Hadoblado
think again losers
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- Mar 17, 2011
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Hey guys...
It's recently come to my attention that I have far too much spare time since quitting uni <3<3<3
...is bored...is do things....
Other than freelance security guard work (srsly, I get paid in sandwiches), I've been looking for something to do. Civ 5 fills a gap, writing guides for Civ 5 fills a bigger gap.
I know plenty of you have had at least a cursory experience with the game, I thought it'd be good to share my thoughts on what I consider the strongest and most interesting new race: the Shoshone.
Intro
Explanation
The details
Thoughts? Anything to add? I was thinking of sending it in to gamefaqs or the steam community guides.
It's recently come to my attention that I have far too much spare time since quitting uni <3<3<3
...is bored...is do things....
Other than freelance security guard work (srsly, I get paid in sandwiches), I've been looking for something to do. Civ 5 fills a gap, writing guides for Civ 5 fills a bigger gap.
I know plenty of you have had at least a cursory experience with the game, I thought it'd be good to share my thoughts on what I consider the strongest and most interesting new race: the Shoshone.
Intro
The Shoshone are one of the new kids on the block since the advent of Brave New World (BNW). When I first read their abilities upon buying the expansion my eyes popped square out of my chest, their abilities are really that broken (and interesting).
Their unique ability is Great Expanse. It gives eight bonus tiles worth of control in each and every city upon its foundation. For reference, that’s over twice as much starting land to work with (everyone else starts with six tiles). On top of this, it gives a flat 15% strength bonus to all of you land units while in your (already larger) territory.
Great Expanse is more like two weaker unique abilities. I’ll cover each component separately for clarity.
Extra tiles:-
Each and every city you found will have fourteen tiles for your citizens to work. This lends itself both to larger population cities, and to massive expansion. There are many implications to this, some more subtle than others:
- Detracts from the value of culture. It is no longer required to get culture production in order to acquire the tiles immediately around a city. If you want social policies, culture is still a fine investment, but this perk of culture production will be negated.
- If you take up more room, people are more likely to covet the land you own, or perceive you as a threat.
- Tiles you own give extra sight. This can be particularly valuable at the beginning of the game when you’re trying to scout efficiently and want to avoid sending your scout into a dead-end of mountains or water, as you then waste time backtracking.
- Extra sight is also useful for spotting barbs early for a more immediate response to protect your workers and tile improvements.
- You are able to more efficiently land grab during the passive stages of the game. You can lay claim to resource nodes other civs have eyes on, and snatch valuable defensive positions.
- You also trap other people scouts out of your land (or in!). This will deny your opponents information if trapped out, which will make them uneasy attacking you, or more vulnerable to a built up force. If you prefer an advantage you can hold in your hand, people will be more willing to pay you for open borders if their scout is stuck.
- At the beginning of the game you will have a larger chance of having a strong food and production base.
- If someone is launching a sneak attack, they will not be able to move inside of your borders then change colours like they used to before this expansion pack. The larger your borders, the further back their units have to be when they declare war, giving you more time to position your defense and deal out the damage.
- You will want a large population to work your large territory.
- You will also want a strong workforce to improve these extra tiles.
- The later the game goes, the more strategic resources start popping up as you gather technology. The greater your territory size, the less likely you’ll have to work in order to get that valuable coal to jump-start your production, or that aluminium for your air-force. Your chances of finding these resources within your already existent borders is quite high.
- Finally, it gives you your normal territory strength bonus to your units, but also the territory strength component of great expanse.
Extra strength within your territory:-
This component is a little simpler:
- Gives you a solid edge in defending against barbarians in the early game.
- Gives a solid edge in larger scale battles during attacks from opposing players.
- Allows you to leave less behind to defend against harassment.
- Gives you a strong preference for fighting at home over neutral territory.
- Makes people not want to attack you.
- Makes founding cities in chokes a strong defensive option.
- Means that when you commit resources to expanding early, your skeletal armies in combination with your town’s bombard will have a substantially higher chance of holding against dedicated bum-rushers.
The Shoshone’s first and most interesting unique unit is the pathfinder, which replaces the scout. It costs substantially more than the scout (45, compared to the scout’s 25), but is also proportionally stronger. It has the strength of a warrior (eight, as opposed to the scout’s four). In combination with some clever positioning and territorial bonuses, you should never lose these guys to barbarians.
They also have a powerful ability: native tongues, which plays more like a race mechanic. It allows you to pick within a limited selection, the bonus you get from picking up ruins. I cherish this ability more than life itself. No more revealing barb camps. No more giving patchy maps of the surrounding area. But it’s more than that. This ability allows you to use ruins as a reliable part of your build. There are several limitations, which I will explain later, but they are to prevent the most profane abuse only. This ability is still wow.
Finally, when you select to have this unit promoted, it will assume the upgrade path of the composite bowman. Das crazy.
- You start the game with a pathfinder instead of a scout (+20 production worth)
- Massive versatility
- Can be used to ramp up the size of your towns.
- Can give a huge initial tech boost.
- Can give you a very powerful early game army of composite bowmen that ignore terrain costs. These units are fully upgradable later in the game, but are the most powerful in the early steps. You will not have the option to upgrade your pathfinders into anything more useful using gold later in the game unless you manage to land some ruin transformations.
- Can rush you through the first few policies.
- Can secure the powerful God-King belief, which gives 1 faith, 1 production, 1 gold, 1 culture, and 1 science. This is achievable as early as turn 20 for the cost of one ruin. No other race has such exclusive access, (INSAAAAANE).
- Is very good at defending against barbarians.
- You will never need to buy warriors (this costs only five more than a warrior).
- Follows the same promotion path as a scout until upgraded to composite bowman.
The final unique unit is the Comanche rider, which replaces the cavalry. It costs 25 less than the cavalry (200 as opposed to 225), and is one unit faster. It’s not available until much later in the game, and has far less impact on the game in general.
- Keeps all perks, so is good to mass produce for cheap, then upgrade later.
- Extra movement is really useful, but cavalry were already highly mobile.
This buff doesn’t represent any substantial deviation in playstyle.
- Movement does give a small (one turn or so) tempo bonus when reinforcing. It’s also very good for defending against harassment.
- Having a late game unit represents a timing window for attacking that should be aimed for. That half of this unit’s advantage comes from it’s decreased cost, and therefore cannot be prepared earlier then promoted to means that this window is not as decisive as one might want. This is for more drawn out engagements, extending to when your technology allows them the promotion. I do not recommend you bring them home to be promoted however. You should capture a forefront city and upgrade them there.
In summary; the Shoshone are an expansionist race with some powerful defensive ability. They have one of the smoothest (and most powerful) early games of any race, and have an exceptionally diverse array of strategic options. Their ability to reliably calculate ruin bonuses into their build, will leave your opponents scratching their head wondering just how you managed to get quite so far in front.
Their unique ability is Great Expanse. It gives eight bonus tiles worth of control in each and every city upon its foundation. For reference, that’s over twice as much starting land to work with (everyone else starts with six tiles). On top of this, it gives a flat 15% strength bonus to all of you land units while in your (already larger) territory.
Great Expanse is more like two weaker unique abilities. I’ll cover each component separately for clarity.
Extra tiles:-
Each and every city you found will have fourteen tiles for your citizens to work. This lends itself both to larger population cities, and to massive expansion. There are many implications to this, some more subtle than others:
- Detracts from the value of culture. It is no longer required to get culture production in order to acquire the tiles immediately around a city. If you want social policies, culture is still a fine investment, but this perk of culture production will be negated.
- If you take up more room, people are more likely to covet the land you own, or perceive you as a threat.
- Tiles you own give extra sight. This can be particularly valuable at the beginning of the game when you’re trying to scout efficiently and want to avoid sending your scout into a dead-end of mountains or water, as you then waste time backtracking.
- Extra sight is also useful for spotting barbs early for a more immediate response to protect your workers and tile improvements.
- You are able to more efficiently land grab during the passive stages of the game. You can lay claim to resource nodes other civs have eyes on, and snatch valuable defensive positions.
- You also trap other people scouts out of your land (or in!). This will deny your opponents information if trapped out, which will make them uneasy attacking you, or more vulnerable to a built up force. If you prefer an advantage you can hold in your hand, people will be more willing to pay you for open borders if their scout is stuck.
- At the beginning of the game you will have a larger chance of having a strong food and production base.
- If someone is launching a sneak attack, they will not be able to move inside of your borders then change colours like they used to before this expansion pack. The larger your borders, the further back their units have to be when they declare war, giving you more time to position your defense and deal out the damage.
- You will want a large population to work your large territory.
- You will also want a strong workforce to improve these extra tiles.
- The later the game goes, the more strategic resources start popping up as you gather technology. The greater your territory size, the less likely you’ll have to work in order to get that valuable coal to jump-start your production, or that aluminium for your air-force. Your chances of finding these resources within your already existent borders is quite high.
- Finally, it gives you your normal territory strength bonus to your units, but also the territory strength component of great expanse.
Extra strength within your territory:-
This component is a little simpler:
- Gives you a solid edge in defending against barbarians in the early game.
- Gives a solid edge in larger scale battles during attacks from opposing players.
- Allows you to leave less behind to defend against harassment.
- Gives you a strong preference for fighting at home over neutral territory.
- Makes people not want to attack you.
- Makes founding cities in chokes a strong defensive option.
- Means that when you commit resources to expanding early, your skeletal armies in combination with your town’s bombard will have a substantially higher chance of holding against dedicated bum-rushers.
The Shoshone’s first and most interesting unique unit is the pathfinder, which replaces the scout. It costs substantially more than the scout (45, compared to the scout’s 25), but is also proportionally stronger. It has the strength of a warrior (eight, as opposed to the scout’s four). In combination with some clever positioning and territorial bonuses, you should never lose these guys to barbarians.
They also have a powerful ability: native tongues, which plays more like a race mechanic. It allows you to pick within a limited selection, the bonus you get from picking up ruins. I cherish this ability more than life itself. No more revealing barb camps. No more giving patchy maps of the surrounding area. But it’s more than that. This ability allows you to use ruins as a reliable part of your build. There are several limitations, which I will explain later, but they are to prevent the most profane abuse only. This ability is still wow.
Finally, when you select to have this unit promoted, it will assume the upgrade path of the composite bowman. Das crazy.
- You start the game with a pathfinder instead of a scout (+20 production worth)
- Massive versatility
- Can be used to ramp up the size of your towns.
- Can give a huge initial tech boost.
- Can give you a very powerful early game army of composite bowmen that ignore terrain costs. These units are fully upgradable later in the game, but are the most powerful in the early steps. You will not have the option to upgrade your pathfinders into anything more useful using gold later in the game unless you manage to land some ruin transformations.
- Can rush you through the first few policies.
- Can secure the powerful God-King belief, which gives 1 faith, 1 production, 1 gold, 1 culture, and 1 science. This is achievable as early as turn 20 for the cost of one ruin. No other race has such exclusive access, (INSAAAAANE).
- Is very good at defending against barbarians.
- You will never need to buy warriors (this costs only five more than a warrior).
- Follows the same promotion path as a scout until upgraded to composite bowman.
The final unique unit is the Comanche rider, which replaces the cavalry. It costs 25 less than the cavalry (200 as opposed to 225), and is one unit faster. It’s not available until much later in the game, and has far less impact on the game in general.
- Keeps all perks, so is good to mass produce for cheap, then upgrade later.
- Extra movement is really useful, but cavalry were already highly mobile.
This buff doesn’t represent any substantial deviation in playstyle.
- Movement does give a small (one turn or so) tempo bonus when reinforcing. It’s also very good for defending against harassment.
- Having a late game unit represents a timing window for attacking that should be aimed for. That half of this unit’s advantage comes from it’s decreased cost, and therefore cannot be prepared earlier then promoted to means that this window is not as decisive as one might want. This is for more drawn out engagements, extending to when your technology allows them the promotion. I do not recommend you bring them home to be promoted however. You should capture a forefront city and upgrade them there.
In summary; the Shoshone are an expansionist race with some powerful defensive ability. They have one of the smoothest (and most powerful) early games of any race, and have an exceptionally diverse array of strategic options. Their ability to reliably calculate ruin bonuses into their build, will leave your opponents scratching their head wondering just how you managed to get quite so far in front.
Explanation
Now we have the formalities out of the way, I’d like to introduce you to my build specifically. I’ve spent quite some time experimenting, and am convinced I have one of the most reliable and formidable strategies goin’ round.
It goes something like this:
1 – pathfinder
2 – pathfinder
3 – pathfinder
4 – pathfinder
5 – archer/pathfinder
6 – pyramids
7 – gratz you win.
Okayokayokay so it looks really simple right? Well… this part of it is. But what you actually build using the production from your capital, and the complexity of what you’re actually doing, are very different. Most of this build is in your ruin, tech, policy, and offensive options. You see each of those pathfinders is off learning about the world, discovering wonders (+happiness), nation-states (+gold), potential points of expansion (+everything), ruins (+army, +pop, +production, +food, +expansion), and probably most importantly: your first victim. This guide is for a rush opener. You need to find out where your soon to be enemy is, what they have, and just how you are going to approach them.
“But Hado, the Shoshone bonuses lend themselves towards passive expansion and defensive play, why would you forgo this in order to attack just like any other rush civ? “
Well, the answer to that is multi-faceted. The first reason is that I don’t believe passive win conditions are optimal or reliable for high difficulty play. Once you’re on Immortal or Deity difficulty, the com's advantages are too large for you to keep up with. You need to leech some of their advantage, and the best way to do that is to take it directly from them via militant intervention. That said, all-in military strategies are also difficult because you accrue substantial unhappiness from capturing enemy cities. Once your happiness goes below 0 your city growth rate is cut by 3/4 (as well as a less severe production cut), and your military units receive a nasty combat penalty. Once it goes below -10 barbarian units will start appearing all up in your grill as your towns go into revolt, and they will pillage all of your tiles: sealing your fate as an unproductive and forever unhappy nation.
Edit: I have since received word (thanks Latte <3) that it is in fact possible to reliably keep up with coms when it comes to passive play. I have no idea how, so I'm not the guy to ask. Go read some other sucka's guide!
No rather than taking either of these routes, I thought it best to take the best of both worlds, and take a town or two to get my empire of the ground, then commit to some other victory condition once I am on equal footings with the brutally over-powered coms.
For this reason, I simultaneously rush scouting, religion, capital growth, workers, expansion, the pyramids, and my opponent.
A lot of strategy gamers might be calling “BS!” right now, as it is a well-known principle that rushes need to be committed to, as any greed on the part of the rusher will result in an inferior push, and an increased chance of failure. Allow me to explain.
Your first move is to make five scouts. This is excessive for any other race. These scouts ensure that you will know about any and all opponents in your area. You will be able to attack the very weakest, improving your chances of success substantially. These first five scouts will also turn into your army for taking that city. By the time you are ready to attack, you should have picked up seven or eight ruins, two or three of which you will use to upgrade your units into composite bowmen waaaay in advance of any opponent having access to anything of similar power levels. Each comp bowman has 11 strength (a normal archer has 7). Two comp bowmen have more combat strength than three normal archers, if you manage to upgrade three there is no way your rush can fail, you probably won’t even lose a unit.
While they are doing this, they also have the time to accelerate your culture. Each ruin you find will give you 20 culture, which will aid massively in your acquisition of your first few policies (you first policy only costs 25 culture). This build utilises the liberty tree, though there may be arguments for using others.
Your first policy will double your intake of culture. Your second will give you a worker. Your third will give you a relatively small bonus to production (this scales rather well into the late game however). Your fourth will give you a free expansion. Your fifth mitigates the social policy penalty of founding new cities, and starts a golden age. Your sixth fixes some happiness issues and gives you a free wonder of your choice. Seems good. You will be rushing up to your fourth policy for the ‘free’ worker and expansion as a follow up to your rush.
One of the limitations of your native tongues ability is that you cannot choose the faith option prior to turn 20. If you spot a ruin on turns 18 or 19, I suggest you halt there and wait until turn 20 so that you can pick up the afore mentioned God-King belief as soon as humanly possible before anyone else has the option. This represents a faster worker (which means faster food and production), a faster expansion, faster unit production, a small increase to science, and a little gold and faith. Don’t pass it up. Even if a civ decides to grab a shrine first, they won’t necessarily be able to beat you to this (approximately 8 turns to make, then 15 turns to get required faith (excluding faith picked up from city-states)). You never need to invest in faith past this point, you already have the most valuable bonus from it (and have denied it to your opponents).
If none of the options above are available:-
- You’ve already got your first faith injection
- You’ve already upgraded this particular unit to a composite bowman
- You’ve already achieved your fourth social policy, or your culture output is so great that 20 culture will not speed up your policy acquisition by a substantial amount
Check your capital city (do this before landing on the tile). How many unused tiles do you have that give you two food plus something else on top? (be that more food, production, or gold). If the answer to that question is more than zero, you should elect to have the ruins increase your population by one. The reason for this is that each citizen consumes two food and one happiness. They also produce one science, and anything in excess of two food that a tile has. Grabbing a tile that only produces two food is essentially exchanging a ruin and one happiness for one science, which isn’t an awful deal. If a tile has less than two food, you are slowing down the rate at which your city grows, in which case the city would likely catch up to where you are shortly even if you don’t elect to take on the refugees.
The final (real) option is to discover a random technology. At the beginning of the game, technologies can cost as little as 20 science. This is a very small profit (considering that a new citizen would give you +1 science for the rest of the game). That’s the worst case scenario, second tier techs take 55 science, and it continues to increase in cost rapidly from there. This strategy leaves many low level technologies undiscovered, so the odds that you’ll pick one up and waste the ruin is high. I only recommend this choice if all the others outlined above are already taken. Even then, there is one last option…
Moar faith!
You have a pantheon with the most efficient belief already, but eventually other religions will come and get rid of that. You could make some investment in getting your own faith rolling. Taking faith twice will give you an additional 120 faith, which puts you in range of the requisite 200 for religion status. You should not have a problem getting there before the last religion is taken using the trickle from you God-King belief. If you do not use this, that portion of the God-King belief will likely be wasted until very late game, when you can purchase great people with faith. I still do not recommend this option (though I feel it worth acknowledging).
…Errr right… back to the rush.
So while scouting for ruins, taking the lay of the land, and producing your army, you need to find the most attackable opponent. Once you have a total of five units, any two of which are composite bowmen (preferably three), you should rendezvous at (preferably) their capital. You should produce a sixth unit before starting pyramids in order to guard the worker you have (or will) gain(ed) through the liberty tree. You cannot wait until after the pyramids, you will have been pillaged by barbarians by that point, and it simply takes too long. This unit can be an additional pathfinder, but I prefer the archer since you know it will be sitting in your base, and a pathfinder has little opportunity at this point to ever be upgraded.
Once all of your units are gathered, you should position to pick off any unit with your archers without being hit by the city. Pick the moment to declare war decisively, you want to take free units, as any units you kill now is damage you won’t be taking while hitting the city. As soon as there are no units in your ways, you should position to have all of your archers move in and hit the city, as well as at least one pathfinder. You want to absorb damage with the pathfinder if possible, with the exception that you need at least one pathfinder left to take the city once it is on zero HP. Use hills and forest to your defensive advantage. That you are unimpeded by terrain can play strongly to your advantage in this fight. Your pathfinders should not attack the city until it is very low, the damage they receive in response is problematic to survival if you attack prematurely. This fight is not hard, but you want to get out with your units for the follow up on their fast expand, or even the next victim =D
…meanwhile…
…at Shoshone base…
You’re completing the mother r*sp*ct*ng pyramids. Das crazy.
Why the pyramids? What do they have to do with this rush business?
Well… The pyramids are awesome.
- They have low wonder rush priority, so the chances you will complete them before someone else is high.
- They give you two workers.
- One culture (slowly adding to your culture trickle)
- One great engineer point (the most useful great person, they are essentially a free wonder)
- They increase the efficiency of your workers by 25%, which is addition to the 25% you get from the liberty tree.
You are the Shoshone. You are expanding rapidly (see policy tree: liberty). You are cracking heads and conquering additional territory. Every city you found comes with over twice as many tiles as normal. You need to improve those tiles. You need to build roads. You need to repair the stuff that barbarians manage to pillage in the time before you hunt them down. This will give you a total of three workers, each of which is the equivalent of 1.5 workers, for a total workforce output of 4.5 workers. All without having actually bought or built any workers the hard way. If you took cities from your opponent you likely captures one or two workers over there too, giving you somewhere between 4.5, and 7.5 effective workers. You now expand to inhabit the space between the capital and your newly acquired cities, and then…
THE WORLD…
Or you know, the other easily attainable areas nearby. It’s your choice from here, though I recommend either science as a passive victory, or straight domination.
The synergy of this build is massive. In the time that another race has managed to roll the dice and successfully capture a city, you have fixed the dice heavily in your favour and captured that same city, while scouting extensively, set yourself up with 4.5 workers, expanded at least once, secured the best belief in the game, and taken the lead in capital population, and you have a powerful and versatile army that excels both at controlling neutral ground and defending your extensive territory. Any passive strategy will fall to your army and any military strategy will be rapidly outscaled with the passing of time.
It goes something like this:
1 – pathfinder
2 – pathfinder
3 – pathfinder
4 – pathfinder
5 – archer/pathfinder
6 – pyramids
7 – gratz you win.
Okayokayokay so it looks really simple right? Well… this part of it is. But what you actually build using the production from your capital, and the complexity of what you’re actually doing, are very different. Most of this build is in your ruin, tech, policy, and offensive options. You see each of those pathfinders is off learning about the world, discovering wonders (+happiness), nation-states (+gold), potential points of expansion (+everything), ruins (+army, +pop, +production, +food, +expansion), and probably most importantly: your first victim. This guide is for a rush opener. You need to find out where your soon to be enemy is, what they have, and just how you are going to approach them.
“But Hado, the Shoshone bonuses lend themselves towards passive expansion and defensive play, why would you forgo this in order to attack just like any other rush civ? “
Well, the answer to that is multi-faceted. The first reason is that I don’t believe passive win conditions are optimal or reliable for high difficulty play. Once you’re on Immortal or Deity difficulty, the com's advantages are too large for you to keep up with. You need to leech some of their advantage, and the best way to do that is to take it directly from them via militant intervention. That said, all-in military strategies are also difficult because you accrue substantial unhappiness from capturing enemy cities. Once your happiness goes below 0 your city growth rate is cut by 3/4 (as well as a less severe production cut), and your military units receive a nasty combat penalty. Once it goes below -10 barbarian units will start appearing all up in your grill as your towns go into revolt, and they will pillage all of your tiles: sealing your fate as an unproductive and forever unhappy nation.
Edit: I have since received word (thanks Latte <3) that it is in fact possible to reliably keep up with coms when it comes to passive play. I have no idea how, so I'm not the guy to ask. Go read some other sucka's guide!
No rather than taking either of these routes, I thought it best to take the best of both worlds, and take a town or two to get my empire of the ground, then commit to some other victory condition once I am on equal footings with the brutally over-powered coms.
For this reason, I simultaneously rush scouting, religion, capital growth, workers, expansion, the pyramids, and my opponent.
A lot of strategy gamers might be calling “BS!” right now, as it is a well-known principle that rushes need to be committed to, as any greed on the part of the rusher will result in an inferior push, and an increased chance of failure. Allow me to explain.
Your first move is to make five scouts. This is excessive for any other race. These scouts ensure that you will know about any and all opponents in your area. You will be able to attack the very weakest, improving your chances of success substantially. These first five scouts will also turn into your army for taking that city. By the time you are ready to attack, you should have picked up seven or eight ruins, two or three of which you will use to upgrade your units into composite bowmen waaaay in advance of any opponent having access to anything of similar power levels. Each comp bowman has 11 strength (a normal archer has 7). Two comp bowmen have more combat strength than three normal archers, if you manage to upgrade three there is no way your rush can fail, you probably won’t even lose a unit.
While they are doing this, they also have the time to accelerate your culture. Each ruin you find will give you 20 culture, which will aid massively in your acquisition of your first few policies (you first policy only costs 25 culture). This build utilises the liberty tree, though there may be arguments for using others.
Your first policy will double your intake of culture. Your second will give you a worker. Your third will give you a relatively small bonus to production (this scales rather well into the late game however). Your fourth will give you a free expansion. Your fifth mitigates the social policy penalty of founding new cities, and starts a golden age. Your sixth fixes some happiness issues and gives you a free wonder of your choice. Seems good. You will be rushing up to your fourth policy for the ‘free’ worker and expansion as a follow up to your rush.
One of the limitations of your native tongues ability is that you cannot choose the faith option prior to turn 20. If you spot a ruin on turns 18 or 19, I suggest you halt there and wait until turn 20 so that you can pick up the afore mentioned God-King belief as soon as humanly possible before anyone else has the option. This represents a faster worker (which means faster food and production), a faster expansion, faster unit production, a small increase to science, and a little gold and faith. Don’t pass it up. Even if a civ decides to grab a shrine first, they won’t necessarily be able to beat you to this (approximately 8 turns to make, then 15 turns to get required faith (excluding faith picked up from city-states)). You never need to invest in faith past this point, you already have the most valuable bonus from it (and have denied it to your opponents).
If none of the options above are available:-
- You’ve already got your first faith injection
- You’ve already upgraded this particular unit to a composite bowman
- You’ve already achieved your fourth social policy, or your culture output is so great that 20 culture will not speed up your policy acquisition by a substantial amount
Check your capital city (do this before landing on the tile). How many unused tiles do you have that give you two food plus something else on top? (be that more food, production, or gold). If the answer to that question is more than zero, you should elect to have the ruins increase your population by one. The reason for this is that each citizen consumes two food and one happiness. They also produce one science, and anything in excess of two food that a tile has. Grabbing a tile that only produces two food is essentially exchanging a ruin and one happiness for one science, which isn’t an awful deal. If a tile has less than two food, you are slowing down the rate at which your city grows, in which case the city would likely catch up to where you are shortly even if you don’t elect to take on the refugees.
The final (real) option is to discover a random technology. At the beginning of the game, technologies can cost as little as 20 science. This is a very small profit (considering that a new citizen would give you +1 science for the rest of the game). That’s the worst case scenario, second tier techs take 55 science, and it continues to increase in cost rapidly from there. This strategy leaves many low level technologies undiscovered, so the odds that you’ll pick one up and waste the ruin is high. I only recommend this choice if all the others outlined above are already taken. Even then, there is one last option…
Moar faith!
You have a pantheon with the most efficient belief already, but eventually other religions will come and get rid of that. You could make some investment in getting your own faith rolling. Taking faith twice will give you an additional 120 faith, which puts you in range of the requisite 200 for religion status. You should not have a problem getting there before the last religion is taken using the trickle from you God-King belief. If you do not use this, that portion of the God-King belief will likely be wasted until very late game, when you can purchase great people with faith. I still do not recommend this option (though I feel it worth acknowledging).
…Errr right… back to the rush.
So while scouting for ruins, taking the lay of the land, and producing your army, you need to find the most attackable opponent. Once you have a total of five units, any two of which are composite bowmen (preferably three), you should rendezvous at (preferably) their capital. You should produce a sixth unit before starting pyramids in order to guard the worker you have (or will) gain(ed) through the liberty tree. You cannot wait until after the pyramids, you will have been pillaged by barbarians by that point, and it simply takes too long. This unit can be an additional pathfinder, but I prefer the archer since you know it will be sitting in your base, and a pathfinder has little opportunity at this point to ever be upgraded.
Once all of your units are gathered, you should position to pick off any unit with your archers without being hit by the city. Pick the moment to declare war decisively, you want to take free units, as any units you kill now is damage you won’t be taking while hitting the city. As soon as there are no units in your ways, you should position to have all of your archers move in and hit the city, as well as at least one pathfinder. You want to absorb damage with the pathfinder if possible, with the exception that you need at least one pathfinder left to take the city once it is on zero HP. Use hills and forest to your defensive advantage. That you are unimpeded by terrain can play strongly to your advantage in this fight. Your pathfinders should not attack the city until it is very low, the damage they receive in response is problematic to survival if you attack prematurely. This fight is not hard, but you want to get out with your units for the follow up on their fast expand, or even the next victim =D
…meanwhile…
…at Shoshone base…
You’re completing the mother r*sp*ct*ng pyramids. Das crazy.
Why the pyramids? What do they have to do with this rush business?
Well… The pyramids are awesome.
- They have low wonder rush priority, so the chances you will complete them before someone else is high.
- They give you two workers.
- One culture (slowly adding to your culture trickle)
- One great engineer point (the most useful great person, they are essentially a free wonder)
- They increase the efficiency of your workers by 25%, which is addition to the 25% you get from the liberty tree.
You are the Shoshone. You are expanding rapidly (see policy tree: liberty). You are cracking heads and conquering additional territory. Every city you found comes with over twice as many tiles as normal. You need to improve those tiles. You need to build roads. You need to repair the stuff that barbarians manage to pillage in the time before you hunt them down. This will give you a total of three workers, each of which is the equivalent of 1.5 workers, for a total workforce output of 4.5 workers. All without having actually bought or built any workers the hard way. If you took cities from your opponent you likely captures one or two workers over there too, giving you somewhere between 4.5, and 7.5 effective workers. You now expand to inhabit the space between the capital and your newly acquired cities, and then…
THE WORLD…
Or you know, the other easily attainable areas nearby. It’s your choice from here, though I recommend either science as a passive victory, or straight domination.
The synergy of this build is massive. In the time that another race has managed to roll the dice and successfully capture a city, you have fixed the dice heavily in your favour and captured that same city, while scouting extensively, set yourself up with 4.5 workers, expanded at least once, secured the best belief in the game, and taken the lead in capital population, and you have a powerful and versatile army that excels both at controlling neutral ground and defending your extensive territory. Any passive strategy will fall to your army and any military strategy will be rapidly outscaled with the passing of time.
The details
For quick reference, this is the build:
Technology:
The first three techs are mining, masonry, and one other tech used to clear land if need. You will have time to complete all three before starting pyramids, so take whatever is most convenient. In the absence of any land clearing requirements, take animal husbandry, as you’ll probably have horses about, and you want to improve that tile ASAP for food and production.
This is a matter of adaptation, but these are the signs you need to look out for in making the decision for each one:
- The wheel: You want this by the time you’re thinking of linking your cities with roads. It’s useful to do this in general just for troop movement, but the gold you receive from trade routes (I believe) breaks even once the population of the linked city is four or higher.
- Mathematics: Once the city you have taken has calmed down, you want to build a courthouse to control unhappiness.
- Luxury resource techs: This is usually not a biggie, it’s just what you fill the gaps in your build with. You won’t need to worry about happiness until a little later.
- Bronze working: Also filler. You want to be able to identify iron. Non-essential but strong.
- Writing: Libraries improve a cities science output by about 50%. That’s a big deal. You want one as early as possible without hurting your build, so think about having this tech done by the time you finish pyramids. You can put it off if there are more immediate matters, but it’s a decidedly solid next step.
- Currency: This build revolves around taking one aspect of the race: the pathfinder, and using it to get the most out of other aspects of the game without actually investing in those areas. You take the pathfinder and turn it into a military, a culture factory, a shrine, and a source of pop growth. You do these things to the exclusion of both happiness and money, and at some point you will need to seek re-equilibrium. Markets are how you address you money concerns.
- Construction: once you’ve got all your available luxuries, but happiness is still a problem, you need to produce coliseums and circuses. If you have trapping, circuses are more efficient, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to fit one in every city due to the tile requirements.
- Iron working: If you find iron, and you want to use it, you need this tech.
- Civil services: If your cities follow rivers, this will bring in one more food for every farm next to water. It’s relatively expensive, but worth rushing for if you haven’t got any more immediate needs. It also opens up the ‘Itza Chicken!’, and if you’ve already completed the liberty tree and have an engineer sitting ‘round it’s certainly worth grabbing.
- Education: I’ll finish off by mention education and universities as a good thing to aim for once all of the above have been considered.
Policies:
1 – Liberty tree
2 – Citizenship – One free worker and +25% tile improvement speed
Lay off the gas, now you have a worker culture is no longer your first priority.
3 – Republic – +1 production and 5% production when producing buildings in every city
4 – Collective rule – One free settler and increases rate of settler production in the capital by 50%.
This is when you stop caring about culture so much. You still get +1 culture per city from liberty, +1 from your palace, +1 from God-King, +1 from pyramids, and +w/e from friendly city-states. You will continue to gain social policies, but there is no need to worry about monuments or w/e until your city production is working at high redundancy.
5 – Representation – Decreases culture penalty of founding new cities by 33%, starts golden age
6 – Meritocracy – +1 happiness for each city connected to cap, -5% unhappiness in non-occupied cities
After I’ve completed the liberty tree, I grab points in patronage until the rationality tree becomes available. Once ideologies become available you’re probably looking at autocracy, or completing your rationalism and patriotism trees.
Ruins: (in order of priority, if the answer is no then move down the list)
Is it turn 20-24? -> Get faith
Are you yet to complete citizenship? -> Get culture
Are you still preparing to rush? -> Upgrade to comp bowman
Do you still have usable tiles, or do you have a worker already/soon? -> Get pop
Have you researched all of the first tier techs, and your current tech still has a few turns to go? -> Get tech
Are you a sly dog that wants to eek out an inefficient religion build? -> Religion
Have you somehow failed to find a person to attack, and your fifth unit is about to pop? -> Get map reveal
Have you lost all hope of winning? -> Barb reveal
Production:
1 – pathfinder
2 – pathfinder
3 – pathfinder
4 – pathfinder
5 – archer/pathfinder (for defense)
6 – pyramids
Scouting tips:
- Keep your scout away from mountains and sea, as they might be harbouring ruins, but are also more likely to lead to inefficient scout pathing.
- Don’t fight barbarians if you can help it until you have high scouting redundancy (not for a while yet).
- Try and leave completely unexplored paths for your scouts to come.
- If you suspect there is ocean about, you can check a tile ahead, as the coastal tiles actually look different. This will save you valuable time by not wasting site on empty ocean.
- If you have the option, and your other priorities are met, try and take ruins with a pathfinder rather than a composite bowman.
- If you come across a nation state, check whether you get 15 or 30 gold from them. Thirty gold means nobody else has found them before you, which means you have a far greater chance of finding ruins in the area. Finding 15 also means you are more likely to find an opponent behind them.
Turn 1:- Found your first city. If you can by your third turn, found it on a hill near your resource nodes. The capital always generates two food, but benefits from production values on the tile on which it is founded. Do not worry too much about your luxury nodes, you won’t be worrying about them for quite a while.
Technology:
The first three techs are mining, masonry, and one other tech used to clear land if need. You will have time to complete all three before starting pyramids, so take whatever is most convenient. In the absence of any land clearing requirements, take animal husbandry, as you’ll probably have horses about, and you want to improve that tile ASAP for food and production.
This is a matter of adaptation, but these are the signs you need to look out for in making the decision for each one:
- The wheel: You want this by the time you’re thinking of linking your cities with roads. It’s useful to do this in general just for troop movement, but the gold you receive from trade routes (I believe) breaks even once the population of the linked city is four or higher.
- Mathematics: Once the city you have taken has calmed down, you want to build a courthouse to control unhappiness.
- Luxury resource techs: This is usually not a biggie, it’s just what you fill the gaps in your build with. You won’t need to worry about happiness until a little later.
- Bronze working: Also filler. You want to be able to identify iron. Non-essential but strong.
- Writing: Libraries improve a cities science output by about 50%. That’s a big deal. You want one as early as possible without hurting your build, so think about having this tech done by the time you finish pyramids. You can put it off if there are more immediate matters, but it’s a decidedly solid next step.
- Currency: This build revolves around taking one aspect of the race: the pathfinder, and using it to get the most out of other aspects of the game without actually investing in those areas. You take the pathfinder and turn it into a military, a culture factory, a shrine, and a source of pop growth. You do these things to the exclusion of both happiness and money, and at some point you will need to seek re-equilibrium. Markets are how you address you money concerns.
- Construction: once you’ve got all your available luxuries, but happiness is still a problem, you need to produce coliseums and circuses. If you have trapping, circuses are more efficient, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to fit one in every city due to the tile requirements.
- Iron working: If you find iron, and you want to use it, you need this tech.
- Civil services: If your cities follow rivers, this will bring in one more food for every farm next to water. It’s relatively expensive, but worth rushing for if you haven’t got any more immediate needs. It also opens up the ‘Itza Chicken!’, and if you’ve already completed the liberty tree and have an engineer sitting ‘round it’s certainly worth grabbing.
- Education: I’ll finish off by mention education and universities as a good thing to aim for once all of the above have been considered.
Policies:
1 – Liberty tree
2 – Citizenship – One free worker and +25% tile improvement speed
Lay off the gas, now you have a worker culture is no longer your first priority.
3 – Republic – +1 production and 5% production when producing buildings in every city
4 – Collective rule – One free settler and increases rate of settler production in the capital by 50%.
This is when you stop caring about culture so much. You still get +1 culture per city from liberty, +1 from your palace, +1 from God-King, +1 from pyramids, and +w/e from friendly city-states. You will continue to gain social policies, but there is no need to worry about monuments or w/e until your city production is working at high redundancy.
5 – Representation – Decreases culture penalty of founding new cities by 33%, starts golden age
6 – Meritocracy – +1 happiness for each city connected to cap, -5% unhappiness in non-occupied cities
After I’ve completed the liberty tree, I grab points in patronage until the rationality tree becomes available. Once ideologies become available you’re probably looking at autocracy, or completing your rationalism and patriotism trees.
Ruins: (in order of priority, if the answer is no then move down the list)
Is it turn 20-24? -> Get faith
Are you yet to complete citizenship? -> Get culture
Are you still preparing to rush? -> Upgrade to comp bowman
Do you still have usable tiles, or do you have a worker already/soon? -> Get pop
Have you researched all of the first tier techs, and your current tech still has a few turns to go? -> Get tech
Are you a sly dog that wants to eek out an inefficient religion build? -> Religion
Have you somehow failed to find a person to attack, and your fifth unit is about to pop? -> Get map reveal
Have you lost all hope of winning? -> Barb reveal
Production:
1 – pathfinder
2 – pathfinder
3 – pathfinder
4 – pathfinder
5 – archer/pathfinder (for defense)
6 – pyramids
Scouting tips:
- Keep your scout away from mountains and sea, as they might be harbouring ruins, but are also more likely to lead to inefficient scout pathing.
- Don’t fight barbarians if you can help it until you have high scouting redundancy (not for a while yet).
- Try and leave completely unexplored paths for your scouts to come.
- If you suspect there is ocean about, you can check a tile ahead, as the coastal tiles actually look different. This will save you valuable time by not wasting site on empty ocean.
- If you have the option, and your other priorities are met, try and take ruins with a pathfinder rather than a composite bowman.
- If you come across a nation state, check whether you get 15 or 30 gold from them. Thirty gold means nobody else has found them before you, which means you have a far greater chance of finding ruins in the area. Finding 15 also means you are more likely to find an opponent behind them.
Turn 1:- Found your first city. If you can by your third turn, found it on a hill near your resource nodes. The capital always generates two food, but benefits from production values on the tile on which it is founded. Do not worry too much about your luxury nodes, you won’t be worrying about them for quite a while.
Thoughts? Anything to add? I was thinking of sending it in to gamefaqs or the steam community guides.
