Rhye's of Civilization Expanded generic strategy
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Introduction
This guide is intended to fill a accelerate learning for players seeking to dive into the Rhye's of Civilization Expanded (ROCX) experience. It is designed for less experienced Civilization III players and players who have never played Rhye's of Civilization. It contains some general advice useful for all civs, as well as specific advice for each civ.
The Readme files of both Rhye's of Civilization mod pack (ROC) and ROCX contain more complete overviews of the changes and additions to the standard Civ III Conquests (C3C) on which they are based.
Summary
In short, the changes in ROCX combine to fine-tune the different elements of the Civ 3 game with two major implications:
- Each civ will generally settle into a starting range of territory very similar to their historical geographic borders and experience the ebb-and-flow of history in a way that captures historical accuracy. For example, the Incans and Mayans will struggle to reach the Middle Ages age before European Civs begin colonising. Similarly, the Americans will struggle early, but then explode into power once they enter the Industrial Age.
This means that your civ choice will have huge implications on the type of game you will play, and will guide and/or limit your strategic choices over the course of the game. So, whilst each civ will offer unique challenges, some civs may suit your preferred playing style (e.g. builder, warmonger) more than others.
- Game balance is vastly improved. As a ROCX player, you are required to constantly be aware of balancing each game element in order for your civ to survive and thrive (in comparison to a C3C game at a comparable difficulty level). This is a great departure from C3C where, by comparison, there is a great focus on early expansion, making it easy to ignore other strategic elements after exploiting early growth.
This means that you will need to juggle all the tools of building, military conflict, diplomacy, and trade if you are going to win, even at the lower levels.
Below is a more detailed list of specific game elements that lead to this, and the specific implications of each on you, the player. We strongly recommend you read through this section as background preparation for the civ-specific guides which follow.
A crowded world
Assuming you play the standard scenario, you will be packed into a 170x170 world with 31 civilisations (including yourself). Even if you have played C3C with 15 opponents, you may not be prepared for how crowded this world is. This has several major implications for ROCX players:
- Territory is at a major premium. In most cases, you will not be able to expand beyond a handful of core cities in your local area. Strategically, this means that either military conflict or colonisation of far-flung shores (or both!) will be required to achieve your growth objectives. However, peaceful local expansion is mostly not an option.
This raises the tactical consideration of offensive actions against roaming settlers as a way of crippling your nearby neighbours (it means more than a couple of free workers!). But, just as in C3C, you must beware the costs of an early, drawn-out war.
- A common tactic amongst C3C players is the early warrior rush, and the crowded map seems to invite this rush. However, human civs will start without a worker, slowing your ability to quickly develop a rushing force. In addition, the AI civs are given palace guards at the start of the game, and the Palace gives every nation's starting capital city a large boost to defense. Combined, this makes the early rush an extremely risky proposition, and one the developers and testers recommend against.
- Exploring the world is going to be difficult. Warriors can defend themselves against barbarians, but they can't enter mountains, marshes, and other rough terrain. On the other hand, scouts can go anywhere and cause less of a fuss when they enter an opponents' territory, but they are completely defenseless in the face of an enemy attacker. Balancing these selections, and dealing with the resulting diplomatic implications, will require careful consideration.
- Regarding diplomacy, early on you will have 4-6 key neighbours with whom you will have to deal. But as the game progresses, you will have to juggle the shifting moods, trade opportunities, and alliances of all 30 of them (if they survive that long!) You will find you cannot get away very easily without trading a lot and keeping your trading partners happy. You should make sure not to attack a nation you have active deals with, and you should also remove your units from enemy territory before declaring war to avoid being seen as a surprise attacker. This can be vital to ensuring the world continues to trust you after you grab that extra juicy city.
- If you do find yourself at war, beware the dogpile. A dogpile is when one member of a one-on-one war draws in every other civ to attack the other civ. This is sometimes called a 'rogue state' strategy. The AI will use the dogpile, if he can at all afford to (and a lot of gold tends to circulate in basic Rhye's of Civilization, and more so in ROCX). Therefore, your best strategy is to dogpile the bastards before they do! Use whatever luxuries, gold, gpt, or tech you can to pull in a few civs to your side. The great thing is that they will then pull in more to your side too! Even if you don't need their help, and even if they don't contribute much to the war, it's better to give a dogpile than to receive one.
Slower growth
A major change from C3C is the cost of workers and settlers. Settlers cost 3, 4, or 5 citizens and a lot more shields than before (the cost changes with time), and workers cost more shields to build. Furthermore, some worker tasks take quite a bit longer in ROCX than C3C. This has two major implications for ROCX players:
- Firstly, you actually have time to develop your cities beyond the simple settler rush. This means that there are suddenly strategic considerations with regard to how to do this, such as which buildings to develop, and tactically timing that development around popping out workers and settlers.
In standard C3C, there's a big panic early to expand, racing settlers out to the best locations, finding your nearest neighbours, growing towards them, establishing cultural borders to control more territory until you can grow into it. By comparison, in ROCX, you have time for other strategic considerations, and if you don't use it wisely, but instead sit waiting for that next settler, you will fall behind. In a sense, an early settler from a goody hut is worth more than his weight in gold!
- Secondly, with worker tasks like cutting forests taking longer, try to build as big a slave army as possible and save on the unit costs. This is a sound practice in any civ game but in ROCX it is even more so. Although slaves work more slowly, bundle slaves into stacks of 4 and then sic them on the landscape and you'll see how quickly they can get jobs done.
One tactic to deal with this is to keep an eye on any civs you know are at war. Check on them in the trade window every once in a while. Chances are they will store their workers in their capital for protection. Use the opportunity to buy their workers for tech or money. This will save you production time, population and money in the long run.
Slower tech tree
Slower growth, combined with a raised minimum of 5 turns per tech, means that tech doesn't come fast and furious. In fact, it can be frustratingly slow! This has two major implications for ROCX players:
- Selecting which tech to build next always has strategic implications, as you will want to time their discovery with your cities' development. For example, in C3C, it is easy to get tech out ahead of your cities' production ability, and never be caught without something to develop. By contrast, in ROCX, you must balance new opportunities (e.g. swordsmen or temples, libraries or aqueducts) from discovered techs against the timing of new settlers and workers who can take advantage of them.
- Early tech trades with your neighbours become that much more critical at keeping up in the tech race (at least until you've grown your civ to be more self-sufficient!).
Here is one tip for tech trading with neighbours early in the game, when gold is scarce and avoiding wars through good relationships is crucial:
There is a cost-effective way of getting good value for trades while at the same time improving your relationship with trading partners. Say that the Persians have 40g and you know Writing, Iron working and Masonry (and they don't) and you own 120g. You could just sell them Writing cheap for just 40g, but this will only get you 40g and a slight increase in attitude from the trade. They won't love you more because they got it cheap, they'll just think they made a good deal. To make them happier to reduce the risk of war, you could give them Masonry also (not Iron working, dummy!), but this will give them a chance to get back into the tech-race, and you don't want that, especially since they are a rival SCI civ! So, what do you do? You give them 100g, improving your relationship significantly, and then you sell them a tech for all the gold they've got, getting all your money back + their 40g! Improved relationship and gold, all for the price of one tech! This is how you should deal with the primitives, at least until you get strong… Just make sure you guess the value right, so you get your money back. Gifts above the value of 100g are pointless, by the way.
- It is worth noting that the ROCX tech tree is very different from, though still slightly similar to, the standard C3C tech tree. Some parts of the tree will look very familiar, and some you will see are completely new. As such, some of the standard advice regarding having a lead in tech at the start of each new age, and reaching the free-tech bonuses first (like Philosophy) will still apply, but you should make sure you know what a tech will give you before you beeline for it.
Scarce resources
Although there are plenty of resources to go around, they are distributed on the map in a historically accurate way. As such, no matter who you start as, there will be a shortage of luxuries nearby. Similarly, you will almost certainly eventually come to some necessary strategic resource you don't have within your territory. There are two implications to this for ROCX players:
- Managing happiness will be that much more difficult without excess luxuries. Fortunately, you will usually have spares of whatever is nearby for use in trade, but you will have to constantly monitor each city's happiness along with what you're building there and use the luxury slider liberally. (Note: these are often skills advanced players take for granted, but are necessary even at low difficulty-levels in ROCX.)
- Plan ahead to colonise the furthest reaches of Earth. Strategic resources are truly scattered (consider where the strategic resources might be found in today's world and you'll have a good idea of where to find them on the map), so consider what resources you haven't found or aren't likely to find in your current area, and try to position your outlying cities and colonies to cover your anticipated needs.
This is much better than hoping to trade with others for a necessary strategic resource, as you may have a tech lead that you don't want to relinquish or they may not be willing to give you the resources that you want. Of course, you can always just pry it out of their cold dead hands.
Resource-specific wonders
Certain wonders now require strategic resources, and many of them are now only available to certain religious factions (though several wonders have been added to compensate). The major implication of this is that, rather than having extreme strategic flexibility, you really have to tailor your strategies around your civ's capabilities, including the wonders that may or may not be available to them. In other words, although most advanced players would not recommend relying on wonders as part of your strategy, it is even more the case in ROCX because your civ is likely to not have one, or even several, of your favourite wonders available to them!
Terrain differences
In order to create the superb game balance described, landmark terrain has been used extensively on the map in order to add or subtract resources from specific tiles near civ start locations or other settling areas. Whilst this does not fall under the heading of 'strategy', it is important for the player to beware that not all grassland tiles are created equal (nor any other terrain type). So before you settle, and before you set your workers to work on a terrain improvement, be sure and double-check the tile's base yield.
There are also a number of more apparent terrain differences. For example, mountains are no longer traversable to most units without roads, deserts require more movement points to traverse, and settlers may no longer settle directly in jungle, forest, tundra, or desert tiles. For the big picture, this means it will often take longer to explore the world, meet other civs, get trades working, and further exacerbates the land premium described above.
Use the Civilopedia
In the drive for historical accuracy, units and governments have been tweaked from what you are used to. Fortunately, the ROCX civilopedia is complete and accurate. So, use it liberally! Some areas to consider:
There are also a number of more apparent terrain differences. For example, mountains are no longer traversable without roads, deserts require more movement points to traverse, and settlers may no longer settle directly in jungle, tundra, or desert tiles. For the big picture, this means it will often take longer to explore the world, meet other civs, get trades working, and further exacerbates the land premium described above.
- Land Units/Upgrade Paths. For example, the archer is no longer the standard ancient age attacking unit nor is the spearman the standard ancient age defending unit. Their new abilities are more in line with their historical uses in warfare. This also means that there are different, distinct upgrade paths for offensive, defensive, and mixed ability units. Become familiar with these so you can do long-range planning of your garrisons.
- Naval Units/Upgrade Paths. There are now distinct upgrade paths for rowing-style and sailing-style ships early on, and later there is a more intricate split between unit types. In addition, movement on the high seas has been modified to make the oceans a place of opportunity from the age of sail and on. Again, you will want to familiarise yourself with the unit abilities and experiment with the movement in order to take full advantage of the opportunities.
- New/Changed Governments. There are many new governments, and the old ones you are used to are either no longer there or mean something different (in terms of corruption, unit support, etc.) than they used to. Before making your "usual" switch to Republic right away (or better yet, before making a tech bee-line for Republic), check that this is actually the best choice for your civ's plans. Generally speaking, the governments in ROCX make a greater difference to civ performance than they did under C3C, so you want to make these choices whilst fully informed.
But, luckily for you, all civs now can suffer no more than two turns of anarchy when they switch governments, and so you can select a government for a short-term goal and switch to another once you're done. You can also choose a peaceful, trade- and science-oriented government to develop your nation with, and then switch to another government that's more suitable for war when you want to provide your workers with some more terrain to improve.
Conclusion
The ROCX development and beta testing team would like to thank you for trying the mod and expansion. We believe it makes a great addition to the C3C gaming experience and hope that you get many hours of enjoyment out of it.
You will find civ-specific reviews and advice helpful the first time you play a new civ.
Authors: Enkidu Warrior, Blasphemous and Iztvan
