Earth Map Strategies

[Arrian]

Well, as it turns out, my decision was made for me. When I conquered India, I razed and rebuilt most of it. The way I did it left one ivory resource outside my territory, but also just outside Persian territory. I needed to get a certain city to influence 3 (100 culture) in order to lock it up. For the time being, I built a colony. Well, the Persian city (Susa) hit influence 4 first, and grabbed the ivory. I was trading all of my extras, so now I had none for my own people.

And so the Chinese Cavalry rides. Susa is a pile of rubble, as is Persopolis. Sadly for Persia, it appears they do not have any saltpeter, and thus are defending with pikemen. The battle of Persopolis has provided a Great Leader, who will become the Hoover Dam in 3 turns. A few more turns and all they will have left are a couple of 1 square islands and siberian waste cities.

The Persian counterattack: I took a southern Siberian city on turn 1 of the war, and the Persian mounted forces responded... a stack of about 8 horsemen showed up, killed one Cavalry that was outside the city on a hill, and took up station on that hill. Horsemen Most of them are now dead or dying... they will be finished next turn. I really do think that the Infinite Siberia Sprawl is responsible for the incredible weakness of the AI civs. I'm used to beating the AI at war, particularly with Cavalry, but it's never been THIS easy. I took down India without facing a War Elephant, and I've seen 2 immortals in Persia (both out in the open).

Basically, my message is this: at least on Monarch (maybe not Diety) the AI civs are total pushovers. The AI is coded to expand as much as it can... and then settle down and build some offensive forces, but on Marla's map, expansion can continue for a loooooooong time, which means the AI has little to no military for a looooooong time. So long as there is unsettled territory out there, I do not expect any of my opponents to put up much of a fight. The Babs are next, unless they sign a MPP with someone before I can get my forces in position (they do not yet have nationalism).

-Arrian

[Flight]

From what I've seen, they seem to accelerate expansion until they get close to the optimal number of cities. It doesn't matter where their cities are, as long as there are that certain number of them - then it will slow down and stop expanding. I'm not even sure if they'll go for strategic resources, like in Australia, but I haven't got that far yet. I do know they will make colonies for Luxuries when they could easily build cities, though (America won't 'colonize' the Amazon, but will build colonies for the gems, etc)

The Zulus are pretty much dead btw, only Madagascar and 2 flipped cities on the mainland are their's.

[dadacp]

With marla's earth map, one knows exactly where the AI's starting sities are, and in Europe they are quite close. The "no capital = no corruption" strategy should be very easy in this case.

For example, start as Germans. Build Berlin, barracks, 4 archers, spearman. Send force to conquer Paris. Just before conquering Paris, disband Berlin by building a settler. After conquering Paris, rebuild Berlin. Now there is no capital anymore, and thus no corruption.

[Arrian]

Well, sounds like it would work, but to me that falls under the heading "Bug/exploit/cheat" so I wouldn't do it. To each their own, though...

-Arrian

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by dadacp
With marla's earth map, one knows exactly where the AI's starting sities are, and in Europe they are quite close. The "no capital = no corruption" strategy should be very easy in this case.

For example, start as Germans. Build Berlin, barracks, 4 archers, spearman. Send force to conquer Paris. Just before conquering Paris, disband Berlin by building a settler. After conquering Paris, rebuild Berlin. Now there is no capital anymore, and thus no corruption.

I say this is a cheat, but you can have your fun as you wish!

I found upping the optimal cities to 40 on the Marla map works very well. Corruption is not complete until you go about 1/3 world away. Berlin would be the optimal capitol location for a "unified" europe. I started with the French - Paris is just far enough away from the Ural foothills that corruption is bad. O well, only grovelling, cold, poor, backwards people live beyond there now anyway.

[bsklepzig]

I'm not playing Marla's map, but rather the huge earth map that shipped with the game ...

Couple of observations:
I've competed with the AI for resources they couldn't see yet (in this case dueling settlers for oil in the Arctic when only I had refining)

I kicked the Aztecs off South America. Their last city is a one square island in the Carribean. At the time of conquest, I only had galleons/frigates and cavalry/riflemen. Couldn't finish the job. Moving the ship got me a "cannot attack land" message, trying to unload cav/riflemen got me a "only marines can make amphibious assault."

Guess I'll wait for the marines. Only 10 turns now ...

I play more of a builder game (this time playing Warlord/Americans/8 civs/I got randomly placed in South America) and have had success watching key rivalries (greeks/eqyptians & french/iroquois) and favoring trade with the weaker of the pair. They're been beating each other up pretty good while I've (mostly) peacefully built a lead. Now I'm up 3 techs with a golden age as factories, destroyers, subs, carriers and (next turn) tanks are in the queue.

I found the 8 civs on the huge map (seemed to be the default setting) and the less aggressive AI (on Warlord vs. Regent & higher) gave me time to expand and get my bulder strategy underway.

The next big plan: Roll tanks into France (in North America) and drop my FP where St.Louis is today.

It's not Diety level, but it's my current play-level and it's been fun!

Ben

[Jumping Choya]

Just thought I would update my game.

Oh yes, the Chinese rock for this map. Now that I've repeated that...

My power has increased greatly. I built a wonder (can't remember which one it was), but it triggered a Golden Age for me. Also, I was getting 200+ gold per turn AND 100% science rate. Tech whoring and trading luxuries and strategic resources to far-away civs will do that. Actually, the gold per turn now is up due to some recent growth on the part of China...at the expense of India, of course.

So I was having my golden age, tons of gold, most of my cities had all the improvements built, I was under a Monarchy...so I started churning out Riders and Musketmen. In my game, India was more formidable than they were in Arrian's. While most of their military attacks proved fruitless, I did see War Elephants, and there were some good defenses at cities. But not enough. I got a great leader and used it to build my forbidden palace at Delhi. India now consists of the usual Siberia holdings, some cities in the Himalayas, and random islands. China goes north to the tundra, controls all of Korea and Vietnam, and goes to the border of Persia. Japan was lucky and got a few cities on the mainland where there was some forests. Not great land, but they're using it. Most of their cities seem to have generated some culture.

Thus far, only four AI cities have been founded in the chain of islands leading down to Australia. Two by the Japanese, one by India, and one by the French.

I seem to be militarily and technologically superior to everyone else. I make my money selling those techs tied to wonders, usually when I've almost completed the wonder and the AI has no chance to finish before me, or one of the other civs has discovered the tech and began building (so I trade it around before they get to). I trade normal techs when I've discovered the tech ahead of it. Right now I'm thinking of attacking either Persia or Japan. Japan would probably yield more benefits, having two wonders and being closer to my capitol. Persia would be a good rainy day activity.

Germany threatened me for a tech, but I kindly told Bismarck to bug off. No war was declared. Everybody else has been respectful.

EDIT: Oh, forgot to talk about Monarchy! For the first time, I'm thinking of using it for pretty much the whole game. It's a good balance between Republic/Democracy and Communism. I can get unit support, military acts as police, and no war weariness, but at the same time research doesn't seem to suffer and I can rush things with money (of which I have plenty). No war weariness is probably the biggest advantage - on a map of this size, you could be eaten alive before your first soldier sets foot upon enemy soil, especially if the civ is overseas.) Anyone else seem to share these sentiments about Monarchy?

[Flight]

Absolutely, i find that a republic needs a larger civ and/or small military to start with. At the time i get the tech im not normaly big enough to support myself. Monarchy seems to work fine on the other hand, accelerating techs straight away and allowing a large military. I normally keep monarchy until democracy unless I want to fight a war, in which case i keep it until I finish the wars. The only down point on getting monarchy quickly is you dont get the great library, so researching for that then changing tech routes is the norm. The AI always go for republic anyway, so I can trade monarchy away when i get it.

ATM on marla's map in the same game as above I attacked the Americans and had massive war weariness after the first turn (they declared war on me, something about the huge naval blockade on their entire east coast and the 30 tanks amassed in south A. cutting off their rubber i think ). The next turn it went to anachy so I'm testing communism, which is great for getting some semblance of production out of Africa without a palace. The damn Indians are also trading rubber to them so they now have tanks after I had already eaten all their cavalry and infantry. Gotta wait for reinforcements.