Vel's Strategy Thread - Part Two

[Quurgoth]

I've been playing around with the Chinese of late, and I must say I concur with the thread above... they're surprisingly powerful.

My main love for this civ centers around one point made above: archers can be made from the start. My first actions with my initial worker are always to road/mine any shielded grassland or cow tiles, which means rapid production. The archers I send out in the early game have been, IMO, better than even a scout, for several reasons:

1. Archers last longer than weaker units. I managed to earn 425 gold by the time I found the Babs... who were happy to sell me three techs for a total of 160 gold. I then bought communications with other civs, purchased the extra techs, and now I'm caught up despite my low science percentage.
2. I have never seen so much of the map so early (I'm playing on huge). The archers survive barbarian attacks, and see more goodie huts than I've gotten in the past (primarily because my scout or warrior eventually gets killed). This has led to tech bonuses galore, extra warriors (more exploration), and so forth.
3. Any goodie huts that yield barbarians generally mean that I've got an elite unit at the end of the AI turn. I've already gotten one GL, with only six cities established.
4. Elite archers can crush early AI cities. Establishing my borders has gotten easier by a long shot, although holding my position can be a challenge. Using a GL to rush the FP in a city that's at the border helps though

[Velociryx]

Yowza! We're already creeping up on the 250 post limit again! I'm gonna start compiling the latest "distilled notes" in preparation for starting up Part Three of the ongoing thread series....did you guys like the way I did it last time? Was something along those lines workable in terms of organization?

-=Vel=-

[Quurgoth]

I think these threads have been excellent in format, and surprisingly good in content.

I can't wait for your next civ analysis Vel, so far you're in complete agreement with my thoughts (although I haven't tried the Aztecs yet).

For some reason I don't like certain civs, and probably won't ever try them. I guess it's based off my experiences in Civ2.

[Arrian]

With the Chinese, as with the other civs (or factions, as SOME of us like to call them ), it behooves you to play to their strengths, which are war and building stuff, essentially. Given that both of those things are pretty important, I could see the Chinese being a good choice to play (though I confess I haven't tried them out yet).

They are not a strong cultural civ (which did strike me as a bit odd, given the rich history and culture of the Celestial Empire), and you must make up for that in other ways. Industrious workers jump-start production in your capitol (faster mining) and expansion (road building). Militaristic... well, all things being equal, your units are gonna do better than a non-militaristic civ, and you do get a nice UU. Culture is the weakness, but it, like war for the Babylonians, can be overcome.

-Arrian

p.s. Just out of curiosity, have most of you played each of the civs at least 1 time yet? I haven't played the Zulu, Aztec, Chinese, Indians, English, French, or Romans, and have only played briefly with the Russians and Germans.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Velociryx,

You have shown a talent for strategic analysis in CivIII. I thought you might like to read another Master's thoughts on the matter:

http://ww1.cnd.org/BIG5/Classics/Phi...Zi-10.txt.html

They ask that you save a copy locally. It's not a fancy text, but it is complete.

I especially like following applying the lessons in the game's diplomacy. Nothing better than convincing an enemy to switch sides... except taking his last city.

Good hunting.

[Gamer at heart]

Vel

I've followed this tread since the beginning of part one, and I really think you've done a great job of organizing it. Sure, lots of people have brought tons of intersting points, but you've made sure everything important have been kept for newcomers. The summary that started this second part was great! Next time, you might just attach a MSWord file or something so it doesn't take as many posts and space at the beginning. That's just an idea of course, I don't mind at all. I'm sure you'll do fine!

As to what factions I've used, I remember playing the following: French, Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians many times and I just started playing the Japanese. Wow, that's a much smaller list than I though! Well, I guess that's something that'll have to be fixed!

[Quurgoth]

I've played the French a few times, Babs twice, Persians twice, Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese. I've abandoned most efforts in the middle ages, although I have completed a few games.

[Velociryx]

Thanks again guys! And I like the idea 'bout just attaching a word doc with the latest notes....since that's how I"m keeping everything anyway, it'll actually save me a step....now I just gotta go in and edit out all the html tags I put in, but....heh...minor stuff!

Anyway, I'm still hacking my own stuff together on the Chinese, but should have it ready soon, and will be posting it in the same basic format as I have the others (oh! And as to the articles I've already done....I have gone back in and added the "In your neighborhood" sections to them, so that everything remains consistent).

All this material that we're collecting....these are all the ingredients that will soon be mixed, blended, and re-combined into version 1.0 of the strat guide! It's not fleshed out yet by any means, but in addition to writing and posting stuff here, I'm working on the skeleton that'll hold the "meat" of the guide together....more on that as it gets closer to completion tho!

Ahhhh yes! Sun Tzu's Art of War! Have two copies at my house, but I am lacking an electronic copy! An absolute masterpiece!! Thanks for the link, and I've already saved a copy on my machine here at work! Awesome!!!



-=Vel=-
(back to work on the notes!)

[DaBear]

Never trade tech on anything other than your turn. If another civ comes a knockin' escape/cancel/bribe but don't trade. If you are in the trading business and you trade on their turn, they can and will flog it around before you can.

Do a repeat visit after you trade any tech that gives a resource that you don't have. example If you don't have coal and need to trade for it, get there soon before it is traded to someone else.

Do a repeat visit to any Science civ after trading a tech that gets them a era...as they will now have another tech to trade.

Use an idea from vel and have handy a scratch pad.
Use it to assist your predictions when other civs are likely to develop new tech or an existing trade for goods is about to run out. Use this to a hold off selling a tech if in a few turns you need leverage in a trade.

Yes you can micro manage your sales to squeeze every drop however repeated use of this tactic does nothing to help how they feel about you. I'm not sure but I have seen really fast changes from Polite to Annoyed that may not have been as fast if all the trades had not been stingy.
You can only trade if your not at war so if you are going to net little on a sale give it away so you can tighten up on the big trades.

Isolationists that hang onto your maps be wary on how long you hang onto them. In a recent game I played I found another large Island with no one on it, close to mine. I held off trading maps until I started settling it. It repeatly came up in trades but I resisted. Then a Civ which was polite went angry and demanded them. Again I refused (dumb for the trader) Went to war with that civ and within a turn 3 other Civs who where polite joined. Lots of no replies later and no fighting I made the wars disappear by trading the map

[JohnE]

Originally posted by inca911
Anyway, one unit per population of the city prevents any city from cultural reversion. Even the former Perisan capital with 4 Wonders!!!

I have seen cities revert with twice as many units of mine in them as the city had population, on Chieftain! Does it matter what kind of units they are? I assumed that Settlers and Workers wouldn't help subdue the population, but what about Cannons? ( They were the bulk of my units. )

[inca911]

Originally posted by JohnE


I have seen cities revert with twice as many units of mine in them as the city had population, on Chieftain! Does it matter what kind of units they are? I assumed that Settlers and Workers wouldn't help subdue the population, but what about Cannons? ( They were the bulk of my units. )

IIRC, Soren specifically stated in one of his interviews that the units used to prevent cultural reversion must have an offensive attack strength greater than 0. Bombardment strength does not count. Opinions differ on the value of Workers as cultural reversion suppression units, but I don't rely on them. Anyone else have thoughts on the effectiveness of Workers in this capacity? So, if you had a bunch of cannons as the primary defensive corps in that city, then it is not surprising to me in the least that you experienced a reversion.

[Arrian]

John - I find that the # of units I have in a captured city has little effect on whether or not it defects back. Soren said, somewhere in these forums, that the garrison is the least important factor. More important is the relative strength of your culture & that of the AI, and distance to your capitol vs. his (this last bit is very important). I find that I usually put 1-3 units in (normally 1 or 2 infantry units and then whatever beat up attackers I used to take the city - unless they're elite) and hold a small portion of my attack force back in case the city defects. If it does, it gets a regular unit of whatever the AI has (spear/pike/musket/rifle/inf), which you can easy kill and re-capture the city. My way avoids the loss of major chunks of my army.

I witnessed some puzzling AI behavior last night/this morning. Shortly after I wiped the Japanese off the face of the earth (hey, they started it!), some impi cross my border. I snicker at them, as I have infantry and cavalry (Zulus have riflemen/cavalry, but for some reason hit me with impis... only Shaka would bring a spearchucker to a gunfight). Shaka had an MPP with the Chinese (weak, but still, they had a border with me and I didn't wanna deal w/them), so I called them up and got an MPP with them too (they paid me for it, heh). Next turn, shaka attacks, chinese declare war on him. I have, so far, taken three zulu cities (including Zimbabwe) and intend to wipe them out. My question is this - why did Shaka attack me? It was... really, really stupid. I am WAY more powerful than he is, and I was a good trading partner for him the whole game. I would sell him luxuries for a pittance because that's all he had. 3gold/turn for ivory is a pretty darn good deal, don't you think?. I gave him gifts (maps) sometimes, and he was "polite" the entire game, so it's not like I provoked him. Clealry, the AI thought it could win.

On the one hand, they are the Zulu. They're supposed to be warlike... and maybe not all that senseable. On the other, I had just witnessed what I think is a good example of a SMART AI attack by the Japanese. I won that war too, but Tokagawa took 2 cities of mine and cut my gem supply for a while. Killing them took SERIOUS effort. My treasury dropped from 3000+ gold to roughly 400. In fact, I think the Japanese were pretty close to critical mass - a little more in the initial attack and I may have lost, or at least been unable to take back my gems city. It was touch and go. Shaka, on the other hand, has done a pretty good impression of an annoying bug. SPLAT. I wonder how the AI calculates whether it goes to war or not? I wonder if that silly calculation of total # of units is the basis for it. Probably, huh? That *might* explain it.

-Arrian

[inca911]

Originally posted by Arrian
Soren said, somewhere in these forums, that the garrison is the least important factor. More important is the relative strength of your culture & that of the AI, and distance to your capitol vs. his (this last bit is very important). -Arrian

Soren did state that as a good rule of thumb, one unit (with attack capability >0) prevents one citizen from thinking about defection. In my book, this is a very significant and simple concept to employ to aggressively prevent defections in captured cities (which is usually my goal). Soren also stated that in addition to capital distances and overall civ cultural ratio (which you mentioned above), there is a factor for the culture that specific city has amassed under your rule vs. the culture that specific city has amassed under previous rulers. This within-city culture ratio is very important since a culturally rich city will attempt to defect more than a culturally poor city. So, speaking as someone who does not have cities culturally defect back to the AI (therefore taking my units as well), I use the one military unit per citizen rule of thumb and control that aspect of the game to an extent where it is a non-issue.

On your second note, I do believe that total number of units does factor into the AI's decision to go to war.

[daFrog]

Great thread Vel et al - very intersting reading, although I think I will probably stick to the easier levels than you are all dealing with as only so much challenge is fun for me.

Anyway, I know this off the current topic, but it came up in my game last night (and no I didn't try several paths yet as turns are at the 5 minute stage Even worse as I am still in the industrial age - at 1890). Anyway back to my question...

Imagine that you are fighting a war with Greece who have an MPP with the Japenese and get them to join in.
Then you hurt the Japanese a bit and sue for peace with them, then immediately continue to attack the Greeks, bringing the Japenese back into the war.

Does this hurt your rep?

Otherwise this seems like a great plan from where I stand, giving me lots of cities as peace-offerings w/out the wait associated with threkking accross their land...
As long as neither civ is really a threat to me I am happy to do it...

That the Japanese have nothing I really want (they have no resources at all, but do have their samurai now), but they rarely find any good tech either. Still it's late in the game and I need to boost my tech rate so every little helps.

Side question: Am I lagging too much to go for the spaceship? There are a 6 civs left, a couple of them reasonably productive in tech. I can tech farm myself (~6 turns/tech) if I have to as I have the cities, but would rather clean up the oppo a lot now rather than get in a close space race with them.

[eMarkM]

Does this hurt your rep?

It shouldn't. It's Japan that's the one declaring war, so it shouldn't be a hit to you. Nor would it be a hit on Japan, since their obliged to go to war w/ MPP.

Yeah, if you're putting the hurt on Japan and getting goodies for making peace than having them be forced to go right back to war w/ MPP in place just so you can repeat the process over again--that's a neat trick. Though a seeming bug w/ how the AI works. I would think it wouldn't make peace w/ you until you made peace with Greeks, or at least refuse to give you anything. But I've done a similar thing in my games.

e

[Raging Mouse]

Originally posted by inca911


Soren did state that as a good rule of thumb, one unit (with attack capability >0) prevents one citizen from thinking about defection. In my book, this is a very significant and simple concept to employ to aggressively prevent defections in captured cities (which is usually my goal

This must put a serious brake on your invasion, since if you want to capture a large city, say size 11, you need to station 11 or 12 military units in it to prevent defection. Those units might be better used elswhere. Nah; I'll stick to reducing it's size via bombardment until it's a manageable size!

[inca911]

You are 100% correct. Bombard until the pop is nice and low and bring over your own workers to staff up cities if you want greater production output.

[mlepinski]

I'd like to know what people's thoughts are on the importance of navel power, particularly in the early game. I find that someone always discovers mapmaking before the intitial landgrab phase is complete. Therefore, I find that I always have the choice of whether to get mapmaking quickly and devote resources to building galleys or to ignore navies until the caravel.

My take on the situation is that the only reason to build galleys is to attempt to discover other land (new islands for expansion or new continents for trade) before other civilations on my continent. Being successful at locating land at sea generally requires both:
A) There must be land nearby (this is mostly luck)
B) Building quite a few galleys (since some will undoubtably be lost in sea squares).

Now I've played games where I ignored early navel power and the computer was able to expand onto several nearby islands that I didn't know existed. I've also played games where I put resources into early galleys (thus hampering my ability to expand and build armies) only to find that there was no land anywhere near me.

Therefore, building early galleys seems to be a significant risk and I'm not sure if the potential payoff (finding an island with a luxery or resource or making contact with another civ) makes the risk worth taking.

- Matt Lepinski :->

[spongeucsb]

Regarding the use of the Forbidden Palace

I recently finished a game in which I began on a continent with 2 other civs, the Egyptians and the Romans. The Romans were located close enough to my prodcution center to attempt to 'secure' a few of their cities located near iron deposits. As I was the first to obtain iron working because I was playing the Greeks and my science was notably better, I played some strategic resource denial and began pumping out swordsman. Eventually the Romans were nothing but a bad memory and i had captured nearly all their cities intact including infrastructure. However corruption was a huge problem and a conflict with the Egyptians to the North was becoming inevitable and i needed these cities to run at full production so i began building the FP in the center of the subjugated roman empire and using my leader acquired during the war to rush the production, i had what amounted to a second empire, full with population centers and improvements. I have read many theories on the best use of the FP but the forceful subjugation of a weaker nation and strategic placement of the forbidden palace can double your center of production with little effort from you (you were going to destroy them anyways...)
I ended up destroying the egyptians easily and although my continent was smaller than the other civs, i was eventually able to secure a military victory due to the high rates of science advance and production from the combined Greek and Roman empires.

[Bambul]

There was some mention before of dropping back to Despotism from Democracy to pop-rush, then back to Democracy (with a religious civ I assume). Well, there's a better way of doing it that doesn't involve anarchy, which means non-religious civs can use it too!

All you need is Nationalism. By the time you're well into the industrial age you should have a number of cities size 7 and up as well as enough railroad to zap your units around your empire and to the front lines. All you need to do is draft a citizen from one of your size 7+ cities, then move the rifleman into the city you're building in, then diband for 20 shields. Not only does this work while the city is still resisting, but once you get infantry and mech inf, you get 22 and 27 shields respectively instead of 20.

It does have it's unique limitations: you can only draft one unit per city per turn and it must be from a size 7+ city, but the pop can come from any city within your empire.

Has anyone else used this strategy?

[E_T]

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[Lawrence of Arabia]

burp

[Lawrence of Arabia]

In my present game I have all the resources I need. Has anyone else ever gotten that? The only problem is that my neighbors are 'Furious' because they want me to trade my 6 rubber to them so they can build Infantry. Yeah right...

[trickey]

Cool. Mybe someone figured this out along time ago (im a newbie) but the AI dosn't reconize units three spaces away as a threat to their city. Has this been patched???

ps. great work vel.