Art of Future[1]: How to Become a Killer Player

Tired of losing? Learn how to make a name for yourself in one of the most exciting and popular scenarios in the multiplayer civ3 community!

What's Future?

Gone are the days of horse and lance. Now is the age of silent killers, guided missiles, and weapons of mass destruction.

Future is a popular multiplayer scenario where all techs are researched with a few minor adjustments. Here are a few.
-Entertainment buildings give more happiness
-Having any 2 of alum, oil, rubber allows for a 2-move assault unit.
-Naval academy, intelligence agency, military academy, battlefield medicine are only 120 shields

If you think you know Future because you played through modern age in single player civ, then think again.

If you never played Future before, then check out this beginner guide for starters
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=773801119

This is a more advanced guide that teaches you how to go on the offensive and snatch victories, with a mix of good habits and basic tips thrown in that players of all levels could benefit from.

In order to become a killer player, you need to keep in mind that Future is a game focused on combat. When you capture an enemy city, you don't become their new protector. You sell all their buildings and raze it to the ground! No survivors.

There is no single way to play future, and players have different flavors of play. I hope that through this guide and after many games with other experience palyers, you will find your style, and become a killer player.

The First Turns

Domestic Screen


Pretty much all you need to know

Planting your settler:

(Plant- Build city)

Move king and scout to see what is around you.
Try to plant near bonus resources that give extra food, right next to you, since the first few turns are important.


Try to plant near forests (has to be within the "fat X" that your city will later expand to), because you will need those forests for chopping. (Chop- forest, act of cutting forest)


Do NOT plant 1 tile away from the sea. Always plan on coast, or 2 tiles away or more.


If you plant near cow, wheat, or oasis, irrigate before getting granary it to get 5 surplus food per turn instantly. Then you grow every 2 turn even before granary. If not, go right to chopping wood for explorer and granry before irrigating any tiles.


Go republic when out of anarchy. Fascism is a viable option if you are industrial and especially if there are no forests around, and if there is iron and coal for railing. Then you can plant forest in 1 turn to use as chops (you can only get shield from chopping once per tile), build railroad in one turn, mine in one turn, and a lot more.

Whipping up your first Granary

It's very important to get a granary up and running at your cap as soon as possible. This is because in future, your very survival depends on whether you can grow per turn or not. WIth a Granary, your cap only needs 5 surplus food to grow per turn, and if you are not growing per turn while everyone else in the game is, then you can't even protect yourself when an opponent drops a draft TOW on you very early in the game. On the other hand, if you grow per turn, then you have more leeway in expanding and at the same time protecting your cities.

These are 5 ways you can get a granary in your cap.



The traditional chop & rush (beginner)
-Start chopping during anarchy.
-Use the first chop for explorer, the next one for granary
-Chop 2nd forest or rush using gold, which ever one is faster
Note: Industrial civs can chop in one turn even as republic



The 3 turn exp rush (intermediate)
-t1 Start chopping, set production to explorer
-t2 Rush explorer to fill 10 shields then switch back to gran same turn. Set citizen to engineer
-t3 Harvest shields from forest.
-t4 Gran completed



The anarchy engineer (intermediate)
-Engineers can add shields to production during anarchy. If you have long anarchy (5-6t), set citizen to engineer while you chop by clicking on the entertainer. Engineer will provide 3 shields (only for buildings)
-When you come out of anarchy, you will have enough shields to produce granary.



The 1 turn chop and slave (advanced)
-If you have cow and go fasc, you can time your growth to grow just after coming out of anarchy (fascism removes 1 population). Chop for explorer
-When you come out of anarchy, you chop once and in same turn, slave ciizen which gives you 20 shields. In total you get 30 shields, and granary next turn.



The wt, tow, and oow (advanced)
-If you and ally are connected by land, then go wartime after coming out of anarchy, accumulate shields faster by setting productuon to TOW infantry, then after you meet your ally, get Out of Wartime and set production back to granary. You can use the saved gold to rush granary in your second city.

Popping like a Pro

Popping Huts:

(Pop - getting a free settler or city from goodie hut)




Your chances of popping a settler increases when:
1)You pop using explorer or scout. (Never use king unless you are expansionist, or unless opponent will get it otherwise)
2)your player score is relatively low

You cannot pop a settler when:
1) You are building a settler. Switch to something else temporarily while taking the hut.
2) You have a settler active in your empire.

You cannot pop a city if you are not expansionist

You cannot pop a city or a settler if you have an above average number of cities. So that means if 7 players in the game have planted their first city, and the 8th is still walking their starting settler, no one in the game can pop a settler or a city.

So communicate to your teammates, tell them when you will plant your capital. If they ask, that's not them being mean or nosy. They want to know if they can pop their huts yet.

Defense

Drafting

After you make 1 settler and a few workers, it is advisable to reach population 7 as soon as possible and get a few drafts out to defend. If any of your cities are coastal, consider it in danger of being landed at end of turn and taken before you have time to respond, if not defended.

If the enemy objective is to spread drafts around your land and pillage, then you need to also surround the enemy drafts with your own drafts to deny them from getting on your land. They will try to hug mountains. Use artillery to reduce to 1 hp before attacking. A draft romping about your land requires three of your own drafts to deny its advance.


Having drafting cities, cities that can go above population 6 (with water source or aquaduct), by itself guaratees you have a fighting force. Try to get as many drafting cities as possible, since that enables you to pull out troops for offense and defense instantly, even while the cities are busy building other things. (increase lux slider to allow citizens to keep working without revolting)

Radar Tower

A worker can be used to create a radar tower in your territory. It gives 25% combat bomus to your units within 2 squares. It even works for air inits, including Mobile SAM.


Air Defense

Mobile SAM is your go-to air defense if you have no oil. It moves like a land unit and fights like an air unit. They are a cost-effective counter to bombers, since you can make 2 SAM at the price of 1 bomber, and the chance of each shooting each other down is the same. (With radar towers, you have 25% boost). Protect tile improvements with drafts or SAM so that they can take the hit instead of the land. SAM don't have ground defense, and will be destroyed when attacked.

Fighters: Reliably shoots down bombers, and have more range than SAM. If you have oil, make fighters instead of SAMs. Also used for scouting.

Jet Fighters: THe strongest Anti-air unit you can build, provided you have alum and oil.


Flak: these archaic forms of anti-air only shoot down planes that bomb the tile they are on and are more expensive than the Mobile SAM (which defends 25 tiles) so are pretty much useless for the new player, but do provide a useful strategy for the veteran:

-More chance of shooting down a bomber when it actually does bomb a tile the flak is sitting on.
-Cannot get shot down due to aerial combat(though it can get bombed to death).
-Does not discriminate in their ability to shoot down stealth planes versus regular planes,
-Has 6 defense and 1 attack while a SAM has none.
-Can shoot down multiple planes in 1 turn
-Can provide AA defense even on the move

So here are some advanced flak strategies.

-Defend bases or other points of concentrated attack
-Cover your units while they're walking on enemy land, since they are even effective on the move
-If you are getting stealthed (cities getting precision bombed from stealth fighters/bombers), then all you need is pack the city with a stack of flak and laugh as those those high tech planes drop out of the sky to WW2 technology. If you got rails, you can move your flak in stack to whichever city that starts getting bombed in real time.
-Use flak to defend important roads or improvements.
-Being cheap, you can put many flak over your king to provide a buffer against enemy cruise attempts to take out your king.
-A veteran flak will defeat an attacking conscript
-Flak also provides a way to give an ally a golden age, since it is the cheapest and weakest unit on the attack.




Sea Defense

How to get pesky enemy ships off your shore when your navy sucks?
-Bombard with artillery
-Sink it with cruise missiles
-Sink with bombers

Against nukes
-Have aluminum
-Build 3 SAM battery
-Build the SDI small wonder in city with a SAM battery
-Shoots down 75% of incoming nukes.
-Send explorers to allied lands to protect them too.


From 0 to 100: If there's a Frigging Army in your land

If you get landed by an army, then expect to lose some drafts. But as long as you have a steady supply of drafts defending your cities, the army will be forced to back off and heal before attacking again, giving you time to make stronger defenders , like veteran tows, army of your own.



If you get landed by an army, but you were stupid and didn't prepare beforehand. How do you respond?

Don't Panic. Even though armies are a formidable force to deal with, especially in early game and if you have no army to counter your opponent's. But if you keep it together, you can survive an army rush and even kill it if you think ahead.

Step 1. Draft as many tows as you can and reinforce vulnurable cities. Rush TOW in cities that are in immediate danger. If an army has 2 moves, it can only kill two tows per turn. Make radar towers using worker, to provide extra combat boost for your units. As long as you keep your doors shut and a constant stream of drafts to defend, the army will either be forced to pillage or lose hp while attacking.

Step 2. Go Wartime and stack shields by setting production to TOWs. Make artillery. Reduce the enemy's hp so that it is forced to retreat outside of borders (unless he has Battlefield medicine) or weakens itself with an attack.

Step 3. Even if you lose a city, don't fret. In this case, the attack has lowered the army's hp, to a third. Expect attacking units lose 2 hp for every hp of defending unit, given similar combat values. Using 2-3 artillery, I am able to reduce the army to 2 points. Upon which I go on the offensive using drafts.

Step 4. Flush out the resistence. If the enemy captured a worker, he can make a base and bring in reinforcements. Then, things get messy. But the immediate threat has been removed, and you can now be sure to not get caught with your pants down again.

Sea Superiority

Sea superiority is extremely important in future, since much of high-level strategies involve boats in one way or another. You need boats to attack, hook resources, assasinate kings, bombard, and hold aircraft.

In asserting sea superiority, you have several options. Here are some basic strategies and tips

Frigates:
-Make these to explore, contact allies, catch enemy galleons, and bombard enemy coasts early game.
-Upgrade to destroyers
-Useful as an war declaration method when you are not connected to ally via land. (bombard allied city to declare war to get back resources or OOW)


Submarines: Invisible to all except subs, destroyers, and AEGIS cruiser
-Get a sub out early if you have oil or uranium. Deny the enemy from hooking resources by sinking their galleons. If you have blocked all enemy ports with submarines and the enemy doesn't have non-vanilla navy, and you are separated by sea, then it's practically game over.
-Submarines attack the weakest unit in a stack. So you can snipe transports from under defending naval units.


Destroyers: backbone of your navy. While not as strong as battleships, there are cheap, catches submarines, and protects transports.
-Make frigates before you get oil, trhen upgrade them to destroyers. Then you have a strong navy early, and can deny enemy's galleons.
-Stack destroyers to take advantage of the defensive bombard bug. In larger games, all defensive bombard is ridiculously overpowered, making small stacks of destroyers invulnurable against even battleships when on the defense
-Since it has 1 bombard range, bombard enemy terrain only at the end of turn, and retreat out of line of vision in between bombards. (or else you will get shot at by enemy artillery)


Battleships: the strongest naval unit, and it's recommended to have them to kill enemy battleships.
-They have strong Anti-Air defense, so stacked battleships are death traps for bombers.
-It's the only unit other than cruise missile that bombards lethally without being vulnurable to anti-Air. Station battleships at enemy ports out of view, and bombard their land end of every turn, movng closer to hit deeper inland.


Nuclear Submarines
-Work just like subs, except a little more costly and moves farther. It's main feature is that it can carry 3 missiles. Sub Cruise or Tactical Nuke, which can be shot from the ocean
-Use nuclear subs, loaded with sub cruise to sneak into enemy coasts and kill their king.


AEGIS cruiser: The strongest naval unit you can make without oil. Requires uran and alum, and loads 1 missile.
-Use these to assert sea superiority if you don't have oil.
-Kills battleships and sees submarines, what more can you ask for?

Offense

The Military Advisor is right. Offense IS the best defense.
In fact, we commonly distinguish noobs from vets based on their ability to attack.

Whoever attacks has the advantage:

-It takes 3 drafts to contain every one draft from pillaging your land and workers cannt be two spaces from the offending draft without being protected by another unit. This slows you down.

-Getting bombed destroys your land and buildings and even if shoot down some bombers, you are left with more damage to your production, while the attacker isn't, and this slows you down.

-Defenders are stronger than attackers. But the attacker can choose WHERE to attack, forcing defenders to spread out. A concetrated attack on one of many possible targets is a sure victory even with same number of units on both sides.

-Attacking force objectively faces a larger force because of the time it takes to reach the destination. But as long as a defender's hands are tied with the immediate threat, there is small chance of meaningful attack into your homefront, allowing you to grow and expand your production while stunting the enemy's.




Here are some general offensive strategies

Boating: Load your first draft on a galleon and land it on an enemy city at the end of turn. if it's empty, then you can take it next turn if you're fast enough. If it's defended, feel free to wak around and pillage. If there is a worker on the shore, you can just directly capture the worker amphibiously using any unit. Otherwise just get on a mountain and be a thorn on the side.

Basing:



To hold a sustained attack, you might want to base an enemy. Do this either by stealing an enemy worker or bringing your own. Make bases at home too. Then, you can airlift any unit that does not bombard or is not a settler and continue the pressure.


Base and Bomb:



If you have oil, then you might want to make a base on a safe location near the enemy. The best place is an island off the enmy's coast (unsinkable carrier), or a mountain. Then you can do a lot of mean things. Bomb enemy terrain for starters. Bomb cities to kill buildings and population. Use figher to see if cities are empty. Use helicopter to drop units end of turn and capture cities/kill SAM's. Use bombers to clear out cities before capturing them.

Base&Swarm



Draft every turn, and make happiness buildings in cities to allow high drafting. Make as many bases at home as you want to airlift per turn. Send a constant stream of units from your base onto enemy land, pillaging and sitting on land tiles like an infestation. This works great with religious civs ( cheap temples and catheadrals) and if you can draft mechs (rubber+oil).

Cruise



Cruise missiles are incredibly strong in large games. Bring some with you on a boating party and use them to clear out cities before taking them over. One cruise in an 8 player game will easily kill 4 drafts in a city, and 2-3 hits will kill an army. But be careful not to lose them to enemies, as the results can be quite embarrasing.

Radar artillery



If you have aluminum, and you are connected by land, send radars to put craters on enemy terrain. With 3 moves, radars are hard to catch, making it suck to be on the receiving side. But a nifty way to capture one of those is to use a helicopter to drop a unit next to it end of turn.

Army



Go wartime and accumulate shields faster by setting production to a combat unit. Switch to Military academy and do the same for producing army. You can make 1 army for every 3 cities. Load 3 veteran units and drop them on an enmy to take cities, pillage, and wreak havoc. A veteran TOW army loaded onto a galleon is a formidable force that you can make even without resources. An army dropping out of the sky from a helicpter is a truly frightning sight..

Cavalry



That an industrial age unit like cavalry even has any value in future is a demonstration of how powerful "choice" is for the attacker. Even though cavalry has 6 attack, and a draft has 14 defense, you can use cavalry to throw off even the most seasoned player. Make a veteran cavalry and wait until end of turn just beyond range of sight before dashing in past the defended outer cities into the unprotected heartland. You can kill a single draft if need, and even capture a city or kill a king out in the open. Halirity will ensue.

Battleship Stack



Brute force method that is inefficient but fun. Inefficient because there are better ways to put craters in enemy cities or destroy their buildings. Fun because no one can kill a stack of battleships sitting just outside an enemy's range of sight, and nothing short of nukes, cruise, or artillery can unseat a such a beast since it's a death trap for bombers.

Nukes



A popular endgame tactic to break stalemates or assasinate a king. Requires Uranium
-pretend to buiild some other wonder until the turn you can finish Manhatten Project.
-prebuild nukes by setting production to various wonders so that you can switch to nukes right when Hatten finishes
-pair nukes with an intelligence center so you can find the king and finish off the enemy in one clean shot.
-Manhatten Project spawns a nuke every 8 turns.

Carrier:



You sacrifice the shields needed to make a carrier for tactical advantage. If you want to bomb an enemy, the most practical way is to base, which can hold infinite aircraft. But good players might use a carrier for strategic purposes.

-Find enemy quickly: Load a fighter and send it on recon missions on very distant unexplored terrain
-Bomb on the move: If you want to reposition your bombers, you don't need to waste a turn rebasing them. Just move the carrier to a different enemy and hit fresh new targets.
-Secrecy: If the enemy does not even know where your bombers are, they he/she cannot make a plan to remove the threat.

BigAss Stack o' Bombers

This is a killing blow endgame strategy.. It's simple. Build up a LOT of bombers put a base on a defensible location near the enemy and rebase it all at the end of turn (use "x" hotkey) and start bombing next turn so they don't know what the f**k is going on before it's too late. The trick is to be discreet, since this can easily be countered with an equal number of mobile sams or other anti-air for the recieving side. But a BIGASS stack of bombers that just suddenly appears out of nowhere will completely rip up a player's empire beyond hope of recovery. Unless...

BigAss Stack o' Bombers ready to rip up my land

Well it gone now

Kill the King

After all the hullaboo around armies, battleships, and bombers, you might forget that there is a way to win the game without waging a bloody war. You just need to take out the enemy king unit. Obviously, everyone will take care to guard their king, but a mix of strategy and foresight can decapitate an opponent from the top, without losing a single unit of yours, and not only will it be the best type of victory there is from a humanitarian standpoint, it's the type that makes your opponents stomp and squirm.

Trappping

It's nice to be able to explore using your king right? Well don't become this lady.



On the flip side, if you see an enemy king venturing too far away from their cap, or treading on terrain where you can easily corner it with a few units, then by all means, pump out some explorers and trap him/her! (And tell your teammates to send their explorers/scouts there too) Then, it's a race to who can bring a boat to either rescue the king or put it out of its misery with a draft.

Intelligence Agency



A key part of killing enemy king is finding out where it is. Most of the time, the king is fortified at cap, then forgot about. But experienced players won't make that mistake. Build an IA to plant spy and check cities to find where king is. If you have contact with the enemy, you can use embassy for this (but this is harder to obtain). Because of the danger of city checking, some players keave king outside of cities. In this case, you can either steal plans (which alerts the opponent), or use recon mission in aircraft.
-If you fail to plant spy, wait a few turns before planting again, since it will keep failing otherwise.
-Use military advisor to see what units a player has, once you planted spy. (free)

Nuclear Sub and Sub cruz


- load 3 sub cruise onto nuclear sub. Check cities using spy and in a city with enemy king in it, fire all three missiles. It is bound to die a sudden and explosive death.

Nuke



- Check cities or steal plans. If you find king, go nuke him. Overkill? Maybe. But it gets the job done.

Carrier



- Use fighter to recon enemy land. If you see a king naked or under a unit, then bomb at end of turn with everything you got, and bomb again start of turn if that didn't kill him.

The art of killing just the king, is to be silent and unseen. The point of using submarines to carry sub-cruise, when boats could do the same and regular cruise are cheaper, is for the element of surprise. The same goes for using carrier when you can just base at the cost of just 1 worker.

To prevent your king from dying a sudden and explosive death, you have two options. Keep your king inside a city so it can't be seen by a fighter, or keep your king out of cities so spies can't check on it without your knowledge. Thus, if the enemy has no oil, but has alum and uran, you should put your king on a mountain and cover it with units. Then, the only way they can find your king (I personally love making them waste their gold on checking every city in vain), is to steal plans, but this alerts you and gives you a chance to prepare.

Making your cities productive

The most important resource that will determine the strength of your empire will be food. That's right. Not shields, gold, but food. You should try to plant your first city near a bonus food source, and irrigate many tiles so you can boom workers and settlers. Build on rivers and lakes so you can grow past size 6 and draft to protect new cities, which then can grow past 6 and draft more units to protect new cities, and so on.

More food = More population = More gold/shields/workers/settlers = More everything.

Growing Big comes at a sacrifice to military and defensibility. Your most important task is to secure key resources such as oil or aluminum, as fast as possible and deny the enemy from doing the same. If possible, expand your empire in the direction of the resources that you're roading to, so that you don't need to allocate extra workers just to road for your settlers. (Always road to spots for cities before sending settlers there)

A way to grow strong without growing big is to grow tall. Future is a game where 1 city can produce 200 gold per turn, 100+ shield per turn, and a player with 2-3 cities can defeat an enemy with 3 times its size. This is done by building key structures.

You have several options to getting a strong empire.



Harbor, Offshore Platform: Build these to overcome limitations of your land. Even if you have terrible land, bam! a harbor and offshore turns all your sea into bonus grassland on a river (with more gold). Cheaper for seafaring civs.



Colosseums, temples, cathedrals, libraries: Have some buildings that produce happiness in your cities so that it compensates for drafting. Having several drafting cities with lots of happiness allows you to pump out drafts to serve as defense or offesnsive grunts to choke the enemy. Cheaper library for scientific civs, cheaper temples and cathedrals for religious civs. Libraries produce happiness in future.



Markets, banks, stock exchanges, dock: Produces gold. Having these in your gold-focused cities like your capital leaves you with insane amounts of gold (+ up to 100 gold per turn for a size 12 city if you have stock exchange). With 200 gold, you can rush a TOW infantry in your weaker cities that have barracks.



Factory: Use wartime to accumulate shields for a factory, then go OOW with an ally to switch production. A coastal city working on battleship does this trick well. Also, disband as many drafts as you need once out of wartime to reduce the turns left to finish a factory. Having a factory in capital with a power plant and 12 population at wartime can produce 50 shields a turn, which equaes to a TOW infantry per turn.

Power plants:

To visualize the things you can achieve with a correct setup, one only needs to look at this picture (under golden age)

The solar plant requries no factory, but boosts shields by 25%. Highly recommended for scientific civs as it's cheaper.

Hydro and Coal plants: Does the same thing, helping factory produce 50% more, but coal is cheaper and pollutes more. Recommended if uranium is not available and you need an extra push to hit 50 shields per turn.

The Nuclear power plant boosts production by 100%! Rush one if you want to build wonders faster, or a battleship per turn. Requires uran, and fresh water near your city.

Manufacturing Plant: Can be coupled with a normal power plant to produce additional 50% output. A factory with nuclear power plant and manufacturing plant achieves ridiculous production of over 100 shields per turn, finishing great wonders in 3-4 turns or a tactical nuke in 1! At this point you are laughing through the game. Requires Iron

Tips on Hooking Resources

Hook resources as fast as possible, even if you don't need it yet, since an enemy will come and try to claim it very quickly, if they can, even if its right next to you. (You should too!)

Strongly recommend using a city to hook resource, not colony. Colonies sacrifice a worker, and also an enemy can come plant next to your colony, while they can't if it's under your city's control.

If a resource is far away, plant a city on the resource, and set citizen to engineer to build harbor and wall. It's recommended to keep population at 1 so it is destroyed when lost (size one cities without culture are automatically raised). If you need to hurry production in fascism, join a worker.

If you can't find resources on your land, start boating with explorer quickly because once the enemy has got submarines out to deny you from accessing resources, it will be too late.

Use airfield or helicopter to reinforce faraway cities with more units.

Terms and Codes to Know

pop - 1. Getting a free settler/city from a goody hut. 2. A city that you got from a pop.
gran- granary

con, or call - contact
no con, or nc - don't contact me
eot - end of turn

wt- wartime
oow- out of wartime

map - (verb) to explore a player's location and land

res - resources

Resource codes. (tell your allies which of these you have in hte beginning of the game by using these abbreviations)

mechs - oil and rubber
brads - oil and aluminum
sf - rubber and aluminum
rails - coal and iron
cav - horse and saltpeter
big 3 - oil, aluminum, and rubber
aegis - uranium and aluminum


ma - modern armor
sb- stealth bomber
bs - battleship
harb - harbor
frig - frigate
gal - galleon
trans - transport

hatten - Manhatten Project
intel - intelligence agency

Afterword

Now you can stop worrying and start killing! With the strategies I've mentioned, no one is safe from your reign of terror!

Going the brute force method (armies, stacks) ultimately becomes a battle over who is bigger and stronger. But now you know there is a cloak and dagger element to this to give the little guy a fighting chance.

Keep working on your timing, the balance between economy and military. Always be mindful of what your opponent is up to. (F7 to see top 5 cities). If enemy is booming and far away, you should be booming. They they're moderately close, go screw them up with a boat or carrier while you grow bigger.

Remember, coast is danger, land is safety. Coatal cities are always in danger, so you need to protect them early on. If a city is surrounded by land on all sides 10 tiles wide, then it's not in danger, and you can expand at will. (watch out for the barbs tho)

Don't be afraid to ask questions, but most importantly, check saves. It does wonders to see how the best player got 9 drafting cities and 200 gold per turn while you only had a measly 3 towns.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2032075016

[Steven Armstrong]

Very Nice. Taught me a lot

[Luv]

impressive

[Suede]

Nice! I like how your list of the pros/cons for each unit.

[Halu]

Very nice job ant