Foward Settling

[dusematic]

Has anyone noticed a growing trend towards "forward settling" in online play? Forward settling has always been a tactic to some extent in Civ. You want to maximize your resources in a land grab. However, Civ 5 has no penalty for settling far away from your capital city, except insofar as the logistics of defending it are concerned.

To top it off, with the way cities now have hitpoints, early warfare is impractical at best. A growing tactic on multiplayer right now is to do extreme forward settling. The other player cannot take the offending city without overwhelming odds. Even if you warrior rush the city, losing 2 warriors is more production than it cost the opponent to build 1 settler. Not to mention the production you lost cranking out a crapload of warriors (spearmen are worthless for anything but anti-mounted units) when you could have been building workers, settlers, etc. And that assumes you even can take the city, as there is such an emphasis on defense in this game.

Within a few months the standard strat online is going to be crank out a settler and use the warrior you start with to escort him as close to another player's borders as practical.

[sogard]

Has anyone noticed a growing trend towards "forward settling" in online play? Forward settling has always been a tactic to some extent in Civ. You want to maximize your resources in a land grab. However, Civ 5 has no penalty for settling far away from your capital city, except insofar as the logistics of defending it are concerned.

To top it off, with the way cities now have hitpoints, early warfare is impractical at best. A growing tactic on multiplayer right now is to do extreme forward settling. The other player cannot take the offending city without overwhelming odds. Even if you warrior rush the city, losing 2 warriors is more production than it cost the opponent to build 1 settler. Not to mention the production you lost cranking out a crapload of warriors (spearmen are worthless for anything but anti-mounted units) when you could have been building workers, settlers, etc. And that assumes you even can retake the city, as there is such an emphasis on defense in this game.

Within a few months the standard strat online is going to be crank out a settler and use the warrior you start with to escort him as close to another player's borders as practical.

Nice pick up and something that I have been noticing in my online Civ V multiplayer play. I agree with your analysis and fully expect this to be the strategy of choice unless you happen to drop into some veritable Garden of Eden and all you want to do is to keep everyone else out.

The game, in its current state, certainly does not punish the player for employing this strategy.

[dusematic]

Thanks. It's retarded, and I predict people will start complaining about it more and more as people get more multiplayer action under their belts and are exposed to this crap more.

Not only is there no downside to employing this strat (besides being kind of lame), there's really only upside. The ultimate and sad downside is that the game now becomes a race to build a settler first.

The radical re-design of the game has led to some serious, serious issues that i doubt they anticipated, and won't be easily fixed.


Edit: Another issue with the multiplayer I've addressed in another post if you're interested: http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92881

[EdgeCrusher]

Had my best friend do this to me multiple times and won this way during multiplayer, even though he might not have know exactly what he was doing.

I had decent territory and was building outward around my capitol and when i found out there was a single choke point out of my territory he went and forward settled it early then put all his military there.

He defended this single city and settled many cities behind it where I couldnt get to and i couldnt expand further without taking this city.

While this isnt a new strategy, the game , as you mentioned, doesnt penalise this at all and in turn makes it what you HAVE to do to succeed.

[UrBestFriend]

This strategy is a two edge sword. By settling far away, the settling nation would have a hard time improving the tiles when a war is waged by the enemy - while you easily expands. Also this leaves defensive holes into their empire during mid-game.

Sometimes it allows one to get free 'cities' once you get 3 or more warriors - easy to do when you're Germany because of the barbarian bonus.

So I don't think it is a lame strategy as its purely done after risk/benefit analysis. Of course, the lame thing would be to attack the city with just 1 or 2 warriors, or simply not adopting a winning strategy against the aggressive opponent.

Also, you can simply sandwich his city between your cities. And eventually, that player can't expand that city unless he wages war on you. Of course, if he's on a choke point then he just won via strategic positioning. But you could always research embarking and set sail towards the other side of the border and settle there.

[dusematic]

This strategy is a two edge sword. By settling far away, the settling nation would have a hard time improving the tiles when a war is waged by the enemy - while you easily expands. Also this leaves defensive holes into their empire during mid-game.

I disagree because A) that assumes the other nation will attack you, B) if they do attack, you can still feel free to improve all the tiles of all rear cities without threat, while the person you forward settled against must contend with you being right up on his capital.

Sometimes it allows one to get free 'cities' once you get 3 or more warriors - easy to do when you're Germany because of the barbarian bonus.

This might be possible as Germany, though that's a poor argument. And again, it's not a "free" city if you had to sidetrack everything to pump out a bunch of warriors, of which you're guaranteed to lose a couple if he even has one warrior defending his cap.

Also, you can simply sandwich his city between your cities. And eventually, that player can't expand that city unless he wages war on you. Of course, if he's on a choke point then he just won via strategic positioning. But you could always research embarking and set sail towards the other side of the border and settle there.

I don't think this is realistic, as, though these are possible options, once you're forced to do that you're automatically at a huge disadvantage for obvious reasons.

Again, the problem is that the game rewards this strategy with no detriments whatsoever to doing so. Being able to settle around someone doesn't address the issue.

[UrBestFriend]

Well, you are correct that it is hard to counter this - easiest way is to kill the settler before they even settle (which is hard). But since it is a legitimate strategic move (i.e. like U.S. controlling Panama canal, or invading Iraq and Afghanistan), I think it is in your best interest to just keep peace with this ambitious empire if you can't go head to head.

[cacapu01]

You have to adjust your strategy dependant upon what other people are doing. If people are going for a land-grab then I say go for it, I will follow my stragegy of keeping my cities close together inorder to keep them safer. If you feel like they are stealing all the resources without penalty then try doing the same. I played tonight and was aggravated early on because a player on my left and right both decided to snatch up land right next to me preventing me from being able to expand. I contemplated creating another settler but felt my cities would have a snake like pattern across the map leaving me vulnerable. Instead, I closed the gap between my two cities and purchased land to the waterfront to prevent exploring the area above me (which was possible because my two cities were close enough to water). Then I began production of my military and as each unit would come out of production I would move the hex or two north of the city to prevent the other players from seeing what I was doing. About 20-30 turns later I launched an offensive on the player who put a city the closest to my two cities. He was dispatched in a matter of a couple rounds. I turned my effort to other player then and was about to accomplish the same thing in about 7-8 turns, but, unfortunately, I didn't get to finish all of my plans as I ended up being disconnected!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention. One of the players who was attempting to pull this land-grab crap and cut off my progress was ☺☺☺☺☺ing and moaning a few rounds into me beating up on him and saying all anybody knows how to do is go on a war path. I thought this was funny because I am usually the last person wanting to engage in combat early, but I get sick of people crowding me so I didn't wait very long. In the future, I will engage in aggressive tactics when other players engage in aggressive expansionism into what I feel like is my territory. Don't want to get attacked then don't get too close.

[dusematic]

The fact that you were able to overcome this happening to you doesn't mean it's not a problem. It's just anecdotal, and you were fortunate to be a much better player than the person you were facing off against.

[dstahl]

This is not only a bummer tactic in MP, but it pretty much seems like an obvious tactic in Single player - especially on smaller maps. Regardless of how unreleastic it is, parking your first settler next to the enemies capital pretty much ensures your dominance over them. The free ranged attack coupled with 2 square movement allows you to harass and pick off enemy settlers/workers while you concentrate on building your own capital.

Seems like there needs to be a huge penalty for settling an early town near an enemy to discourage this type of gameplay.

[MikkOwl]

Speaking only about multiplayer here.

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In Civ4:

- Distance to palace costs were mostly a non-issue when players (as they often do) started near each other. At longer distances it was a major issue.
- Actual cost: No growth in own city that built settler for the duration of the production. No trade route. No resources. No tile improvements. Delayed expansion. City unable to contribute in any way. Cost & delay in tuns of producing settler escort & city garrison.
- Capital likely to out-culture the offending city and flip it that way at some point. More difficult vs creative leaders.
- The offending city almost impossible to defend successfully. It would need an escort to last more than a few turns since they have no default protection. And yet then very hard to keep alive.
- Settlers are destroyed permanently if attacked by barbarians or humans before settling.
This made it no problem in my experience. Just a free city for the other player.


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In Civ5:

- The costs are roughly the same as Civ4. Main difference is the absolutely required garrison unit in Civ4 and the ability to settle at any distance from own capital.
- City will not flip peacefully through culture.
- City has the equivalent of a Swordsman(?) strength unit with Bushido ability for defense for free.
- City has archer(?) equivalent attack range and damage ability in a 5 hex diameter circle. Enough to shoot up to the hex next to another city, preventing it from improving its tiles with workers.
- City can still, of course, have extra garrison be put into it, but not more than one. Does not help defend it much early.
- Settlers are captured if attacked, and can also be captured back.
- Successfully capturing the city gives a nice amount of gold (if not mistaken?).
- The city is not as valuable as a city in Civ4 when captured due to the happiness penalty of puppeting or annexing a city.
- Declaring war on the forward-settling player, capturing the city, and worse, razing it, will cause diplomatic penalties in the eyes of any AI leaders.
- Scouts are military units able to attack & capture settlers.

Summarily it is more advantageous in Civ5 to do this than Civ4, with lower risk.


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Recommended counter-tactic:

A couple of scouts (they are very cheap to build and move without terrain penalty) a bit of distance from the own capital. If there is an obvious choke point, try to put the starting warrior near there with a single scout.

Any unprotected settler that is rushed there can be captured and used as one's own. A big gain for self and a nasty loss for them. At the very least it will cause them to deploy the settler away from the intended choke point/near capital.

The forward-settling player may attempt to escort his settler with at least a scout, or warrior (probably scout due to cheap cost). If having only a single own scout, attack them when they are in the open for a high likelihood of victory (terrain penalty for them), and if you have two or a warrior there is no problem - either they settle their city immediately or pull back.

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Suggested changes for Civ5:

- Require archery technology to bombard from city.
- City strength when newly settled starts at 0, then increases by 1 per turn until full.

These two would make it even more difficult than Civ4 to pull off forward settling early on - as scouts are able to capture and are cheap to build.

[dusematic]

Good post, thanks for the input. I wasn't aware that Civ 5 had distance to palace costs. Is that what you're saying? Because I'm not seeing a literal cost in terms of gold for "corruption." If this is the case, please link me the information so I can better educate myself.

[MikkOwl]

A misunderstanding. Civ5 has no distance to palace costs. I was saying that mostly in Civ4 the distance to palace cost was completely insignificant if the other person was a starting neighbor anyway, but started to make a difference if they were further away.

[EdgeCrusher]

(deleted post)

[Azoulix]

Yes this would help.
as well as :
- distance to palace cost/unappiness
- Revolution
- culture flip

[dusematic]

A misunderstanding. Civ5 has no distance to palace costs. I was saying that mostly in Civ4 the distance to palace cost was completely insignificant if the other person was a starting neighbor anyway, but started to make a difference if they were further away.

Well sure. That's the point. It stopped people from settling 6 cities worth of land towards someone, and then filling in the space later. If people started close together, there isn't much "forward settling" to be done, and of course there will be a fight for the prime city in the middle of the neighbor civs.

[MadDjinn]

seriously guys, adapt.

Don't think: "Man, now he's won because he settled right in that sweet spot beside me; even though he's got no defenses"

Think: "Nice, free city"

Just go take the city and puppet it. Seriously if you lack 3-4 units early game to deal with aggression/cause some aggression yourself, then you need to rethink what you're doing.

This isn't a simulation game where you're just trying to super build an empire and 'oh noes' the other guy cutting you off hurts your simulation.

It's a game where only one will win, so shank the guy next to you and keep moving til you've won.

[dusematic]

seriously guys, adapt.

Don't think: "Man, now he's won because he settled right in that sweet spot beside me; even though he's got no defenses"

Think: "Nice, free city"

Just go take the city and puppet it. Seriously if you lack 3-4 units early game to deal with aggression/cause some aggression yourself, then you need to rethink what you're doing.

This isn't a simulation game where you're just trying to super build an empire and 'oh noes' the other guy cutting you off hurts your simulation.

It's a game where only one will win, so shank the guy next to you and keep moving til you've won.

Yeah, not really, supra.

[vicx]

We discourage this kind of gameplay in our LAN games by turning Rampaging Barbarians ON. RB also discourages early mil unit rushes.

If you isolate any of your cities they become very vulnerable to barbs. Paired with a higher difficulty (we play on Emperor) you can easily lose an isolated city to barbs.

[Sombra]

The negatvie impact of this strategy is...i


- It takes time to babysit your settler to the location, you are losing some crucial turns to produce another settler or jump start a wonder or doing something usefull.

- No time to look for these tasty ruins as you babysit your settler.

- IF you sent your settler so far away you are sure that another nearer civ isnt able to settle this sweet spot before you can do it... All the way for nothing.

- These barbarians are kind of pesky in the beginning. Even if you are only wounded you are easy prey to another civs warrior.

- You piss of right away other players in MP not a winning strategy most of the times

- building a street between these far away cities is a ☺☺☺☺☺. worst if somebody plugs in a city between them you will never create a trade route.

- If the other civs are warlike in the beginning. Like germans, japanese etc. they can easily "amass" the strength to either capture your settler on route or destroy the offending city.