Expansionist Chariot Gambit with ICS topping

[Aeson]

An exploit of AI stupidity if ever there was one...

The Settings:

Large landmasses are where this works best. Huge Pangaea maps, especially with Warm/Wet/5 Billion year settings are optimal. Many of the same principles work on smaller maps though. The fewer the AI the less resources will be on the map, which is a good thing. 8AI is my favorite setting on Huge maps.

The Civs:

Obviously Expansionist Civs. The Americans and Iroquois are the two most suited for this style of play. Any of them can do well.

The Attributes:

Play your Civ to its strengths. The Iroquois can upgrade to Mounted Warriors for an earlier rush as well as pop rush Temples at will. The Americans use the Industrial attribute to build the most cities possible. Zulu's build Barracks, Russians build Libraries, and the English don't build anything.

The Plan:

Chariots are my new favorite military unit. War Chariots are good too, but it's better to be Expansionist. Chariots cost twice as much as Jag Warriors while having the same stats, require horses, and can't pass Mountains or Jungles without roads. Pretty good eh? So good in fact that you should hold off on obtaining Horseback Riding as long as you can.

What to do with these Chariots? Build them. As many as possible. Forgo Ancient Era wars with Horsemen and/or Swordsmen just to build more Chariots. In the average city you can fit a Chariot or two between Settlers. The timing is perfect if you make the proper terrain improvements.

Of course you can only build Chariots after Horses have been hooked up. Usually that takes a while to do, so in the meantime build Scouts. Try to hook up the Horses by the time the 20th Scout has been produced. Those Scouts explore the map, meeting the AI, gobbling up goody huts, and most importantly, stand on hills and mountains (with Iron in them) doing nothing but telling the AI Workers to go build roads somewhere else. Just make sure that you 'research' Horseback Riding with no funding, otherwise your Scouts will make your Chariots obscolete before you can even build them!

When you meet your neighbors, make sure and give them Masonry if they don't already have it. You want the Pyramids to be built close to home.

Now that you've settled into the Chariot/Settler cycle it's time to cover city placement. An Ancient Era 'productive' powerhouse needs 2 things. Each of those things is a tile that produces 2 food. That means just about any city site will do, build them everywhere, always covering up the worst food terrain with your city. A city can't build anything unless it's a city, having Settlers walk around is a waste of production. So build them tightly packed.

Once you hit the number of cities corruption limit is where the fun really begins. Cities that are corrupt just cut out the Chariots and focus on more Settlers, or Workers if they are in short supply. Buy the Workers from the AI when you can, especially as the Americans. Each city becomes 2 every 30 turns. They are 'worthless' anyways, why not claim every available nook and cranny with them? Who knows where that future Saltpeter or Rubber will turn up...

By 500BC you should have a commanding lead in number of cities compared to the AI on any difficulty. Always check the F8 screen, powergraph, to see where you stand in relation to the AI. Once you get a noticeable lead on any of them, renegotiate your peace treaty. Make note of size 1 cities the AI has before going into negotiations. Check each of these for availability. The ones that are unavailable have resources nearby. If you can't see them, they are still there. Send a Scout to stand on a likely area that resource may pop up. Even if you guess wrong the Scout can sometimes get in position before the AI builds a road there. The cities you can extort just keep building Settlers like the rest. On any difficulty other than Deity you can hit the domination limit on a Pangaea game without fighting a single battle!

As you get a few luxuries built up, pop rush until your happiness levels can barely take it. A good rule is that for every 'spare' two luxuries, you can pop rush 1 time every 40 turns. Spare in this case means anything above the point where a city can be size 3 and not in disorder. If you've been keeping to the ICS settler flood, you should have plenty of spare luxuries. The only question is what to pop rush? If the city is size 4, rush the Settler. If not, rush a Chariot (or a Horseman if you've somehow been tricked into recieving Horseback Riding)! Then you can rush another if you aren't going to war anytime soon.

Eventually the AI will make it to the Middle Ages, don't worry. All this time of spending no money on research should have built up a big bank account. Along the way your maps should have kept the AI without any spending money. Sell them every turn! The key is to save up as much as possible before Chivalry hits. 5-10k is a good target range. The higher the difficulty level, the less time you'll have to save up. Sell ROP's to every civ except your closest neighbor (target) to further increase your income. The AI pays for ROP's according to number of cities and/or territory ratio. Not sure which. Either way they should be paying from 5-10 gold per turn each once in the Middle Ages.

Now the time has come for your Chariots. Trade for Chivalry and build a Barracks near the borders of your target Civ. If at all possible, target whoever built the Pyramids first. Upgrade all the Chariots you can to Knights. You should now have anywhere from 50 to 100 Knights, and none of the AI should have any Iron. It won't matter at all that your Knights are just regulars...

The chariots you haven't been able to upgrade should follow along, being used to quell resistance in captured cities. First leader should build Sun Tzu's. Having a Barracks in each newly conquered city is the perfect compliment for the offensive.

At the same time begin disbanding a few core cities, freeing up room for more production later on. Target suspected Saltpeter sites (from earlier peace negotiations) with your Knights. Your armies should be invincible until the advent of Nationalism. Enjoy!

[Harovan]

A typical Aeson strategy. What means, it is gigantic . You have convinced me earlier, Expansionist and ICS together do awful things to the poor AI . No doubt I will try it after I finished my current game. I mean, if it's still valid, because patch 1.21 will be here. Poprushing might have been disabled and the AI might be intolerant to blocking scouts. We'll see.

[DrFell]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
A typical Aeson strategy. What means, it is gigantic . You have convinced me earlier, Expansionist and ICS together do awful things to the poor AI . No doubt I will try it after I finished my current game. I mean, if it's still valid, because patch 1.21 will be here. Poprushing might have been disabled and the AI might be intolerant to blocking scouts. We'll see.

I doubt they will disable pop-rushing, and this little strat would still work quite well even without the scouts. Which is why I still await MP.

[Dominae]

Aeson, this is a good summary of many of the things you've been hinting at on other threads. Have you tested this out on Standard-size maps? It seems to me that the smaller the map size, the less potent this strategy becomes.


Dominae

[Arrian]

On a smaller map, just adapt to the chariot -> horseman upgrade (or MW's if you're Iroquois).

Aeson,

If you're the Iroquois, why wait for Knights? Won't you be facing pikemen (4 vs 3)? Why not hit the first civ with Mounted Warriors (3 vs 2), pause & upgrade, and continue? What makes waiting all the way until Chivalry more attractive?

-Arrian

[Theseus]

I think Aeson likes Settlers more than GLs.

While Aeson has clearly demonstrated that ICS and pop-rushing can totally dominate the AI, I don't feel like I'm playing a "balanced" game when I follow his strategies. No warfare, no Wonders...

I agree that Chariots are cool... why not fight with them? Warriors are toast, and even free-ranging Spearmen (ie, covering a Settler) can get taken down if you have enough forces.

Then upgrade to Horsemen. Then Knights. Then Cav.

Every one of'em has a period of relative strength worth fighting with.

I do like the idea of making sure your closest neighbor has Masonry!!

[Harovan]

I think that was what he meant with "Play your Civ to its strength".

Personally I think, the later you rush, the better is it. Building cities should be your primary goal as long as there is free space to settle. Early wars only slow this down. There's a huge difference if you build Knights (or later Cavalries) with 50 or 150 cities. Expansionist, while it was shunned by the analysts at the beginning, is really powerful at maps larger than standard. I tried the settler flood with the Japanese (due to their better timed UU) and it worked not half as good as with the Iroquois. They still are my overall favorite.

EDIT: To clarify, I was responding to Arrian, and Theseus sneaked in

[Theseus]

That's what Joan said.

[Harovan]

The only thing I don't understand is, why did you name your strategy a gambit, Aeson. As chess player I know a gambit as an opening, where you sacrifice one or more chessmen for a defined advance in time or space. What do you sacrifice?

[Arrian]

I don't know that early warfare really slows down growth. Temporarily, yes, of course it does. However, a successful war will gain you cities, and if you're lucky, you will get a GL for a forbidden palace. *poof* you've just doubled your number of productive cities.

I think, Sir Ralph, that this is yet another case of huge/large maps vs. normal and smaller. In other words... on a normal map, you've filled in all available land before the middle ages. There is time to settle and rush with horsemen. On a huge map with 8 civs, there is just so much land to fill that waiting for knights for your first combat makes more sense - you're still building cities left and right.

As impressive as the settler flood can be, I couldn't do it. Wouldn't be fun. More power to you, though, Aeson.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Arrian
As impressive as the settler flood can be, I couldn't do it.

Neither could I, at least in Aesonic dimensions . I struggled long enough at standard maps, because my old computer could not handle larger. Now I have a new one and just gain experience with larger maps. Aesons strategies come well at hand. I don't play huge maps limited in the # of civs, I want all 16 civs. But I want to be the biggest fish . And I avoid pangea maps, prefering continents. So I try to fit Aesons gigantic strategies into my gaming concept, and even limited to a continent with the same # of civs like Aesons pangea, they work outstanding

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
On a smaller map, just adapt to the chariot -> horseman upgrade (or MW's if you're Iroquois).

I think the actual unit you're using is irrelevent compared to other strategies involved, namely, 1) exploiting Scouts as resource-deniers, 2) exploiting the AIs willingness to give away "crappy" cities and 3) exploiting ICS.

My intuition is that the power of ICS is directly proportional to the map size. Point 3 makes point 2 possible (point 1 is always viable...I never ICS but use Scouts extensively when playing Expansionist civs). Fewer cities means less opportunity for abuse, and smaller maps means fewer cities (in ICS terms).

Whether you're using your superior resources to rush Chariots, MWs or whatever, the fact that you can muster an army upwards of 50 units strong in a couple of turns is the game-winner. In "normal" games, the type of unit you use (related to the timing of your rush) is important, because your forces are comparable to the opponents'. Not so with ICS, where you'll outnumber them at least 3 to 1.


Dominae

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Arrian
I don't know that early warfare really slows down growth. Temporarily, yes, of course it does. However, a successful war will gain you cities, and if you're lucky, you will get a GL for a forbidden palace. *poof* you've just doubled your number of productive cities.

One more note about growth and expansion. Aesons strategies are based on a nearly geometric progression. Let's assume, at 2500BC you have 5 cities (with an average amount of "skilled settlers"). 15-20 turns later you have 10, then 20, 40, 80 and so on (without extorted cities). Sure, corruption may slow it down a bit, but not much. Any war in this time, where your cities are enforced to build units instead of settlers, will significantly slow down your growth. Each MW costs as much shields as a settler, that's inacceptable in terms of this strategy. If you are lucky and conquered 5-10 cities in an early war, that's nothing compared with the number of cities you could have built in the same time.

With this approach, you quickly will trigger the corruption treshold. This makes possible to build the FP early in a core city. It ought to be done in somewhat 40 turns or even less. When doing a free palace jump then, you have just optimized your empire's economy/commerce without a leader.

[Theseus]

What's a free palace jump?

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
The only thing I don't understand is, why did you name your strategy a gambit, Aeson. As chess player I know a gambit as an opening, where you sacrifice one or more chessmen for a defined advance in time or space. What do you sacrifice?

Well the 'sacrifice' is the early warfare and traditional military that most other strategies call for. The players sanity could be at risk as well from micromanaging so many cities! The first is just a percieved sacrifice, the other not really a strategic one. I'm sorry if I offended any chess players with my liberal usage of "Gambit"...

Originally posted by Dominae
Aeson, this is a good summary of many of the things you've been hinting at on other threads. Have you tested this out on Standard-size maps? It seems to me that the smaller the map size, the less potent this strategy becomes.

Yes, there are drawbacks to this on smaller maps (or landmasses). Some of the general principles apply to any map though. Some of them even become more powerful the smaller the map.

• Scout resource denial: easier to do the smaller the map.
  
• Pressing a powergraph advantage: a demanded city on a smaller map is even more of a power swing.
  
• Building cheap military and using gold for upgrades: with less room for productive cities, using gold to 'finish' production of military units is even more powerful.
  
• Dense build for more early production: on smaller maps you get boxed in earlier, until the Industrial Age 2 small cities are much more productive than one large one.
  
• Using a poor food terrain tile to build the city on: most people will do this regardless of map size. Always a good idea.
  
• Disbanding 'core' cities during the mid-game for more production later: same benefits on any map.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Arrian
If you're the Iroquois, why wait for Knights? Won't you be facing pikemen (4 vs 3)? Why not hit the first civ with Mounted Warriors (3 vs 2), pause & upgrade, and continue? What makes waiting all the way until Chivalry more attractive?

I did mention that the Iroquois should upgrade to Mounted Warriors for an earlier rush. Sorry if I hid it away too much, I tried to focus on the overall Expansionist trait, rather than the ones it is paired with. As an Expansionist Civ you never have to fight against Iron units though! If you want to let the AI have their Iron (read: aversion to the Scout exploit) then waiting for Knights makes less sense.

The benefits of waiting to get Horseback Riding sometimes outweighs those of an early rush though. Chariots fit nicely into almost all productive city's Settler patterns, while Horsemen slow it down a bit. If you are doing pop rushing of units as well, the Horsemen cost the same. The most efficient timing of when to switch from Chariots to Horsemen is mostly map dependant.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
With this approach, you quickly will trigger the corruption treshold. This makes possible to build the FP early in a core city. It ought to be done in somewhat 40 turns or even less. When doing a free palace jump then, you have just optimized your empire's economy/commerce without a leader.

Thanks for mentioning that Sir Ralph, I forgot to include it.

Originally posted by Arrian
I don't know that early warfare really slows down growth. Temporarily, yes, of course it does. However, a successful war will gain you cities, and if you're lucky, you will get a GL for a forbidden palace. *poof* you've just doubled your number of productive cities.

I see where you are coming from. I meant to include everything I felt was 'exploitative' in this thread. The free Palace jump is one of those things. Sir Ralph's explaination of how to build the FP covers it nicely. If you space the FP about 10 tiles, this along with ICS will mimic a traditional Palace/FP 'dumbell', just on a smaller, more tightly packed scale. The Palace jump in this case isn't especially needed.

Another point is that ICS reduces the need for the FP. The FP doesn't add any more 'productive' cities AFAIK, it just reduces the corruption by distance factor. With (small) cities tightly packed together, you get a similar benefit with ICS when compared to more traditional spacing. By the time you stop building Settlers and start building up and spacing out your core, you should have started the Knight rush. And leaders will be available to reposition the Palace as needed.

[Aeson]

What's a free palace jump?

When you disband your capitol (or lose it to the AI) your Palace will automatically be built in another of your cities. In the early game when all your cities are building Settlers, it's pretty easy to move your capitol this way. It almost always will hit the 'target' city if it is the only city size 3+. With multiple larger cities it becomes very hard to predict exactly where the Palace will end up though.

Very useful in situations where you start out on the coast, on a peninsula or isthmus, or on the edges of a high food area. I almost always start out my games planning on jumping my Palace. If it ends up my capitol is nicely centered, great! If not, I'm prepared to make it so.

As Sir Ralph mentioned, this can be used to build the FP in a productive area, and then jump the Palace to a new city. You have to be careful though, sometimes the Palace will jump to the FP city, make sure it's at size 1 when you do the jump.

[Harovan]

The free palace jump is quite new for me, although I've heard about it already a few months ago. I have done 3 jumps so far, and all ended in the city I targeted. All I did was to make sure, that all other cities have size 1 or 2, or 3 at most. The city I target I usually choose at a fresh water source, and I add a few workers or even spare settlers to make it as big as happiness allows, usually size 7-9. Worked great so far, and the lots of settlers and workers I build to adjust the city sizes come at hand for further expansion or road building. Usually I make the jump, when I have about 60-80 cities. This number is still manageable, it will be a lot harder to hit the target with twice as much cities.

The turn, when I make the jump, is an adrenaline kick though .

[Hurricane]

Great post, Aeson! I actually tried this strategy, but with a random map I ended up with an Archipelago map, so the game turned out quite differently. And now patch 1.21 is coming out... Seems I can´t try this strategy before next week.

Nice to see you used the ROP exploit. I always use it extensively, but I haven´t seen many other players mention it.