|
Post by civerdan on Dec 12, 2005 20:51:08 GMT -5
I find that having no metal is one of the toughest situtions in civ4 MP. With no metal, even if you have horses, your opponent can simply counter with spears. Two civs, Mali and Aztec, can stay alive in this situation, but will have a tough time either launching effective attacks (unless you bring large amounts of catapults, of course) or expanding. No horses or iron (which happens very rarely, thankfully) will result in most players having a tough time even staying alive against a close neighbor with metal or horses.
As soon as a good opponent knows you have no iron, they can either go after you, or decide to simply box you in and focus their armies toward other targets.
Ways to combat this:
a) Deny your opponent his resources. This works best in tighter games, and in situations where his resources are not within 1-2 tiles of his capital. This requires good knowledge of his terrain and appropriate units. Quechas work best for obvious reasons. In almost all standard map games, resource denial is a non-factor.
B) Beeline for Feudalism. Longbows are critical to mid-late game defense in this situation. Get these before your opponent can mass catapults and your survivability will improve.
C) Attempt an early dagger if you have horses. This works better the earlier you get them, and if your opponent has few sentries or doesn't know you have horses; otherwise spears will be waiting. This is also better on smaller maps.
Side note: I think spears are a bit too good against horses, especially on attack. They also diminish the value of elephants.
|
|
|
Post by Tony on Dec 13, 2005 9:26:22 GMT -5
If a strong player is playing the other civ and you have no metal you should pretty much be done.
There is nothing you can throw at a stack of axe and spears, pre-catapults, and your horses/achers will get slaughtered, with little or no losses to him. Although you can probally defend your city it will have no work and low production and seriously slow down the rate at which you will get catapults or longbows, in the mean time he builds up a little and the minute he gets catapults...GAME OVER.
Personally the only light i see at the end of the tunnel is, if you can get carriots on him before he get bronze, or hit him with a stack of carriots while he has few units.
In a bigger game i guess you always have the hope hes busy with somsone else.
|
|
|
Post by MMV on Dec 13, 2005 9:57:42 GMT -5
yes, you can defend for a long time - long enough for someone else to take out the "metal" civ.
and in another game, even while under attack I was able to expand the other direction and "culture" my border out to eventually take metal AWAY from a different player (nice that his copper was already mined and roaded, lol).
yes, in a 1v1, 3 player or maybe 4 player small game, it's impossible, but in a bigger game? It's difficult, but not impossible.
|
|
|
Post by drspike on Dec 14, 2005 8:21:24 GMT -5
If you are playing a duel and you wish to avoid this (which is sensible) just play mirror. Problem solved.
|
|
|
Post by tommynt on Dec 14, 2005 8:55:11 GMT -5
if u are slightly better as your opponent there s on 99% of maps some way to get metal - u just have to be fast enough.
maybe get some bows to hold these early chariots off 2 bows ll kill 1 chariots easy - slaso 1 bow and 1 warrior
if u really dont get metal soon enough u can just hope that your opponent dont want to waste time gainst some "dead", so he stops sending unit and u can outbow him and build up
|
|
|
Post by Lestat on Dec 14, 2005 12:58:17 GMT -5
CCC ironman cvalification match. Very very 4 strong players and me. My neigbour was close and i was Persia. West of me is that neigbour but north, south and east was sea. Atacked him early with imortals but failed bc he had spears (i atacked to late). I dnt have cooper or iron. He pillage and atacked me all 110 turns. Wot i was doin ? Buildin archers ... first 3 or 4 with cite defense upgrade then all others new archers with first strike upgrade. He atacked me with beserkers, catapults, spears (about 10 units) and lost army. My units was VETS. Then he pilage, choop, pillage , atack all the time. I was screwed and think that i dnt have hope. But I was leading on score against him and he build new cite 5 turn before end of game close to my cap. I saw this cite is empty and went with 6 vets (wounded archer) towards hes cite. He put 1 beserk and 1 catapult in cite but 2 turns before end i killed him with that stack of wounded VETS archers. This is my hardest game ever and YES u can survive without iron and cooper. This killed playery was between me and another VET palyer which toke hes cap and help me to survive. But still, this killed player all the game had minimum 5 beserks,spears and cats near my cap.
Sorry for translation.. i have hadache.
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Dec 14, 2005 14:56:19 GMT -5
One reason why getting AH before bronze is often quite uesful, If you don't have Iron or bronze 9 times out of ten you'll have horses, Build 4 early chariots chop for them if you have to and go and take out some weakly defended second city of the nearest player. Your only hope is to hassle the other players before they can hook bronze and give yourself some breathing space. If it turns out you have iron instead then whoop de do. Time to go hassle 'em some more.
Having no metal sucks big time though. Not as much as having early iron trying a rush by cutting all your forest losing 5 phalanx and 1 swordsman to 3 archers in a city on a a hill. And then being sandwiched between them and another civ with very little good land, with nothing to chop and a big score defecit from not expanding. Then experimenting trying to gazump land with a close city build and realising that it's the classisc age and the only thing you can build without religion is a library which takes 30 turns.
Sometimes your just screwed and there's nothing you can do, but it's still fun to try anyway. Every game is not going to be perfect, it's how you play the pile of crap that determines whether your a good player or not. Personally I'm still learning having played perhaps twenty games, but that's probably the only situation I've seen where there's very little I could do. There's nearly always some way to claw a third place or even just survive. I've had two great starts 1 mediocre and four bad starts recently, the two great starts where scrapped turn 1. But I can at least say my reports against aren't much greater than my reports for, personally I value this kind of tally more than the all resource build fest and kill wins. A win like that is nice: a third place out of eight from a sh*t hole is better.
|
|
|
Post by lorddragon on Dec 16, 2005 5:44:24 GMT -5
I had no copper or horses this last game. There was iron but I had to go WAY out of my way to get it. Very annoying situation. My neighbor had copper right next to his city, lol. He messed me up, but I fended him off with the iron grab. HOWEVER, my neighbor was an incompetent. If he had been skilled I would have been dead, period. As it was it screwed up my game, only came in 4th of 8, pfft.
I would really like to see some kind of balanced resource option for all maps, sometimes being royally resource screwed is just no fun.
|
|
|
Post by Avogadro on Dec 16, 2005 12:04:07 GMT -5
With no Iron..I also go construction asap not bottom route. Its cheaper and faster. Stopping the pillagers is indeed a pain, hopefully he/she doesnt bring too many and you can fortify a few on key production tiles.
|
|
agent_x7
Settler
Agent of Truth
Posts: 65
|
Post by agent_x7 on Jan 3, 2006 16:11:18 GMT -5
I remember once I was stuck in this situation. My capital was besieged for about 40 turns, then when I finally got feudalism, and upgaded 2 archers, a huge stack appeared and killed me. I find it pretty easy to survive without iron in civ4 compared to civ3. Just build archers early on, and beeline for feudalism. It is possible in some cases to get longbows before you cities are besiged.
|
|
reptile
Worker
in desperate need of a new avatar
Posts: 106
|
Post by reptile on Jan 3, 2006 16:55:20 GMT -5
Metals are the most important thing in the ancient/classical game. It is the top priority for me to get them within 30 turns. Sometimes I had to settle my 2nd city on them, stop research to get money for upgrades and sent the upgraded units back to my capital to get rid of the pillagers. This 2nd city may have a terrible spot, but without metals it´s not very promising to play on.
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Jan 3, 2006 17:26:48 GMT -5
actually, techs are very relevant, but if you have no metal go rape the hell out of the guy with, horse( 2 moves, watch those axemen try and keep up) archers early, whatever, they'll go on the defensive and you'll get that breathing space you need, just warrior/archer flood them. and sit back and make them over protect there land. Then when you get horse archers, go pillage some more, then when you inevitably end up with elephants or bows, your safe. Seriously played 3 games next to opponents who had bronze early, me with squat not even iron till turn 40/50 or not at all, surivived them all. with carefull planning and pillaging you can build stack loads of warrior archers compared to there axemen. four axemen against six fortified archers are toast with border expansion, build on hills, mine and chop if you have to, you'll suffer but you'll get a few reports at least and hey who knows once you get thos Elephants you might even kill them, I have. I'd like to say I've had crappy starts six games running, I'd like to say add ten no reports to my tally, I'd like to say not that hard
|
|
|
Post by civerdan on Jan 3, 2006 18:05:19 GMT -5
Had one game on a small pangaea when I was surrounded on 4 sides one a tight map with no metal in cap, but was egypt with horse in cap. Went for early kill before I realized how boxed I was, but opponent just got spears before then. I got second city near iron but SW opponent (Cruise) prevented my from hooking it.
So I laid low, since I was lowest in score while other people found it more worthwhile to attck other people than attack me. 1 person died in middle of game tothe neighbor i tried to attack early on. Thankfully people left me alone enough (and had gold and Ivory) that I was able to research contruction and build a cat/elephant army which killed 2 or my 3 neighbors before Cruise took my out with 3 turns left in the game.
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Jan 4, 2006 17:22:50 GMT -5
Precisely, good work Civerdan.
|
|
|
Post by Avogadro on Jan 4, 2006 22:47:33 GMT -5
Trouble with the horse thing is often your neighbor find his copper before you reseach animal husbandry therefore by the time you see the horses you wish to have you are pinned and may even not have a worker to get to a resource. If you are rushed early and this iniatial rush is followed by axes it is very hard to survive against a vet who wants you dead.
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Jan 5, 2006 2:35:18 GMT -5
Yeah agreed that sucks, but I'm one of those people who goes sneaking around my nearest neighbours land first, If he's got bronze I know about it, sometimes before he does, only go ah first if it's one tech. Otherwise go bronze. get ah in 5/6 you should have no difficulties bronze takes longer to research and so you have an edge here. Use the warrior archer flood as soon if not before you even know he has bronze you can really put a crimp in his day, before he hooks it. This'll give you the breathing space to hook and build those horses, people go on the defensive, and how does he know the difference between a choke and a desperate attempt to stop your opponent killing you. Do it to them before they do it to you is my advice. plan for the worst hope for: well if you get the land I've been having lately. Desert and jungle paradises, then just go pillage everyone and hope you don't die too early Seriously I was in a teamer last night(thanks to all for letting me sub) the land was beautiful. i thought ahhhh so this is what good land looks like, I thought everyone started off in a hell hole Typical only way for me to get good land lately is to play someone elses game ;D
|
|
|
Post by Avogadro on Jan 5, 2006 8:51:44 GMT -5
Great for 1v1 games but during a cton if rushed early you are stuck at home until the axes come
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Jan 5, 2006 13:45:35 GMT -5
Actually I was talking about ctons. If you don't know what's coming early what are you doing wrong, where are your early scouts/warriors. Yes sometimes you'll be caught off guard, nothing you can do about that, but percentage wise if you get a few scouts out early you should find a neighbour or two. Edit: if you have two opponents nearby with bronze then ok your boned if they decide to attack you. Only hope is a pathetic score makes them ignore you. Sit back and watch yourself die. I'm sure 5% of the time you could live though so I'd just play my hardest and if I have to, die with my boots on. I had Immortals and War Chariots coming at me simultaneously in one game, I managed to survive due to some drafting and hooking elephants when I finally got them. I nearly beat Persia with a reposte attack and Egypt dropped and never returned so the AI did that slow thing it does after that of sending dribs and drabs in to promote your units then when your tough enough send a huge stack at the end that just, by the slimmest of margins can't cut it . Nothings over till the fat lady sings. Got a report or two from that game and broke even. Edit: played a teamer tonight, admitedly not my forte, only played a few, gg guys nice late attack, once again a nuts hole, if land evens out, then my next 7 games are gonna be the promised land, er actually the promised land is mostly desert ok Eden.
|
|
|
Post by friedrichpsitalon on Jan 12, 2006 21:15:55 GMT -5
Forgive the question, but I'm rather surprised that a lot of Ctons haven't morphed into "No tech trading" games that are otherwise open session?
There are legitimate reasons to not want to trade techs, but hand across resources and border agreements.
|
|
|
Post by Sidhe on Jan 13, 2006 2:36:57 GMT -5
Well that's an idea.
|
|