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Old August 19, 2002, 18:39   #1
Bluesman
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Strategy for English, Deity, v1.29f
First off, a big thank you to all the contributors to Apolyton strategy whose ideas I have shamelessly stolen in trying to win with the English on Deity. Vel, Aeson, Arrian, Theseus and many others - I take my hat off to you all. Three cheers!

I thought that it would be worth reporting on my current game-in-progress, for which I have shamelessly leached ideas from the Strategy forum, to let you know how some of them are working out for the suicidally-weak English on the fiendishly difficult Deity setting.

Firstly, game setup. As suggested in the civ traits discussion, Huge map to make the most of expansionist (and, hopefully, the lower corruption from commercial). Pangaea. Only 7 enemy civs chosen from the least popular/powerful player civs, trying to restrict the number of religious ones in particular: Americans, Greeks, Russians, Zulu, Romans, Iroquois and French. Roaming barbarians only (perhaps I should have gone with raging).

Starting position: on a river, 1 cow on grassland, dyes in a nearby forest. Don't come much better.

Early game: a fairly standard explore-with-scouts and REX approach. I didn't try early rush strategies because on a large map it's a long way to your nearest opponent, so I'm erring on the side of builder. I am on the east coast (south-west, it turns out to be). A goody hut yielded a settler on the edge of 4 mountains containing gems, and York was born in 3850 AD.

I was pursuing a low-science, high cash strategy, running for Writing and Literacy at 40 turns per tech and getting other techs by purchase, trading and goody huts. N.B. milk expansionist Scouts for all they are worth, which is pretty much nothing after the ancient era.

First contact was with the Americans to the north-east. Here I have to report that early war really, really works. An elite warrior took down a stray American archer, becoming the 1st Light Irregulars, and a GL was born. Not trusting my chances of getting another for a bit I declined the opportunity to build the Pyramids with a heavy heart and built a 1-spearman army, aiming to bolster it with stronger defensive units later. One heavily-battered American archer learned that even small defensive armies pack an offensive punch and the Heroic Epic was underway in a coastal city on the 'safe' south coast.

As my archers and spearmen were heading north, the Americans sued for peace. We had tech parity so I demanded contact with other civs and thought I'd try it on by asking for a city, you know, just for a laugh. Instead of the expected "get knotted" message, the poor fools were prepared to offer me New York and Boston of their 6 cities. Boston was nothing special, but New York was on a river to the east of Washington, with hills, mountains and jungle to its east. And to the south-east was Philadelphia with its 4 or 5 Silks. Cue Wayne's World impersonations... she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine. The snowballing contact with other civs allowed the Iroquois to gouge me for Iron Working, revealing two sources near me. I also found horses on the way to America... My forces returned home, where I spent my hoarded cash on upgrades and embassies.

Note that the cash surplus from low-science was key to this strategy, and as I couldn't raise enough science to budge the 40 turns for Writing and Literacy I bit the bullet and made money fast, in true Usenet style.

I wasn't sure about going down the army/warmongering route - I was a Civ 2 builder, and quite a good one - but it paid off in the long run. I urge the unconverted to try it! I also tried and fell in love with the worker-purchase strategy. Population means expansion means power ! The only problems came when refusing extortion demands from the other side of the world led to, say, the perfidious French declaring war and annoying a key citizen in London.

I had less luck with the rolling-conflict and client-state approaches as my wars continued. There simply wasn't another opponent near enough for a series of quick wars: the Greeks with their tank-like Hoplites and Russians were far to the north, and the Zulu with their devilishly fast Impi to the east beyond the Americans. I rationalise it like this: whatever you build is an investment of resources, which needs to generate a return. The rate of return on a military which spends most of its time en route is low; hence the AI's REX tactics. The economics of Huge maps are quite different from smaller ones...

What did work well was a combination of contact-denial to slow down AI tech exchange (otherwise the Russians and Greeks would have run away, I fear) and the fostering of vicious wars between distant powers. This if you like was the upside of the worker-unhappiness problem: once I was at war with some distant civilization then gold, world maps, or a goody tech could all go to checking the AI's advance through fruitless warfare. (One slight drawback was that the Greeks wiped the floor with the advanced but Hopliteless Russians, leaving a small Wonder-rich core and becoming very powerful. Not what I expected. Worked well for other civs, though.)

There's a paradox here: warfare is productive for humans but not the AI. Why? Because we're better at stategy, I guess. We hoard our elites for GLs. We pick terrain better. We concentrate our forces. But I digress...

A second war with the Americans allowed the conquest of Detroit and the ceding of two more cities, for the cost of Boston destroyed. A second GL from my swordsmen was hoarded for the Great Library (my first wonder). The English civilization was small, spread out, culturally puny, with a small but threateningly-poised military. (All comments about relevance to real life to /dev/null please )

And on that note, I'll leave the story for now. More if people are interested, or I'll shut up if not.

Bluesman
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Old August 19, 2002, 18:59   #2
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Very well written and I'd read more if you post more .

It's tough to do the rolling-conflict or client-state approach on a huge map with only 8 civs - there's just so much land that you're likely to find (as you did) that the ancient empires are widely spaced -- making army transit time exceedingly long, especially without the road network of an industrious civ.

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Old August 19, 2002, 19:24   #3
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Excellent!

I would warn that on Deity, given your settings, running Machievellian wars has the potential negative side-effect of creating killer AI civs, such as is happening with Greece. On Deity though, also, that's probaby outbalanced by the distraction created for all the non-killers.

I'm jealous... I still haven't had an elite Warrior generate a GL yet... when it happens, he gets named Og.

Keep writing!
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Old August 19, 2002, 21:03   #4
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Very good written. Deity and the English, that's double hard. Although expansionist on a underpopulated huge pangaea rocks, and commercial has been improved, so may be they aren't that bad given your settings.

A few notes: Roaming barbarians were a wise choice. On huge underpopulated maps you usually don't succeed to claim all land till the first 2 civs get into the Medieval age, especially on Deity. That will result in vast barbarian uprisings. They can drive you crazy, believe me. 24-stacks of horsemen every 2nd or 3rd turn are not fun.

Underpopulated maps give the human a good chance to keep up in expansion even on Deity and without war, because the AI stops expanding and around the optimal city number and does not claim every small patch of land. (Sidenote: No, Coracle, it doesn't. Settler diarrhea is the result of vastly increasing the OCN, perhaps to lower corruption).

I'm curious how the game proceeds.
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Old August 20, 2002, 09:17   #5
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I'm curious as well. Keep us posted. Playing the English on Diety... yeesh.

It's good to know that some of my input has been useful on Diety... a level I have yet to play.

I have a question about that 2nd GL you are hoarding... wouldn't the forbidden palace be more useful than the Great Library? I love the Library, don't get me wrong, but the the FP is sooo powerful.

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Old August 20, 2002, 15:40   #6
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When I played unmodded Civ3, always as the English (hence the name), I used much the same strategy, although I did make huge even bigger; don't know if that compromises the unmodded bit. Used scouts to get a technical lead, expand as fast as possible although I maintained as much of a peaceful builder approach as possible (good thing the AI counted all my workers as if they could actually fight). Played Deity once, early and overconfident that my Civ 1/2 skills would work just as well in Civ 3. Did eventually get so that I could usually win on Emperor. And I did always try to get the GL as my first or second GW, either as a defensive ploy to protect my scout induced tech lead, or as catch up if others got ahead of me. Try to pick my fights, and milk diplomacy/trading for all I could. Oh yeah, also quit if didn't get a good or better starting position - with at least one or two nearby sites that could act as settler factories to power my expansion. Without that good starting position, one was just playing catch up the entire game, and generally falling further behind instead. That said, one could be competitive with a starting position as described by Bluesman - although I can't claim to have succeeded on Deity.

Problem was that Civ 3 really sucked with those map settings. Low OCN, few corruption fighting buildings, really no fun at all. 'One shield suck land' as someone accurately and amusingly described it. So mods it was, first LWC, now DyP, both subtly (or not so subtly) tweaked. OCN 90 on 240x 226 maps and six buildings with anti-corruption fighting. Still playing the English and using the same basic approach, now playing Deity but to be honest, DyP is much easier to win with than vanilla Civ 3 - and I have traded Commercial for Industrious (making it even easier, even though I gave all the other civs an extra trait to compensate). I too would like to hear more on the game. Who knows, if DyP can't be made competitive, than maybe I'll have to revert to (near vanilla) Civ 3 with the awful English.
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Old August 20, 2002, 18:42   #7
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Well, if you really want to know...

To answer Arrian's question about why I didn't build the FP: one, I didn't think of it and two, I hadn't built enough cities to trigger it. I only had a dozen cities (including captured Seattle and extorted New York) strung out in a line. However, I think Arrian will approve of my eventual FP

My logic for GL was similar to Anglophile's: not so much to protect a tech lead as to maintain an acceptable tech lag (trading GL techs to weaker opponents in exchange for maps, cash, workers, you name it - and coincidentally keeping the squabbles between AI civs as even as possible ) And much more importantly, cashing in as much as possible. My nation of shopkeepers was going to be going in for marketplaces in a heavy way...

By 950 BC I had just built the GL, had 12 cities a/a, and was expanding towards ivory to my north-west and a lonely-looking furs to the south. Then some spices turned up just north of the horses (I lost a lot of scouting troops to barbarians early, and had done a lousy job of scouting to the north while at war), and I knew this was as close to ultimate power as I was likely to get. Five luxuries far closer to me than anyone else, and the puny Americans with their Silks being groomed for destruction! And beyond them, Zimbabwe had incense nearby. Those marketplaces were my ticket to possibly illegal levels of happiness in the usually-sullen English populace.

By this time it appeared that the poor Americans had no horses, and hadn't taken the trouble to stroll into the mountains east of New York to mine the iron. (I'm sure the presence of New York was a factor.) As will become apparent, New York would become a lynch-pin in my eastern campaign, and I had pop-rushed an early temple there to protect my borders and ward off the dreaded culture-flip from neighbouring Washington.

What I tried to do with America was an uneasy combination of destruction and cultivation. I wanted them to build my cities for me, essentially as a client state, and I would conquer some and extort others. But to keep conquered cities, I believed that Washington would have to go, and of course the greedy eyes of my troops had long since turned towards Philadelphia. The ideal was that America would build cities out to meet mine, cultivate the land for me (we were into jungles at the eastern end) and then I would take them, ready-made.

By this time, the Heroic Epic had been built. A short war with you-know-who generated Nelson in about 450 BC, who rushed Sistine in Nottingham. I was waiting for Republic rather than switching to Monarchy first, to keep the war-and-money machine going, and got that about the same time. With insane levels of happiness, war-weariness was not going to be an issue. Finished some key builds, with the aim of getting culture buildings up and settlers on their way (or newly-founded cities growing) while anarchy and such raged. In order to be doing something productive, I declared war on the Americans, destroying a town on my way to razing Washington. Anarchy over, I rushed a barracks in New York, where my frail elite horsemen became strong veteran knights. (Chivalry and education were the last gains from the Great Library, and I was now putting money into science. It hurt.)

Now this is where I got lucky, even by previous standards in this game. Taking Philadelphia, the new capital, netted me Wallace in 50 BC. Every fibre of my builder-instinct screamed that I could use him to rush Copernicus, thus annoying the French and Greeks no end - if I could research Astronomy in time. But I wanted culture in Philadelphia, to make sure I held it, and I wanted to fortify against the Zulu in the east. Rather than splash big money on a temple, I gambled on the FP, and used Wallace to build it in Philly. (I had a decent garrison and a culture advantage, but I would have screamed if the place had flipped...) This was absolutely the best thing I could have done, except possibly building FP in my core cities and rushing a Palace (which I hadn't planned for, and I was in a hurry). The city didn't flip, the extra commerce helped me reach Astronomy quicker... and to cap it all, my newly elite knights gave me another GL just outside Buffalo in 30 AD. It was time to mop up, call another truce for cities (I'd lost the reborn Boston while taking Philly) and expand into the wide open spaces.

I did make one sensible long-term decision: instead of rushing Copernicus in London, my highest commerce city at the time, I built it in York, home of the four mountain-gems. No university at the time, but I knew that staying competitive in tech was going to be needed against a real opponent...

Cue title music, possibly that Civ 3 tune that always reminds me of "Teddy Bears' Picnic"

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Old August 20, 2002, 19:54   #8
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I take it we can safely assume that you're playing under the new "accelerated production" option?
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