Opening Strats - The Unheralded Iriquios

[Sauron07]

I have recently become a major fan of the iriquois because of the opening you can utilize due to their combination of religious/expansionist traits.

I believe that one of the most valuable and definately most underappreciated aspect of the civ-specific traits are the techs that civs start out with. Expansionist civs begin the game with pottery allowing you to biuld granaries right out of the gate. When combined with the religious trait and its cheap temples, this combo allows the iriquois to rush a granary and temple earlier than is feasible with other civs. The extra scout unit that expansionist civs obtain also gives you a unit to explore with while allowing your first warrior to garrison in the capitol to quell unhappiness created by rush building. The combination of these factors can give a huge boost to your early expansion,especially on higher difficulty levels where rushing a granary first is not very viable due to the unhappiness beginning at pop 2 or 3.

Here is an example of how this start could work in a city with access to a grassland cow square to begin the game(I realize this is above average but many players appear to "accidentally restart" until they obtain a good initial spot anyway). With 3 extra food, you are growing in pop after 7 turns(turn 8) and producing 2 shields per turn. If you start a granary on turn 1 it can be rushbuilt on turn 11(w/ 38 shields remaining). At this point you will be back down to 1 pop but have 13 food stored and will grow again in only 3 turns. Build a warrior in 5 turns, and then rush a temple in 1 turn(the religious bonus!). At turn 18 you have a temple, granary, garrisoned warrior, are at 2 population and can build a settler in no more than 7 turns(depending on which tile you work with your 2nd pop. point).

Contrast this with a non-expansionist civ who must either research, find in a hut, or trade for pottery - all of which take between 10-32 turns(assuming normal encounters with other civs occur around turn 10 - although I admit pottery is usually one of the first techs you can trade for becuase the other expansionist civs have it and you usually find them first if they are near you). If you start building a settler on turn 1 you will build it in 15 turns provided you can reach pop 3 by then. Most people seem to build a warrior first for exploration purposes and then settler allowing you to complete both by turn 17(assuming you have a 3 food producing square).

What im curious about is how much of advantage is 1 settler on turn 17 with the second not coming until at least turn 31 as opposed to a settler at turn 25 with the infrastructure to crank out an additional settler every 5-6 turns. I have generally ignored the impact of workers improving tiles on this analysis but I know it will have an impact(I tend to mine cow squares rather than irrigate if Im building a granary in order to achieve 5-6 turn settler production) and will try to address the issue in a subsequent post if this topic generates any interest

Feedback is very much appreciated and as you can tell this analysis is far from complete(doing this on a computer w/o Civ III installed so my numbers could be slightly off) so flames are appreciated(I dont want to waste my valuable gaming time if this is a worthless strart/opening). And if you cant tell, I ultimately have multiplayer in mind with this analysis, where I feel the opening will be much more critical and fast starting civs(read expansionist) will have an advantage.

[War4ever]

good food will make an country great..... granaries aren't really needed in the opening....temples are far more important....

culture and war.... research bronze then iron...find a neighbor and slash and burn your way to territory while having some breathing room.

i like the japanese...militaristic religious..later golden age with the samurai which is a nasty unit.

upgrades are easy and the religious aspect i feel is the best in the game...

even if you clip an empire..... you can dictate everything they do afterwards....

on large maps expansion is better for the scout..but warriors do just fine and defend against barbs on the standard size map

[Velociryx]

:;nods:: You make some outstanding points bringing to light the strenght of the Iroquois! IMO, they are one of the most powerful Civs in the game. Their UU just rocks, and their Civ-Traits work very well in concert with each other.

Of all the games I have played, I have to admit that I felt the MOST secure militarily in my game with the Iroquois...able to utterly dominate the continent I was on during the heart of the Ancient Age, which of course, secured the rest of the game.

I would say that they are the strongest of the Expansionist Civs. Good, informed city placement in the early game. Ability to control early contact, outstanding exploration and combat units (and, as a bonus, a half-hidden strengh of the Civ is the fact that a few early wars, and they'll have a crack force of All-Elite Mounted Warriors, and generate a higher than expected number of Leaders, almost making them a triple threat in the sense that they (like the Persians) mimic many of the traits of Militaristic Civs.

Outstanding review of an outstanding Civ!



-=Vel=-

PS: As to your Settler Analysis, I would say this:

To calculate the net advantage of the granary, I'd say you'd have to take a look at the opportunity costs involved, and in this case, I'd say you're right to build the granary first. There is no long-term turn advantage to waiting. True, your rivals may expand from 1-2, and then from 2-4 before you, so on tiny maps, it'd probably sub-optimal, but on standard maps or bigger, I'd say you'll wind up with a long-term turn advantage in overall speed of settlement by building the granary first (possibly even before the garrison!)

Edit: This depends *strongly* on what level of play we're talking about, too! On Monarch +, you'll almost be forced into building a garrison first, and this may impact your overall granary strategy, if it'll cause you to grow faster than you can control....but since the Iroquois are *also* a Religious Civ....

-V.

[player1]

Iroquois are great on higher levels.

-You can expand like AI in the begginig.
-Then build temples to quell unhappines
-And at the end, when you become strong,
you start attacking enemies with Best UU in the time (M. Warriors)

[David Weldon]

Interesting comments, but how do you live without Inudstrious workers?!

I get sick of controlling each of my 20-40 workers by the end of the Ancient Age, and they're all Industrious. If I had to order around twice as many I think I'd go batsh*t crazy.

Do you generally automate them and play on easier levels? Or use smaller than standard maps so you need fewer?

If there's an easy way to overcome this problem, I might consider giving them a try. Since aborted attempts with the Romans and Babylonians, I have run like crazy away from any civ that ain't Industrious. It's not that they're _bad_, they're just not nearly as fun.

[Thunderfire]

Iroquois often start next to the americans. Kick
some american butt and you'll get industrious
workers.

[Out4Blood]

You can have a crapload of workers if they are all slave labor. Chances are you will capture some industrious ones anyway. It's far better to have superior military (UU) than a faster worker IMO - especially if u are rush building everything and capturing enemy workers.

[player1]

In late game Industrious is just not important anymore.
You'll have Democracy 50% bonus, plus Rep. Parts 100% bonus, so that bonus from Industrious isn't that much needed.

[MisterMuppet]

I tend to only build a single granary in my empire.
This is what I have been doing with mixed results.
Build first city straight away on turn one, and queue up a warrior for scouting.
Second build is a settler, this will found my 2nd city or nursery as I call it. Make sure the nursery is in a good location preferably cattle, but wheat will do. The nursery city will rush build a Temple and then a Granary. After that it spends the remainder of the game building workers, one every 2 turns, after improving the surrounding tiles one a turn is possible. These workers are added to my fledging cities on an as needed basis. My other cites therefore never need Granaries. This saves one gold a turn per city per granary in maintenance plus the shields usually needed to build granaries can be utilised elsewhere.
Dragging this post kicking and screaming back to the point I therefore tend not to play as expansionist civs. I prefer the French for thier industrious workers and lower corruption. (Who says American's have no sense of irony.)

[Ozymandous]

I'd agree with what others have said, you don't need industrious workers when you have 3X as many as you can make from capturing foreign citizens to work for you.

Last game I played as the Iriquios I fought the English, Aztec and Americans for land or other resources. By the time the Ancient Age ended the English were gone from the continent and the Americans & Aztec's had dinky empires I threatened a lot.

Having 30-40 captured workers from these three civilizations almost completely negated my need to make workers for myself.

[Sauron07]

Dave, as another player who started and became infatuated with the industrious civ trait at first, I agree that it can be frustrating to switch to a non-industrious civ(I hate watching my worker take 4 turns or so on a plains road- It hurts thinking of those lost turns). Generally, I will not fully automate my workers but will use shift-r alot in the early game and even the shift-L(I think thats it, it orders them to create a road network thru your entire civ and to all resources).

Capturing enemy workers in an early offensive is definately a means to eliminate this problem and I agree with thunderfire that the americans are commonly nearby the iriquois(as are the azteks). The big impact of this is that captured workers require 0 upkeep (this will another reason to be offensive in mp - raid the opponents road/resources network and capture his workers).

I also think that a worker factory such as Misterpuppet describes is a very viable option, sort of a "domestic training camp" to utilize velociryx's new ICS terminology. On that note, Misterpuppet I think you would be surprised by how quickly the iriquois can pump out settlers from just 2 cities with granaries, temples and a 3 food square. If you let the pop reach 4 you can pump them out every 5-7 turns. Having your capitol set up a settler factory immediately can really give your start a tremendous boost in producing cities until you research horseback riding and decide to go on the offensive.

Good Luck and LONG LIVE THE IRIQUOIS CONFEDERATION!!!!(this will be a great faction name if mp ever takes off)

[David Weldon]

An important point about capturing American workers, they're not industrious for you. Work rates are determined by _your_ civ, not the nationality of the worker. Any captured worker works at 1/2 the rate of your native workers, period. Check for yourself. This means that Industrious civs get _much_ more use out of captured workers than do non-industrious civs, because their free slave labor is every bit as fast as your home grown workforce.

I'm not trying to corrupt this thread by arguing the case for Industrious, we all have our opinions and that's fine. What I'm trying to figure out is how you can stand the micro management nightmare of having to order around literally hundreds of workers from 1000BC on... Maybe I'm just too "perfectionist" to let that many slackers wander around my empire aimlessly!

I absolutely agree that the Mounted Warrior is a disgustingly filthy UU.
It seems to me that their strength must have been intended to make up for the relatively weak civ strengths that the Iriquois get. Boy does it ever work...

With a little pop-rushing and MWs, who needs roads anyway? Who cares about the near-useless civ strength? With that army, you might as well have the Arc of the Covenant in your pocket!

And much fun was had by all ... err ... except by anyone not wearing feathers.