Opening Strategies

[Comrade Tribune]

This thread exists to collect all known openings that work in CivIII.

(Note: Only openings that work at Regent or higher do qualify. Please do not use this thread for ideas that you have never tried, or that only work at chieftain. )

My impression is that, at the current time, only two viable opening strategies have been found:

1- REX Rapid Early Expansionism

This is what most players, including me, do. Found as many useful cities as possible, as fast as possible. In short, expand like hell.

2- FLASH Forced Labour Rush

This was proposed by Out4Blood first, I think. Use Forced Labour continuously to churn out large numbers of Attack Units -Horsemen seem to work particularly well-, and never stop. Stay in Despotism, and overrun everybody in the Ancient Era. This may be the safest strategy, and will yield the highest score (though this was probably not Firaxis´ intention ).

Has anybody found another viable opening?

[Matthew]

I call this Delayed Rapid Expantion.

I generally play as the Iroquois, just because this allows cheap temples, gives me a scout, and I begin with the tech to build both Temples and Granaries. Works best (as does perhaps any strategy) when you start out with good food resources. Rather than cranking out a settler as soon as possible, my first build order is warrior-temple-granary-settler. The temple and granary may be reversed. I use luxuries to keep people happy when necessary. This does delay the production of my first settler a bit, but generally my capital is going between size 3 and 5 or between 4 and 6, and I can produce those settlers at a much higher rate than I could with a smaller granary-less city, all the while producing a lot more money (for the ancient era anyway) and getting an early culture boost. I have also noticed that I get a settler from a hut early on more often if production of that first settler is somewhat delayed. My secod city may follow the same early build order as the first, or may forgo the granary if I find that another civ is too close. I can generally establish a 6 to 9 city ring about my capital fairly quickly this way. I concentrate on these cities, and generally only expand much beyod this to get resources,to take advantage of excellent terrain, or to exude culture on the AI. I don't concern myself much with the fact that the AI civs tend to have many more cities for two reasons.

1. Any city near my civ will eventually switch to me peacefully.

2. Those distant cities don't do the ai any more good than they do a human player.

The forbidden palace is usefull in reducing corruption in an area where I do expand into for resoures, or where ai cities have flocked to me.