Civilization Revolution - General strategy guide v4.0, Sept 4, 2008
PS3/360/DS
silentdisruptor@hotmail.com
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#Table of Contents - TC1#
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1. Table of Contents (TC1)
2. Introduction (IN2)
3. Game Concepts (GC3)
3.1. Terminology
3.2. Terrain
3.3. City Production
3.4. City Settling
3.5. Buildings
3.6. Wonders
4. Playing the Game (PG4)
4.1. Early Game
4.2. Building Buildings
5. Warfare
5.1. General Strategies
5.2. Perpetual Warfare
5.3. Leonardo's Workshop
6. Advanced Strategies (AS6)
6.1. Population Pumps
6.2. Rushing
7. Governments (GO7)
8. Artefacts (AR8)
9. More Math Derivations (MD9)
9.1. Production Improvements
9.2. Military Strength
9.3. Banks and Universities
10.Technology (TE10)
10.1.Tech Strategies
10.2.Bonuses for First Research
10.3.Tech Tree
11.Leaders (LE11)
12.Sample Walkthrough (SW12)
13.Victories (VI13)
13.1.Conquest
13.2.Science
13.3.Cultural
13.4.Economic
14.Reader Questions(RQ14)
15.Closing Remarks (CR15)
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#Introduction - IN2#
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Hi, welcome to my first guide. I've been playing civilization games for
almost 10 years now (I started with Civ III), so I have significant
experience. My skill level is typically in the mid-high range - I hate to
micromanage, which is often required at the higher levels. Highlights of
CivRev are the streamlined tech tree (no 2 units are even similar) and
superior city specialization opportunities (by selecting whether the city
produces gold or science). Honestly, I can pretty well handle the AI in this
game at the highest difficulty without resorting to 'cheap' strategies, so this
guide should be valuable for anyone looking to improve their game (or even
figure out why warlord is so bloody difficult).
You can think of this guide as my personal thoughts and observations on the
game. I'm not the type to sit in front of the game with a pad of paper, and
record info that is freely available if you're actually playing and paying
any attention whatsoever to what is happening.
V1.0
As of this version, this guide is just a brief outline of some thought I've
had from playing the game. Expect it to expand quickly. I like to give
examples, wherein I take a standard case (usually a very general city), and
give what the most efficient behaviour is for it, given some desired outcome.
This should definitely improve your early game, unless you've already done it
yourself.
V2.0
Big expansion. I've tried to flesh out something for each part of the game,
so there's a reference for any specific area you're having issues with.
V3.0
Went into more detail from the last version; working out the math for optimal
strategies. Updated the population pump strategy. Still need to work out
exactly what aqueducts do. Added the 'walkthrough' section, and take the
game through the first bit of expansion. Still working out what military
strength numbers mean exactly. Still need to clarify some of the wonders.
I'll also be putting in a technology guide in the next version, with all of
the exact bonuses from each tech (not just 'extra gold'). I'll also be doing
a tech tree.
V4.0
Since 3.0, I've added the section on my hypothesis of what the military
strength numbers mean in terms of win percentages.
I've also gone and added some ideas on tech and leader strategies.
I badly need to reorganize this guide now though, as the strategies are
detailed all over the place. Victory conditions are basically just strategies
for improving gold/science/culture and waging war...
Also, I've added in a bunch of questions I've been asked by players; hopefully
this section is more practical, and should help people with common problems,
like "I can't research everything before 2100" and such.
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#Game Concepts - GC3#
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****************************************************
*Terminology - What the hell are you talking about?*
****************************************************
Here's a brief glossary of the terms I'll use in the rest of this document:
City - Where civilization happens. Everything is built in cities, using
their population to work the surrounding land and produce things.
City Radius - The area around the city where workers can work. This is the 8
squares around the city in the middle, and can be expanded to 17
squares by building a courthouse.
City View - The zoomed in view of the city. You will automatically be taken
to this screen if the city can build something. You can also reach
this by pressing R1 on the main screen (Just R in the DS version).
Food - Food is one of the things that workers can produce in a city. An extra
population point is added for every 10*current population you have. So,
a city of size 2 takes 20 food to grow, while one of size 10 takes 100
food.
Gold - Gold is one of the things that workers can produce in a city. Squares
don't usually produce gold, they produce trade, which can be used for
science or gold (interchangeable in each city). Gold can be used to
rush building things, or it can be saved up to reach economic
milestones, which give you free things for saving a certain amount.
Population - The number of workers you have in a city. These will be
automatically assigned to work a tile in the city when they are
produced. Without people, you won't get anything done. You can
see the population by going to the city view, and looking at the
top of the screen.
Production - Production is one of the things that workers can produce in a
city. If a worker works forests, hills, or mountains, they
will contribute production (hammers) to whatever is currently
being built in the city. Factories double this amount, and
workshops and iron mines improve hills and mountains productivity.
Science - The beakers that workers can produce in a city. These squares are
always just trade squares, and can be interchanged between science
and gold. These go towards researching new technologies.
Worker - The people in your city. Each population point represents one of
these, and they can be manually or automatically set to work with
different priorities.
**********************************************
*Terrain - What is the potential of the land?*
**********************************************
There are 8 types of workable terrain. They follow the general pattern of a
weak tile (1 food/trade/production), medium tile (2), and strong tile (3, a
weak tile with an upgrade). The exceptions are mountains (which improve to
5 production), and sea tiles (which improve to give a food unit).
Plains - 1 food
This can be improved to 3 food with a granary.
Tundra - 1 food
Acts like plains.
Grassland - 2 food
This cannot be improved.
Desert - 1 trade
This can be improved to 3 trade with a trading post.
Sea - 2 trade
This can be improved to 2 trade and 1 food with a harbour.
Hills - 1 production
This can be improved to 3 production with a workshop.
Mountains - 1 production
This can be improved to 5 production with an iron mine.
Forests - 2 production
This cannot be improved.
Ice - nothing
This cannot be worked or settled. Found around the top and bottom of the map.
I don't think you can actually get any of this within city limits.
*******************************************
*City Production - What happens in a city?*
*******************************************
Cities produce military units, culture, and trade (gold/science). You should
try and specialize a city towards these goals, at least somewhat. Firstly, a
city will either produce science or gold, so decide which when you found the
city. If there are resources nearby that will give you extra gold (not
trade), such as gems or gold, then focus the city on gold production. Most of
your cities should be science, and if you're not planning on producing any
trade, set it to whatever you want. What you build in the city then pushes
you towards your ideal version of the city. If you aren't producing gold in a
city, don't build markets or banks. Likewise, don't build libraries or
universities in cities that aren't producing science. No trading posts in
cities focused on production with one square of desert, and no harbours in
production cities with a few water tiles. This is a long list of no's, but
specialization of cities is really what makes your civilization powerful.
Most of your cities will end up being good science/production/culture areas,
simply because those things tend to go together well. So the main choice to
make with a city then is science or gold.
Culture is useless in small cities since it's based on population size, so
only go for it in large ones. This is especially true for building
cathedrals, as they are very expensive at 160, which is a relatively smaller
benefit than temples at 40. More production is always useful in a city, so
always build those improvements in cities, usually prior to building the
actual specialization of the city. Based on this, here's what you should
build in each type of city:
Science city - Library, University, Granary, Harbour, Trading Post
gold city - Market, Bank, Trading Post, Trade Fair
Production city - Workshop, Iron Mine, Factory
Culture city - Temple, Cathedral, Granary, Harbour
You can obviously see a lot of mixing that would occur - having all of the
culture buildings in the rest of your cities might make sense. However, try
to avoid too much production in a good science city, it is for science after
all. Try to use gold to rush universities and banks especially, as they take
forever for non-production centres to build, time spent building them is time
not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and the benefits of the building
are delayed until completion. The only building that every city should have
is a granary (although, this is not very useful later in the game, and some
advanced strategies might skip this - although for those it won't make much
difference).
*************************************************
*City Settling - Where should I build my cities?*
*************************************************
Cities always have to have food, and probably need some production as well
(unless you have a lot of cash and plan on buying whatever the city needs).
Cities can work the 8 tiles around themselves, and the 17 around them in a
'fat cross' if a courthouse has been built. Don't worry about the whole
courthouse thing though, unless you have some major plan for a city - it takes
quite a while before you have a sufficient population to use the extra
squares, and citizens still produce 1 production and 1 trade if they don't
have any land to work (hence why you never work unimproved deserts or
mountains).
So, you found a place that has some plains and trees, but which square exactly
do you want to settle? You should never settle a city beside a hill,
especially if the city itself isn't on a hill, and you're near enemy borders.
The AI will always attack that city from the hill, and you'll be crying soon
enough. If your city is on the hill though, and they are on an exposed plain,
you can pick off some of their attackers quite easily (especially since you
can see the strength comparison before starting the attack). Also, consider
creating a choke point city on your border, somewhere the AI will have to go
by first if they attack you. It's much easier defending 2 cities than all of
your cities, and you can realistically build walls in these cities as well.
The third thing to consider now is what improvements you have available for
the surrounding terrain - are there resources you can use nearby, or
hills/deserts/mountains/water nearby? Later in the game these are always
positives, but early on having lots of mountains and deserts can be crippling
for a city.
Given the above, consider building cities in these sub-par areas, with the
idea that they not produce much now (focus on food), and then use gold to
buy them the necessary buildings once they're available. Your worst cities
will suddenly become production powerhouses if surrounded by some mountains,
and can build lots of wonders fast.
******************************************************
*Buildings - What do all of these things ACTUALLY do?*
******************************************************
Some buildings have really clear descriptions, like granaries doubling the
food output of plains tiles, some are a little unclear (how do libraries and
universities apply their multiplier to everything?), and some are totally
ambiguous (what specifically does an aqueduct do?). This section will briefly
discuss all of the buildings in the game, what exactly they do, and when you
want to be building them.
Bank - 120 production
quadruple gold output in the city - i.e. every gold bar you see your workers
producing will now actually be four.
At a ratio of 3 gold to 1 production, this pays for itself after it generates
360 gold. 360/4 is 90 (i.e. the base gold production to cover this), so if
your city has 3 tiles that generate 2 gold each, this pays for itself in
15 turns. Not too shabby!
Barracks - 40 production
These make every unit produced in the city a veteran (+50% attack and defense).
Build these in cities that are going to be producing military units. You don't
have to build many units before this pays itself off with stronger units. Each
little extra improves survival, so you a) don't have to build more, and b) can
get highly experienced units. This gets more efficient to build as the game
progresses - at the beginning, it's the same as 4 units, so it might not be
worthwhile (instead getting an army). Later though, when you don't have
barbarians to be levelling with, the cost vs units plummets. It's worthwhile
to note though that if one unit in the army is veteran, then the whole army
is veteran (likewise, any individual unit upgrade carries to the whole group).
So, why bother having a barracks in every city? Just build one, and always
make sure one of those guys is in every army you form.
Cathedral - 160 production
Gain 2 culture per population point in the city.
This is a weak version of the temple. You get 2x the culture, but at a much
higher price point. You'll need these though if you want to produce many
great people. Consider this in all high population cities with decent
production (or all high population, if you have the gold to rush). This is a
really good building to rush, as you'll gain the massive culture benefits
immediately, not after 20 turns.
Courthouse - 80 production
Increases the available land for working in the city - not just the squares
around the city, but also the squares that directly touch those.
Before: After:
XXX XXX
XCX XXXXX
XXX XXCXX
XXXXX
XXX
This is really good in cities with high populations or with resources just
out of range. Not very useful in small cities that are already not using
their available land, or if the expanded area just cuts into another city's
working space.
Factory - 200 production
Doubles the production output of the city.
Clearly this is excellent in your big production cities, and not overly
impressive in your other ones. A city with a couple mountains that has this
and an iron mine can really pump stuff out.
Granary - 40 production
Every plains tile now produces 3 food - i.e. instead of 1 food on a
yellow plains tile, you'll now get 3 food.
This is pretty nice to build, unless the city has lots of water and some
good grasslands. Make sure you have 2+ plains tiles before building.
Harbour - 100 production
Every water tile now produces 1 food along with the regular trade.
This is a very nice upgrade in a city that's on the coast producing a lot of
gold or science. Working only 4 water tiles gives you the food of 2 plains
tiles (or 1 plains tile with a granary), without sacrificing anything.
Definitely better than granaries in watery cities.
Iron Mine - 80 production
Every mountain now produces quintuple the production - i.e. instead of 1
production, you'll get 5 production.
If you have many mountains in your territory, I cannot stress the importance
of these enough. I rush to railroad just for them. Little backwards cities
that had no production will suddenly be pumping out wonders in 10 turns. I
definitely suggest rushing these, as the cities they're most effective in have
lousy production without them, so the time for actually building them can be
extremely high. A city with four mountains will produce 20 hammers per turn,
which goes to 40 with a factory. Very nice.
Library - 40 production
Double science output in the city - i.e. every beaker you see your workers
producing will now actually be two.
Build in every science producing city. Probably worthwhile to build everywhere
except gold cities.
Market - 60 production
Double gold output in the city - i.e. every gold bar you see your workers
producing will now actually be two.
Build in every gold producing city. Again, if we assume 3 gold is 1
production, then this pays off with 180 gold. 180/2 (since the market
improves the generation of gold by 2), reduces it to 90. Notice, this is the
same cost as the bank. Using 3 tiles at 2 gold each covers this in 15 turns.
Temple - 40 production
Gain 1 culture per population point in the city.
This is a pretty standard building you'll want in most of your cities, as it's
cheap and generates great people. More benefit in more populous areas.
Trading Post - 60 production
Generate 2 extra trade (i.e. 3 trade total) in desert tiles.
Good if you have a lot of desert around, and you want to be producing science
or gold in the city. Probably not worthwhile for only 1 tile. Like the banks,
we can say this covers itself based on the gold production improvement. If you
already have a market, then for the 180 gold cost (at our 3:1 gold:production
rate), using 2 tiles at 3 gold instead of at 2 gold (as I expect you to be
using the sea tiles beforehand).
University - 160 production
quadruple science output in the city - i.e. every beaker you see your workers
producing, multiply by four. With a library and a university, you take your
base number of beakers x, take 2x for library, and 4x for university, for a
total of 6x beakers.
Walls - 100 production
Provides a 100% defensive boost to units in the city. So for a defense 2
archer, you now get 4. A veteran archer would have 5 behind the walls.
This is pretty sweet to build if you have a good choke point city, through
which the AI will naturally try to throw their armies. Even if your units
are outdated by a generation (archers vs catapults, pikeman vs cannons, etc.),
with walls you don't have much to worry about. They also prevent a culture
flip, which would only happen in border cities where you need walls anyway.
I typically rush build a few of these to prevent conquered cities from flipping
back to the AI.
Workshop - 60 production
Every hill tile produces triple the production - i.e. instead of 1 production
on a hill, you'll now get 3.
Pretty good production boost, definitely worthwhile if you have a few hills.
*****************************
*Wonders - What do these do?*
*****************************
Like buildings, wonders can have some less than clear descriptions (like, what
will your units become when you build Leonardo's Workshop?). This section will
briefly detail all of the wonders in the game. I've also listed here some
'tiers' of wonders. Excellent you should nearly always build, good are ones
that usually pay off, and you should build if you have the resources.
Situational ones are only useful if you are in a very specific situation (duh).
Excellent Wonders
-East India Company
-Trade Fair of Troyes
-Leonardo's Workshop
-Internet
Good Wonders
-Hanging Gardens
-Oxford University
-Magna Carta
-Himeji Samurai Castle
Situational Wonders
-Oracle
-Pyramids
-Great Wall
-Stonehenge
-Hollywood
-Manhattan Project
-Great Library
Mythic Download Wonders
-Great Lighthouse (good)
-Leaning Tower of Piza (situational)
-Scotland Yard (situational)
-SETI (situational)
Hanging Gardens
Increases the city's population by 50%.
This can be pretty nice if you have a big city early on, or if no one builds
this for a while. Going from 10 to 15 people is quite the boost, and will
really help you build any other wonders or gain a tech lead from then on.
Oracle -
Warns you if an attack will be unsuccessful.
This is a pretty cool wonder, but I'm not sure how useful it really is. You
have to be attacking a lot of stuff before it could be worthwhile, and most
of what it tells you could be learned with the correct unit upgrades (to see
what units you'll be attacking in the city). Consider how many legions you
could build for the same production, and how many you really think this could
save, before you build it.
Pyramids
All government types become available.
I couldn't be less impressed with this wonder. The government types come in
pretty much the way you want to use them - first republic, then democracy, and
the rest periodically for whatever needs arise. I guess communism early
could be pretty useful, just as fundamentalism could be nice in an early war,
but the production could still go somewhere else.
Great Wall
AI won't wage war or make demands of you.
You'll notice if you build this, the AI will randomly talk to you and profess
their love of peace. They would have made a demand if you hadn't built this.
A bit expensive, but if you're concerned about being attacked early, it can
give you a lot of freedom. Just remember to still build some defenses, or
things will go very bad when it expires.
Stonehenge - 50 production
Temples produce 50% more culture.
This is an amazing wonder to combine with the Ark of the Covenant. I usually
don't have enough temples running, or enough population, to really make this
worthwhile considering the early expiry.
East India Company - 200 production
Sea tiles produce 1 extra trade.
One of the best wonders. It lasts until flight, and you're probably getting
most of your science from sea tiles, so you're effectively getting a 50%
bonus to the total science/gold in any city (i.e. think of this as applying
after other multipliers, so 50% on top of what comes out of libraries and
universities). This pays for itself so fast.
Oxford University - 150 production
Learn one advanced technology.
This gives you literally any tech that's way down at the end of the tech tree.
I've gotten atomic theory in the middle ages, which was actually quite useless
given how long it takes to build the Manhattan Project. A risky wonder, but
very worthwhile if no one's built it towards the end of the game (consider
the hammer to science ratio - it's very very good).
Trade Fair of Troyes - 200 production
The city that constructs this produces double the gold, meaning take the base
amount x, and make it 2x. Markets and banks multiply on this amount, so that
a market makes this city produce 4x, and a bank makes it produce 12x.
Magna Carta - 150 production
Courthouses produce culture
The benefit of this is directly related to whether you can build it easily,
if you have lots of courthouses, and if you want a lot more culture. Obviously
without any courthouses this is pretty useless.
Himeji Samurai Castle
Gain 1 attack for each unit - armies thus gain 3 attack. Note that this bonus
also affects naval units.
This is pretty good when it's first available, as that extra 3 points
multiplied by a few bonuses (veteran, infiltration, hills) can really add up
to a lot when you're using catapults or cannons. It makes only a very small
difference though when you're using tanks/artillery/bombers, which all have
over 10 attack.
Leonardo's Workshop
Automatically upgrade all units to their most modern version.
You probably want to rush to invention anyway (for the great person on first
discovery), so you have a bit of time to build this. I suggest getting as
advanced military tech as you can as well as building as many old units as
possible before you finish building this. Otherwise, you won't be upgrading
many units to anything very good, and it would've been cheaper to sell off
your old units and just build new ones with the resources available.
Wall Street
Available to build after accumulating 20 000 gold, achieves an economic
victory.
Well, if you're trying to win as fast as possible, you probably want to build
this as soon as you can. Otherwise, you're going for a different victory
condition, and then you shouldn't have stockpiled more than 10 000 gold for
great people.
United Nations
Available to build after accumulating 20 culture points, achieves a cultural
victory.
You should build this as soon as it's available if you want to win fast.
Internet
Doubles the size of your economy, i.e. 2x the gold output in each city, in the
same way that the Trade Fair of Troyes doubles the gold produced.
This is pretty useful no matter what victory you're going for in the late game.
The gold you get per turn will literally double, meaning you can buy a lot more
buildings and units, or pile up the money fast for an economic victory. Once I
get this, my top gold city typically produces around 500 per turn, and some
secondary ones produce 300-400. It doesn't take long to get 20k from there.
Hollywood
City walls can't prevent a cultural flip.
Normally, you can prevent a city from being converted to a rival civilization
by building walls for it. If you build this, then your rivals can't use that
as a defense. I'm not sure how useful this really is, as it's quite expensive
and very late. I guess if you're having trouble getting those last few
culture points, this might be able to help if there are walls in nearby cities.
Remember that you can't flip capital cities either.
Manhattan Project
Grants the builder the 1 ICBM in the game.
This is an ok wonder. For how many tanks you could build instead, I really
have to question the efficacy of building this. However, it's very useful if
you think an AI is going to finish the UN/World Bank/Spaceship before you
can get an ending. But wouldn't these resources be better spent on your own
quest for victory? I guess it depends on your situation. Also, the AI tend
to act a bit scared towards you if you have this, so it can help stop or
prevent wars against you (late game Great Wall?).
Great Lighthouse
Allows galleys to travel in deep water.
I really can't say anything negative about this wonder. Getting into deep
water early is really the whole advantage of going with the Spaniards in this
game (with their free navigation tech at the beginning of the game). You can
settle islands way out there, but more to the point you can claim a lot of
artefacts if you pull this off right. It is pretty nice to get Atlantis well
before the industrial era.
Leaning Tower of Piza
Doubles import tax on caravans.
This is so useless. Even if you use a lot of caravans, the AI certainly
doesn't, so you'd make more money spending the hammers to build more caravans
instead.
Scotland Yard
Prevents great people from being kidnapped by spies.
I've never had the AI actually try to kidnap a great person. I suppose this
could be useful in multiplayer, but of course none of the download packs
are available there. This is even more useless than the Leaning Tower.
SETI
Decreases space ship travel time.
If you have the resources to build this along with the space ship, go for it.
I tend to rush the entire ship, so this has to have been started a while before
you develop space flight to be useful. Obviously useless if you aren't
intending on getting a science victory.
########################
#Playing the Game - PG4#
########################
***********************************
*Early Game - What should I build?*
***********************************
This is the expansion phase. Your goal is to grab as much land as possible,
while setting up some basic defenses and grabbing as many barbarian huts as
possible.
You should always produce a Warrior first, even if you are Roman and can
produce a Settler. Remember, 100 gold collected gives you a free settler.
Your first settler should be this free one, unless barbarians are annoying and
give techs instead (this is quite common on higher difficulty levels). The
best thing you can get from the barbarians is a caravan. You can explore the
map fast and get 50 gold from it once you're done exploring an area. Be
careful not to send it unprotected near barbarian villages, though. It
becomes a trade-off when you have 50 gold and a caravan - you can decide then
whether to send the caravan to a city to quickly get a settler, or continue
exploring. It's almost always better to get the settler fast.
For this and the other economic bonuses, avoid building any roads until you
have to have them (i.e. unexpected war requires troop movements). Roads build
instantly, so you'll always have them available if you need them and haven't
spent your gold early on. I'd suggest not spending much gold until you've hit
the second or third milestones. You only give up the opportunity cost of the
gold by holding it (of course, the Americans have a cost associated with
spending gold, with their 2% interest on holdings). Always consider the
exchange rate you're getting, gold to hammers, when you go to rush something.
Are you producing gold in cities without markets and banks, and spending it
on cities with high productive capacity? That seems like a bad idea.
As for city production, you probably want to start building a settler when
your city gets to be size 3. With warriors heading off in most directions,
there isn't really an advantage to building any more, especially for their
cost. Ideally, you would have 3 produced, so that you could form a warrior
army. Also, as you begin to produce the settler, I'd suggest focussing your
city on production (no science). The new city will begin with population 2 (3
if Chinese), so the loss of 2 (1 if Roman/Republic) population from the
capital doesn't matter. This is why you should build settlers as much as
possible whenever you can to fill in the empty space - the amount of turns it
takes for you to 'make back' the initial cost of building the settler is
minimal. The only reason for building warriors at the beginning is to try and
get a settler faster than you could build one - or at least, simultaneously,
and without the population loss.
So, every time a city hits population 3, build a settler. Depending on the AI
placements, you may need to build some defenders as well. Also, you should
definitely consider building a galley if you think there are islands nearby -
they are always good to colonize, often have good barbarian huts, and you
might even get a relic. For this reason, you should have a costal city not
produce settlers, and instead just build a galley immediately. You probably
want to start this around when you build your 4th city.
***************************************************
*Building Buildings - What should my city contain?*
***************************************************
Outside of building units, what order should you construct buildings in your
city? Let's assume that the city has 2 plains tiles (2 food each), 2 forests
(2 production each), 2 grasslands (2 food each), and 2 trade tiles (2 each),
and you have 2 people in the city. It takes 20 food to grow 1 population point
with 2 people (10 times your current population), granaries cost 40 production,
and libraries cost 40 production. The game will always automatically average
out your people, first to food, then production, then science.
Here are some examples that will indicate whether manually specializing your
citizens is better than the auto types, by completion time of library and
granary.
My worker choices:
-4 production per turn
-Build granary in 10 turns (10)
-Switch both people to food; 6 food per turn
-Population increase in 4 turns; 4 food overflow (14)
-Person 3 builds library; 6 food, 2 production per turn
-Population increase in 5 turns; 4 food overflow, library at 10/40 (19)
-Person 4 builds library; 6 food, 4 production per turn
-Population increase in 6 turns; library at 34/40 (25)
-Person 5 on food; 8 food, 4 production per turn
-Library complete in 2 turns; 2 production overflow, person at 16/50 (27)
-Person 3 and 4 switch to trade; 8 food, 8 science per turn
-Population increase in 5 turns; 6 food overflow (32)
So, in 32 turns, there's a granary, library, 6 people, and you've produced
40 science. Not too shabby.
AI Style - Balanced
-Auto to 2 food, 2 production per turn
-Gain 1 population in 10 turns (10)
-Auto person 3 to 2 food, 2 production, 2 trade per turn
-Granary complete in 10 turns; person at 20/30 (20)
-Start on library; 3 food, 2 production, 2 trade per turn
-Gain 1 population in 5 turns; library at 10/40 (25)
-Person 4 goes to production; 3 food, 4 production, 2 trade per turn
-Library complete in 8 turns; person at 24/40 (33)
So, in 33 turns, there's a granary, library, 4 people, and you've produced
46 science - in 33 turns, the previous model produced 48 science and had 2
more people to work stuff. This one gets a lot of the techs early though, so
if you have a tech you really want fast, you might like the AI style. I tend
to choose long term growth though. Also, if you're dividing people between
production and food, you should always specialize them if you have the tiles
available. Why get a person and a unit in 10 turns, when you could have
a person in 5 and the unit in another 5? You get all the benefits from that
extra person for 5 turns. The most dramatic example of this is at the very
beginning of the game. If you use the default worker settings, you'll get
your first warrior in 5 turns, and a second warrior and a population point in
another 5 turns. If instead you focus on production, you'll get your first
warrior in 3 turns, the second one in another 2 turns, and then you can change
your workers to food to produce a person in another 5 turns.
This should clearly indicate that you DO NOT want to allow the AI to
automatically allocate your workers to the 'correct' squares. Even specifying
focus on food or science doesn't totally focus them entirely on food or
science, instead always doing a bit of a hybrid thing (and never going for
enough food). It is quite difficult to get your cities doing the right thing
though, as you have to remember to check cities upon growth to re-allocate
citizens, and make sure that your workers aren't getting reassigned
independent of your orders. After your cities are up and running, the auto
assignment is likely acceptable; you usually want a little bit of production
for units (this might be your main way you produce military units, actually),
you want food to grow the city (except late in the game, when the new person
won't be able to 'pay back' their cost or they can never pay back the delay in
production), and you want gold/science if the city is specializing in them
(there usually aren't enough production squares for a city's people, and it's
usually beneficial to still have the city producing people for these things).
The important thing is to focus, and have an improvement before you start
focussing on that area; build a library before trying to build science, a
granary before building much food, etc.
The AI likes to declare war on you after you've build a certain number of
cities. This is why a good chokepoint city is awesome. Walls are extremely
expensive, but can make a huge difference in the number of defenders you need.
I'll usually place 2-3 of my most advanced defender armies in these cities,
ship the obsolete ones to vulnerable costal cities, and any other troops I've
built up for attacking later (or free troops) in the choke point city. The
armies might get worn down in a turn due to a high number of attackers, so
make sure there are some other units around to keep your good ones from
getting killed off. Having a good attacker or two (especially an army) can
really rip through the armies prepared to attack your city - particularly
since your city should be on a hill, and there may be a great general there
from all the crazy defending you've been doing, which gives some really nice
attack boosts. If you can get an overrun advantage versus the people trying
to attack you (your city is on a hill with a great general and a boat nearby),
you can kill off their entire attacking force in one swipe.
##########################
#Warfare Strategies - WS5#
##########################
******************************************************
*General Strategy - How should I defend and attack?*
******************************************************
Some units are good for attacking, some are good for defending, and some are
in the middle. Middle units are, frankly, not very good unless you have a
nice tech advantage. Obviously warriors are completely obsolete after you get
any other unit - everything else always has at least 1 attack/1 defense, and
will cost the same amount, so abandon them for legions/archers as soon as you
can. Each era has a pair like this, but when you introduce catapults and
horses, it opens up a bit. Horses aren't very useful unless you don't want
roads for some reason. You don't have opportunities to pillage AI land in
this game, and the AI usually defends all of their cities decently - so the
horses are just expensive, faster versions of your regular troops.
Catapults/cannons/artillery are extremely useful, however, and will replace
any other attack-type troops in your army. Just remember to always tag an
army of defenders or two with each group of attackers. I generally use the
following combinations:
legion/archer
catapult/pikeman
cannon/rifleman
artillery/modern infantry
bombers/fighters
submarines/battleships
*******************
*Perpetual Warfare*
*******************
Once you get to a certain point in the game, the AIs start demanding things or
else they go to war with you (unless you have the Great Wall, pre-engineering).
So, what should you do? Firstly, they usually demand something pretty
extravagant - the shiny tech you just got, or 3/4 of your bank account. I
never give them their number 1 demand unless I'm really concerned about their
military vs mine (this is much more likely very early in the game). Whether
you give them the compromise gift or tell them to screw off is really up to
you. I usually tell them to screw off. If you're going to do this a lot
though, expect to have a pile on through most of the game. If you were able
to establish good chokepoints (not so effective on higher difficulties, and
not so great if the AI is using boats to get to you - a good navy will solve
this easily though), you should see a lot of attackers fall to your well
defended, walled cities. I usually go on the offensive once I get some nice
new attacking tech, like when you first get catapults, cannons, tanks, or
artillery/bombers.
*********************
*Leonardo's Workshop*
*********************
I would argue this is, by a fair margin, the best wonder in the game -
especially if you have a tech lead but poor productive capacity. I like to
get Invention, but not start building this until I have some better technology
- your units should upgrade to cannons/riflemen/knights at the very least.
So, when you are getting ready to build this, start cranking out all of the
lowest cost units you can, along with a lot of catapults (unless you are a
warmonger, you have probably focused on defensive units thus far). Getting
all your cities to produce catapults for a few turns, and then switch some
high production city over to the workshop, will net you a nice sized force of
cannons to go after whoever you want.
Germans get their units upgraded for free if they're elite (i.e. have an
upgrade you got to choose). This is pretty awesome, especially if
you're in the middle of a war and suddenly your nicely upgraded archer
army suddenly becomes riflemen - nothing's getting through then.
For the cost of the workshop, consider how many units you could build in the
same time. There are definitely instances where you only have a few old units,
so building new ones is more cost effective. This probably doesn't happen
very often though, considering how much more expensive later military units
are than older ones.
*****************************
*Boosting Attack and Defense*
*****************************
You've decided you really want to wage wars before you have some crazy tech
advantage, and you want to know how to do that effectively. Or, you don't
want to waste any production building defenders, and want that one army to
protect your entire civ for all of history. Here are all of the ways you
can boost attack and defense:
Government - Fundamentalism
+1 attack for each unit
Wonder - Himeji Samurai Castle
+1 attack for each unit
Naval Support - depends on the ship (all except Galleys)
The bonuses these units give can be boosted by them being veterans. This
affects both the attack and defensive strength of the units, and is a
flat number (i.e. not affected if you attack with an army).
Galleon
Submarine
Battleship
Unit ability - Engineer
+100% city defense
Unit ability - Infiltration
+50% to city attack
Unit ability - Leadership
+100% defense if another unit is in the same square
Unit ability - Loyalty
+50% defense in home territory
Unit ability - Veteran
+50% attack and defense
Unit bonus - Great Leader
This bonus applies to all units in the same square
+50% attack and defense
Terrain - Hills
+50% attack and defense
Terrain - Forest
+50% defense
Building - Walls
+100% defense
Unit defense - Fortification
+100% defense
At the very least, your units should all be veteran (at least, besides the
first few warriors you build), as a 50% boost for only 40 production is quite
the deal (if you build more than two units in the city). Forming armies is
sort of a weird thing though - if you have one veteran unit joining, the
entire army gets the veteran benefit.
Ideally then you could reasonably have an archer defender in a city on a hill
with walls that is fortified, veteran, and has an engineering upgrade, to give
2+1+2+1+2=8 defense - which translates to 24 for an archer army. So,
if you wanted to attack a city that might have these, you'd want a veteran
legion with infiltration attacking from a hill and fundamentalism, for
2+1+1+1+1=6 attack, which is then 18 for an army. That's not nearly enough.
You can see if the city has walls or not at least, which would reduce the
defense down to 18, and then you might be ok attacking. I wouldn't at this
level though, because if you lose and they get a great general, you'll find
the city incredibly difficult to attack in the future. At the very least,
try and use a spy to destroy their fortifications, and then it's 21 to 24 -
although you're still screwed if you lose.
If we instead attack with the more advanced catapults before they've upgraded
to pikemen, we could have a veteran attacking from a hill for 6+3+3=12, or
36 for an army. Even without the hills, it would still be 27, which would
be very difficult for a non-walled city to defend against. An individual
catapult would not successfully attack them though. But, what if they are
attacking your city, and you have a catapult - can it benefit you to send it
out? The main attackers are probably travelling with some defenders, but
they no longer have the city bonuses like walls, fortifications, city defender
abilities, or likely hills (or forests, depending on your city placement).
So, the best their archer can do is veteran, for a defense of 2+1=3, or 9 for
the army. You should be able to take care of this with 1 catapult, or an
archer army, pretty easily. Then you can pick off their attackers with
single catapult and legion units - they will have between 1 and 6 defense,
depending on their upgrades and how they're situated (and if they're in
armies), so a catapult veteran from a hill will take them nicely.
This generalizes pretty easily up until the modern era. Then, you have to deal
with tanks, modern infantry, artillery, fighters, and bombers. Artillery are
the best attack units in the game, mostly because bombers can't get the same
attack bonuses. I personally feel like attack becomes much more important than
defense at this point in the game, and so if someone's attacking me, I'll focus
on killing their troops well before they reach any cities.
###########################
#Advanced Strategies - AS6#
###########################
******************
*Population Pumps*
******************
If your government type is Republic, you can build a settler for only 1
population. You can then take these citizens and get them to join another
city. So, basically, you have a bunch of little cities that only produce
settlers, along with a couple (or one) very very large city that absorbs all
of their people.
Even if the population total of your empire is the same doing this versus
having lots of midsized cities, efficiency is massively improved on the whole.
No longer are you building things in cities without production enhancements,
or researching things in cities without libraries and universities. Each
extra person that can't work the terrain adds 1 trade and 1 production to the
city, as well as the culture bonus that comes from population with theatres
and cathedrals. You'll have each great person type settled in the city
(hopefully), further boosting the potential. Also, you can build so many
wonders in the city, all taking only a couple turns to build. Many of the
wonders have excellent synergy with a single city (i.e. they boost something
in only that one place), like Shakespeare's Theatre and the Trade Fair.
Since the little cities won't be doing much, and will always have low
populations, you can pile them all very close to each other - just make sure
each one has 1 plains tile for food, and 1 forest for production. You can
easily have 10+ cities generating a settler every 10 turns by the middle ages.
Security for this many cities can be of concern, but they don't really
possess anything you need to defend, so leave them empty. Just protect the
borders. You can quite easily stick up some walls for your main city, and
have an army or two of the most recent defenders hanging out inside. Ideally,
your production would be high enough that you could produce enough for an
army every turn - once you have every building imaginable set up, you can
build to take over the world.
Cultural victory is probably the worst with this set up - there isn't any real
benefit from settling most of the great people you're creating. Domination
is good from the quick unit production, centralized for easy army formation
before going on a rampage. Economic and science are probably the best two to
go for - the city should be able to produce enough gold for victory in under
40 turns by mid-late game (that's only 500 gold/turn, which I sometimes can
hit without this strategy with the Internet and Trade Fair).
As predicted, this strategy was determined to be broken, and so settlers now
just add 20 food to the city they're joining. This totally kills the strategy.
Sometimes you just really want a city in the middle of the mountains, even
though you can't produce any food there. Shipping 20 food over, at a cost of
20 hammers each, from some food producing city can still be viable - it's just
not worthwhile when it takes 100 food to get an extra person. 6 people is
probably about the cap that you'd use for this, as that next person would take
60 production and (optimally) 3 population from elsewhere. 3 people working
forests instead of 1 mountain (the extreme case, I know), would produce 6
production instead of 5, and you'd save 60 for something else, along with the
extra food. The tradeoff isn't quite as bad if you have a super gold city
with the Trade Fair, market, bank, internet, etc etc, but by the time it's set
up you'll probably have 10 people there already. 100 production for the next
population point probably isn't that great, unless your other cities are
terrible.
*********
*Rushing*
*********
Rushing is a way of converting gold into production. This occurs at a rate of
3 gold per 1 production. Let's say you have a city with a market and a bank,
with 2 citizens, and they can only work tiles that have 2 trade on them or 2
production. If they work the trade tile, they get 2*2+2*4=12 gold, and if
they work the production tiles they get 4 hammers. Thus, gathering gold is
equally productive in this city as working production. However, this
production is transferable, and can be stored between turns (i.e. can save up
to build some universities as soon as they're available, and have them built
in cities with poor productive capacity). Also, you no longer need to focus
on building cities with productive squares nearby; settling to maximize trade
is just as efficient.
I've summarized this in the table below, based on earning 2 trade in a city
with the given advantages:
Base Multiplier Total Gold Effective Production
Square 2 1x 2 2/3
+Market 2 2x 4 4/3
+Democracy 3 2x 6 2
+Bank 3 6x 18 6
+GP 4 6x 24 8
+Trade Fair 8 6x 48 16
+Internet 16 6x 96 32
So it's not very efficient to buy things when you only have markets, but it's
just as good with banks as when you have a factory and a 2 production square.
Production doesn't have a wonder like the Trade Fair or the Internet though,
so at least one city can be a 'production powerhouse' through gold production.
Also, you no longer need to be upset when you produce a great person that
isn't productive - trade ones are good too!
Let's say it takes 20 turns to produce a university, and you're currently
producing 30 science in the city (15 base x2 with library). You'll gain an
extra 15x4=60 science each turn once it's built. If you rush build it, you're
gaining 60*20=1200 science plus the cost in hammers of the university for
something else, while giving up some gold.
From this, it's obvious not only that it's important to specialize cities, but
really to even specialize the land they're using. Aim for areas with food
and only trade, or food and only production, to really maximize potential.
Plus, you don't have factories available nearly as early as banks, so buying
production is really efficient for that inter-period. Just remember that
you'll need a few cities that can traditionally produce at the beginning of
the game, before these all get set up.
When you're trying to maximize the gold from the city, be sure to remember the
cost of the Trade Fair with that of a bank. Trade Fair costs 250 production
though, and isn't any more effective than the bank. It's pretty difficult to
get that much production early on, and it involves giving up a lot of gold
now for some extra later. I only build it when I have a city that has lots
of sea, but also has mountains (i.e. I wait until after I have railroad so
that I can build iron mines, and then build it).
Also, if you choose to use Democracy (which I highly recommend if you aren't
building settlers and aren't declaring war on anyone), you get another 50%
boost to gold, now making gold production equivalent to actual production in
cities with markets. Suddenly water squares look pretty nice! With a bank,
they're as good as mountains.
I guess the main caveat here is that the 3 gold to 1 production doesn't seem
to be a fixed ratio throughout the entire game. I'll have to do more
analysis to determine what the ratio is for each building, and how progress
affects the cost. Wonders at least seem to be a different ratio.
###################
#Governments - GO7#
###################
Choosing a government has fairly large effects on your empire. Briefly:
Despotism - Only use if you're planning on nuking someone
Republic - Really good very early on when you're building a lot of settlers.
Get a better government as soon as you finish settling.
Monarchy - A good government if you don't want any impediments. The culture
boost isn't that big a deal, but you can fight wars and keep all
of your stuff working.
Democracy - Probably the best type, at least when you aren't waging war. I
typically use this after republic, until I want to start blowing
people up.
Fundamentalism - This is pretty sweet for waging war early on. The science
hit is crippling though, so don't use this long run.
Communism - If you don't need culture, this is pretty amazing at producing
stuff. Great for later game wars or really working towards any
victory at the end - build more units to conquer, build the UN or
the World Bank fast, or just build all of the space ship parts.
You always get to a certain point where culture, science, and gold
don't really matter, so just go for extra production.
#################
#Artefacts - AR8#
#################
Hold off on grabbing the Ark of the Covenant when you find it - getting a free
temple/cathedral in all of your cities is a VERY impressive boost, and you want
to get it everywhere. You'll never have to worry about your culture being too
low if you get it.
Make sure you choose to research a really expensive tech before you claim the
Lost City of Atlantis. You'll get 3 free techs, which will be the one you're
currently researching, and the two cheapest techs you have to research. So
don't waste this by being 1 turn from discovering something and having 2
techs you can get in 3 turns by researching.
The Knights Templar is pretty useless. Only having one of a unit isn't very
impressive, since you need three for an army. Even if you're first to discover
the tech, you still aren't going to be getting an army immediately. Also,
you're getting this extra free unit way ahead of when you'll be getting the
tech. I guess if you got a whole free army it would be too powerful.
Angkor Wat seems to give wonders in a certain order. I'm not sure exactly,
but if I claim this early I *always* get the great wall (which just so happens
to be really useful in a high difficulty game, as you can ignore defense for
quite a while and never have to build archers).
I don't really have any comments for the School of Confucius or the Gold City.
Both are pretty nice bonuses, and can be grabbed as soon as possible. Just
don't rush to settle the great people if you get them really early. You can
always hold onto them until you get the right city for their bonus.
With the Mythic expansion, there are a couple of new artefacts, which aren't
very good. It almost makes it better to not have the expansion, just to
avoid these not-so-great things.
#############################
#More Math Derivations - MD9#
#############################
So, you know what you want to build at the beginning of the game, and you know
what cities to set up to produce gold - and how you should use that gold. But
there are a lot of other scenarios where you'd like to know "Should I build
this improvement?" or "When should I consider this as being beneficial?".
Generally, I'd assume you're using a square that already produces 2 of any
resource (i.e. grasslands, seas, forests), and look at the improvement over
working those tiles.
Lastly, I'll also assume we're using a 2% interest rate (which the game
already uses for some gold loving civilizations). By this, I mean that we
could build any building at some time, but it has to pay itself back - and
since 1 production matters more in the first 5 turns than it does in the
last 5, we need some way to balance that out. At 2% interest, things double
in almost exactly 35 turns. So if an improvement takes longer than 35 turns
to pay for itself (i.e. it costs 60 production, and improves production by 1,
thus paying for itself in 60 turns), then we shouldn't be building it. At 35
turns, it will take forever to pay for itself, and thus we are indifferent
towards building it. Less than that, and we should always do it. This is
obviously more complicated for science, gold, and food than it is for
production, but I'll just make what I would consider to be reasonable
assumptions for these items, i.e. assume that people working production could
instead produce 2 trade per turn, should we still build a market?
*************************
*Production Improvements*
*************************
This section tries to clarify when you should and should not build certain
buildings, based on what they improve.
************
*Production*
************
Let's start by discussing workshops, iron mines, and factories. These are the
easiest to determine the efficiency of, as their benefit is the same as their
cost. When you have more of the tile (more hills or mountains), the better
the building of the improvement. So, when do we want to build these things?
Workshop
This makes all hills produce 3 production. Ideally though you wouldn't want
many of these around a city, as an enemy can use them to attack you. This
costs 60 production, so with one hill it would take 60 turns to recoup the
cost if you had a forest to work instead. With two hills, it drops to 30
turns to recoup, which is ok, but not great. I'd more recommend this if
you just lack production squares, and so you're actually getting 2 extra
production from each square - but that's still not great unless the city
is specializing in production.
Iron Mine
This makes all mountains produce 5 production. That's 3 more than forests, so
you'll cover the 80 production cost in 27 turns with just 1 mountain present.
If you can build this in a city, always go for it - arguably the one no-brainer
in the game.
Factory
This doubles the production of any city. At 200 production, this will pay for
itself pretty quickly - around 20 turns for a city with 2 mountains, or with
2 forests and 2 hills. At less than 10 production per turn, this really isn't
worth it.
******
*Gold*
******
Next, we'll discuss markets, banks, and trading posts. These are only a bit
more difficult than production improvements, as we can consider gold as being
worth 1/3 of a unit of production (well, better than that due to being able to
store it and transfer it to other cities, but roughly equivalent).
Market
60 production to double the gold output. Taking two people off of producing
gold on sea to produce production with forests would reduce your gold by
60 for the time it would take to build this. You'll get that 60 back in
15 turns. If you already have all of the production squares being worked
(assume 2), then it takes 15 turns to build, but gives an extra 4 gold
per turn once complete (again, assuming 2 sea tiles). If gold is worth 1/3
of production, then this takes 30 turns to pay for itself. Very much worth
it if you have more than 2 trade squares, but with only 2, I'd stick with the
cheaper library and have this as a science city.
Bank
120 production for quadruple the gold output. Twice as long to build as a
market, with twice the benefit. Each sea square will now produce 8 gold
(up from 4 with just a market). 8 gold is 8/3 production, which with 2
squares working is 16/3 production per turn. With two trade squares,
then, this pays for itself in 24 turns, which is pretty nice. Switching
from sea to forests would cause you to lose out on 8 gold a turn (with two
people), so in the 30 turns it takes to build you lose 240 gold, which you
make back in 60 turns. Definitely not worthwhile here. So, the point here
is that a good gold city has to be a decent production city unless you like
to rush buildings.
Trading Post
Boosts trade in deserts from 1 to 3. You usually don't have a lot of
deserts around a city, and this is a bit expensive at 60 production for what
it gives (especially since desert cities usually have a ton of sea around).
I'd really question the benefit of these at all if you have a harbour -
the extra food is probably beneficial until you've used up all of the
available squares. Getting 1 extra trade in 2 tiles will not pay for itself
in a reasonable amount of time, even at a 1 trade:1 production ratio. This
applies for both science and gold producing cities. The only time this could
be worthwhile is if you're playing as the Egyptians, and actually have some
deserts around.
*********
*Science*
*********
Now, the science buildings - libraries and universities.
Library
Double the research for 40 production. Compared to the market, this is pretty
good even with only 2 sea tiles being worked. If workers move from trade to
production, you lose 40 science to build this, and gain an extra 4
science a turn afterwards - so it pays for itself in 10 turns. With more
trade, it's even more efficient. You'll build one of these in pretty much
every non-gold city, even if it doesn't make much science.
University
quadruple the science for 160 production. This isn't nearly the deal
libraries are, and not even as good as what banks can do. You build these more
out of necessity than actual efficiency. I would build one of these in every
city that is producing at least 12 science (with a library). That's three
workers, so there's an extra 24 science every turn with a university. I really
like science, and you should to, so this might be a bit more worthwhile then it
really should be (i.e. I might evaluate this as more like
1.5 science:1 production). At a 1.5:1 rate, this pays for itself in 10 turns.
Hence, build it pretty much everywhere. Ideally, you have the gold to rush it,
to get the benefits faster, and not have to take anyone off of science.
******
*Food*
******
As for the food buildings, granaries, aqueducts, and harbours, these are
pretty difficult to really measure the efficiency of. I'll assume that
each new person can provide 2 production. This is complex since each
extra population point costs 10 more food than the last, so the benefit of
these structures is linked to the size of the city. I'll start by assuming
size 5, and then have a generalized chart at the bottom for these.
Granary
Improves plains from 1 food each to 3 food each. Obviously, there isn't
much benefit here if you have a lot of grasslands around and your city is
a decent size. As with the aqueduct, it might be better to just try and
gather the gold for freebies (except in heavy plains/few grasslands cities).
At size 5, it takes 50 food to grow. At 4 food per turn, that's 13 turns.
With 6 food a turn, it's 9 turns. 4 turns is 8 extra production. This
takes a long time to pay off then, going from grasslands to plains. It's
more efficient at lower populations, less efficient at higher ones.
Harbour
An extra food in each sea tile for 100 production. With 5 sea tiles being
worked, that's 5 more food a turn, for an extra person in 10 turns. In
comparison, you could have four people on the sea and one on the land, which
would produce 80 trade and 2/5 of the person, instead of 100 trade and a
person. So, it would take another 15 turns to match the population. In 25
turns though, you could have 250 trade, 7 people, and a bit extra food, as
compared with 200 trade and 6 people (not to mention, the extra stuff those
2 people could be producing, probably another 30 trade or production). This
makes the harbour very worthwhile to build with lots of seas.
********************************************************
*Military Strength - What do the numbers actually mean?*
********************************************************
You have a legion, which you know has strength 2. The barbarians you're
going after have a defense of 1, halved for being uncivilized, so it's 0.5.
What are the odds of you winning, and how much strength can you expect to be
at after battle? And is 2:0.5 the same as 4:1 and 80:20, or are other things
at play here?
****THIS SECTION IS CURRENTLY PURELY SPECULATIVE****
The stats here are based around the number of 'units' in the battle - if the
total strength of a warrior unit is 1.5, then each soldier there represents
0.5 strength. The barbarians it would encounter would be 0.5 total, so only
about 0.167 for each guy. At first it's 3 vs. 3, so 1.5 vs. 0.5. 1.5 wins
3/4 of the time, and loses 1/4 of the time. Here's a breakdown of the battle:
Initial Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1.5 1.5 1
Barbarian Strength 0.5 0.34 0.5
Odds of outcome 75% 25%
Warrior 1 win Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1.5 1.5 1
Barbarian Strength 0.34 0.17 0.34
Odds of outcome 82% 18%
Warrior 1 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1 1 0.5
Barbarian Strength 0.5 0.34 0.5
Odds of outcome 67% 33%
Warrior 2 wins Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1.5 1.5 1
Barbarian Strength 0.17 0 0.17
Odds of outcome 89% 11%
Warrior 2 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 0.5 0.5 0
Barbarian Strength 0.5 0.34 0.5
Odds of outcome 50% 50%
Warrior 1 win 1 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1 1 0.5
Barbarian Strength 0.34 0.17 0.34
Odds of outcome 75% 25%
Warrior 2 win 1 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 1 1 0.5
Barbarian Strength 0.17 0 0.17
Odds of outcome 85% 15%
Warrior 1 win 2 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 0.5 0.5 0
Barbarian Strength 0.34 0.17 0.34
Odds of outcome 60% 40%
Warrior 2 win 2 loss Start Warrior Wins Barb Wins
Warrior Strength 0.5 0.5 0
Barbarian Strength 0.17 0 0.17
Odds of outcome 75% 25%
So from this, we can see that the outcomes are:
with no losses 75% * 82% * 89% 55% = 55%
with 1 loss 25% * 67% * 75% * 85% 11% +
75% * 18% * 75% * 85% 9% +
75% * 82% * 11% * 85% 6% = 26%
with 2 losses **derived from other numbers** = 15%
with 3 losses 25% * 33% * 50% 4% = 4%
So generally the odds of victory are 96%, even though the numbers are just
1.5 against 0.5. If we do this for strength 3X against strength 3Y, we get:
Initial Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 3X 3X 2X
Y Strength 3Y 2Y 3Y
Odds of outcome 3X/(3X+3Y) 3Y/(3X+3Y)
X 1 win Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 3X 3X 2X
Y Strength 2Y 1Y 2Y
Odds of outcome 3X/(3X+2Y) 2Y/(3X+2Y)
X 1 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 2X 2X 1X
Y Strength 3Y 2Y 3Y
Odds of outcome 2X/(2X+#Y) 3Y/(2X+3Y)
X 2 win Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 3X 3X 2X
Y Strength 1Y 0Y 1Y
Odds of outcome 3X/(3X+1Y) 1Y/(3X+1Y)
X 2 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 1X 1X 0X
Y Strength 3Y 2Y 3Y
Odds of outcome 1X/(1X+3Y) 3Y/(1X+3Y)
X 1 win 1 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 2X 2X 1X
Y Strength 2Y 1Y 2Y
Odds of outcome 2X/(2X+2Y) 2Y/(2X+2Y)
X 2 win 1 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 2X 2X 1X
Y Strength 1Y 0Y 1Y
Odds of outcome 2X/(2X+1Y) 1Y/(2X+1Y)
X 1 win 2 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 1X 1X 0X
Y Strength 2Y 1Y 2Y
Odds of outcome 1X/(1X+2Y) 2Y/(1X+2Y)
X 2 win 2 loss Start X Wins Y Wins
X Strength 1X 1X 1X
Y Strength 1Y 1Y 1Y
Odds of outcome 1X/(1X+1Y) 1Y/(1X+1Y)
So the outcomes are:
X no losses 3X/(3X+3Y) * 3X/(3X+2Y) * 3X/(3X+1Y)
= 27X^3/(27X^3+54X^2Y+33XY^2+6Y^3)
X 1 loss 3X/(3X+3Y) * 3X/(3X+2Y) * 1Y/(3X+1Y) * 2X/(2X+1Y) +
3X/(3X+3Y) * 2Y/(3X+2Y) * 2X/(2X+2Y) * 2X/(2X+1Y) +
3Y/(3X+3Y) * 2X/(2X+3Y) * 2X/(2X+2Y) * 2X/(2X+1Y)
= 2X^3Y(108X^2+165X+57)/
(108X^6+540X^5Y+1077X^4Y^2+1095X^3Y^3+587X^2Y^4+165XY^5+18Y^6)
Y 1 loss 3Y/(3X+3Y) * 3Y/(2X+3Y) * 1X/(1X+3Y) * 2Y/(1X+2Y) +
3Y/(3X+3Y) * 2X/(2X+3Y) * 2Y/(2X+2Y) * 2Y/(1X+2Y) +
3X/(3X+3Y) * 2Y/(3X+2Y) * 2Y/(2X+2Y) * 2Y/(1X+2Y)
= 2Y^3X(108Y^2+165Y+57)/
(108Y^6+540Y^5X+1077Y^4X^2+1095Y^3X^3+587Y^2X^4+165YX^5+18X^6)
Y no losses 3Y/(3X+3Y) * 3Y/(2X+3Y) * 3Y/(1X+3Y)
= 27Y^3/(27Y^3+54Y^2X+33YX^2+6X^3)
***I don't guarantee the 1 loss formulae are exactly correct, as they're quite
long, and I didn't have anyone check my work; please let me know if there is
a problem***
***These numbers just seem reasonable to me, and make logical sense in how
they're calculated. I haven't tested any of this. This is most likely not
the same way battles are calculated for units that aren't little groups of
3 (like say bombers or tanks), as I describe below***
Obviously, things would play out differently from this if you had an army of
warriors, or just a single tank (since it's not split into three units). The
single unit is quite easy though - just take the strength of it, divided by
the strength of the opponent plus your strength, or X/(X+Y). The formula
will actually work out like the one above for 2 losses, and then looking for
three wins. As such, a tank against a strength 21 defender would face odds of
X/(X+3Y), X/(X+2Y), and X/(X+Y) or 20/(20+21), 20/(20+14), 20/(20+7). Even
without working it out, you can see your odds of victory aren't very good at
all (it's 21%). If the defender is at 15 for the group, the odds are still
only 30%. You get close to 50% if the defender is at 9 strength to start.
Clearly there's a major disadvantage to only having on tank go around then,
but you gain the advantage of always being at full health on victory (which
also applies to tank armies).
->This is the same answer you get if you plug the numbers in for a tank
winning over another unit with 3 guys without losing, 21%.
****************************************************
*Banks and Universities - How should I build these?*
****************************************************
Alright, I'm going to assume that whatever cities you're considering building
these in don't really have great production. So, you'll want to rush them.
However, they both become available at the same time, and cost a lot of gold.
Which should you rush first - the bank, to get everything up faster, or the
universities, to get more science, or some mix? I'll assume that we're using
4 cities, of which 3 are science cities, and all have libraries or markets.
The weak cities will have 3 trade tiles, average 5, and strong 6 and a great
person for a 50% bonus to outputs. I'll also assume you're using democracy.
So, a weak city has (3*2)*2=12 output, average has (5*2)*2=20 output, and
strong has (6*3)*2=36 base output. With banks and universities, weak have
(3*2)*4+12=36, average have (5*2)*4+20=60, and strong have (6*3)*4+36=108.
Rushing a bank costs 360 gold, and rushing a university costs 480 gold.
We'll also assume we start with 360 gold, to rush the bank - even if you
don't really have the gold available, you'd have to pass 360 to be able to
rush anything, so it's not really assuming anything.
Case 1: All cities with roughly the same amount of trade
Rush Bank first:
@60 gold/turn, you can buy a university every 8 turns.
Turns 1-8: 20*3 = 60 science/turn
Turns 9-16: 20*2+60 = 100 science/turn
Turns 17-24: 20 +60*2 = 140 science/turn
Turns 25+: 60*3 = 180 science/turn, 60 gold/turn
Rush University first:
@20 gold/turn, you can buy the first university in 6 turns.
Turns 1-5: 20*3 = 60 science/turn
@20 gold/turn, you can buy a bank in 18 turns.
Turns 6-23: 20*2+60 = 100 science/turn
I think we can conclude here then that you want to rush the bank first.
It's just a massive advantage - rushing the university will only be ahead
of rushing the bank for 3 turns, then the same for 8 turns, and then it will
fall way behind. Even if the science city was significantly better, those 18
turns to build a bank even just cripple everything. Thus, we'll just consider
in the next bit if you have a weak gold city, and a strong science one. You
should never be in this situation though, as you always want gold to be your
best trade city's focus.
Case 2: Weak gold city, strong science, weak others
Rush Bank first:
Turns 1-13: 20*2+36 = 76 science/turn
Turns 14-26: 20*2+108 = 148 science/turn
Turns 27-39: 20+108+60 = 188 science/turn
Turns 40+: 60*2+108 = 228 science/turn
Rush University first:
Turns 1-10: 20*2+36 = 76 science/turn
Turns 11-40: 20*2+108 = 148 science/turn
Turns 41-53: 20*2+108 = 148 science/turn
Well, I don't think I need to go any further. They're both the same for the
first 10 turns, but then rush university is ahead for 3 turns. After that,
they're equal, and then rushing the bank first pulls way ahead. So, clearly,
rush the bank first, regardless of the quality of the cities involved. We
can also conclude from this that you should pursue the banking tech first, and
then go for the university tech.
###################
#Technology - TE10#
###################
***I'll complete this section shortly***
*******************************************
*Tech Strategies - What should I research?*
*******************************************
****************************
*Bonuses for First Research*
****************************
***********
*Tech Tree*
***********
################
#Leaders - LE11#
################
This is likely the most important decision in your game. I've written
everything up to this point without assuming any special abilities from any
leaders; and clearly there are some incredibly powerful improvements with
certain leaders. Different leaders are good at different things; some seem
to really favour a particular victory type. However, being good at one thing
often has carry over effects. A strong culture will produce a lot of great
people that count towards a culture victory, but they also provide benefits
to population, production, gold, science, and culture, which can be used for
other victory types. Likewise, having a lot of gold can get you an economic
victory, but you can also use some gold and rush build the space ship in a
single turn. So clearly being good at one thing doesn't mean you have to go
for that victory type. Everyone always wants a rating of the leaders, so here
you go, my personal leader ladder, from easiest to hardest, and what victory
type they generally are geared towards:
Tokugawa - science
Alexander - science
Saladin - conquest
Caesar - culture
Gandhi - conquest
Montezuma - science
Isabella - gold
Mao - science
Cleopatra - science
Lincoln - gold, conquest
Napoleon - conquest
Genghis Khan - conquest
Bismark - conquest
Shaka - conquest
Elizabeth - culture
Catherine - science
Caesar - Roman
Extra great people and 1/2 cost wonders makes the Romans good at producing
culture and getting nifty benefits; the Republic from the start is really the
reason to choose the Romans though. You'll get your early cities out so much
faster with this, giving you more land and cities than your opponents without
having to sacrifice research and production like other leaders. This again
falls in naturally with being cultural, as you lose fewer people to set up
new cities, and you settle more of them, which can then build more cultural
buildings. Bigger is definitely better when going for culture.
Cleopatra - Egyptian
The free early wonder is ok, but none of them are really that fantastic.
Depending on your skill level, you might want to consider restarting if you
don't get one you like. The Great Wall can be helpful, but probably means
you aren't building enough defenders. The Pyramids are really the ones you
want - then you can choose to go Roman with lots of settlers, or Greek with
extra gold and science (with Republic and Democracy, respectively). I'd go
with Republic until you've settled a decent amount of space, and then flip.
With this, the Egyptians become extremely powerful. Starting near some
deserts, with the Egyptian's 1 extra food and trade, can also be a nice bonus,
as these now are like sea tiles with harbours. Egyptians are really the only
ones that should be actively looking for desert tiles to settle near, and also
the only ones that are interested in building trading posts.
Alexander - Greek
Starting with democracy makes the Greeks awesome at science. The courthouse
to start with is ok, I'm not sure how great it really is. Sure, your workers
will always be able to fully specialize at the beginning (big plus), but you
won't want your other cities overlapping with this area, which means sending
settlers out for an extra turn before settling somewhere, and most of the
space will go unused until well after you'd be able to build them anyway.
Gandhi - Indian
The ability to use any resource immediately is quite an impressive advantage
for the Indians. No anarchy is also really good, and generally underrated -
consider being able to flip to Communism to build lots of troops, then
switch to Fundamentalism for the extra attack strength, and once you're done
go back to Democracy. It's somewhat interesting that all of this makes
Gandhi an extremely proficient attacker.
Mao - Chinese
The Chinese get 3 people in new cities from the start, as well as free science
techs along the way. You have to be able to exploit this early bonus well
though, as getting an extra person in a new city doesn't matter once all of
your cities are built.
Tokugawa - Japanese
Another science monster, the Japanese have a major advantage with an extra
food produced on every sea tile. Your science cities will grow crazy fast,
as you are effectively getting a free harbour in each city. When you do
actually go and build a harbour in the city, each sea tile acts like
Lincoln - American
Bismark - German
All of the German's bonuses seem really nice, but I never seem to get them
going really well. The warrior bonus is decent, and prevents you from
losing any in the early exploration game. Try to make sure you've
built 3 of them, and have at least one win 3 battles - then, form an
army before you discover iron working, to ensure they are all upgraded
to a legion army. The free upgrades throughout for elite units are only
OK generally though - how often do you have many elite units wandering
around? If you're declaring war and winning, you're already on a path to
victory, so you don't really need stronger troops. I think the best bonus
is the extra production point from forests, but, if you know how to rush
things well, it again doesn't make as big a difference as you think it should.
Catherine - Russian
Isabella - Spanish
The ideal economic victory leader, Isabella should be able to grab nearly all
of the artefacts on a map quite early in the game. The advantage is random,
but will nonetheless help out with the 50% bonus to gold production she
receives.
Elizabeth - English
Shaka - Zulu
Napoleon - French
Saladin - Arab
The Arabs are the best choice to wage early war, and really, if you want to
exploit their advantages at all, you must do so. Get iron working quickly,
and start building legion armies and barracks (remember, only one unit
forming the army needs to be veteran for the whole thing to be veteran),
and then make sure you're using fundamentalism and attack. If you're
going for an AI's non-capital city, you really can't lose. Base 9 attack
for your legion, plus 4.5 for veteran, makes it hard for anyone to stand
up to you. The only thing you still have to worry about are veteran
archers in capitals that are fortified - so go get Alphabet for spies
after you get iron working, if you want to grab any capitals. After this
initial expansion, you can pretty much cruise for the rest of the game,
having way more territory than anyone else. Just remember to grab some
chokepoint cities, or set some up, along the way.
Genghis Khan - Mongolian
Maybe I'm too picky, but I really hate having the barbarian villages join my
civ. They're often in lousy locations; always on top of a resource that you
now cannot use; often really vulnerable to attack (lots of hills around, near
enemy borders).
Montezuma - Aztec
The Aztec's ability for units to fully heal after winning a battle is more
useful in defense than attack. Border cities need only be set up with one
or two of the latest defenders; more is incredibly wasteful, as your
defenders should always have an advantage, and that advantage will grow as
they win more battles. I'm always conservative in my attacking, so it isn't
common that I have damaged units in battle. Even if they are, they can
probably still win some easy battles, or retreat to friendly territory for
a heal. Temples produce a pretty nice bit of science - 40 hammers for an
extra 1.5 science workers is cheap. You can really focus cities on science
too, with the lack of defenses required.
###########################
#Sample Walkthrough - SW11#
###########################
Some people need to see strategies in action before they fully understand
their potential and how to apply them. This section intends to walk you
through a very generalized game. I can't predict what your map will look
like, so I'll just assume you get a really lousy location.
First thing is to settle your city. Usually where you start is good, but you
can always move one square and settle there if you want to (since the settler
can move 2 squares per turn). I wouldn't recommend you go further than that.
Now, your first build item should be your only build item, a warrior. I would
go to the city and manually put all of your workers on production - you want
this guy fast. The turns will auto-pass now until the warrior is complete (be
careful to set your workers before exiting the city screen when you select the
build, or else you won't be able to adjust it until the warrior is done). If
you don't change the build focus, you'll end up with 2 warriors at the same
time as you hit population 3 (and can build a settler). If you do adjust the
workers though, you can get the first warrior in 3 turns, the second in 2 more
turns, and then have the two workers focus on food to grow the city in 5 turns.
It's a big difference to get those warriors 2 and 5 turns early, respectively.
Of course, if you don't have 2 forest tiles or 2 grassland tiles, you can't
really optimize this - then it's fine to just use the default worker settings.
Send your warriors out as soon as they're built to find a barbarian village.
The goal here is to get 100 gold quickly (usually you get it around the time
you finish building a settler in the first city). Send the warriors in opposite
directions, and make sure to attack from hills if possible, and heal whenever
you can (i.e. whenever your units are damaged). You have a good combat
advantage over barbarians, so you shouldn't be too worried about losing units.
Still, if you have 1 guy left and they have all 3, you should probably retreat.
There are a few things you can get from the villages - triremes, horsemen,
caravans, gold, and technology. Caravans are excellent to get, as you can
explore a lot of territory very fast, and get 50 gold whenever you find an AI
city. If I have 50+ gold, I'll send the caravan to the nearest AI city
immediately, to get the settler fast. With less than 50 (and only one
caravan), I'll have it explore, but only around the AI city, so that it can
quickly bring me over 100 gold when necessary. Triremes are also really nice
to get, as they're very expensive early on, and these can help you get to
artefacts much quicker. Just don't be in a rush to claim the Ark of the
Covenant - it's much better when you have a lot of cities.
Once you hit population 3, switch from building warriors to building a
settler. There are a few different ways you can organize your workers at this
point - the default way (food, production, and trade) and a good way
(production and science or food). I'd go with production and science, with
2 workers on forests and one on science. You want to be able to build both
libraries and archers pretty soon (since science sucks without libraries, and
archers are better than warriors, but the same production cost). The settler
will be done in 5 turns at 4 production per turn. Now you have to figure out
where to put these two settlers - if you aren't close to getting your free
at 100 gold settler, I'd consider quitting the game. It sounds pretty harsh,
but to build the settler just dropped your capital from 3 people to 1, and cost
you 20 production - which easily could have given you another tech. If you
have 80 and are attacking another village, or can see a peaceful one, then
you're fine. It just really sucks to not get the free settler early on.
You should settle these two settlers within 2 turns of your capital. Just look
for some places that have a decent mix of terrain (or lots of water, one
forest, and some grasslands). It will be quite a while until you can improve
hills or mountains, so don't really think about those when you build. Plains
are iffy at this point - you can't build granaries yet, and they only make
plains 1 food better than grasslands. Your capital is now at 1 population, so
have the person focus on food (which happens at any of the auto worker
settings). It will take 5 turns to get to 2 population there. With another
grassland, you can get to population 3 in another 5 turns.
Your new cities start at 2 population. You probably don't need any more
warriors to explore now, so have them work on food and science - preferably
everyone works grasslands to get the 3rd population point in only 5 turns,
rather than in 10. You'll be able to build libraries shortly, so pick out
which city it should go in (based on potential science, available food, and
lack of production) and rush build it as soon as possible. This is going to
be your big science city for now. You don't want to build anything here,
just have everyone working science and food (grasslands take precedence over
water).
You'll want either your capital or the non-library city to start building
settlers now (or maybe both of them). You aren't in as much of a rush now as
you were with the first ones, so you can send them a little bit further away
(either to block the AI from getting close to you, or to claim nice resource
areas). You should set up another city like your library city, but you'll
instead be focusing this one on gold production. You can focus it on science
until you have a market in though. It depends on how close you are to 250
gold, and if you want to get currency or banking as the free tech for that
milestone. You probably aren't close though since you rushed the first
library, though.
Generally you want to build as many cities as you can. If you've blocked off
a nice little area from the AI by carefully placing your cities, then you have
some time to fill everything in (i.e. you can wait until you have the Republic
government type, for cheaper settlers). If you're doing that, and you have
more than one or 2 settlers to build, try and push your science in that
direction a little faster. It can be quite beneficial to focus on getting
certain technologies faster, but they all have decent bonuses for being the
first to get them. Some key technologies to get first include:
-irrigation (+1 population in all cities)
-navigation (Free galleon to go and grab undiscovered artefacts, particularly
Atlantis since it can't be discovered with triremes)
-communism (factories are 33% cheaper)
-railroad (+2 production in all cities; access to awesome iron mines)
Techs that allow you to build a new unit always give you one of those free.
It's not a fantastic bonus, but it's a nice little bit of free production, and
helps you get that first new army up. Generally, I'd just try to pick off
whatever next tech looks interesting, or just whatever tech is cheapest, and
research that. Plotting your way through the tech tree properly can give you
a huge advantage, but there are always nice bonuses for picking everything up
first. If I've gotten a little bit ahead, I'll typically just research
whatever's cheapest at every point (unless there's some sweet technology
available that will really help me a lot).
Don't be too concerned about building a lot of cities close together. You want
to leave a few open (like your main production city, and your main gold city),
but there are a lot of benefits of having a lot of cities if you get a lot of
technologies first. When you start getting +1 production and +5 gold per turn
in each city, it's nice to exploit that. Also, before settling cities,
consider how close you are to the next era - you gain an extra population
point to a settled city as the era increases. You might have no idea though,
in which case just settle. You'll only lose 4 turns max in that city for
this point in the game.
Have your science city continue focusing on science, while another city
focuses on gold (or science if you want), and the rest build settlers (and
archers, depending on your difficulty level) until you've filled in all of
your available space. At this point, you should have at least 6 cities, and be
most of the way through the ancient era of technology. As soon as you're done
building many settlers, you want to switch your government to democracy. 50%
extra science and gold is such a sweet bonus. You can still build up your
military so that you're ready to wage war, and then just flip governments
when the time comes. I usually find the AI is warlike enough though that I
can wait for them to declare, and then take one or two of their cities before
they want peace - so I never have to get rid of democracy.
With a nice stockpile of gold, you can rush a library or two in some cities
that no longer need to build settlers. Focus these science cities on science
totally - manually switch all your workers to work on sea tiles. It's up to
you whether you continue to produce food after you have enough workers to
work every sea tile; you're losing out on the trade while you work on that
citizen, but after that one is produced, you can keep making more for no
science hit. It's probably worthwhile to get the extra people, so you're
better prepared once courthouses arrive (both to build and to work).
When you get markets available, build it quickly in your gold city. It's
probably not worth rushing it, but it's definitely worth switching people
from trade tiles to forests. Temples can be built in any high population,
good production area. Consider first though what else can be built for
the same cost, and whether you will be going for a cultural victory. The
great people are nice, but temples are expensive right now. Definitely
go for them though if you are going to get the Ark of the Covenant; then
you get a free cathedral in the city instead.
The next big milestone is really when banks and universities become available.
These massively increase your trade outputs, and need to be built right away.
Getting universities first allows you to get other things faster, but getting
a bank sooner means being able to rush universities faster. If you have one
huge city with a large chunk of your science coming from it, build the
university first, then the bank, then universities in any other science cities.
If you don't have a dominant science city like that, then build the bank first,
and then the universities. Of course, I'm implying here that you are rushing
the building of these things, and you should still put whatever production you
have towards building them to reduce the rush cost.
##################
#Victories - VI13#
##################
Here I'll outline how to position yourself for each victory type. Without the
proper focus, it's far too easy to end up equally going for each type of
victory, which is inefficient. If you're going for gold, maybe you should stop
researching and building space ship parts, and actually switch all of your
cities to go all out for gold?
**********
*Conquest*
**********
Ah, the classic conquest victory. Since there aren't any penalties based on
the size of your empire, once you've taken over one or possibly two civs,
you've realistically won the game (by any victory type at that point). So,
how should you go about taking over that first civ? You need to figure out
how to reduce the massive defender bonuses in the cities you want to take, and
ideally have the newest attackers out to take them out (catapults against
archers, cannons against pikemen, tanks against riflemen, and artillery against
modern infantry). This will give you a decent advantage, but it's not always
possible, especially if you aren't doing really well on the technology side.
So, what can you do to 'even out' the odds, or get them in your favour? If
it doesn't hamper your civ too much, definitely consider switching to
Fundamentalism before waging war. The extra 1 point per attacker gives 3
extra to an army, which really helps when you're using low level stuff.
And, if you're really into attacking, building the Samurai Castle wonder can
give you this bonus again, for a potential +6 strength to an army.
If the enemy city is on the coast, get the most advanced boat you have into
position before you declare war, so that when you go to attack you get the
naval support bonus (even +1 from galleons is very nice, which the Spanish
can do at the beginning of the game). Also, with a ship beside the city,
you gain the ability to see what you are about to attack (possibly the main
advantage of having the ship nearby).
Consider sending some spies in to reduce the fortification bonus for the
defenders. Spies are pretty expensive early on, but your opponent is unlikely
to be using them very much then either, so one will actually work. The 100%
bonus for fortifying is pretty big, so I strongly suggest you look to do this.
The rest is pretty basic stuff, or things you can't easily control - only
attack with armies, make sure the army is at least veteran (one unit joining
the army has to be veteran, and then the whole thing is), having a ninja
attacker (+50% attack to cities), attacking from hills, and not from across
rivers. If these all line up, you can get a +150% attack bonus. +100%
should happen pretty often, and +50% is the worst you should ever have. When
you're very lucky you could end up with a great general, which would put the
unit over the top to +200% attack.
Putting this all together, you have:
(base attack X +
naval support +
Fundamentalism +
Samurai Castle) * bonus
The enemy has:
(base defense Y +
naval support +
fortification +
Samurai Castle +
Fundamentalism) * bonus
You can deal with naval support and fortification, but not the rest. The AI
will rarely build the Samurai Castle though, so we'll just assume they don't
have it. Here are the odds then (i.e. what you realistically have to do to
win) for each unit era:
Archer and Legion
The archer will be in an army, fortified, but is unlikely to have naval
support or fundamentalism. As such, I would expect them to have a base
defense of 6, and a multiplier of 150%, so 15 total defense. Your legion
has a base attack of 6, and you might have fundamentalism or naval support,
depending on your starting leader. You'll definitely have 50% bonus for
veteran though, and maybe another 50% for hills (it's unlikely it will be
an elite legion though), for a 50-100% bonus. To get to 15 attack though,
you have to have at least 3 of these things going for you, which is highly
unlikely. So, you pretty much have to use a spy to win early on. I cannot
stress this enough. Reducing them to only a defense of 9 (12 if they're in
the capital), means you only need a veteran army to stand a chance, and the
rest just increases those odds. So start building spies. Winning a few
battles will quickly upgrade the unit to allow even easier victories.
Pikemen and Catapult
Fundamentalism, the Samurai Castle, and naval support all become truly
viable at this point. Assuming you're serious about conquest and have the
Samurai Castle, you should always have at least +6 attack. Spies might not
always be able to get rid of fortification bonuses now though.
**To be done**
Riflemen and Cannon
**To be done**
Infantry and Tank
**To be done**
*********
*Science*
*********
Science is the path you should always be heading down until you know what else
you want to focus on. It's a sort of middle of the road victory, when you are
close in strength to the AI. Every suggestion I could make here I'd make for
anyone going for any victory type (have cities that are focussed on science),
so I'll just say what to do to get the space ship fast. It's all about rushing
production. For some reason, the space ship is really cheap to rush build, so
after you've finished researching what you want, switch all of your science
production to gold and buy the expensive components.
**********
*Cultural*
**********
This is the one victory type that you can really focus on early. It's
basically the peaceful builder victory. Try to prevent some wars by giving
in to AI demands, and always build temples and cathedrals as soon as you can
in each of your cities. You want to have as many people as possible, so
gathering the gold to reach economic milestones for free granaries in all
cities (1000) and free aqueducts in all cities (5000) is a really good idea.
Otherwise, just be sure to build lots of wonders, especially the culture
focused ones (Stonehenge, Shakespeare's Theatre, Magna Carta). If you aren't
sure what to build at any time, try building spies and infiltrating enemy
capital cities - they probably have a great person or two that you can steal.
Artefacts can really help with this victory type, especially the Ark of the
Covenant for free temples or cathedrals. I'd try and hold of grabbing it,
if that's possible, until you've build temples in all of your cities - I'd go
so far to say that you should rush build temples if necessary, especially in
low production, high population/food production cities.
**********
*Economic*
**********
In many ways, I'd say this is the easiest victory type to get without really
trying, and faster than the space race victory with science. Picking a civ
that gives some bonus either as 2% interest to gold reserves or 50% increased
gold production are good choices for this victory. Some wonders to go for
include East India Company, Trade Fair, and the Internet. I personally
always go for a gold megacity, which is mostly sea tiles and mountains. You
can't get a lot of gold out of a city until you can build banks, and the
Trade Fair is really expensive, especially when it's advantages are compared
to those of a bank. So, my strategy involves getting railroad as soon as I
can, so that I can build Iron Mines in the mega city (i.e. rush them with
whatever gold I currently have). I aim to build in this city a harbour,
market, bank, iron mine, and courthouse, plus the Trade Fair if possible.
With 4 mountains nearby (maybe one with gold in it?) you'll get 20 production
per turn, meaning it would only take 22 turns to build these buildings, and
another 10 to get the trade fair. Run democracy for the 50% bonus to gold
production as well. I've had a single city run well over 1000 gold per turn,
without a leader bonus or the East India Company (with the internet though).
At 1000 gold per turn, it's only 20 turns to victory. Even without some of
these wonders or leader traits, it's not overly difficult to hit 500 gold per
turn, and that's only in one city.
Democracy +50%
Spanish +50%
Market x2
Bank x4
Great Person +50%
Trade Fair x2 (stacks)
Internet x2 (stacks)
From a square producing 2 gold per turn, you'll get 120 gold per turn, from
one square! With 6 squares producing 3 per turn (with the East India Company),
that's 1080 gold per turn. It gets more absurd the better you've positioned
yourself (especially with a gold resource mountain). This doesn't require
you to be a tech leader (only you lose some wonder bonuses if you aren't),
doesn't require warfare, and leaves you open to do whatever for most of the
game. Definitely the easiest victory type. It's a good idea to have a gold
city anyway, to let you rush things in low production cities, and even there
I'd expect:
Democracy +50%
Market x2
Bank x4
Great Person +50%
Which gives 24 gold per 2 gold square that is worked. This isn't reliant on
having mountains nearby though, so I'd expect there to be more trade tiles
available; with 10, you're getting 240 gold per turn from the city, and can
rush build decently in a lot of cities now.
#########################
#Reader Questions - RQ14#
#########################
Q1.hey silent disruptor, my names jesse and i have the game civilzation
revolution... and i read your walk through on game faqs but it didnt mention
the part on how to actually win the different types of victories. I was
woundering if you can email me back regarding on how to get a tech win becuase
everytime i try to produce any science buildings or research more technologies,
i run out of turns before i can research the spaceship to win. Can you help me
out?...
A1.I think the main problem is that you're trying to actually build libraries
and universities in cities. Each forest worked only gives 2 hammers, and you
probably have at most 2 forests in your city limits, so it will take you 40
turns to build a university. You can't wait that long. Set up a city early
on to focus on gold instead of science, and then buy these buildings when the
time comes. If it's a toss up between buying a bank for the gold city and a
university for a science city, always build the bank first, so you can buy
more stuff faster.
Since you're going to buy a library/university/courthouse/whatever in the
science city, you don't need it to have any hammers in it's city limits at all,
just food and trade. Same with the gold city. A city producing gold instead
of science should be able to buy a bank in ~20 turns, so save up before you hit
those techs.
***I have a lot more questions to add, I'll put them in soon***
########################
#Closing Remarks - CR15#
########################
Thank you for reading my guide. I can be reached with comments/questions at
silentdisruptor@hotmail.com. Feel free to spread any strategy from here
around wherever, but of course using my exact text without reference would be
a violation of copyright law. I get a lot of requests to repost this, but I
really don't care if people do, as long as they don't change my words. I have
a reputation to maintain, after all.
Explore the galaxy in the franchise's first open-world game.
