Mistfit's return to Civ
 

Warning: If you are a CFC'er and lurk the HoF much of this will be a duplication.. otherwise.. read on

Well after a long hiatus from civ I have finally started to play cIV with some regularity..

I am playing Vanilla to start with (I want to get competent with this before moving on to BtS)

As some of you know I was an active member and staff member of CFC's HoF.

I know that some of you dislike CFC and specifically the HoF over there due to the idea of winning at all cost and using every available trick, exploit and the such but.. it is what I enjoy..

So why am I posting this here?

I need help.

I want to restart my cIV/HoF adventure where I left off when I was playing C3C. Domination.. To me it seems like it is still a very important aspect to almost every victory condition out there.

So my plan is to start on an easy setting to start with (Noble) as I am comfortable there and get good at dominating the game..

My first games that I will be trying will be:

Small map
Pangaea - high water (to lessen the domination limit) - solid edges (to keep from having to many islands out there)
Civ - Rome (Prets are just really fun to whack people with)
Opponents: Asoka - George - Liz - Vicky (no one with useful UU's and no one with easy culture)

What I need your help with is the start.. It seems like the first 20 turns I struggle with which order to make stuff in.. am I better going warrior-worker-settler or worker worker settler? or some other mix

BTW I can turn off barbs for the HoF..

In some of the test games I have played I figure that I will only need 2 or 3 cities to be settled by me in the beginning on these settings.. one to get bronze and one to get iron.. from there I can expand by force..

I'd love to hear some of your ideas and thoughts on how to get to domination the quickest :)

At noble, you can try the following (only takes about 30 minutes for each start.

Settle, build worker. Pick tech based on local resources.
Use your starting unit (scout or warrior) to find your closest neighbor

After worker, build 3 warriors.

Send all 3 warriors to your closest neighbor to conquer (I think Rome starts with a warrior, so perhaps send all 4). He'll only have a defending warrior and hopefully a worker. Now you have 2 cities + 2 workers very early in the game.

From there, domination should be attainable. Probably another neighbor goes down via axe/preat rush, and a third via preat/mace/cat rush.

The rest is up to you :)

interesting strat.. one that I will have to try tonight.. I have been waiting for bronze at least to start whacking on people.. maybe with 2 decent starting cities I can do even better..

If your going for that early rush you may as well use the incans with the quechas+promo.

Quechas even work on higher difficulties: I am now playing Monarch and managed to pull a quecha rush on Emperor - average start, AI on hill. The AI's start with archers to begin with, so that adds further value on the archer bonus.

Another thing you might want to do is to try a horse domination: while waiting for your Praets and the long run towards IW, you just might need AH for working cow/pig/sheep and wheel for roads. Chariots do a good job at pre-bronze early rushing, probably worth the time you delayed praetorians. For a more fullproof horse rush experience, go with Mongolia, Persia, Egypt, Carthage (all for UU's, but particularly Mongolia and Egypt since they start with both wheel and a tech leading to AH).

This early rush writeup was useful to me: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5966344

The Cardinal rule of Civ is still around in C4. That is GROW!! If a worker helps you grow faster than a warrior, build a worker. If a workboat does the trick, do that.

I have had really good luck with my grow first strategy.

Well.. I have put up my first game at the HoF.. Good and bad news..

I won at 820 AD Domination

small map noble

I settled.. made 2 of my own cities.. hooked up iron.. started whacking my nearest neighbor.

I stopped for a while after the first guy was down to build some more troops and courthouses and went to town on 2 of my other neighbors at one time and ended up winning at 820ad.

This made me pretty happy at first until.. the damn dutch got involved [mistfit]

I go back to the thread at CFC to announce my win and I see a guy (Dutchfire) who said that he got the same win at 150AD [:O]

So for me it is back to the drawing board.

you need to start earlier, quecha rush someone, at the very least build a few queches and put them in forests around their capital if you can't capture it. The AI is so stupid it just sits there letting you consistently building archers.

Also if your going for domination win you needn't bother with courthouses, to be honest i don't like courthouses that much anyways -they've been improved but not immensly.

For BTS:

Prince and below- warrior rush
Monarch and up- quechua rush, if no quechua you need the next branch of horse UUs or axes.

Research currency and CoL at some point for Caste System to run merchants and artists. That should be all you need for small or standard maps. If you raze almost everything and time your 40 settlers at the end you dont need these.

well..
1.) I am not playing BTS yet
2.) I really did not want to use Quechua yet as it kind of seemed like a "Cheesy" win (although once I have the #1 spot I might see if I can't beat it with them)
3.) warrior rush did not seem to work for me.. they always seemed to have one more warrior or 1 archer in their so it consistently failed.
4.) thanks for the thoughts.. all of them help