Strategies to Try Out

[Seeker]

..based on what we know of course....

'Agitprop Strategy'

-all Spies have a chance of 'converting' an enemy city if they do a propaganda mission. Most civs will be building in a balanced way. Build a huge mass of spies, stockpile them up, then hit the enemy with a lot of propaganda missions all at once before he has a chance to prepare.

'Starvation'

-Roads and rail bring trade...so instead of going for enemy cities you send in a bunch of cheap-ass obsolete units or high defense units and just pillage roads...unlike in Civ II this will actually work since even the AI's money is based on its transport network, and you will try to cut off unique or scarce resources this way.

Think of any others?

[Admiral]

An extension of the starvation strategy:
blockades, trade embargos, colony seizing, cultural encirclement. The ultimate peacemonger strategy.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

-The Wombat Maneuver (coined by Immortal Wombat in CTP)
(1) Get a a really good city. Could be anywhere, but preferably in the center of your civ.
(2) Empty the city of units
(3) Sell it to another civ (which you hate) for mucho money. If the civ is more technologically advanced, the better.
(4) Move your armies in and retake it. You get the money which you sold, the money which you pillaged, and maybe a free tech.

[Skanky Burns]

I cant think of anything new, so some comments on your ideas:

'Agitprop Strategy'
Spies are no longer built, so stockpiling them is (possiibly) a problem. However, i think that 'sending them out' costs gold, and that we can stockpile. Keeping the cities will mean that you will need a high culture, so your empire will need some high-maintainence culture buildings. Spies will also drain your treasury.
However, you probably wont be too involved with wars, so some cuts can be made to the military, keeping only essential (high quality) units, to prevent excessive expendature. Also due to not being at war, a cash-cow style government like Democracy would be most suitable.

'Starvation'
This could work, and become a very annoying style of strategy. A variation on this is to send a heap of really cheap units to a very valuable strategic resource held by the enemy, and stack all your units there. To get access to that resource, he has to kill all your units and since there is no damage to other units if one stack-defender dies, if you have 15 warriors, it will take the enemy 15 attacks to remove them all. If your units are cheap enough, replacing any losses wont be a problem.

[Sandman]

Trader: Concentrate on building harbours, ships and roads to nearby civs. Discover all other civs in a short time and set up a global trade network, with you acting as middleman.

Buy silk from the Chinese for 10 gold and sell it to the Zulus for 15, as an example.

As a side tactic, use the forbidden palace to set up low corruption colonies on a farflung, empty continent.

[Grumbold]

Starvation strategy is what I expect the AI to use against the player. With the slow attack speed thanks to roads mysteriously refusing to let invaders march on them, taking cities is going to be very difficult in the early years where defence values are relatively high. So you march up and pillage all the surrounding tiles, forcing the city dwellers to come out and attack you if they want to stop your activities. Then they are unfortified and vulnerable to your better attack units.

A different version of the Wombat manoeuvre is to empty a central city of units and wait. If your enemy starts trying to march an attack stack toward it, ignoring closer targets, you know that it is using an omniscence cheat but is too stupid to apply it properly. Cut off and kill the army wherever it suits you.

Incidentally, on the cheap unit strategy, it looked from one of the IGN screenshots if all his units had a 1 gold maintenance fee regardless of type so it may not be so useful to build "cheap" units if they cost the same to maintain in the long run. But perhaps you don't expect them to live long enough

[Sandman]

Slaver: Build lots of fast units. Some UUs will be especially good for this. Use espionage to find out the location of enemy workers and surge in, capture them before the enemy can respond, and retreat to your pre-prepared rock solid defence.

You've just gained a ton of workers, which can be used for improvements or just expanding your cities. Even better, the enemy will be weakened by having to rebuild its workers. Which you can go in and grab again once the dust has settled.

[HalfLotus]

Originally posted by Sandman
Trader: Concentrate on building harbours, ships and roads to nearby civs. Discover all other civs in a short time and set up a global trade network, with you acting as middleman.

Buy silk from the Chinese for 10 gold and sell it to the Zulus for 15, as an example.

As a side tactic, use the forbidden palace to set up low corruption colonies on a farflung, empty continent.

This I like. I can see my sprawling empire hoarding resources for dozens of centuries.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Actually, in reference to Lawrence's comment about getting a free tech from capturing an enemy city-is that even still IN? I confess I've not heard anything about it, so I'm wondering if they've removed it?
What I always felt was that, if you captured the city of a more advanced civ than yours, you shouldn't get a free tach, just a boost to whatever you're currently researching (allowing you to get the advance quicker!) I felt this would have reflected the capture of valuable hard copy and (later-on) computer files relating to your current research, but that you still require time to apply the data! (Rather than instantly recieving the tech!)
Of course, this might also provide another use for "Scientific Method", that is-once you have that advance, the boost to research from city captures would be much greater (as you can apply it much more successfully!!)

The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Incidentally, on the cheap unit strategy, it looked from one of the IGN screenshots if all his units had a 1 gold maintenance fee regardless of type so it may not be so useful to build "cheap" units if they cost the same to maintain in the long run. But perhaps you don't expect them to live long enough

I meant cheap production cost, so you can pump out one per turn (to replace expected losses) or start pillaging other enemy cities.
PROs:
Cheap to set up, Effective
CONs:
Requires continual renewal of units (cities must be devoted to unit production), High Upkeep costs are involved.

A variation on this idea is to produce the best defensive units you can, and fortify around an enemy city if its too hard to take. As they will cost the same in maintenance, and hopefully wont suffer as many losses, this could also be effective.
PROs:
After setting up, cities can produce other stuff, Likely to no have as many losses, Effective
CONs:
Requires a large initial production of units, High Upkeep costs are involved.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Actually, in reference to Lawrence's comment about getting a free tech from capturing an enemy city-is that even still IN? I confess I've not heard anything about it, so I'm wondering if they've removed it?

Actually, with those new screenshots, I've yet to see anything about tech grabbing, only money grabbing. Maybe its out.

[Seeker]

"Spies are no longer built, so stockpiling them is (possiibly) a problem."

We need to know more about spies. I was thinking they are now like MOO2 spies??

Slaver strategy sounds good. Plunk down a fortress with a stack on a coast nearby. Raid for slaves to take back to your 'castle'!

Another Idea:

'Trench Warfare': stacks don't die...so build a mass of riflemen protecting workers making forts...and slowly advance...while your enemy is wasting time on cannons, tanks, or other expensive (in construction turns) units, you just have this TIDAL WAVE of quickly produced cheap-ass riflemen, all entrenched stacks. The mass of entrenched units will eventually reach the enemy city and engulf it like bacteria....without EVER ATTACKING!

[Pseud0nym]

Heh... I like the slaver strategy. You could even become a slave trader by selling off your excess workers to another civ. I think for one game I'll try to build up an empire like the english one (the empire where the sun never set), by having lots of far flung cities and colonies.

Btw, how long do you have to be a damn settler for b4 you move up a rank?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

-The Death Trap

Set an area where you can pulverize the enemy civs units with artillery

[Inverse Icarus]

i can type! its a miracle!

[Inverse Icarus]

anyway, i like the slave/trader ideas. taking enemy workers and selling them to the higest bidder.

another strategy that could work is the "nuke the hell out of anything that is a different color from you" strategy.

but pumping out impis that run and and stack with enemy workers as they run to your boat seems like fun... too bad i'm the germans.

guess i'll wait for PANZERS to stack on top of those enemy workers.

[Bosh]

Hmmm, how about building settlers. And then some more settlers. Then more

[Inverse Icarus]

and then your 50 roadless, improvementless, cities get swarmed by an AI culture and start getting subverted.

better smack them down.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Yeah. i think ill be either Americans, Germans or Greeks

-Blitzkrieg (i invented this a minute ago )

Take 3 armies of Panzers, roll over France/Joan of Arc

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Heres another

-Sitzkrieg

Take 1000 b-2 stealth bomber and pulverize France back into the Stone Age.

[Sarxis]

The Microwaved TV Dinner-

Build 1000 nukes and make a bag of Jiffy-Pop popcorn; then simply unleash.

[make sure your citizens have plenty of sunblock though]


oh, btw- the popcorn is just for you to eat while you watch the show.

[Skanky Burns]

Hey, how about this one??

Find heaps of resources, trade them for a low price with the other civs, give them tech advances now and then. Then build the UN wonder, and get yourself elected leader of the world!!

Nah, will never work

[Sava]

I'm going to build two or three little puny cities within my empire and devote them to unit production. These cities can be within one city radius since I don't want them to grow. They will not be converted because they will be close to my capital which will be culturific! Then I will just pump out UU's and just send them out on military campaigns. I figure, if these cities are by an area of hills or mountains, their production will be high enough to pump out units every 4 or 5 turns each. With almost a unit per turn just from those cities, I will overwhelm the AI.

[Bleyn]

If tech stealing is out, then I would propose the Modified Wombat Manuvear.

The modification is that you specifially sell the city to a civ that is close to yours and has a lower culture rating. The lower the better. With any luck, the city leaders will come crying back to you begging to be let back in within turns.

I can see some potential advantages to this. One is that you won't have to attack the city or anything like that. Another, so far as I know, is that regaining the city this way can't be called an act of war.

Even if tech stealing is still there, this might be a good way of going about it.


BTW, if you sell a city does it lose its cultral rating in the same way capturing damages it?

[Boliao]

I used this in diety Civ2. I was the Chinese and was 10 techs below the Indians and a very poor civ. I captured one of their pop21 cities (got a free tech plus lotsa gold) and withdrew my units. They recaptured it,(they got 20 gold). I recaptured it (got a free tech plus lotsa gold)....etc.

I continued until I was on par with them in Tech and $$ ....By then the poor city's population dropped to 1 or 2. Oh yah I forgot, I sold an improvement every turn.

[Boliao]

I call the above "City exchange" strategy

[splangy]

Mongol Rush (edit the game so mongels take the place of Iroquiose for max enjoyment)

Build a sprawling empire of crap cities, then build horsemen units like theres no tommorow, then find a unsuspecting victim...

Take a Shite-load of Horseys and ambush the empires workers/settlers/defenceless, capturable units untill his empire is reduced to alotta cities, but no infastructure. Then attak each city once just to test it, if its like a warriors and chariots garrison attack until it falls, if its a hoplite and swordsmen garrison just seige it until about size 2, then use the horsemen to attack-retreat-attack-retreat-attack-retreat-attack-retreat-attack-retreat-attack-retreat until it falls.

while your doing this build another horsey army till its real big and find another civ, then continue to fight till both civs fall or exist only in a few colonys, this way you can harrass them till they just get exausted and die. The only reason this wouldn't have been as good a idea in civ2 is the retreat button, which I think will be REALLY benificial in taking cities

[Inverse Icarus]

i dont think "retreat" is a button. i think it just happens sometimes if the unit is losing.

confirmation either way would be nice.

[MxM]

How about building your most culturally advanced city at the age of your empire? Of cause you need to protect it well by units (produced in other cities), but then, it will convert more cities of your opponents, because it is closer to them!

[Gralak]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
-The Wombat Maneuver (coined by Immortal Wombat in CTP)
(1) Get a a really good city. Could be anywhere, but preferably in the center of your civ.
(2) Empty the city of units
(3) Sell it to another civ (which you hate) for mucho money. If the civ is more technologically advanced, the better.

...and when your armies are closing enemy city (slow, because in enemy territory), enemy builds a cheap unit and KABOOM! destroys the city.