Dido, Carthage city rush/Beeline.

[Megiddu]

I'm currently playing with a 'wide' strategy with Dido of Carthage, where I settle along coastlines and expand fairly early. As a test, I've played a short game. Successfully made my first few cities really early into the game.

A descision I made quite early was that I wanted the Collosus, and so I made a beeline for it in Iron Working. I began work on it straight away, mostly due to fear that I would lose my chance to build it.

I was wondering if this is a sound strategy for future games I intend to play, in multiplayer and do you think I will be able to juggle a defense?

[yang573]

Well the main problem I see with beelining for wonders (especially this one) in the early-game is that you may neglect science, infrastructure, and improvements. The last two probably aren't as important with a wide empire compared to a tall one, but you may really fall behind in science if you go for this wonder. If you play against experienced humans, it will be very difficult to catch up.

Also, humans are probably more likely to attack you if they see that you have a wide-empire with little defenses. Just something to keep in mind.

[Megiddu]

With the free harbours I get with Dido, I don't have to bother too much with infrastructure. I am able to keep my people happy enough with the number of workers I have, but yes I've definitely felt that I am behind technologically now that I look at it. Which is a real shame.

I suppose I might have to go back to the drawing board. Thanks for your input!

[Cobra]

Carthage is an early agressor, especially on maps with a lot of water. When playing civs like this, you want to hold off on expanding early. Outside of your core cities (depending on the map size, usually 3-4) you want to wait before settling any new ones. Didos unique units are early game, you want to try and take advantage of that.

The early ship is great for harassing enemy coastal cities, and if you can amass enough you may even be able to capture a couple. Mostly, with the ship you get early sea dominance, but some games this might not be that helpful however. The elephant riders are decent, but they still have the same weakness as regular horsemen, and considering spearmen are pretty prevalent early game, it might be a gamble.

To really get the most out of dido, you want to make an early game push, which means rather than going for wonders or settlers, you focus on unit production and happiness. Picking up wonders early only slows you down, unless you absolutely need them, skip them. The collusus is decent, but requires you to maintain trade routes, and if your going to war this makes it that much more diffucult, coupled with early game barbs that love to end those expensive trade routes.

Her unique leader trait may seem great early, but its decieving. Even with the lib bonuses, the amount of unhappiness you get early from new cities may lead you crippling yourself. All while making you very vulenrable. The free harbor doesnt justify early expanision at all, it only really shines once your able to take enemy coastal cities and later when you have the happiness to start spamming new cities (industrial era and up).

Really, Didos defianately one of the weaker civs. The early units are at odds with one another. One favors open wide plains to make the most of the mounted bonus, while the other wants more of a coastal map to be of use in the early game.

[kafkaclone]

if you arent close enough to some city states to use cargo ships carthage really sucks. being able to walk through mountains is useless. the elephant special unit is inferior to the roman legion which takes less effort to build. in reality only one elephant actually made the crossing of the alps and it had no military value but was used as hanibals personal taxi. another problem with the historical accuracy is they used indian elephants not african elephants which have longer ears but are smaller in stature. on all the surviving carthaginian coins you will see indian elephants...not african.

[Ryika]

Playing wide Carthage isn't really a good idea imho. Getting enough unique resources to plant 5-6 cities is hard enough, but getting 5-6 resources at the COAST is just not going to happen.

And playing wide + getting an early wonder is not really viable on higher difficulties. But on Island-Maps that's not really a problem anyway, just conquer the city that builds the wonder for you.

[kafkaclone]

another problem with carthage is it almost never starts you on a river. this is a huge disadvantage for population growth later on. the cartheginians were the direct decendants of the phoenecians who invented the alphabet we use today. they also made modular type boats that allowed for replacement of individual damaged parts. the romans were able to challenge them at sea only later after they captured a carthaginian vessel and learned this technique. carthage/phoenecia were the techo leaders of their day but this game makes them seem as if they were retarded also rans. and yet hannibal was within inches of destroying mighty rome. and it didnt have a damn thing to do with elephants.

[Ancientciv]

Awhile back I played a mess of Carthage games trying to get one of the most stupid of challenges out of the way (killing a Roman unit with a forest elephant by attacking over a mountain). In the end I had to save an elephant until the very late game, liberate Rome, capture a city with a mountain next to it, give Rome the city, give it some units (tanks in this case), move some stealth bombers close, declare war, bomb the tanks to a hairs breath of life and then kill one with the damn elephant.

That story over here is my theory on Carthage. assuming king to immortal level:

1. Assuming access to the sea use the early naval ability to explore and meet as many CS's as possible. Follow the advice above and focus on the development of three or four powerhouse cities and develop your navy. The advange you get from the harbor thing is that you can colonize your first few cities at a distance in strategic high defense locations.

2. If it looks like I can scam the great library I usually do just to get the free library at the same time and get the ability to build ampetheaters early. To do this I go for writing as my second tech and follow a liberty track going first for the free worker and then for the extra production and then for the free settler. You need some forest or hills to pull this off at the higher dif levels plus setting your first city to production after hitting a population of 4. HOWEVER, for Carthage I would go for the Great Lighthouse (perhaps after the GL) simply for the extra sea movement.

3. The way to go broad with Carthage is to focus on building 3-4 productive cities and position yourself to capture coastal cities of aggressors (after perhaps inviting war by keeping your millitary a little on the small side). Scenario: You have three coastal cities with walls and a couple of defensive units and 6-10 ships. This is begging for Greece or Rome or some other AI to attack you. They in turn likely have a few coastal cities. Wait for them to attack and while all their units are occupied in attacking one of your cities, you take there beutiful coastal summer playground depleteing their resources, the size of ary they can field, etc. and get a puppet that you can convert to a real city AFTER you have gotten stuff like the National College and other important natinal wonders out of the way.

4. Elephants are rarely useful for all out war (as poor Hannibal discovered). But they are fantastic for exploration and picking up coin killing barbarians. On a big map with mountains it worth picking up that great general on the Honor track in order to get the ability to cross mountains early with Elephants. Also it is fun in the late game taking out that pesky warmonger city packed up in the hills with mountains on three sides as your GDRs blithly ignore mountains.