Not as easy a question as the title might imply.

Here's what I'm looking for. Putting war aside, what's the most effective Gov/Tech/Economy setup for a would-be assassin.

My personal preference would be A Tyr Casher loaded with Bus/Res/Mil/Warfare/Strategy techs. My thinking here is that Tyrs get 1 turn attacks and with enough Warfare tech, a larger Tyr can refresh readiness while flipping missiles at countries who would be most likely to mount a CS against them.

I've run Tyr Techers in the past, but they depend on the market and timely sales to keep funded. Same would apply for a Tyr oiler or farmer. Mind you. I'm talking about assassins here, and not netgainers or even maybe "mainsteam was builds".

Recent events have got me to thinking about this simply from the standpoint of a one man band being able to maximize damage on a FS against a tag 3-4 times his size.

Suggestions?

tyr farmer. casher needs to cash. i prefer to spy and grow. you dont depend on market sales, you can dump food on the PM. not to mention tyr's 25% PCI hindrance. also, even empty acres make a little food. you also only have to purchase one main income tech while growing as a farmer.

i have slammed into clans as a solo tag many times, and a tyr/farmer/missiler with a good spal is a lethal weapon.

^

what he said

if your assassin casher gets gs'd it would be more fluffed up than farmer would be, quite possibly negative income and no other income source than sell military and/or techs off while farmer would still produce bushels to sell until population has recovered.

Except for population based production.

Stay away from the grownup threads marshal.

+1 mrford

I'd say tyr farmer too

i know all production is tied to pop but still farmer would have source of income to survive those turns needed to get population back to near normal and no need to sell military off (at least not as much as casher).

no

Thanks. I had the right idea but wrong economy.

I ran almost exclusive tyr/farmers come war time. Tempted to have a dicts in there for breaking, but high spals are the answer to that problem.

I'll never run anything but a Tyr

A 100% tree-hugger talking about creating killers. What the hell have the Hobbits done to you Dragon, brainwash? :)

nah, they converted him to killer. :P

LOL! No, sir. Call it background research for future use. My mind is far too dirty to wash, by the way.

create bonus turns, rule the server

The key in a war is to minmize non-civ killing turns. Turns are the game's most coveted asset and tyrs are best at maxamzing civ killage, especially ones with great spal.

For maximizing damage, tyrannies are best. For withstanding damage, dictators are best.

The most brutal FS will come from tyrannies, but if your goal is to have all the big countries at the end of the war, you'll want some dictators as well.

Tyranny techer has the best economy due to tech prices compared to food prices. Dictator casher has the next best economy, and with low enough tech prices will surpass the tyranny techer. You'll wreck your SPAL too quickly as a tyranny farmer doing spy ops for readiness, so I'd recommend a dictator doing spy ops for readiness. You do want to do some demoralize/CD on a target before killing it, but due to spy DR, the number of spy ops you'll run is quite limited. You'll also want to regularly update spy ops on all enemy countries every few days, but sabotage missiles becomes a pointless spy op to use after the FS. During the FS, breaking will be easier because your enemy won't be quite as well prepared, so you'll want to do sabotage missiles instead of demoralize/CD. Bomb airbases will be a very very useful spy op, and my reliance on it is what allowed me to run about 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of troops to turrets when warring. But with 72 turns per day, you'll get to do about 30 attacks and 12 spy ops per country with a dictator, and that's enough spy ops. If you run half tyr techer and half dict cash/farm, you're still getting about 100 spy ops per day per person.

Because of dictators losing less military than tyrannies due to the military strength bonus, they make excellent breakers, too. Tyranny techers are the best breakers, but you need to mix in some dictator cashers and dictator farmers to protect yourself from a bad tech market. You really need to have most of your countries capable of breaking so that you can spread the economic strain around. Breaking is a big strain on a country's economy, so you should keep all 16 countries capable of breaking (except for the ones that are rebuilding from enemy attacks). For that reason, I would not use any tyranny farmers except on restarts (which obviously won't be breakers regardless, although with these new restart rules, maybe that's changed).

My ideal mix would probably be 8 tyranny techers, 4 dictator cashers, 4 dictator farmers. I might drop 4 tyranny techers for 4 more dictator cashers, it'd also be a good mix. I'd want at least half of my countries to be dictator farmer/casher just for the spy ops.

My goal in war isn't to do the most amount of damage, my goal is to have the strongest economy so that I can do a lot of damage, and withstand enemy attacks to keep doing a lot of damage and taking down all their biggest threats. I know how much of a strain breaking is on a country's economy, so I want to place as much of a strain as possible on my opponent, and to make it so that attempting to damage me is too much of a strain on their economy. I want them to resort to only killing restarts as fast as possible. I don't care if they outkill me, if their kills are almost all on my restarts.

Simple answer is Tyranny Techer/Farmer. Early war, Tyranny Farmer is the best.

Dict cashers are really strong as well especially if you have time to get them above 10k acres and alive long enough to load up on cheaper tech. I am usually on the losing side so my breakers only last so long. If you can do a top down FS on an enemy having big dict cashers with excellent SPAL makes the economic strain of killing these massive and if the CS targets weaker builds and your dict's survive you are looking really good.

Correct Rockman, Bring down a big dict is a pain in the arse, but Dictators are really vulenerable to ABs. I rarely AB in war, but if there are big dicts out there, I won't hesitate to AB them down. Their ecoonmy will be ruined and since they are a 2 turns gov't, hitting/op turns will instead be used to rebuild, which is also degraged due to building speed penalty.

Word of caution though, ABing dicts doesn't work quite as well in FFA due to self-FA, so a looksy at the stock in the other countries in the string is needed.

Oh yeah true. I have been AB'd before in that scenario and it sucks.

Hit em at turn 100 and call it a day

1 civ GS/BR mins outside of missiles!

^Yeah... That's a little annoying

In ffa, ill use my 16 tyr missilers and cripple those dicts. Lemming and missiles and spy ops. Even at 89% sdi 100-150 missiles in 24 hrs cripples production. And those dicts, without production or growth potential are a liability more than a resource. They are good to use as inital breakers but the tyr farmer missiler with good spal wins nearly every time and has a higher ceiling.

From my experience, ABing a tyranny techer hurts more than ABing a dictator casher/farmer. The Dict casher/farmer still has some income while rebuilding, but a tyranny techer has no income at all while rebuilding. The Dict can then work on its bpt after getting fully rebuilt instead of doing spy ops for readiness, whereas the tyranny techer will probably keep its lowered bpt for the rest of the war. The dict casher/farmer can do a better job maintaining a high troop/turret count than a tyranny techer while rebuilding due to its partial production, whereas the tyranny techer can sell off a bit of tech, but will probably also have to sell off some military to fund turns & rebuilding. Obviously, neither will do any breaking after being ABd, but I think the dict casher/farmer is in better shape than the tyranny techer. A tyranny farmer is the most resilient against ABs, but they just don't match up against tyranny techer or against dict casher/farmer when it comes to being a breaker. Tyranny farmers are incredible if you run into someone foolish enough to run very low SPAL (you still find these people who seem to think a good war strategy is to have 1 or 2 very high SPAL countries and the rest with very low SPAL), but against a reasonably skilled target, they're gonna have to do a lot of exploring with their turns (which makes them perfect for restarts).

the tyr techer can just rebuild as a farmer for readiness faster than the dict can do anything..... dicts just dont have the BPT or readiness turns to rebuild and fight at the same time.

5% warfare tech means about 60 missiles per day total for your 16 missilers. Relying heavily on spy ops against a dictator farmer or casher will wreck your SPAL really fast, too. The tyranny farmer missiler just doesn't have the economy to keep up with the dictators, not when its SPAL is getting wrecked because of your overreliance on spy ops against warprepped dictators. There's a reason why I like doing just ~10 spy ops per day per country instead of ~40 spy ops per day per country. I like not cannibalizing my spies. Although early in the war, I am more than willing to do spy ops at 100% readiness if I'm taking on countries with similar or lower SPAL that have missile stockpiles. Getting 3 missiles per spy op is worth doing it at 100% readiness, and even at the risk of doing more damage to your SPAL than your economy is setup to handle.

You have to remember, not only do dictators get a 20% bonus to military strength, but their spy bonus strength means that they only have to use 800 industrial complexes to produce the same spy strength as a tyranny with 1000 industrial complexes. When you're running countries that are gunning for a good SPAL in war, that saved land is very helpful and adds even more to the dictator's economic superiority. If your opponent is trying to do 40ish spy ops per day on you, they will find themselves failing more and more spy ops as the war goes on, and they will wreck their SPAL very quickly after the first few days, even if they're running twice as many industrial complexes as you.

I'm sorry, but tyranny farmer spy countries only works when warring countries that aren't warprepped.

There are some interesting and potentially powerful strats mentioned in this thread, but, as far as your question goes, you are looking for an "assassin" style of country.

Well, the best war country in my opinion has always been the dictatorship due to the military strength bonus.

In order to maximize damage with a dictatorship, you need to fund the war effort. The BEST way to do this without being dependent on the market is to have your military tech at it's highest level, thus guaranteeing you 35 per bushel on the private market, and configure yourself as a farmer so that every turn you run is profitable.

Have just enough indies to build spies, and buy the rest of your military as needed.

There is an attack pattern with a dictatorship that maximizes readiness while at the same time doing the most damage to your enemy.

Since it takes two turns to attack on a dict, the first turn reduces your readiness, the second starts to rebuild it, thus, you might only have to run one turn to return to 100% readiness, and if you have spies, you can use a spy attack to regain that readiness and still be inflicting damage upon your enemy. :)

AB a dictator and it's over, not ideal killer.

Tyr farmer/missiler as mentioned already in this thread is it.

This was really cute to read.

There are far more better ways to regain readiness than the idle 2nd turn used when attacking as a non-tyranny. After 30 attacks (60 turns) you only need to rgain 30 points of readiness (10 turns). Between missiles and ops, there are far more than 10 turns worth of non-attacking to be done.