... ponders the Germans...

OoO

[Velociryx]

Making sure conquered cities don’t revert (drenasau)
I've seen many people complain about captured cities reverting to enemy control via culture. I've been playing on mainly diety level lately, and what works for me is to ensure that there are no unhappy people in the city, even if you have more happy people to balance it out. I just set more people to entertainers so that everyone in the city is either a happy person or an entertainer. I usually don't even let someone remain just content. Of course, I build temples, cathedrals, etc. as fast as I can as well to stave off the city reverting. I may have been just lucky, but this has worked pretty well for me so far. I just won a tiny map, panagea, diety level game last night via space race in 1600 AD, but if I had wanted to, I could have finished off the game via dominination if I just took a couple more cities (which would have been effortless). This was without any cultural reversion during the whole game and I probably took something like 15 - 20 cities during the course of the game. Anyway, hope that helps some people.

Another approach for handling resistance (padillah)
This worked like a champ for me in my last game but you've got to have the money for it. (maybe as much as 2000 gold )

If you get a city from a battle the first thing you do is rush buy (or whatever rush you want to use) a settler. If you do this for several turns you will use up the people in the city until there is only one left (havn't figured out how to get rid of that last one yet). Then wait a turn and add them back to your city.

What I did was to "trade" settlers from a nearby city of mine but I think it should work just by waiting a turn or even joining the city right back.

The new settlers deplete the city by two (but they are resistors anyway) but it is comprized of your citizens so when you add it back you get two of YOUR citizens in the city.

And another (madmario)
If you are on a large or huge map fighting an extensive and consuming war of domination (and would actually like to keep control of, say, Babylon) consider shifting to comunism (if not already there) and culling some conscripts. Conscripts suck in combat, to be sure, but the work fine for maintaining control. Communism is really needed for big wars of domination, and it allows two conscripts/turn (who can also be used for domestic happiness, though they do cost some cash).

This is especially in the industrial age after medicine, when you may have really big cities thta wonst miss a few citizens playing cards in babylon. You can get really large amounts of garrison units this way for basically their upkeep cost.
OoO
One more for good measure (Adam Wallock)
When you capture a city (Ancient Era, under Despotism), if you start rushing improvments and units down to Pop 1 and then let it grow back to Pop 2 and then rush once more (back to pop 1 again) the remaining citizen will be the last to grow, i.e. Native to your Civ.

This brand of ethnic cleansing almost eliminates the possibility of cultural reversion, and stocks the city up with the culture and units it needs to hold and expand your new borders.

EMarkM on the Vassal State Strategy
I wanted to bring up on this thread the subject of vassals which I touched upon in the last thread. This is the strategy elaborated in detail on the "3 step to Deity" thread. In that thread this is combined with your standard "build nothing but warriors" rush strategy. I know this kind of mindless pumping out of military in the early game is frowned upon by many--a rebuttal being eloquently stated in the last thread by Vel. I also find the idea rather unpalatable myself as I, too, want to build an empire, not just rack up points in a rush frenzy.

However, don't let the rushing aspect of "3 steps" detract from the brilliance in the idea of creating vassal states. I don't think this has been explored here sufficiently. It's certainly not just a mindless exercise in rushing. I've been playing Monarch games now where you're very often behind in tech to everyone early in the game and quickly fall out of the "tech trading loop". You're in trouble when this happens because you'll be dead last in tech and have nothing to offer in trades. Putting science up to 100% sometimes isn't enough. Buying tech is fine, but only goes so far. At some point you have to give up exorbitant amounts to buy it from the leaders. Amounts you often don't have or are unwilling to part with.

Sometimes, you just have to go out and take it from them with force.

If you outclass a neighbor militarily, say, because they don't have iron and can't match your swordsmen or UU, but they are beating you in the tech race because of their AI bonuses, you're missing out on an effective way of catching up in the tech race if you don't make them a "vassal". As randomturn states in his thread, you use the AIs strengths, judo like, against them.

This is compelling game play, not just mindless warmongering. The trick is to take their cities to the point they cry uncle and come to the bargaining table. If they're strong enough at first--which they usually are--it will take more than a couple of conquered cities to accomplish this as they initially will refuse your envoy. But when they finally do, you can get at least one, maybe all of their tech, from them.

In the "3 step" thread they recommend backstabbing on the peace treaty almost immediately to get back to extracting tech. The rushers don't care about rep as they never cease in their conquest. I don't recommend this as an empire builder. In order to maintain your rep, you can't violate the 20 turn peace once negotiated. And this is where a lot of subtlety can come in. If they're still relatively strong, you can provoke them into breaking the 20 turn peace. This is a delicate situation since if you really break their backs and dominate them militarily, they'll never declare war no matter how much you provoke. You actually would prefer they remain semi-strong to get back to war sooner and so they are still out producing you in tech. Often they are strong enough to counter attack by then, so again, there's a lot to consider when doing this. You want to have them JUST under your control enough to get the maximum out of this, but it's a fine line to walk.

If you do it right, you can really play a civ like a fiddle. Declare war, take cities, make peace, get tech, provoke them to start war, take cities, make peace, get tech, etc. You can milk it for quite awhile doing this and get right back in the thick of things if you're trailing. At some point, they'll be so weakened by your onslaughts that they can't be provoked to initiate hostilities no matter how much tribute you demand. Then you just have to wait out the 20 turns. This is fine since by that time they'll research a tech or two so you can knock them back down again and get those advances. Once the 20 turns are up, you renegotiate peace. If they don't give up tech tribute, you can go to war with them and it won't damage your rep. Conquer cities, sue for peace, get tech, rinse, repeat. This can go on a over an Age.

Now at some later point you'll weaken them sufficiently that they can no longer produce tech for you and are reduced to a very minor power. At that point, depending on your preferences, you can take them out entirely to expand your empire, leave them alone to rot in obscurity, or continue with the vassalization and just get gold from them.

In my games my strategy was to always mark at least one civ for death and just mow them down to get their territory. At lower levels, you can just brute force w/o milking for tribute since you're often ahead in tech and tech tribute is meaningless. But at higher levels, even if you've marked the civ for genocide, it behooves you to squeeze them for all their worth in tech and gold before the final annihilation. To do so requires some forethought and planning, not just mindless unit rushing.

Fitz on the power of Massed Catapults in the Ancient Age
I submit that even catapults in large numbers are useful. My army of 10 catapults did fine at reducing all city defenders to 1 hp over 1-2 turns, destroying walls, etc. Not that you really need to do that when their backed by 20 swordsmen, but if you start leaving those swordsmen behind as garrisons ...
Aanother key point of artillery is the overrun. If you are trying for a quick push through several cities to your objective, or even just a fast moving military campiagn, with swordsmen/longbowmen (infantry based units) catapults help. With horsemen, they may not. Example:

Turn 1, catapults advance on the city, along with infantry.
Turn 2, 1/2 catapults pound the city. Infantry attacks, taking minimal damage. Unharmed infantry advance into the city capturing it. After the first unit captures it, the rest move through the city, alon with the other half of the unused catapults towards the next city.

Now, the you can do the same thing with infantry alone, but you will potentially take many more losses, and certainly have much more healing to do. The number of infantry who advance through the city will be much less, since more were damaged in the assault.

Compared to my first game, in which I never used catapults for attacking, my advances into enemy territory have been lighting fast in this game.

Enough catapults garuntee you won't lose any of your attacking force. I don't think that extra infantry will do the same. Basically, if I start with 20 swordsmen & ten catapults, I'll probably end with the same (assuming early game opponent). If I start with 30 swordsmen, I may or may not end with even 20 swordsmen.

METAGAME & OTHER ESSAYS
*****************************

Romantic vs. Scientific Gamers – Brushing against the edges of Metagame in Civ3
Okay, since I've been reading a lot of the threads over in the general section, it's got me thinking about something.

In the broadest sense of the word, you can break gamers down into two camps. You've got your scientific gamers and your romantic gamers.

Scientific gamers are all about the numbers. They want to know what the specific attack and defense numbers are and WHY. They want to change them if they don't suit (see the NUMEROUS threads in the general section re: combat). These guys are all about realism. Unfortunately, they'll probably find Civ3 not much to their liking. The reason for that is that Civ is not a wargame in the classic sense (certainly not in the sense of Panzer Blitz or Wester Theater). The kinds of detail in combat they're looking for are staples of the wargame genre, but have NEVER been implemented with great success in 4x games.

Why?

Mostly, because 4x games MUST, by their definition abstract combat in order to devote time to what the game is really about....that is, growing an empire!

Romantic gamers exist at the other end of the spectrum....they're the ones who see past the abstracted combat at what's going on behind the scenes. They're the ones who recognize that it's not "really" a spearman that just beat that tank, but an "ill-equipped partisan rebel" who somehow....somehow carried the day.

History is full of wildly romantic tales like that, and they tend to be our favorite stories.

From Thermopalye to the Russian withdrawl of Afghanistan, it sticks in our minds BIG TIME when the underdog pulls one out on the big dog.

And, IMO, since the game we're now playing represents the whole sweep of history, it's important that the combat system leave room for events like this.

Frustrating as it is when it happens to me, that's what history is all about....

OoO

More Observations From Gatamelata’s Notebooks
AI Behavior:

I have to add my voice to the chorus of praise for the AI. At first I was puzzled by some people who claim that the AI is impossibly aggressive, and others who said that it is completely docile. What's more, I've noticed both behaviors in my games. I studied the phenomenon some, and this is what I came up with.

It seems that the AI is strongly influenced by its early experiences. In games where I refused to share world maps, refused to trade technology, and was otherwise completely polite and well-behaved, the AI typically turned into a group of raging tyrants. On the other hand, when I traded frequently and yet was opportunistic and occasionally aggressive, these were the games where I could see 5700 years of peace. At this point it seems that if the player becomes the bad apple in the early trading barrel, to use a clumsy metaphor, it'll spoil the whole bunch relatively quickly.

The AI seems to place a large stake in willingness to trade. You might notice that sometimes a refusal to trade will even change a rival's attitude an entire step downward; say, from Polite to Cautious. So here are a few tips on forestalling AI aggression via trading:

1) If the AI wants to trade, do it! This doesn't mean you should accept those ridiculous late-game requests for mutual protection, right of passage, and 108 gold per turn. But trade something. My usual placation is just a token trade, such as territory maps, or even just a small gift of gold. Making such little gestures seems to keep the AI thinking of you as a friendly and viable trading partner.

2) If you see the AI getting ready for one of its ambush extortion gigs, where it builds up a huge military, requests a lopsided trade, then either goes to war when you refuse or sneak-attacks you the next turn, then you can still avoid the attack. When you see the piles of infantry gather just outside your border, and Alexander rings to ask for Sanitation, Flight and Radio in exchange for his World Map, offer a counter-proposal. Then do everything you can to arrange an alternate deal that involves per-turn payment. This seems to have two effects: first, the AI still regards you as a good trading partner, and second, the AI seems less likely to attack somebody who still owes them a balance of gold, or who is providing them with crucial spices.

3) Mutual protection pacts are a good way to keep a potential aggressor away. Find the biggest bully, and sign one with him. That way he's less inclined to attack you, and when war does break out, chances are you're on the winning side.

Finally, when your carefully-balanced millennia-long peace finally breaks down, there are a few things you can do. First, try to stay out of it if you can. Everybody else at war means that you've got a bunch of turns of production that they don't, and it means you're gaining ground in the Big Race. Unfortunately there is often a tangled web of mutual protection pacts in these games, and by the time somebody decides to be the turd in the punch bowl (so to speak) and plunge the world into global war, you may well be involved in one of these pacts. If so, then take any extra turns between the outbreak of hostilities and your own involuntary involvement to fortify your borders. Chances are you'll be fighting off two to seven civilizations, depending on world size and how the pacts shake out. Be prepared to lose some ground and keep your eyes on the long term goal - survival. You may even be lucky enough to be in a position that lets you do some serious land-grabbing right now. But be careful, and be ready to set aside some of your new cities as appeasement. Finally, keep in mind that it's usually pretty easy to sign a peace treaty during these conflicts. Not even the AI wants to fight several people at a time. If the pact that got you into the mess in the first place has expired, you can usually extricate yourself, and it pays to do this. I have found that the last couple of civs still engaged in the global war tend to stay in it much longer, for a couple of probable reasons: first, they've usually either gained or lost something significant, and they want to capitalize on the gains or recoup their losses. Then again, I may be anthropomorphizing, here - those are the reasons I'd stay in ;-) But this trend indicates that you should get your land-grabbing done quickly. By this time you have probably already got a manageable empire anyway, and there are only a couple of cities you should grab anyway: critical chokepoints, resources or luxuries, or perhaps a wonder.


Treaty manipulation:

Okay, so while we're on the subject of global war and far-reaching mutual protection entanglements, what if you're the fly in the world peace ointment? In a recent game I played the Romans, and the Greeks and the Russians each had a presence on my part of the continent that was too much to bear: each empire was right next to my capital, which made mine long and thin, and which made their cities potentially excellent ones if they belonged to me, for corruption would be minimal. Furthermore, the Greeks sat on vast oil reserves and the Russians had furs. Mutual protection pacts abounded, so I did some study and this is what I came up with:

When I just rode in and attacked the Greeks, I found myself at war with five other civs. The Greeks called in the Russians, who called in the Iroquois and the French (ironically enough), who negotiated with the Egyptians to put me down. Okay, not unexpected given all the pacts. But then I tried again, with a twist: I negotiated mutual protection with France before attacking Greece. Greece called in Russia. Now France is not involved, but they're sworn to protect both Russia and Rome. So who do they attack?

It turns out that they fall on the side of the defender, which was me. My forces were committed in Greece, so when Russia crossed the borders and attacked one of my cities, France declared war... and then got the Egyptians in on the deal, too. I couldn't stand to see the Americans idle, so I negotiated them into the mix, as well. But the point is that you can get past the tangled web of pacts if you're careful and clever.


Nationalism: a powerful tool

In another game I found myself using tanks to attack an England armed with Riflemen and cannon. It was here that I learned a painful lesson: conscription and mobilization are extremely effective defensive tools, and the AI is not at all shy about using them. The AI will ruthlessly rush-build, conscript, and mobilize in order to ensure its own survival. How do I know? Well, aside from the abundance of conscript-level riflemen that I killed, whenever I took a city it was ridden with unhappiness. When I checked to see why, aside from the predictable "Stop the aggression against our mother country!" business, there were also three other categories: "We can't forget the oppression you have bore down upon us" [sic] (rush building), "All we are saying is give peace a chance" (war weariness), and "Hell no, we won't go!" (conscription). Now, I hadn't been conscripting or rush building, so it seems that I inherited some discontent from the unlucky English.

Because this was such an effective tool for the AI, and because I am such a blatant rip-off artist when I see good tactics for the first time, I heartily recommend this. I have yet to fight much of a defensive war after the discovery of Nationalism, but I'm eager to be in the position so I can test the effectiveness of these tools. Now, to be sure, nobody wants to be in this position, but I enjoy playing a losing game to the bitter end as much as I enjoy playing a winning game to completion, so I would like to try. Perhaps when I start playing on Monarch or Emperor, I'll have a chance? ;-) Currently my T-REX (heh, cute name, Vel) style of expansion means that if I can forestall any serious AI aggression past the middle ages, I won't be seriously threatened militarily. Which, of course, explains why I have committed so much research into pacifying the AI.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Purists vs. Opportunists

An interesting series of comments recently right here on this thread led me to start thinking about these two groups, and I suddenly re-discovered something I forgot I even knew….where you are on the spectrum mentioned above will dramatically alter how you play your game. What’s more, it will dramatically alter what kinds of strategies you find acceptable to add into or mesh with your playing style.

So…before you even fire up your next game, you would do well to consider exactly where you fall on the “sliding scale” that exists between the two extremes. To that end, I’ll post some stuff that might be common to both camps:

Absolute Purist:
1) Would never use Pop-Rushing for anything, beelining straight for Republic, and later, Democracy

2) Cities would be five tiles apart….no exceptions, EVER. If a rival civ built a city less than the optimal distance, it would (eventually) either be absorbed or taken by force and razed. Similarly, if a settler, en route to a base site was about to be ambushed by a barbarian, the Absolute Purist would simply let the settler die, rather than found the base where he was to avoid losing him.

3) Would not use the tech-selling “exploit” to raise cash after buying a new tech from a rival civ.

4) Would chop down existing forests (eventually), but would not replant and re-use (IFE).

Absolute Opportunist:
1) Would space cities anywhere resources dictated, regardless of city spacing. One tile apart…two…three….immaterial. Access to the resources and number of cities is the only valid consideration.

2) Relentless use of pop-rushing any time there’s a need for it. Under attack? Rush in a defender! Got the tech for Libraries. Rush it in asap! Planning an attack? Rush build your army!

3) Would utilize any reasonable trick in the book, so long as it’s not outright cheating (ie – would not use the million dollar bug, but sees no problem with fund-raising tech selling, or mass deforestation).

Myself? I fall somewhere toward the middle, I think. I’d like my cities 3-4 tiles apart, but more importantly, I want more cities than whoever my rivals are (checkable each time I do diplomacy). Whatever it takes to get there….I can live with it. Once I can dominate the landmass I’m on, if I want to pretty things up later, that’s easy to do.

If I’m getting pasted, I’m going to respond forcefully, and probably overwhelmingly….lol…that’s just the kind of guy I am. If I have to respond by rushing a unit, you can bet the farm I will. That would include rushing a unit to hit someone preemptively sometimes.

I also use pop-rushing to complete an average of two ancient era buildings per city I have (frequently, when playing the babs, I’ll let their cheap temples and libraries build “naturally” and rush something else (market place and coleseum) a bit later). In games where I’m testing extreme playing styles, I HAVE played where I simply rushed everything, but in general, I average about two buildings and two units a city.

I lumberjack readily, and I use it to my advantage, timing my deforestation to speed build units/buildings, especially when there might be a long period between city growth, or when I don’t want to pop-rush, because lumberjacking will finish the build and much of the pop-rush would wind up being wasted. Sometimes, I replant later in the game to hurry the construction of factories with more lumberjacking, but not always.

I’m not above fund-raising when I acquire a new tech from one AI faction, making the rounds to re-coup what it cost me to get the tech in the first place (and then some!)

Anyway, it’s important to figure out just where you fall on that spectrum, because the answer to that question will help define what game strategies you will or will not use in your game.

In essence, the question is: When you sit down to play Civ3, how much of a straight jacket do you put onto yourself? How much do you limit what you will and won’t do?

There are no right or wrong answers here.

This is not a test you can pass or fail.

But it IS vitally important to think about, because it will, in a very real sense, impact how much flexibility you give yourself in the game, and it will in large part determine which of the strategies you read here you can incorporate into your games. (Because, undoubtedly, you will read some stuff in here that makes you blanche in terms of applying it to your games).

Anyway….definitely a good topic to mull over and reach your own conclusions about, cos it has ENORMOUS impact on your game!

OoO

Corporal Clegg’s In-Game Observations
On the subject of workers, I found something new in my game last night that may not be obvious (at least it wasn't to me).

We all know that one of the strong factors the AI takes into consideration when deciding to go to war with you is your military strength. Weak military = AI attack, strong military = less likely AI attack.

The thing that I didn't realize before last night is that for purposes of the AI declaring war, it appears that workers count as "military" units.

Here's my experience:

I'm the english in the late game, clearly the most powerful civ on the map and approaching a spaceship win. Germany is to my west, across a small choke point that I pinned them in early and have since fortified with fortresses / tanks. Russia to the east, and France to the north. Germany and Russia (surprisingly) were friendly the entire game, and france came at me a few times but I beat them back and took a few of their cities for good measure. America, Babylonians, and Japan on another continent.

I've got about 50 workers running around the map clearing pollution, building RR's, etc. Needless to say I was getting tired of the long terms due to watching them. So, just for kicks and since I had a lock on the win, I disbanded all of them (could have fortified, but decided to disband instead).

The turn after I disbanded all my workers, german signed an MPP with russia and attacked! I beat them back and started to set up my defenses (I frustratingly couldn't attack their territory due to the MPP, unless I wanted a two front war). The next turn the germans allied with the French against me, and since France had an MPP with the rest of the Civs, I was essentially at war with everybody.

Now, since I was really just trying to complete the win, and clearly it seemed they attacked because I disbanded my workers in that pursuit, I decided to do a reload. I generally never due reloads, but for this specific case I made an exception.

On the reload, I didn't disband my workers and instead fortified all of them. In this case, all civs remained peaceful with me for the remainder of the game and I got the spaceship victory!

This was very interesting to me because it means that while I am making workers primarily to improve my territory, it also makes me look stronger in the eyes of the AI....very nice.

It also means that the "poplulation banking" techniques discussed earlier in this thread (building extra workers when your cities stop growing), also builds you military might in the eyes of the AI.

Just something I found interesting that I figured I would share and hear if anybody else had similar experiences.
OoO
Specific Building Notes – Factories
I don’t know if this is at all the norm, but here’s how I approach it….and let me start by saying that every city I’ve got gets a factory! True, pollution can be a problem, but with a team of 4-6 workers on permanent pollution patrol (ctrl-P, if memory serves??), you’re all set! And, read on for some ideas on how to get your pollution patrollers for free, too! (no upkeep).

I regard industrialization as a pivot-point in the game. Corruption or no, the addition of factories to even horribly corrupt cities can do nice things to your overall productivity, and to that end, the MOMENT I get the tech for it, nearly city I’ve got changes its production from whatever it’s working on to a factory.

There are exceptions, of course. Cities currently working on Wonders keep working on them, unless they’ve just started, in which case I’ll still switch, then rush the factory and finish the Wonder even more quickly!

Cities who are at or near growth limits and building an aqueduct/hospital get to finish those builds before starting their factory (yep….I generally beeline for Sanitation before factories….this is because even without granaries, my cities spend tooooo much time stuck at size twelve if I do it the other way…), and cities that have recently been culturally absorbed/militarily captured and don’t have “the basics” in place yet (cheapies that I can rush easily, up to and including: Temple, Library, and Cathedral (esp. if I have the Chapel Wonder).

Of course, factories are honkin’ expensive builds, especially on the fringes, where you have scant shields to work with to begin with, BUT…there are some things you can do about that.

First…consider the early game. Your worker-priorities look something like this: Road-build to new city sites, road-build to connect critical and luxury resources, make mines to boost mineral counts in cities you want to build early Wonders, and irrigate the occasional food tile, but only those that will see some benefit to it under despotism.

Note then, that clearing forests was not on the hot list for your busy workers, and when you start mass-producing factories, now would be an excellent time to start doing so a vengeance, generating LOTS of those “10 shields to…” messages to speed your factories to completion. Also, now would also be a good time to gather up all of those out-dated warriors and swordsmen, ship them to some fringe town and have them line up to offer to melt their armor and weapons down for the cause. It’s only a few shields, but hey…every little bit helps, and those guys have no doubt paid for themselves many times over by now anyway.

Doing both of the things mentioned above, and mixing in liberal amounts of cash will see you speeding selected factories in strategically important cities to completion relatively quickly, and if you’re really in a pinch for money, once your first few new factories come online, having them build a few artillery units (or something) and transporting via rail for disbanding at fringe cities should see all your factories coming on-line in good time. (you’ve got the “built up” production from the stuff they were working on before the tech, you’ve got an army of workers milling around anyway, who instantly begin descending on every patch of forest anywhere close to cities now working on factories, and you’ve no doubt got a number of obsolete units milling around).

Also….in terms of raw production, there’s seldom any contest at all between a factory and a courthouse, so if you find yourself having to choose between one or the other, always do the factory first and use the productivity gains to speed in a courthouse. Post-patch (depending on how they “deal with” corruption, this may change, but for the moment, nine times in ten (or more), the factory is the way to go in that comparison.

So….factories as soon as they become available. You’ll be glad you did!

With coal plants though….I never do. Hoover Dam comes right on it’s heels (or at least that’s what it feels like in terms of getting tech), and I’ve found that by focusing on running my fledgling rail network through mined tiles (everything eventually, of course, but starting with the mines!) where I want to build HD, I can spike my mineral counts obscenely high anyway (without a coal plant), and generally get it built in something like 20 turns (and by this point, I’m running about 4 techs ahead of the next nearest competition, which means that even if he destroys his economy in the name of science, the turn he gets the tech, I’m finishing the project.

Factories with Hydro plants everywhere…build a courthouse for the 25% reduction in corruption, and suddenly those formerly “1-shield” towns are actually….well, okay, not GREAT, but better….viable….
OoO

Arrian’s Different Take
I industrialize ASAP. I usually bypass Sanitation and go straight for the factories. Why? Because in my experience, it seems that population causes much more pollution than production. Hence, the factories provide much more "bang for my buck." I actually tend to keep most of my cities at size 12 until I have mass transit. With factories, these cities produce plenty, but pollute only a reasonable amount. Once I have mass transit, it's hospital time. I've decided, due to the fact that "specialist" citizens provide only minor benifits (1 gold/research per taxman/entertainer), that the optimal city size is at or around 20. Thus, much of my grassland remains mined, not irrigated. I usually sell ecology and recycling to the AI for tons of cash, as they pollute like crazy and don't seem to emphasize those techs.
OoO

Brother Kinjy’s take on speed-building Factories
I have been playing around with this idea for a bit and thought I might as well share it with everyone.

When you get to the industrial (and modern) age, everything costs so dang much, shield-wise. Granted, by running democracy and setting your science slider to 10% you can generate a lot of cash to rush-buy stuff, but still, I long for the pop-rush.

So, why not do a pop-rush?

Get all your cities to a point where they are ready for say, a factory. Start building factories and get them maybe 20% complete.

Then call for a revolution and switch back to despotism. Execute a pop-rush in all your cities, then switch back to democracy.

Now, this strategy is a real winner if you are a religous civ and you only lose two total turns to anarchy, but it can be viable with any civ. The key is making sure you can handle the impact of the anarchic period (have a good army ready in case some other civ gets uppity, have reserve cash on hand, etc).
OoO
Granaries
On the topic of build orders:
I find that for cities with bonus food tiles, they generally grow faster than I “need” them to, or can easily control anyway, so the only place I build granaries in the early game are those cities with what I’d call only “average” food production, and for them, it’s a good investment.

Even when pop-rushing though, if you’ve got a city near a flood plain with a bonus wheat tile, and you’ve got it, and one other floodplain tile irrigated (which does net you one extra food under despotism), the city’s going to grow like a freakin’ weed anyway….and your fledgling economy will be hard pressed to support granaries everywhere in any case (especially if you’re already bulking up on temples and libraries for culture), so the places with astronomical food production….I’m inclined to let them run without one. Keep in mind that in the early game, you really only need pop points for three things:

1) Rush-building facilities or units

2) Making workers

3) Making more settlers

To that end, any city that grows over size three in the early game is growing too fast, IMO! (The exception would be a city that you have earmarked for Wonder-Building, and in this case, a granary is a must-have, along with a temple!) So….for a city that I KNOW will be making a Wonder for me, when the city gets founded, it gets: Temple, Worker (who is devoted exclusively to that town to bulk up mineral counts), Granary, Wonder (the town’s garrison is provided by some neighboring town doing the Warrior/Settler/Warrior/Settler routine). Again, I don’t know how typical that approach is, but it’s the one that made the most intuitive sense to me as I began exploring the game.
OoO

[Velociryx]

Barracks & General Tactical Discussion
As I see it, there are two basic approaches to building an army in Civ.

The first, and what I'd probably call the more traditional of the two, is to pick a city with good shield output, build a barracks there, and start makin' troops. Under this methodology, you get a good army built up over the course of time, and they're all veteran units.

The second basic approach is...dispersion(?). I generally DO build a barracks somewhere and crank out a core of veterans, but I firmly believe in supporting them with troops cranked out anyplace I can make them (if I've got some towns that would otherwise be idling waiting for the next improvement to come along, I'll augment my veteran force with scads of regular troops).

When fighting, I'll sacrifice my regulars (or if they're mobile regulars, let them put dents and dings in the defense force I'm tangling with, and then let my sturdy vets come in and finish the job when I feel the force inside whatever town I'm attacking has been weakened to the point that my vets will likely win.

The surviving regular troops don't have to make too many hit and run raids before some will start winning, and be promoted themselves to vets, while the vets quickly rack up enough kills to become elites and maybe spawn me some leaders!

In my last Monarch game, my initial army consisted of two veteran Mounted Warriors, 9 Regular Mounted Warriors, and 9 Swordsmen.

It's true that my regulars would mix it up for a round or two and then haul, but of those nine, none died, and two wound up getting promotions. All four of my vets later went on to become elites, and only one of those got killed (out of position, couldn't cover him with a swordsman, he got aced by a savage Jaguar)

I think that unless you're a militaristic civ tho, those barracks are too expensive to build in more than a couple of cities in the early game, meaning that if you want to get a good sized army quickly, the only viable way to do it is either:

1) Build Barracks in 1-2 cities, but build troops from everywhere and guard your vets jealously

or

2) Build Barracks in 1-2 high food production cities and rush constantly to crank out high numbers of vets (such that you'd wind up with a comparably sized force as you would have in the first option, but with the advantage that they'd all be Vets coming out of the gate.

Other possibilities here??

Arrian’s Reply
About barracks. On Regent, like I said, the only regular troops I built were very, very early on to defend cities. After that, just like you described, a few high-shield cities built barracks and they would churn out the best available units (provided something more important didn't come along... marketplace.. bank... ANYTHING non-military, really). However, on Monarchy, I did build some regulars, because the barracks are pretty damn expensive (ponders Germans some more), and I HATE regulars. My regular mounted warriors ended up doing 0 damage to defending spearmen roughly 1/2 of the time. That seriously slowed me down. I didn't lose the units, but I had to pull them back to heal, and meanwhile, they didn't accomplish their task, which was to weaken (if only by 1 hp) the defender, so that the vets could take them out. Arrg. No more regulars for me.

By the way, why all those swordsmen? I would have built MW's nearly exclusively, with a couple of swordsmen for escort duty. Then again, you appear to be better at this than I am (for now, my ego mutters), so I may well be wrong.

EMarkM’s Reply
Barracks

I generally make them in the best producing cities to crank out military units in case of war. I'll create units in non-barracks if I have to, but I try for at least 1/2 vet, 1/2 regular force.

I try to space them evenly through the empire if I can, since you need barracks for updating units. I'll send out that upgraded pikeman to a city w/ a spearman and send the spearman back to the barracks for upgrade. Send that updated pikemen to the next city and send back that spearmen, etc. Defensive units get upgraded first. I don't want to spend a lot of turns shuffling back and forth, so I keep this in mind when I build barracks. Try to space them so no single-move unit has to take more than 3 turns getting somewhere to get an upgrade. You really expedite upgrades with well spaced barracks.

I'll also generally build barracks in border towns with Civ I'm planning to take down and send wounded units to it for quick healing.

This brings me to the subject of drafting. When is it best? Of course, drafting is a must when you're under siege. I also tend to draft units when I go on the offensive and I mean to take out a good 5-6 cities or the whole civ. I leave drafted units in garrison and send the stronger egulars out to war.

When I capture a city I like to stock it full of cheap draftees just in case they revolt back and I lose them. You don't want to leave elites in captured cities and waste a potential leader in a rebellion.

So I mostly use draftees for defensive purposes. Another use for draftees is putting them in diversionary forces, units you expect to get killed while the real force takes the real objective.

Vel Again
Battles:
The main reason I don't mind using regulars is this - even if a check of your military advisor reveals approximate pairity ("we have an average military compared to them"), you have two important elements in your favor. First, the element of surprise (you can dictate precisely when you declare war, making sure that your troops are already in position when the declaration is made, giving the AI no time (or at most, a single turn) to prepare/respond).

{Side note - I am sure there are a great many ways to accomplish this, but what I do is move my army toward the target city, and if the Civ-Leader calls me up and asks me to move my troops, I just ignore him and keep on coming. He gets ticked, but so what? LOL...My intention is to kick is tailfeathers anyway! And, when my troops are in position, my declaration of war is made by my army proper, launching an attack on his city. }

Second advantage you've got is concentration. Even if you have roughly the same size military, the fact is, you've got the bulk of yours all in one place and his are...well...you have no way of knowing, but they're definitely scattered far and wide.

So...when it comes time to launch the attack, I'll usually lead in with two swordsmen. If they die, no biggie...they're my grunts and garrisons, and I've prolly got more en route anyway.

The swordsmen weaken or kill the spear-chuckers, and if there are any survivors from the first wave...in come the regular MW's. They kill anybody who's left, or weaken them down, and then one gets a couple lucky shots (and usually a promotion to veteran), and marches into the city.

As to the derth of swordsmen, here's my reasoning:
First - I bring my garrisons with me. I know that the AI loves to counter attack, and I don't want my vulnerable MW's to ever fight on the D if I can avoid it. My rule of thumb is 2 swordsmen per city on my hit list for garrison duties, and 3 more for good measure.

The "extra" swordsmen are along for the ride for a couple of reasons. First, they can occupy high ground and watch all ways for approaching enemy troops, allowing me good intel about where and how the enemy is approaching (and what he's got). Generally, one of them parks his butt on a nearby mountain or hill and just watches.

Second, targets of opportunity/covering. Sometimes, my MW's make little raids of opportunity on that lone archer the AI has sneaking up on my position. I'd rather hit him before he can hit me, BUT....doing so would leave my MW vulnerable to counter attack...so, I have a swordsman handy to step onto the tile with him to protect him while he's in the field.

Sometimes, I use my spares to pillage roads to muck up the AI's ability to get to the recently conquered city, especially if I"m about to do a 180 and head in a different direction to the next target town.

Back to Arrian
eMarkM -

Conscripts, huh? I've never used 'em. Not once. Maybe I'm an elitist. Heh, at least I think I'm funny, right?

However, I agree with the idea that if you've got some, better to use them to garrison a city which may revolt. Typically, I yank elite units out of such cities asap, but the replacements are usually vets, as I don't have anything else. I also tend not to put more than 2 or 3 units in a newly captured city, as "quelling the resistors" doesn't take all that long, and the best way to keep the city afterward is to rushbuild temple/library/cathedral/university ASAP (along with starving the hell out of it while it's in resistance). That way I don't lose very many units if the city reverts. I tend to station good attack units next to the city for a bit, so that if it does revert, I can nail it right away.

The only time the AI has beaten me at war thus far was an early rush. That was pretty amazing (I was the greeks and I couldn't stop it). Once I'm rolling, I can fend them off. The reason I'm having trouble at Monarch isn't that I'm being defeated in battle, but because I'm behind in tech and wonders.... which I HATE.
Vel -

Interesting tactical approach, and different than mine. Here's my reasoning:

I would rather come with a bunch of mobile troops. They speed your attack, have better survivability, and are better at pillaging. Now, usually I grind up the AI's mobile force early (obviously, if the AI has a bunch of horse units, I either 1) don't hit him or 2) adjust my tactics to kill those units). It's first part of their army that can arrive on the scene, because of it's speed. Also, the AI doesn't use its mobile units well, particularly on defense. If I do lose a MW or two, so be it. I would rather have 18 MW's than 9 MW/9 SM. The advantages of mobility cannot be overstated, in my opinion. Of course, I do end up (grudgingly) building a few grunts to accompany my mobile force, and they end up garrisoning cities. Often, a beat up MW will garrison a city while it heals, and the rest of the force continues onward. The AI counterattack is a one time thing. Weather the storm, and you've won - just KEEP the momentum. This is why I love MW's and other mobile troops. You knock the enemy back on his heels and KEEP HIM THERE.

Say I want to attack an AI city (this is early, keep in mind, I do NOT fight this way later on) and I have 6 MW's. They all go to the best defensive square next to the target city. If the AI attacks the stack (again, ancient era), it usually only hits once, with an archer or something. One MW retreats. Next turn, 5 MW's attack and take the city. Clearly, your strategy will work better against certain civs (in particular 2-move UU civs) than mine, and I have used forces like you describe before against the Zulu.

EDIT: I just realized that I was getting a little too civ-specific. Clearly, when I play the Babs (or any non-iroquois civ), swordsmen are a much larger component of my army. However, even then, if I have horses, I will build more horsemen than swordsmen.

On barracks placement, it matters pre-railroad. After that, goto will do ya just fine. I've only gotten Sun Tzu's once (via conquest), and it is really nice and all, but I'm ok w/o it.

Inca - Solid reasoning behind ancient warfare. Especially on the upper levels when keeping up or leading in tech peacefully is much more difficult.

I think I may play as either the Germans or Japanese tonight... as warfare appears to be more important on Monarch than on Regent, but I've gotta still have either religious or scientific. Persia also comes to mind.

The problem w/the Iroquois is that you had better get A LOT out of that ancient warfare, because you're gonna blow your golden age early.

Back to Vel
Arrian: I think your approach is a pretty sound one, but I think the reason you're getting beaten using it is two-fold.

IMO, If you're going to hit a Civ with all (or nearly all) mounted troops (sucky defense), you gotta literally swarm across the border....the longer the battle grinds on, the worse for you, cos that's more chances for the AI to make attrition attacks....I mean, take two or three cities in the same turn and end the fight right then and there.

Do that (at least double, and prolly close to triple the army size you mentioned in one of your other posts), and you'll have them begging for mercy before they even get a chance to respond. Once you make peace, even if most of your horse troops are torn up from combat, it won't matter and they can heal up in the newly captured towns or anyplace else.

Alternately, if you don't wanna make it too dicey, combine the three strike forces into two, take bigger groups and hit two towns in the same turn, with your victorious armies converging on the third target from different directions. As I understand it though, you were attempting a "one at a time" conquest with an all mobile force. That can get you in trouble because when the declaration is made, the AI knows where to send reinforcements. By hitting multiple targets at once, if he doesn't surrender on the spot, he'll be much more disorganized in his pursuit of your units, and you'll suffer fewer attrition attacks.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Gnomos on Pollution
My first take on pollution is that a factory automatically adds 2 pollution. Each pop above 12 adds 1. I refuse to build coal plants, so I don't know what their effect is, ie, do they add pollution themselves or do they make the factory create more pollution?

I can't find ANYTHING in the manual about global warming. Does it only occur when you have too many polluted squares? Can you hold it off indefinitely by keeping all the GG (glowing goo) cleaned up? So far I've only had one map square go from grasslands to plains, luckily it wasn't even in any of my city radiuses, seems to me it happened on a turn where there was a lot of pollution on the ground.

Oh, I'm still playing my first game, chieftain level, been working on it for about 4 days now, I'm up to 1752, half way through industrial tree, I left the comp civs way behind in science, and I'm in the process of conquering the map. I've eliminated 3 civs, I own about 40% of a huge map with 60% water, I have about 120-150 cities now, and about 400 units. I'm working my way through the years to learn the ropes before I move to a more difficult level, and I'm setting a scoring benchmark against which I can measure future games. I like the new averaged score method, civ2 was kinda silly, you built a huge pop then on the last turn you made everyone happy for a maximized score. In civ3 if you want a good score you have to keep everyone happy every turn, because each turn's score is averaged.
OoO
Random stuff that I wanted to include, but wasn’t sure where!
· Three captured cities, and the AI is ready to talk peace.

* With high culture pushing borders HARD against your rivals, an all swordsmen force will be fine, cos they can be adjacent to the target cities on the turn war is declared.

* The research advantages enjoyed by your rivals can be undone by a focus on commerce. If you’re willing to wheel and deal, you can spin yourself into a position of complete dominance.

* High-demand luxury items can be used to wreck havoc with a rival Civ’s Empire if the plug is pulled when they don’t play as nicely as you want them to.

* Most of the time, the AI will offer their world map as part of a trade deal. Refuse that portion and ask for 2-3 more gold per turn. Most of the time, you’ll get it.

Essentially, you have a captive market. They’re gonna be BEGGING for the goods you’ve got, and remember….the more cities they have, the more valuable those luxuries are to them! This is good incentive not to overrun them completely. First, the corruption will crush you like a beer can, and second, you can make a TON of money selling luxury items and strategic resources to other sprawling nations. And, you also have a big economic stick, too. If they do something that ticks you off….pull the plug. You don’t have to do a trade embargo (tho you can if you want to protect your market in the long term and prevent them from simply going elsewhere), you can just….stop selling and watch as their cities riot.

I don’t know how many turns I made the AI waste doing stuff like that when I was working on a Wonder they were competing with me on (Copernicus’s Observatory). Snagged the Wonder, too…probably via strategic use of Luxury items. Very cool, that!

I also found a very good reason to let the Zulu nation live!

I was gonna just take them out, but then….something dawned on me as the game progressed into the Industrial Age.

I had three freakin’ tiles of saltpeter I didn’t need anymore!

And an extra horse tile.

And a bunch of Iron that nobody was buying anymore!

Well….nobody but the poor, tech-starved Zulu….

Talk about a captive market!! I was making money hand over fist selling them all the resources I didn’t need any more, and that nobody else (who had higher tech) would touch with a ten foot pole!

They were my little harmless buddies to the west! (well…and in stubborn Denver on my northern border), and still furious with me, after several hundred years of peace.

So….it’s GOOD to be the guy with lots of luxuries. I’ve had civs (factions…lol) offer me a tech and money just to get some incense (which I’m swimming in, and could really care less about, except that I know they want it….NEED it for control….heh….it’s good to be the King!)

Next stop….Built Newton’s University and sparked a BRUTALLY effective Golden Age.

Was able to run 100% science, widen my tech gap by an average of five techs (the English are my nearest competition, and I have a three tech lead over them), and make +/- 500 a turn. Any time another civ researched a tech along a different branch of the tree, I simply bought it with cash (no tech swapping here), and then shopped that tech around. My research I kept as my own….entirely proprietary.

OH! With one exception! GAD, I almost forgot.

The Babs are a scientific civ, so you get a free advance when you move from one age to the next.

The other civs will pay ANYTHING (well, nearly anything) for those techs that bridge the ages. I sold Nationalism all around for SILLY kinds of money. Several points in the game, I was actually making more in trade revenues than I was in taxes (and I’m no slouch where taxes are concerned!).

OoO

Arrian’s Reply
Vel,

I've noticed some important similarities between our two, rather successful Monarch games.

1) Extensive sale of luxuries - often for tech. I've done this to great effect. If you can monopolize a couple of lux. items, you can make up for early tech problems while you're setting up your economy.

2) Early military success against one, and only one, adversary. This, I think, is very important. If you hit one, then another, then another... you will end up in the mid/late game with some pretty "cautious" or "annoyed" civs - and those are the ones you haven't fought. Plus, wars take time, especially if you have to move your army from one side of the empire to the other in order to hit the next target.

In your case, you were able to do 2 rounds of attacking & get all tech, whereas I did it once, but kept up due to my golden age.

3) Industrial/Modern Wonders are ours for the taking. Due to the way Monarch works, it is unlikely (possible, but unlikely) that you will get early Wonders. The key is setting up your empire in such a way that you can nab the later ones. Capture early ones if possible.

I forgot to mention that I did get Hoover in my game... thus 2-turn tanks and bombers in several cities.

Differences:

1) You were able to hold off on your golden age, I was not. Immortals triggered it, of course. Sounds like a late-game golden age can really put you over the top.

2) You kept the Zulu alive as a client civ, I wiped out the Babs. The deciding factors were 1) they were relatively small, so my initial attack knocked them to 1 city, and 2) they declared war on the Zulu (why is a total mystery), who would have taken that last city anyway. Instead, I got some money out of the Zulu for an alliance vs. the Babs, and took the city myself. Shaka was "gracious," and we're still on great terms.

Some important notes: Having a strong economy is crucial on this level of play. It is always important, but is even more so now This means marketplaces/banks ASAP.

Placement of your forbidden palace will not always be "perfect." I found that I was holding off on building it because I really wanted it in an ideal location, but need either 1) a leader to build it in less than 300 turns, or 2) that location was an opponent's capitol (and still under their control). Heh, I was a little too ambitious for my own good. I suggest putting it near some cities with hills/mountains. This will allow them to actually produce some shields. Once you have factories, you're talkin' a Tank in 2 or 3 turns (or wealth, if you're low on cash). Of course, if you have a city with a could of gold hills, I would give STRONG consideration to strategic placement of the FP near that city.

During the middle ages, build as many knights as you can w/o hindering overall development. They upgrade to cavalry for 20 gold each

Give small gifts (world map when everyone has it already, 1 gold, etc.) to other civs from time to time. I'm not positive this is the reason, but my diplomatic relations w/others were pretty cordial (heh, Civ2ism there) with everyone for most of the game. Besides, it's awfully cheap and easy to do.

EmarkM’s Reply
On resource trading:

Getting those fields of luxuries is really key. Usually worth going to war over. In this Egypt/Monarch game I have going I started w/ only one wine. I ran into a field of 4 jungle spices and just before my settler was about to enter the square where I was going to build a city, Rome beat me to the punch. Since I had a warrior escort right there, the town came right down and each civ's fortunes forever changed. Rome only had one silk to themselves, so I effectively shut them out of the lux trading scene. They never could build up a bank balance and quickly became a vassal.

I later fought a war over 3 English furs, had to take their capitol to get it. These wars over lux fields are well worth fighting. Any extra luxs you have should be traded. You only need one for your own empire and you shouldn't let the others sit idle. Not only do you rake in money from selling these, you can bankrupt the other civs as they bleed $$ to you. Go to each civ you know and first try to get a tech in the trade. They often will say 'no', but always ask them what they'd offer for it. They'll usually give you gold/turn. Always shop for the best deal. You should always get every excess lux exported at all times. You can usually put science way high then and still be making a profit each turn on gold/turn deals.

Now the same doesn't apply to strat resources, IMHO. I try to keep geopolitics in mind when I trade these. In this Egypt game I had virtual iron and saltpeter monopolies. With these I became king-maker. I decided which civ would get what, but only when I considered how it would benefit me in the power game.

The Greeks and Russians shared my continent, each had no iron. I had 5. Russia was very weak and the Greeks were in close 2nd after me. The Russians came between me and the Greeks and the Greeks & Russians were fighting a on and off war forever, w/ Russia slowly losing ground. Perhaps you can guess who I sold iron to. The Russians. I would have got a LOT more from Greece since Catherine could barely offer me anything for it, but I sold it them and denied the Greeks to give the Russkies a fighting chance of keeping the Greeks in check. This worked and it wasn't until much later that Greece disposed of the Russians. By that time I was far and away the #1 power.

Overseas continents, I still consider geopolitics, but will generally sell them since I don't have to worry as much in the early and midgame how they effect me. These bring in BIG $$ and tech from cash rich civs.

OoO
DaBear’s Notes on Tech Trading, etc.
Never trade tech on anything other than your turn. If another civ comes a knockin' escape/cancel/bribe but don't trade. If you are in the trading business and you trade on their turn, they can and will flog it around before you can.

Do a repeat visit after you trade any tech that gives a resource that you don't have. example If you don't have coal and need to trade for it, get there soon before it is traded to someone else.

Do a repeat visit to any Science civ after trading a tech that gets them a era...as they will now have another tech to trade.

Use an idea from vel and have handy a scratch pad.
Use it to assist your predictions when other civs are likely to develop new tech or an existing trade for goods is about to run out. Use this to a hold off selling a tech if in a few turns you need leverage in a trade.

Yes you can micro manage your sales to squeeze every drop however repeated use of this tactic does nothing to help how they feel about you. I'm not sure but I have seen really fast changes from Polite to Annoyed that may not have been as fast if all the trades had not been stingy.
You can only trade if your not at war so if you are going to net little on a sale give it away so you can tighten up on the big trades.

Isolationists that hang onto your maps be wary on how long you hang onto them. In a recent game I played I found another large Island with no one on it, close to mine. I held off trading maps until I started settling it. It repeatly came up in trades but I resisted. Then a Civ which was polite went angry and demanded them. Again I refused (dumb for the trader) Went to war with that civ and within a turn 3 other Civs who where polite joined. Lots of no replies later and no fighting I made the wars disappear by trading the map
Arrian on Golden Ages and Timing
Timing one's golden age is not always an option. Sometimes, you trigger one by building a wonder you really want. Sometimes, you get attacked and you need to use your UU to win. But to the extent that it's possible, I personally think that the best time to have a golden age is the Middle Ages. Why? Wonders:

Sistine Chapel - To me, the most important wonder in the game.
Copernicus - Helps boost your science output, so that you can maybe lower the science rate to pay for all those cathedrals you're building.
Newton - See above
Sun Tzu - For some, this is a critical wonder. For me, it's a really, really nice wonder. Any way you cut it, whether you're a largely peaceful builder or warmonger, having a barracks in every city is a beautiful thing.
Leo's - Cheaper upgrades probably aren't gonna make the difference between victory and defeat, but they help.
Adam Smith's - Mo money, mo money. Allows you to max out that science rate, or support a larger army.
Bach - Happiness is soooo important (which is why the Sistine is #1 in my book), especially on higher levels. If you're a democracy (if you're not... I'm not the guy to talk with about strategy as I can't even imagine running in a different form of gov't) and you have to fight, this will help out with that brutal war weariness.

What's my point? The middle ages have a TON of really nice wonders, most (all?) of which do not expire. A golden age will allow you to get the jump on building them.

Example: Last night (and a goodly portion of this morning *yawn*) I finally got a really good start as the Babs on Monarch. Babylon had a river, 2 cows and a game, and I was able to secure 4 lux. resources during the land grab. I built the Great Library! I couldn't believe it. I have a theory on why that happened, but I'll come back to that. I also built the Colossus, which triggered a golden age right at the beginning of the middle ages. My "free" tech was monotheism, so the first one I researched was theology. I started the Sistine.

At this point, I had jumped ahead of the opposition, so I did something I normally don't do, which was research feudalism. I started Sun Tzu. I also began my forbidden palace. I then made a beeline for Astronomy, and started Cop's (in the Colossus city).

I nailed them all. Sistine, Cop's, Sun Tzu (not to mention Bach, Leo's and Newton too). Now THAT was a golden age. The Sun Tzu/Leo's combo really, really helped me when Tokagawa decided to throw WAVES of Samurai at me. Ouch, that hurt. But when I counterattacked, with WAVES of Cavalry, the Empire of the Rising Sun ceased to be.

Anyway, I think ancient golden ages, though they can set you up for a great game if they happen just right, are largely wasted b/c of despotism, or the lack of infrastructure in a young republic. An industrial age or modern age GA could be immensely powerful (I seem to recall Vel discussing that a while back), but if you've missed some of the key Middle Age wonders... I dunno, I'm going with the Middle Ages. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Ok, my theory on why I was able to actually build the GL: I started next to: Japanese, Chinese, Zulu, Persians. Only the Persians are scientific. The others are militarists who are less likely to research the proper techs for the GL.

OoO

[Velociryx]

EXPLOITS
*********
(List of Acknowledged Exploits you can choose to make use of in your games)

Lumberjacking (IFE): Chop down trees en mass, to gain the +10 shields. After researching “Engineering” you can replant those trees and repeat infinitely. Using sufficient numbers of slave laborers (free…no support costs), this will net you a VAST advantage in terms of shields produced, and note that these shields are in no was impacted by corruption. (Note – This ability to do this has been severely restricted, post patch. To the point that it can no longer truly be considered an exploit, but has been kept here for historical reference)

A Possible Use for Priveteers? (Bblue)
Stumbled across this in my last/current game and came in rather handy, granted this situation isn't that common, but this could be a handy tool in the CIV3 toolbox. One of my continential neighbors, the Aztecs, who I have/had a good relationship with and had no intention of fighting a long drawn out war with had only one supply of Saltpeter. with no saltpeter on the open market for trade this was thier only source. The deposit was on an island with one city and thier only navy was galleys. Thier city didn't have a harbor yet so it wasn't getting to thier mainland, so I had my spy...umm I mean 'tourist' visit the city and saw thay were building a harbor, I quickly built 4 Priveteers and proceeded to embark on a PEACETIME blockade of thier harbor for 30 turns or so (before a french armada of Galleons from half a world away sailed by and sunk them) this was 30 free turns for me to build up a gunpowdered military and... well... take care of the situation before it became a fair fight. Combine this with the 'cheat/bug' where you can stack other ships (ie. battleships) with the priveteer where the game allows units to attack the Priveteer's square, lets the battleship defend and no peace treadies are broken, and this becomes a viable stratagy even in late game. (although exploiting this 'bug' is up to the individual, personally I don't feel it was the way the game was intendend and will not use it unless I see the AI use it (not likely).)

Brother Kinjy’s Civ-Paralyzation Plan
If you find yourself positioned such that there is a narrows between you and a rival civ, you can easily thwart the AI's expansion, on all but Diety levels.

1) Build up a fair number of military units near the narrows.

2) Let the rival civ establish a city at or near the narrows.

3) Rush in and capture the city.

4) Raze the city to the ground.

5) Pull back your units.

6) Wait a short while, usually less than 10 turns and watch the rival civ establish another city at the same spot.

7) Repeat steps 3 through 6.

For some reason, the AI will invariably attempt to keep settling the same spot, to detriment of their expansion elsewhere.

Vel’s RoP Blitz
This will wreck your reputation with all other civs in the game, so think carefully before committing to it….you’ll be regarded as a total bastard and global pariah, but….sometimes you just gotta….you know?

1) Contact said Civ and trade luxury items and cash for a Right of Passage agreement, giving you access to his roads/rails (already have your army en route by the way...and preferably just off the coast!)

2) Land your troops and use his own rail system to position your forces exactly where you want them.

3) When you're ready, launch the attack! With enough force, you can take the Civ out in a single turn, or at least grab all his key cities and cut the roads and rails to them to prevent a swift counterstrike.

City Pairing (Vel):
This is an exploit designed to put you at least “on par,” if not superior to the AI’s production bonuses on the higher levels of play. In doing so, it also gets around the (currently too weak, IMO) side effects of making constant or long-term use of the pop-rush technique.

The general idea is that for every “real” city you found during the land grab phase of the game, you later (once your land grab has ended) go back and add another city to the mix, packing them tightly together so that each city has a temporary “training camp.” The sole reason for this city’s existence is to pop-rush regular troops of the best kind you can make, and do so until you have an army that rivals that of your nearest neighbors.
Once you have achieved military parity, subjugate your neighbors, and when the immediate threat to you is gone, peacefully disband the training camps (poof! No more discontent due to pop-rushing!).

Borg-Style ICS, as applied to Civ3
So you thought corruption killed ICS?

Nahhh….the Beast lives on, as I found out last night, playing with extreme styles.

Last night, my focus was on Despotism, and I began with a simple premise.

In Despotism, corruption doesn’t matter, because your people are your production. Kill ‘em off by the thousands to further the glory of your Empire.

By extension then, Food = Shields.

By further extension then, Granaries = Factories (same essential benefit, but you get them a LOT sooner, and on the cheap!)

So that got me thinking…..What If….

1) You founded as many cities as you possibly could (ICS Style), without regards to corruption, spacing, or any of the “usual” means and measures.

2) Your ONLY consideration for your initial city placement was the presence of a bonus food tile (game, cow, wheat)

3) You build cities with the notion that each gets access to ONE AND ONLY ONE of these tiles (meaning that if there are several bonus food tiles clustered together, you simply found several cities very close together there).

4) Every city gets a granary. EVERY city. This is akin to “powering up” after all. You’re not building granaries, you’re building factories.

5) Once all the food rich city sites have been taken, start expanding like a cancer. Again, corruption doesn’t matter, just grab as much land as you can, expanding relentlessly.

6) Research Iron Working and The Wheel to get a bead on those resources…founding cities to take them into your fold.

7) When you run into another civ’s borders, all stop to take stock of your game.

If you’ve done this, you’ll probably have something close to thirty cities (I was playing on a standard map, Monarch level, 8 Civs, Babylon). Some of those cities were all of two tiles apart. Almost all were growing like weeds.

Trapping AI Navies (cousLee)
Trapping the AI navies:
I control a section of water between my continent and a large island. At one end, there is a 1 coast tile choke point, at the other, the area can be choked off with 3 ships. I left one end open, and cruised around outside the trap with a privateer. the AI can see that unit, even from all the way around the globe, and hunts them with a vengence. I know they can, as I have watched them B-line for the privateer using other ships as spotters. I captain the privateer into the trap, and wait for the AI horde to come a running, which they do. I then pull the bait into a city with trap access, (to protect it) and seal off the AI ship that have entered into the trap. They of course want out, so I can open one end of the trap and they all move towards the opening, and close it again just before they can exit. Pull the privateer out of the base at the other end, and they B-line for the bait again. rinse, repeat. I was able to effectively trap the majority of the AI ships using this. When they got to the one end that was being closed, and when I pulled out the bait ship, I could open the other end, and suck some more ships into this trap. When all was said and done, I had about 20-25 AI ships from every civ in there. With the use of MPPs, I would have been able to kick-start a world war and watch the AIs massacre each other. The "doors" of the trap were compromised of stacked ironclads, and the AI would pick of the weaker ships of the other civs (I am sure of it). I didn't start that war, tho it was set up for it. The persians and the brits were MPPed, and myself and the other 4 civs are MPPed. Could have been nasty indeed. But even without warring, it took the competition (mostly) off the main seas, and allowed for oceanic superiority. Some might call that a cheezy tactic, but I look at it this way, if the AI can see my privateer from 20-30 tiles away and come running after it at every oppertuniy, I can use this to make him pay upkeep for a bunch of obsoleting units for a 1000 years. The Americans also had access to this trap area, and contributed a large number of ships to the pile. Should a war actually do break out, My many artty on stand by will have a blast (har har) shooting these fish in a barrel. But since this has gone on during a 2,000 peace fest, I used privateers to eliminate most of them. Battles would generally go, one turn I lose 2, they lose, next turn they lose two, I lose one. Since privateers are cheap and my bait cities will either produce privateers or wealth, it was not a debilitating cost on my end. and over the long term, one for one with privateers VS man-o-wars, frigates, and other masted ships was not too bad (imho). It took away from the monotony of working my lumberjack crews. And to boot, I had all the AI gracious. I would pull up the diplomacy and make the rounds about every 5-6 turns, ask them what they would offer for my world map, and accept whatever they gave. Usually, they gave token crap (5 gold, WM, TM, ect) but it kept them thrilled while I picked apart their navies. When the barrel got empty, all I would have to do is open the door, and here they would come en-masse. Probably cause they were chomping at the bit to get in on the action from the other side of the trap door. The most that came through at one time was around 8 vessels, and since one blocked the door from being shut, I had to wait an extra turn to re-close it, and 5 or 6 more came through on the end-turn cycle. It was actually fun to watch all these peacefull ships trying to dodge eachother moving around looking for the occasional appearance of the disappearing privateer. If the privateer got left in the trap after a battle, I would stack it with one ironclad. Most of the time, the AI only took bombard shots at them, but would occasionaly attack trying to sink the clad to get to the pirate. they almost never attacked if I stacked 2 ironclads. Since I didn't mind losing an ironclad or two (as I had many) to have a chance at getting an elite one, i usually didn't oreo the bait ship I think I lost a total of 4 clads, got 2 elietes, and sank who knows how many masts. All during gracious peace. If this was smac, I would have landmarked it the "bermuda triangle". I also ended up with 2 eliete privateers. Call it what you will, but it sure was fun.

OoO

Stat’s by Aeson
This is a table I put together on another thread.

4000BC - 2750BC 25 turns, 50 years each
2710BC - 1750BC 25 turns, 40 years each
1725BC - 750BC 40 turns, 25 years each
730BC - 250AD 50 turns, 20 years each
260BC - 1250AD 100 turns, 10 years each
1255AD - 1750AD 100 turns, 5 years each
1752AD - 1950AD 100 turns, 2 years each
1951AD - 2050AD 100 turns, 1 year each

540 turns overall, 10BC being the 126th.

Conquest scoring bonus = (2050 - Date) * Difficulty (approximation)

BC dates are considered negative

Difficulty:
1 Cheiftain
2 Warlord
3 Regent
4 Monarch
5 Emporer
6 Deity

This formula has been tested on Regent and Diety levels, the other diffuculty levels are complete guesses.

Maximum Score
3950BC conquest victory on Diety 36060
(pop of 1, area was 150 IIRC)

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
*******************

Jumping Choya’s Question re: What prompts the AI to attack

What exactly does the AI take into consideration when declaring war on you? Is it an apparant opportunity, technological/numerical superiority, or sheer boredom?

I've played a number of games now, and of all the times an enemy AI declared war on me, they sent in a half-witted invasion force that either got marginal success or was swatted down like a silly fly. And every time after that there was hell to pay for them, believe me.

My first example - opportunity. The AI (Iroquois) noticed once that I was in anarchy. In my current game, I had all my forces at the opposite end of my empire preparing for an invasion of China - and along come the Japanese, all the way across the land, with a horseman who slays my lonely spearman and razes the city. Both of these attacks were initially frightening - "Damnit, under attack!" - but I found as I began to strike back that they did not follow up their initial attacks, and did not have very good defenses.

Fortunately, I've never found myself in a war against a technologically superior foe, and because of my tech advantage I've been able to overcome numbers.

And then the third, which can be credited to randomness, insanity, or boredom. In a game I played, I had battled the Germans early on after encircling all of their settlements with my own - hey, why leave a hole in your empire? So I battled them down and let them keep one last city, as later in the game I hoped to relocate the Germans to some other place and do some nation-building. One day, I notice that Bismarck deploys a few swordsmen into my rifleman and cavalry defended territory. I dozens of cities, he had one, and for every obsolete unit he had, I had...at least dozens of superior units. I give Bismarck a ring and say, "Hey, what're these guys doing? Sight seeing?" to which he declares war. Bismarck sealed a very quick deathnote with that.

Another time, the Aztecs - good trading friends, we had about the same status- landed a swordsman on my shores and declared war. I never ended up succesfully invading their continent - they had big numbers and good units. It baffles me as to why the sent an obsolete unit to me, and never bothered to invade me again during the rest of the war.

All of these times, the AI relied on the sneak attack - they gave no prior displays of angst towards me or my people.

I should point out, though, I've been playing only on Warlord (hey, I'm a newbie, bear with me...)

Another thing that has baffled me is the signing of the Mutual Protection Pacts. Like others have said, stay out of them - they're the causes of many world wars (in fact, the only cause it seems...I've never seen the world descend into warfare prior to MPPs). If you go to the foreign relations screen and click to display MPPs, you'll see this spaghetti-string tangle of lines, and the truth of the matter is that you don't know who your allies will be if you have multiple alliances. Sometimes the AI makes alliances with the mortal enemy of another civ they have an alliance with. So basically, when it comes to war you could find that you have to betray several of your friends in order to fight for two or three other dumb countries. And forget any ideas of building a coalition that'll last for centuries, fighting all evil - in my experience, the other civs sign around too much and eventually they're forced to declare war within your little coalition.

This slightly relates to the above, but have any of you noticed that the AI is very forgiving to each other? The last game I played, I was dragged into war with the Aztecs again because the Brits went to war with them (but I didn't really commit any forces to it). After a while I noticed a message that they had signed a Peace Treaty with the Aztecs. A while later, while mucking around in the foreign advisor screen, I found that the British and the Aztecs had signed a mutual protection pact! Madness!

Also, I've noticed that the AI has some uncanny exploration abilities. This game, the Germans just edged me out for the Great Lighthouse. Later in the game I trade for his World Map, and I see something a little surprising. Germany had sent out a ship in a straight line that lead directly to a small island in the middle of the ocean upon which they founded to cities. No variation in course or signs of searching around whatsoever.

Anyway, I hope I'm not coming off too negative here - I dearly love this game and it's been the joyful cause of many hours of lost sleep recently. I'm merely curious about what makes the AI tick, as I'm sure most of us are. Knowing thy enemy is the best way to thwart thy enemy, right?
(PS: To Jumping Choya! Damn…I can’t believe I missed your question about the sixteen civ game! Sorry ‘bout that! And I’m afraid my answer is a sad one! I was bitten by the corrupted sav. File bug!!! My game was fine until I put it to bed and saved it off…after that…I could never get it to open!)

***END OF FILE***

-=Vel=-

[Adam Wallock]

Wow!

This info is far from complete and still so far superior to any other discussion going. I continue to be impressed with this crew.

I've taken a break to play a bit of Wiz8 and will resume playing post-patch ( Hopefully tomorrow) but I can only try to encourage everyone to keep up the experiments. Great Stuff!

P.S. Thanks for including my tip Vel! I wasn't sure it got noticed.

[ChrisShaffer]

Brother Kinjy’s Civ-Paralyzation Plan has been fixed in the patch. I'm hoping that fix also corrects Trapping AI Navies (cousLee)

[sophist]

Regarding proper placement of roads for rapid transit in the ancient era... It's obvious that you should not criss-cross rivers; you might as well not have roads in the first place. But where do you place your crossing? I've found that it's best to have two or four (if necessary; see below) crossing points on each road going out from a city in a given direction. The first crossing point (ideally) occurs two tiles away from the city. Why? Your unit uses 1/3 point traversing each of the first two tiles. Then you maximize the use of your remaining 1/3 move point by crossing the river so you don't waste a full move point later (1/3 move point that you wouldn't have had you crossed earlier). Similarly, figure out how units will be coming TO your city and optimize that way as well. Also bear in mind that you want to do the same thing 5 tiles away for your 2 move units, as with them crossing at the spot described above, they will be able to travel 4 tiles only (1/3, 1/3, 1, 1/3), but if you manage to place your crossing properly, you'll get the full 6 tiles of movement out of them. Then of course you need to bear in mind fast units coming into the city... Chances are you won't need to/be able to manipulate it quite that way, but bear this in mind to maximize your roads' efficiency.

[Nero Would]

Sorry to keep being a pain, and I know that this is only a minor point, but Militaristic civs do not all get warrior code as a free advance. Japan gets The Wheel instead.

Japan is the only civ that gets the wheel as a free advance, and the wheel is the only advance that is given free to only one civ. This seems particularly significant since the wheel reveals one of the two early strategic resources (horses).

[Bblue]

Being a builder/hybrid style of player (typically Monarach level, 'standard' 8 player maps) I find one of the best tools in CivIII for controlling the flow of the game in the latter eras are the MPPs. Several people have posted that they tend to steer away from MPPs useually do to the fact they tend to get dragged into extensive and prolonged 'World Wars' I find that conservitive and timely use of MPPs are one of the key elements to my playstyle.

Typical ways that I will use them are for the promotion of protection, world peace, and as a way to weed out any AI civ with an itchy trigger finger (Yes, Mr. Bismark this includes you)

Protection:

This use for MPPs commonly presents itself not long after MPPS become avalible. I'm usually building up infrastructure while one of my neighbors or more of my neighnors seems to like building up thier military and I don't want to spend all my precious shield production and gold on upgrading and increasing my military. So I scimp on the military and sign up a buddy or two. I prefer to MMP with someone who shares a border with who I preceive as my potential threat (preferably sharing a border on the far side of the potential threat) That way It the treat does attack they are going to have to fight a two front war. This means the aggressor can't concentrate the full brunt of their force on just me, meaning that my scimpy defense is not as outclassed as it could have been. It also allow me time to build up a military to repulse the invasion as the agressor probably don't have enough troops to fight on two fronts AND send in multiple pronged invasion forces. If they send in only one prong, I can concentrate militarily with what reserves I do have. A lot of times the AI, not being a total dork, with 'see' it's situation and not bother to attack in the first place.

World Peace:
This use of MPPs tends to occur late in the game, typically at the very end of the industrial and into the Modern eras. Basically everyone is MMPed with everyone else. This is something that the player can't setup exactly; but, the player can be the final link of 'locking things up' by MMPing witht the 2 AI CiVs witht he most MMPs and any 'straggler' civs that aren't fully intangled in the web. As long as no civ get substancially behind in tech the world is a quite place as everyone is afraid to break bad on anyone else. That said... You have to keep an eye on the MMPs, if other Civs start dropping out of MPPs.. start dropping yours! else your be caught in one of those long unwanted wars.


The Itchy Trigger Finger:
This typically happens when you have your MPPs set up for world peace and someone does something stupid. If you've paid attention to the the way MMPs are webbed. It turns into an all on one situation. How many times have I seen the Zulus and Germans go down hard from this A lot of the time you can foresee this situation in the non-to-distast future... The militeristic civs start lagging behind in techs and they try to take thier frustration out on a nieghbor. You can spot this coming, so be a real cad and take optimal advantage of it! limit your MPPs to only 1, maybe 2 other civs and try to set it up so that they will run out near the time when you feel the Aggressor will take action, or better yet set up a 'good deal' with one other AI civ. Find one that wants a MPP, then give them a MPP plus a few gold a turn, or a resource, they will commonly not bring the MPP up for renewal at 20 years, this means that once war does break out.. you can cancel the MPP and make peace with the agressor (it's usually not to hard to do, since they don'y want to be at war on so many different fronts). Now while the whole world (excluding you) goes up in flames, sit back in your democracy and build/research like a madman. During this time start terminating your luxuries trades (unless they are absolutly nessasary) to EVERYONE except the aggressor when the 20 year limits are up. This can reak havoc on the other civs economy as war weariness kicks in (except the original aggressor, who you want to keep stong in order to prolong the war). Eventually, if all goes well (for you at least) the AI civs will start changing goverment to communism, slowing down thier research and culture, in addition 3/4 of the AI civs will lose 5 turns right off the top due to periods of anarchy, plus another 5 if they change back to democracy after the war is over. After everything is over and done with, you've come out far ahead of the remaining competion in infrastructure, economy, and techs; and your reputation is still spotless. You too can be Nero playing the fiddle as the world burns around you

[Velociryx]

Got you covered Nero....I intend to address that in the Civ-Analysis of Japan in particular as one of their key "selling points."

-=Vel=-

[Skanky Burns]

Excellent Vel, keep the info flowing
And on that note, its time i contributed something.

For those interested in determining just how many workers you need to finish an improvement in one turn (rail, or mine on a hill, etc), move your worker on to the tile that needs improving, and move the mouse over the worker button (like the build fortress button)

It will tell you how many turns to complete that project. Then use this many workers to finish that project in one turn. If you use slaves (captured workers), you will need 2 to do the same work as your own workers.

If you use a slave to determine how many workers are needed, you will need that many slaves to complete it in one turn. Using your own (paid for) workers will count as 2 slave workers.

Note that not all improvement projects take an even number of turns. By using pure workers on these projects, you are loosing a worker's... erm.... work. By determining the cost of a project with a slave, you will be able to pay the absolute minimum to get an improvement completed.

From the example below, i tested using a slave (captured worker)
To complete the fortress in one turn, I could use:
6 slaves
4 slaves, 1 worker
2 slaves, 2 workers
3 workers (moving the slave off to do another job)

Hope this helps people

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Gnomos on Pollution
My first take on pollution is that a factory automatically adds 2 pollution. Each pop above 12 adds 1. I refuse to build coal plants, so I don't know what their effect is, ie, do they add pollution themselves or do they make the factory create more pollution?

I can't find ANYTHING in the manual about global warming. Does it only occur when you have too many polluted squares? Can you hold it off indefinitely by keeping all the GG (glowing goo) cleaned up? So far I've only had one map square go from grasslands to plains, luckily it wasn't even in any of my city radiuses, seems to me it happened on a turn where there was a lot of pollution on the ground.

Unfortunately there is no easy-access information on pollution. My take is that certain improvements add a set number of pollution triangles generated by a city. I dont think shields generated has *anything* to do with pollution levels. Must test.

Not tested either, but i think your right on the money with regards to population level and pollution production.

Global warming is INDEPENDANT on existing piles of orange goo. It is soley based on the total number of pollution triangles your cities produce. Thus, global warming will occur regardless of the size of your worker army Most of the time it happens to me, there is no pollution on the ground.

Hows this for lucky?? I had a mountain with gold get turned into a desert with gold!!! Kewl, bonus food!!

[sophist]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns

Hows this for lucky?? I had a mountain with gold get turned into a desert with gold!!! Kewl, bonus food!!

How the @#%& can global warming turn a mountain into a desert? wtf? I could see it turning a snow-capped mountain into another one, though...

[Skanky Burns]

It surprised me too!! The square next to it also became a desert, but its rather strange. But, if its good for me, cant complain too much

[Arrian]

Vel - That's quite a complilation of strategy info & opinions. I admire your dedication. I'm far, far too lazy to put any serious work into this stuff, I just post

I think we (read: someone who likes crunching numbers more than I do) should examine the pros and cons of selling tech to the AI when you're ahead, so that we can come to some sort of concensus on when it's worth it, and when it's better to horde the tech for yourself. Obviously, this will vary GREATLY depending on the map size & # of AI civs. Also important would be when (early/middle/late in the game). Obviously, I'm not talking about selling the AI wonder tech (until you've built the wonder).

There are 2 main reasons to sell tech to the AI:

1) To make money (which allows you to max your research)
2) To drain the AI's budget and thereby ruin their own research capacity.

The question, therefore, is how much a given trade will help you and hurt them. Will making the trade push you further ahead, or drag you back toward the pack?

If, just for an example, they're offering 45gold/turn for combustion, is it worth it for you to make that trade (and, consequently, trade combustion to everyone else - if you don't, the AI will). There are, of course, a number of factors involved, which is why I'm throwing this out there for others to help out with.

Another note on trading w/the AI: last night I offered the following to Bismarck for Wine:

Ivory
Fur
Dye
Gems
Coal

"I doubt they will accept this proposal."

Now, I know that luxuries are more valuable to me (large empire) than to him, and that the AI seems to be really demanding once you get powerful. Still, 4 luxuries + a strategic resource for one luxury? This irritated me so much that I'm considering invading Germany, though I have absolutely no need to do so. For now, I'm selling each of the resources I offered him for 6gold/turn or so each - which is garbage, I know, but it's all he can afford. I seriously doubt he can afford any science at all.

-Arrian

[eMarkM]

Some interesting new info has come to light on civfanatics about additional cheats the AI gets at higher levels. Apparently--and this was confirmed by Dan Magaha at Firaxis on the thread--the AI get free units on Monarch and up. In the test, Sman created a super small island and when the AI builds its first city it magically gets free units. He found on Deity it got--get this--3 warriors, an Archer and another worker after it built its first city! Geez, no wonder the AI gets around so quick and makes contact and gets ahead in tech race. Nice job, Sman!

Once this info gets around we're sure to see the typical whining about how it's unfair, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Hey, the higher levels are supposed to be hard, I don't care about it being "unfair". But this is good info and I'm only concerned about it in terms of how it will impact strategy. Something we'll have to consider now.

e

[Velociryx]

Hey guys! Intereasting news indeed emarkm! I'll have to give the thread a good looking over...but on balance, I think that's as it should be. Head to head (equal production) the AI simply cannot compete with a human player so yeah, I'm all for giving them free units and anything else that will make it tougher goings!

Arrian, excellent thoughts as always good sir! And, just so you guys don't think that ALL I do is think in terms of strategy, I've written what I HOPE is a rather funny beginning to a story over in the fiction section.

When you get a moment, drop by and give it a look. I included a separate thread for comments, just so the story segments all stay together for ease of reading. Enjoy!

For the Glory of Rome

-=Vel=-

[eMarkM]

Some more info on AI bonuses. Dan Mahaga said on the civfanatics thread: "Here's a hot tip: When the patch is released, go directly to the editor and hit the "Difficulty Levels" tab. This will settle, once and for all, what bonuses the AI gets on each difficulty levels."

Haven't downloaded the patch yet, but it's all listed right in the readme.txt. So this gives you an idea all the handicap it gets and what we need to overcome w/ our strategies:

Editor: Added Barbarian Combat Bonus to difficulty level tab.
Editor: Added Cost Factor to difficulty level tab.
Editor: Added AI unit support bonus to difficulty level tab.
Editor: Added AI bonus starting units to difficulty level tab.
Editor: Added AI max. govt. transition time to difficulty level tab.
Editor: Added corruption modifier to difficulty level tab.

Quite a few advantages (or disadvantages on lower levels), we'll be able to see what these are actually set to now. Now I can dumb down the highest level to Chieftan and claim I beat "Deity"

e