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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:21
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I wrote an essay on REX like I promised. It took a while to post it because I wrote it, then went on vacation then forgot about it. I'm going to let you guys pick over it, and if you find anything wrong, then I can revise it. It would then be nice if a moderator could make an essay section and put essays like this and Catt's Fundamentals of Mobilization, so everyone can have a look whenever they want.
The essay has been moved to post 32 and 33 due to its length.
Last edited by Lawrence of Arabia on 26-08-2002 at 00:23
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King of Rasslin
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It's good for the newbs of Civ 3, but I think it should be combined with one about ICS or city placement. Besides expanding, knowing how to place cities is also good.
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Objectivist
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Excellent post, I usually find that getting a granery between the founding of your second and third city can really help your rexing ability skyrocket on the higher levels of difficulty. Pottery is a starting tech for the expansionist civs, so if you dont start with it, it shouldnt be hard to trade for this tech.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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of the Gulag Archipelago
Apr 2001
time: 06:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Arrian
REX is very useful, whether you are a builder or warmonger. As a warmonger, I tend to build 8-10 cities (standard map) REX-style and then concentrate on building my attack force. The AI will remain in REX mode, building spearmen and settlers, while I pump out troops. I'm not worried about them beating me to certain city sites, as I will be conquering them shortly.
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Good point, I'm going to add that.
In MP, a smart player will take advantage of this. If the humans start next to each other, you can almost be sure that one of them will try to cripple the REX by sending in some units and starting a war. However, if he fails, then he will be dead meat because he spent a whole lot of resources on the units. A smart REXer who beat the other players gambit will be able to take him out.
That is also another idea I am kicking around. People always complain about how the RNG gives them consistently poor results. However, I think that if your attack mechanics are fundamentally solid, no matter what the dice roll gives you, you can still win EVERY TIME. You might lose a few more units that what you expected, but the outcome would still be favorable to you. Anyhow, I digress
A question for Arrian
I know that you are the GL and Continent capture expert at poly. Which unit do you think most contribues to your success. In my games, I've used the archer rush to great succes and that ususally knocks out the nearest civ. After that I build up barracks and horsemen, then upgrade them to knights. However, by that time, the AI is so big (it has settled the land of the civ I destroyed) that my knights only manage to take about half of their empire before my advance loses steam. Cavalry can usually finish off that second civ, but then I still have 2 or more civs to go.
So, how do you do it? 
Last edited by Lawrence of Arabia on 20-08-2002 at 04:53
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Theseus
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The warmonger formerly known as rpodos. Gathering Storm! Apolyton Spirit!!
Apr 2002
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
A question for Arrian
I know that you are the GL and Continent capture expert at poly. Which unit do you think most contribues to your success. In my games, I've used the archer rush to great succes and that ususally knocks out the nearest civ. After that I build up barracks and horsemen, then upgrade them to knights. However, by that time, the AI is so big (it has settled the land of the civ I destroyed) that my knights only manage to take about half of their empire before my advance loses steam. Cavalry can usually finish off that second civ, but then I still have 2 or more civs to go.
So, how do you do it? |
I'll take a shot...
It's not just one unit type, it's the series. Everytime you have relative strength at the unit level, use it... hard. So that means, have gold and a bunch of units pre-built for an immediate upgrade, so that you have relative strength in numbers as well.
Combine this with oscillating war, and between Og the Opportunistic Warrior (who wants a Tank instead of a piece of wood), Archers, Swordsmen, and Horsemen, you should be able to have damaged if not destroyed each of the civs within reach on your continent. The best civ for this, hands down, is China, as you start with Archers, get cheap barracks, can lay down a mean military road network, and then have a killer upgrade-to-UU... but you can really do it with any civ.
(Arrian typically plays Standard, Continents, so it's almost always the case for him... it also lets him slap the locals around without care for his rep, as he then pulls the Arrian Deception, and slaughters them all before the rest of the world finds out what a psychotic bastard he is!)
On Pangaeas and on Large / Huge maps, this may not be the case, but you just extend the oscillation to farther away civs with Knights and Cavs.
So that's part one, damage / destruction of the civs within reach.
Part two is a balanced approach to the production of your empire. You need to keep on pumping out units, preferably in waves. Just because you send out 20 vet Horsemen doesn't mean you shouldn't send out 20 more a bit later. In the meantime though, build critical early-ish improvements, such as Temples and Marketplaces.
Lastly, you want to be continually expanding your territory. There's little that pisses me off more than whittling down an AI civ only to see the others move in. Also, you can never have enough luxuries... MAKE THIS A PRIORITY! Capture the towns that make sense (2 pop, connected to your road network (luxuries, hopefully new ones as well!), not in too much danger of a flip), but also have Settlers and defenders waiting to move in when you choose to raze; I often have a couple of Settlers on hold in a forward town, just for this purpose... even if they don;t get used so, I'll have them join a captured town when it's safe.
The biggest difference between Arrian and I, I think, is in initial placement. During the early REX for 6-10 towns, I am happy to go 3- and even 2-tile, and am more opportunistic about making sure these are highly productive towns ASAP (btw, that's a comment I would make on your essay... I do NOT believe that anything before your tenth city should be on a bad site for either contiguous territory expansion or for future resources. I want all towns contributing growth and productivity immediately. I either backfill or capture down the road).
But that doesn't really impact how we deal with the AI civs. I think we are usually both at perpetual war, at least till the medieval era, when there's often a builder /settle-in period, before going intercontinental.
My sense is that we build more military units than many... for instance in the 1337 game (Deity, Tiny, supposed to be Pangaea), I was on a continent with 2 of the 3 AI civs, Egypt and Greece. I REXed to 8 towns, and by the time I got around to Greece to secure the continent, I had appr. 40 Legions in the attack force.
Anyway, overall, it's a combo of relative strength, oscillation, and GL hunting that works quite well.
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Theseus
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The warmonger formerly known as rpodos. Gathering Storm! Apolyton Spirit!!
Apr 2002
time: 00:21
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LofA,
1. BTW, put this into the "must read" thread... great job!
2. It's not so much treaty, 20 off, war. That's just for one respective civ... who else is there to play with at any given time? And also, even for one civ, it's not so much when my military loses strength, as I'll keep reinforcing it... it's when I've achieved the objective(s): lebensraum, towns, crippling damage, resources, extortion... all the good things in life!
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Arrian
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Kneel before Grog!
Jul 2001
time: 00:21
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LoA,
I typically only use an early warrior or archer strike (depending on what civ I'm playing) to cripple one neighbor... and I don't do it all the time. I aim to build a large attack force that will sweep the continent clean. I'm actually at peace for long periods of time. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, my mongol horde cuts loose.
Last night, for instance, I went back to Japan to see how things would go if I incorporated worker-buying. Unfortunately, I only got 1 worker out of the AI. That notwithstanding, I pre-build/upgraded an attack force of 30 horsemen and 12 swordsmen. I had about 11 cities, and built the Colossus. I forget the exact date, but my two neighbors (china/india) were nearing the end of ancient times. I unleashed my attack.... and discovered that the RNG was holding a serious grudge against me. After knocking China to three cities (captured Pyramids) and taking 1/3-1/2 of India (captured Great Library), I had 9 horsemen left. NINE! And I had been building reinforcements the whole time. I figure I lost roughly 30-35 horsemen. I watched several elite horsemen lose 5 consecutive rolls to regular spearmen. No GLs for me. My attack ran out of steam, and I called it a night.
Such are the pitfalls of my all-or-nothin' approach. Theseus' version of oscillating war is actually less risky, because he sets about "pruning" the AI very early on, hampering their development with very little investment. I go the other route... building up for a huge bloodbath, hoping all that fighting will result in several GLs. Last night it just didn't happen.
My city spacing is wider than Theseus', but I have definitely compromised a bit (each of my first four cities last night had overlap *gasp*).
My horseman rush (which was developed as a Monarch-level strat, keep in mind) will not achieve continental domination on large/huge maps. In fact, on standard maps with three or more neighboring civs, I usually end up using knight-level units to polish off my unfortunate neighbors. It all depends on how things shake out, and there's a lot of luck involved.
-Arrian
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Anglophile
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Philly, USA
Jan 2002
time: 00:21
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A very good description of the REX strategy and hopefully someone besides the elite of Civ 3/Apolyton is reading about it and learning something. My only criticism of the Essay is that map size is a critical variable and is not part of the discussion. The essay descibes REX as I suspect it pertains to standard maps and with diminishing relevance for smaller and larger maps. Tiny maps and a reasonable number of civs won't have such a long REX and war is likely to be more important than expansion earlier. I play huge or larger maps and do use the REX approach. I would note the following differences between ultra huge map REX and standard REX.
1. The expansion stage will go on much longer.
2. You are likely to have two or more cities (more if you pop a settler) before you even find another civ, so initial build diection will always be something of a guess.
3. You can have less concentration on defensive units since the opponents don't know where you are either. This is especially true if you are Commercial and won't have to worry about barbarians for awhile.
4. Early offensive units are a waste of time if the next civ is 30+ tiles away and you are playing at a high level (by the time your archers get there, they will be cannon fodder, an anachronistic mixed metaphor, but you get the meaning). Warfare earlier than knights will be ineffective, as noted by Arrian.
5. You will be expandimg for a long time (frequently into the ADs) and will require a lot or workers to do so efficiently. Build roads ahead of time towards the key points for future cities - luxury & strategic resources, choke points, etc.
6. Resources are spread very thinly on very large maps so building towards them is critical.
7. A seaside city is a much lower priority since each land mass is much larger, allowing land only expansion for a long time. The AI never builds the required improvement to allow sea trade until very late; seas are also very large and almost certainly uncrossable until half way through the game. So there are few early benefits to having an early coastal city. I only build an early coastal city if it can act as a settler/worker or unit factory until becoming a port city when that becomes useful. If one is playing Archipelago, ignore this advice and get a coastal city ASAP (not that this will be difficult).
8. On Emperor, one can outexpand the AIs with two settler factories; on Deity one needs three+.
9. Because the size of the map gives so much more time before any meaningful contact (i.e. a border) with other civs, my second city will be a settler factory, even if my first also is. Two out of my first three will be settler factories, the other a unit factory. My first five cities will have two settler factories, one worker factory and two cities churning out units.
10. These five cities are the core of my empire and will be as concentrated as possible while having the right bonus resources and production capabilities. Optimally they will be contiguous but getting the right early cities and backfilling later is more important. Further expansion will continue to add worker/settler and unit facory cities in balance plus all those other cities which are built for tactical or strategic reasons or are just plain great city sites.
11. A road network is absolutely critical to the formation and defense of a large empire - or attacking other empires. REX is the best expansion approach but on larger maps one is always balancing the strategic benefits of a city far from the expanding core vs the vulnerability of that city if it is 5 or 10 turns of movement beyond the borders of your empire.
12. Granaries are a very complex issue. There is a large opportunity cost in building them vs the obvious growth benefits once built. I almost never build early granaries in cities with lots of grasslands, sometimes in others. This works well for me because I 'cascade' settler production as each new city builds at least one settler - with some exceptions - so I want to start this cascade early and granaries would cause a significant starting lag. Given the time available on very large maps, this may be a non-optimum approach - would like to hear other views.
13. I agree with the Culture vs REX argument in the essay but moreso. A small culture-rich empire will be non-competitive on very large maps. First you will have very few resources (on huge, each 5 cities will on average give you one strategic or luxury resource, so to get a few luxuries and all the strategic resources requires a large empire). So REX it is.
14. In general, I agree with all the timing issues which are well-described in the essay. Build the first city ASAP, no later than 3900 BC and only delay that long if there is a super site nearby that will easily make up for the delay (a scout helps in this) and then time the building of the pop using units to match pop growth. On the right city sites, this only requires working the right tiles; otherwise production of other 'things' needs to be timed in.
15. Build as many scouts - or whatever you can use if not expansionist - since you have a lot of exploring to do and the more of the map you know, the better the REX tactics work.
REX does work on all map sizes but it needs some customization to fit map size. I hope that some of the preceding will be useful, if only as a source of errors for discussion and improvement.
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Tuberski
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ACK!!! PTHBBPPPTTT!!!!
Feb 2002
time: 23:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Coracle
Laugh, clown, laugh.  Get lost.
I have no intention of spending many hours on detailed strategies to have them all go down the drain with one flip. See the "It finally happened" thread recently posted by Alexman for an example. |
I've read that thread. I understand your point.
BUT, I'll bet more people have lost power while playing the game than have had what happened to Alexman, happen to them.
My point is, worrying about a flip that might, or more likely, might not happen, kind of ruins the game, don't you think?
Oh, and you think I'm a clown? I'll bet more people laugh at your repetition than anything else.
You Get Lost! At least until you have something NEW to whine about.
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MarkG
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Grand Lord of Apolyton, Owner of all this land as far as the eye can see
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quote:
Originally posted by Coracle
See the "It finally happened" thread recently posted by Alexman for an example. |
you ought to see it too
there's a post of mine to you waiting for your answer for ages now
finally, my mission is complete:
quote:
Brave Sir Robin ran away,
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.
He is packing it in and packing it up
And sneaking away and buggering up
And chickening out and pissing off home,
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge. |
at least Sir Robin denied the accusations....
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Anglophile
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Philly, USA
Jan 2002
time: 00:21
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To Coracle: Play a bigger map. If you have 70+ cities, one flipping doesn't matter squat. Lose a bunch of units, build more - you've got lots of production cities to do it with. Retake the flipped city; repeat as necessary.
Remember, citizens of captured cities are more likely to flip if the conqueror whines alot.
As for settler diarrhea, it can be managed and the larger the map, the less it matters - and it keeps the AI civs competitive much longer than they were in Civ 1 or 2.
You may consider culture flipping and settler diarrhea to be bugs, I consider them to be features that makes Civ 3 tougher, more challenging and in the long run therefore more fun and satisfying.
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Coracle
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglophile
To Coracle: Play a bigger map. If you have 70+ cities, one flipping doesn't matter squat. Lose a bunch of units, build more - you've got lots of production cities to do it with. Retake the flipped city; repeat as necessary.
Remember, citizens of captured cities are more likely to flip if the conqueror whines alot.
As for settler diarrhea, it can be managed and the larger the map, the less it matters - and it keeps the AI civs competitive much longer than they were in Civ 1 or 2.
You may consider culture flipping and settler diarrhea to be bugs, I consider them to be features that makes Civ 3 tougher, more challenging and in the long run therefore more fun and satisfying. |
Seriously. . .
There are realistic and logical ways I can think of to make a game more challenging - ways other than the arbitrary, artificial, and contrived stuff that is CF and SD.
If it MAKES NO SENSE it isn't fun! No rival civ would ever build these crappy towns everywhere. MANY times I have conquered all of them in a war because they are too isolated to be productive or defended by their civ. All they were was an irritation increasing the tedium, and dragging out the length of wars - something CF does as it often forces us to exterminate entire civs for fear of a flip. Tedium!
You bet large maps are better for many reasons. best game I ever played was on the famous Marla map with realistic starting positions. But then the usual problems occur: massive micromanagement and tedium, plus before you get to the Modern Age you have a very good idea if you have won or lost. That is a continuing problem which I hoped scenarios might rectify somewhat. I DO await scenarios, good tested ones.
As for making the game more challenging. . .
Have the AI do fewer dumb things, such as sending those settlers/spearmen wandering past my militray even when at war with me. The AI will be, ipso facto, smarter if it is less dumb. I also believe this AI is not state of the art.
Another dumb thing the AI does: if a civ is considered "defensive" or non-aggressive, it builds DEFENSIVE units - this makes it ripe for invasion as they have very few offensive units for counterattacks. I rolled over China once this way, and could not believe the AI is so stupid it had so few offensive units to counterattack.
Make trade, economics, politics, et al, less simplified abstractions.
Less AI cheating; just change combat odds per level as Civ 2 did.
Give us STACK combat, realtime, with tactics. Strategy games had this over a decade ago ("Kingmaker" for one).
A lot of things could be done. On higher levels GIVE the AI freebies IF you need to do this, but spare me the illogical irritating stuff such as SD and CF.
It's not that hard.
Anyway, REX as a strategy is tied into SD, which is as annoying as it is illogical. Civ 2 had it much better: different civs expanded at different rates. Contrast the Mongols to the Aztecs. OK, the Aztecs were too slow, but SD is crazy, and giving different civs various options on expansion rates would be more realistic, interesting, and more fun. Why not, other than Firaxis' unwillingness to do the work?
Last edited by Coracle on 22-08-2002 at 07:19
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Anglophile
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Philly, USA
Jan 2002
time: 00:21
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Good response Coracle - lots of stuff that can be discussed. First a throw away on one of your remarks. I played my first ever game of Civ 1 on the in-game world map. By about 3000 BC I had figured out that I already knew where everything was. A 4x game had become a 3x game and I have never played on an Earth map since and never will. Don't understand the attraction, but then one of the strengths of the series is its ability to appeal to a variety of tastes and preferences.
I totally agree with you re the Civ combat system. Still sucks after all these years. My understanding is that this is deliberate, as it was felt that going to a separate combat screen detracted from the strategic nature of the game. Hear the reasoning, don't agree with the conclusion. CTP does a better job of combat while still being strategic but the other Microprose classics MOO and MOM had fabulous combat systems and they are the SF and Fantasy variants of Civ (sans Sid). Unfortunately, there is no solution before Civ 4 (a tactical combat mode tacked onto Civ 3 would be Civ4).
I can't sympathize (well I guess technically I can sympathize but I can't empathize) with your annoyance over the slipping of settlers through your territory. Block 'em and demand that they leave. Do the settler/blocker two step until the option finally appears to leave or war - and then they're gone next turn one way or the other. Block the gaps between unexpanded cities until expansion because I will go through those to desirable sites and so find it hard to complain about the AI doing the same. My problem however remains that the AI is not aggressive enough in expansion (especially with heavily modded, e.g. DyP, versions) to remain competitive through the game.
Yeah, the problem with really big maps is really long games. But I have a fast computer and do things on one of my other three computers (work portable, 900 MHz PIII and PI dos computer for those old classics that keep me coming back) during those long interturns - not as long as they were with the PIII. I also don't micromanage much, just accept the fact that most of my cities are not being optimally managed. And you do generally know by the middle of the Industrial Age whether you are going to win - and it is hard to keep interested if a win is assured.
The AI is not wonderful but it is better than most I've played against and I'm not sure what the PC version of Deep Blue is going for or exactly how many Gigs of RAM I'll need to run it. It is a lot easier to complain about poor AI than it is to develop a good one. Chess is a pre-school game compared to Civ and how long and how much money has been spent to make a chess AI that is competitive with good human players?
I have never had the problem of AI civs not having any attacking units, just the opposite. In a recent game, I had expanded to the another continent and despite having a tech lead, had my first line of defence overrun by the INDIANS and CHINESE and only just managed to hang onto my key cities by constantly ferrying over reinforcements from the homeland. Eventually made peace but never did manage to move from the defence to offence despite having a score greater than the Indians and Chinese combined. This was Deity which does matter.
Incidentally, I don't agree that SD is unrealistic. Canada, USA, NZ and Australia (the four countries in which I have lived) were all settled - over the deadish bodies of the original inhabitants - in about 300 years from across a large body of water. I would suggest that Civ never gets near to this level of SD so I would argue that Firaxis has actually toned down SD not revved it up.
One can argue endlessly about CF, whether it has a basis in reality or not. My view - for the first and last time on Apolyton - is that there are real examples of CF in history but that it is not realistically portrayed in the game (note the word 'game'). I believe that it is there to make beating up on AI Civs more difficult because that is the easiest way to win. That is, it punishes certain play styles but, call me insensitive and unfeeling, it isn't my style that gets punished, so I really don't care.
Again I don't really care whether the AI cheats or gets bonuses or some combination of the two, I just want a challenging game. My second game on Civ2 was Deity and I won easily. I only played a couple more times and never finished another game. It took me 6+ months to win on Deity with Civ3 and - yes your complaints are valid - I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Not the best value for software $ ever but in the top 10.
And finally, to get back to the thread topic. Threads like this are extremely valuable to both neophytes and veterans. I'm certainly not good enough to win on Deity from any starting position on any map in any circumstances. I read these forums (fora I suppose in deference to the Romans) in order to pick up tips and insights. The better one's techniques are, the less some of the frustrations you have described will matter and the better the gaming experience will be. So my thanks to LoA for taking the time and making the effort to make the Civ experience better for us all.
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17-08-2002 07:37
A shameless bump for one more try.
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