Is this cheating? Twin-Cities Leach Method

[DanS]

OK, so I'm playing the Romans on Emporer normal map and it appears that using your military is actually quite useful early game with the following build queue:

warrior
barracks
archer x 5
spearmen x 2
temple

Then you go out and raise a little hell.

As I was playing with this queue, and I kept having to raze enemy cities, it occured to me that there is a variant that is the perfect antidote (the yang) to expansionist civs. Why establish a capital city quickly at all when you have good reason to believe that there are civs near you, and nobody is belligerent early game? It turns out that you really don't have to or want to when playing a militaristic civ.

Start your civ, but instead of establishing a city, use your settler and worker to find the nearest civilization and plant your capital right next to his so that no resources overlap. Use your worker to attach to his road grid. By the time that you have the means to conquer his civ, he'll have three or four cities on the grid. Use the following build queue:

barracks
archer x 5
spearmen x 1

Then attack his capital. Take it out. You now have a sister 4 or 5 pop capital city with 2 or 3 workers for free. Most of the surrounding area will have been developed for you. You'll get a leader about 1/2 the time. A couple of your archers will become elite. You should be able to take over a couple more cities or even destroy his entire civ, using his expansionist policies for your ultimate benefit.

Then expand backward to the areas where your original starting place was located. This is sort of like a "hole" into which you can now expand.

This will work 90% of the time against the Egyptians and Chinese and normally the take of cities is quite nice. It's toughest to do against the Greeks. I've done it successfully against the Germans, oddly.

[Awender]

What level did you play?

[DanS]

Emporer, as I stated in the first sentence.

[Monoriu]

Some problems I can see about it:

1. The other civs will have a head start of you before you can find them.

2. If you lose one war you lose the game. But then you haven't invested much time into the game and you can easily restart

3. You'll have a hard time fighting civs that have an early unique unit. That's probably why you had so much trouble with the Greeks.

Other than that, its probably a good strategy, though one with a lot of risks.

I can't see how anyone can call that cheating. Its a high risk strategy that is completely within the rules and intent of the game.

[DanS]

Actually, it's low risk, as far as these things go. You are assured to take one well-developed capital city, no matter who you're up against. Even the Greeks can be beaten if you build some more archers before implementing the battle scenario. Nobody has relevant tech deployed when you attack them (~1,200 BC).

The real risk is not finding someone close by.

[notyoueither]

How about...

Found capital in 4000bc. Build warrior x 2, settler x 1, Archer x 3

Build second city. Build Archer x 2.

Gives 5 Archers with second city to allow more flexible response to circumstances.

If you do not run into enemy civ early (fat chance), you are not screwed. When you do, you still take their capital.

First couple of warriors expand your map area somewhat, lets you know wher to build city 2, then garrison your home while Archers are fulfilling destiny.

Have done this just about every time to toast close civ early. Once there wasn't one, then Archers still were useful as scouts/guards for settlers (yeah, Barbarians eat settlers).

Prudent strategy saves restarts.

[notyoueither]

BTW, higher difficulty levels will not allow more than 4 units per city (no deficit spending). 1 city with 5 units means 1 gold maint.

Haven't seen many 1 pop cities with 2 plus gold surplus.

[Dev]

Supporting those extra units for a couple of turns until you conquer the other city shouldn't be much a problem.....

/dev

[chumly]

Zealot rush! Zealot rush! Peewee Rush! Peasant Rush! Dragoon Rush!

Er... sorry, wrong game

Yeah, viable strategy, risky, with a decent payoff.

[DanS]

notyoueither: that's the kind of method I started out with, but the distance between you and the enemy civ's capital is a critical component. You want to gain the benefit of the enemy civ, not just remove him from play. He's got valuable cities, resources, developed land, and workers. That said, I would be interested in seeing the results of the timeline you outlined.

Using the arm's length approach, I found myself razing cities because I knew that it wasn't possible to hold all of them militarily and, in any event, the corruption would be killer on the higher levels to have a 5 city 20 squares away.

So I found it preferable to use the AI's bonuses and proclivities against him. Hit him at the heart when I have control over most of the variables.

[pchang]

Not a cheat. Just evil.

[DanS]

Thanks. That's exactly the response I was looking for, pchang.

Last night, I successfully made it through early game on emporer using this approach. It appears that there are two big risks. About 25% of the time you will not find an appropriate starting place for one reason or another. Also, 25% of the time, you will be next to the Greeks, who are pains in the ass.

Last night I saw the Greeks, said "screw that" and eventually ended up establishing my capital city next to the Aztecs. There were two iron resources in a city very near, so I went after that first. I then had legions. However, I think this was a mistake. I shouldn't have screwed around, but rather went after the biggest prize.

Also, I got bogged down destroying the Aztecs, even with my legions. It was about 800 AD before I could seriously start my vertical expansion. By about 1500, everybody was in modernity and I had one of the smaller civs.

I think I'll have to work on my siege warfare. I had 3 catapults and 5 legions before attacking his capital. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with 5 catapults, 5 legions. Pound him into the ground and then take his cities without losses. I'll be working on a suitable mix over the weekend. Somebody in randomturn's thread talked about doing this against the Greeks, so it is appealing...

[pchang]

Instead of Romans, try a civ with an early unit that can move 2 like Aztechs or Babylonians. You get to retreat and heal up in a town with a barracks. You get to whittle down the enemy without taking any losses (until you run up against enemies with move 2 units also).

[Enigma]

Artillery is fantastic, this game gives you frequent losses unless your offensive unit has more than double the defenders power, once you build up a large artillery force you do not have to replace it. My industrial age ratio is 1 Calvalry to 2 Infantry to 3 artillery- you can wipe other civs off the map really quickly this way.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by DanS
Last night I saw the Greeks, said "screw that" and...

I guess theres 2 initial strategies to prevent you starting out next to those evil Greeks
First is to start as the Greeks, which will make a counter-attack by the other civ unlikely to do damage.
Seeing as civilizations start in their cultural groupings, perhaps starting as another civ in a different cultural group will help. as pchang suggested, the Aztecs look ideal for this, with retreat-able units, which will allow you to heal your attack force, rather than rebuilding them after each city, and then continue to roll over their other cities.

[zeace]

I accidentally tried this strategy when I played my first game on a small map. I was aztecs, and the iroquois were very close and cutting me off from the rest of the continent. Jaguar Warriors are great for the first few turns of the game. I easily took the iroquois capital. Every time they built a new city, I was taking their old city so I never had to build any settlers of my own.

The only problem was when I finally rid the continent of them. I quickly fell behind in the science race as I couldn't find any other civs to trade with. By the time I had navigation, the other continent was already enjoying the industrial age.

Ze Ace

[Plutarck]

I gotta try this

[DK36]

It's not cheating AT ALL. Not even exploition. Just a strategy like any other.

But, my question is, none of you guys got absorbed by culture!? By the time you find someone, plant a city next to them, their capital should already be booming with culture (well, mine is).

[morbak]

I mean , in the beginning , i prefer stay cool , and offer a maximum help to others civilization so they grow at maximum and help mine .

[DanS]

Shanky: I appreciate your deviousness. Start as the Greeks! But I've fallen into a pattern of playing as the Romans, so I sort of want to play them until I win a deity game. One of the very interesting things about Civ3 is that you have to play to the strengths of your civ. So if you aren't winning, then it's your strategy that's the problem!

DK36: I've never had this problem.

After playing several more games like this, I think that catapults really suck early game. I mean REALLY suck. I had five catapults and the only thing they did was knock down the population of the enemy civ's capital. But those are very valuable population points! They can be liquidated for units or for, say, a temple.

Playing more variations, a preferable way of starting is to have twelve archers, if your treasury can handle it. Break it into two forces 7 and 5. Attack the capital with the 7. Attach the second city with the 5. Fortify the second city. Move on from the capital city with the remainder after fortification.

I'm still trying to find that perfect mix...

[DanS]

It's amazing what you learn on Apolyton. After reading of randomturn's victory on deity, it became clear to me that my system is flawed. Rather than planting your capital right next to the enemy civ's capital, you should leave a 5 square gap, so that he can fill it in with a settler. Here's the kicker. DON'T ATTACK CITIES RIGHT ON THE EDGE, ALWAYS GO ONE LEVEL DEEPER.

So in this strategy, you will at first be attacking his capital city and the second largest city, which will be one level deeper always. Sue for peace, if you can get anything valuable and then renew the attack.

[Jing]

DanS: If you play as the Romans, the Greeks will be always nearby if you let the game choose your opponents at random. So one way to avoid them is to choose all your opponents manually at the start of the game.

[Enigma]

DanS-
You are correct that catapaults and cannons suck, but I am talking mainly about the later game, perhaps I overrated artillery but let me present some numbers to you...
Infantry- defense 10
Size 13 city- +100% - defense 20
Fortified, +25% - defense 22.5
plains- +10% - defense 23.5
Even at the lowest possible way of evaluating defense modifiers, this is a defense of 23.5. Lets compare calvalry- offense 6.

I would attack some cities with like 10 calvalry, and although I wouldn't lose any the damage would be so low that nothing would happens. It seems you need armies to take the really large cities. That point in the game was where the offensive techs lagged the most behind the defensive techs, later on I was able to use modern armor without artillery.

[DanS]

Deity is pretty tough and I've been working on an early game strategy for deity-large world-raging hordes. This sure isn't easy.

Enigma: I think the key is to have veteran units and to not fall behind on tech. Always attack the weakest opponent, etc. But maybe you're right when you get to the middle ages.