Being a warmonger ands rushing hasn't worked for me

[Artifex]

At least for me it doesn't. I read here some players love warmongering civs and say archer rush this, archer rush that. Talking about how easy it is etc.

Well, every time I have played trying this the other civs are 40+ squares away and there is jungle, mountain, hilld and slow terrain seperating us.

By the time I get swordmen down there and start mounting an attack..all the other civs have tech traded up to the middle ages and have pikeman and hordes of swordmen.

So it would seem at least for me playing non militaristic style civs is the way to go. AT least chinese/pangea hasn't worked for me.

[Nakar Gabab]

Play on a smaller map, perhaps?

I like continental maps with semi-limited land, standard size. Other civs are close, but not TOO close. 40+ tiles suggests Huge or Large, which is, IMO, too much.

However, I know plenty of people probably play on biiiiiig maps and do rushes anyway... I can only suppose they have roads ready, or a lot of patience.

[Catt]

Are you playing with the "standard" number of civs for your map size (i.e., 4 on tiny, 8 on standard, 16 on huge)?

I honestly can't remember a game when the nearest civ was 40 tiles away.

BTW - I should post this in your other thread re: archer/swordsman rush - make sure to use your industrious chinese workers to build roads towards your targets. Check out Vel's "The Virtues of Being Industrious" thread here in the strategy forum -- a very nice overview and discussion of the advantages of playing an industrious civ (particularly with respect to early warfare).

Catt

[Artifex]

"Are you playing with the "standard" number of civs for your map size (i.e., 4 on tiny, 8 on standard, 16 on huge)?"

I always play in standard maps with 8 civs.

The map I have been playing on was the Standard size map (in the middle). World type was Continent. The land mass was large (far right map). This was one where 40-50 squares to nearest civs.

Then I tried Standard size Pangea world map. Land mass Regular (middle map). This was a little better but still kinda far away.

[Artifex]

I was just reading how some here had preached the gospel on how much they love germany or japan and all these militaristic civs and how it was almost too easy to win via archer/sword or horseman rushes. Well I dunno what maps they are playing on but if its anything close to the maps I was on..militaristic is not the way to go.

I was playing on standard size maps..not the huge maps either.. maybe they were playing on tiny maps or small land mass/lots of water maps.

[Solver]

I'm imagining that playing on Huge maps might limit the need for rushes, you can control enough territory by only killing one civ in the Ancient, and just Settlers and Settlers... however, I've not played much on Huge maps, so am not any sure.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Artifex
...
I was playing on standard size maps..not the huge maps either.. maybe they were playing on tiny maps or small land mass/lots of water maps.

Can't see how standard map, 8 civs could yield a 40 tile gap between capitals. I usually find Civs are too close - within 12 tiles or less.

There is a distance setting somewhere in the editor, I think, but the default setting tends to start the player nearer, rather than farther to the others.

[Theseus]

40 tiles distance on a Standard, Continents, 60% water map, is an anomaly, although not as much as one might think.

A standard map has 5000 tiles, of which 1825 will be land, not including coastal tiles, using the above settings.

With 8 civs, this means an average of 228 tiles per civ... depending on how civ placement is determined in initial map generation, one could reasonably expect an average distance of appr. 30 tiles between capitols. Assuming the 2 capitols have grown to level 2 culture by the time you want to go to war, the distance from your territory to theirs will average 25-26 tiles, and obviously considerably less if 2nd and 3rd cities have been built, often towards each other.

BTW, if you stick with "standard" settings, however, and use the middle continents setting (70% water), it's only 163 tiles per civ, and the distance between territories is considerably reduced.

[DrFell]

Simple solution to the distant civ problem... don't use swordsmen If the closest civ is so far away, building a ton of chariots and upgrading them to horsemen before attacking should be your plan. In the meantime, expand into all that space you've got. However if you're playing on a higher level your opponent may get pikemen by the time you reach him... on higher levels it may be worth skipping the horsemen and upgrading straight to knights.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DrFell
Simple solution to the distant civ problem... don't use swordsmen If the closest civ is so far away, building a ton of chariots and upgrading them to horsemen before attacking should be your plan. In the meantime, expand into all that space you've got. However if you're playing on a higher level your opponent may get pikemen by the time you reach him... on higher levels it may be worth skipping the horsemen and upgrading straight to knights.

DrFell beat me to it.

One other thing, if you find yourself running into pikemen too quickly: do not use the Pangea setting. The more civs make contact with one another early on, the faster the tech progress gets. It all depends on the level, of course, but on Monarch I like 3-4 neighbors to beat on. More than that and the tech gets a bit too fast to pull off a really good horseman rush.

-Arrian