Many people doubt the power of Sumer, writing it off as a watered-down Hittite. This is true to a certain extent, but in my opinion, the way most people are using the Hittites today (Cats and Ele's), they'd be better off going with Sumerian.
The best bonus of the Sumerians, in my opinion, is their double farm production. This gives them a maximum food-per-farm, after irrigation, of 725 (!), far greater than the relatively puny 475 of other races' farms (or the 325 of Persian farms). This huge +250 food-per-farm advantage is very useful for the elephant, centurion, or HHA strategies. Keep in mind, though, that you must farm a great deal in order to take full advantage of this bonus. I recommend no less than 18 farms, 24-40 is optimal.
I usually follow the basic 8-TC, gov. centers, markets, granary, SP strat, as I do with most heavy-economy civs (read: Greeks, Hittites). But now on to the actual strategy... First off you want to build towers or archery ranges, or both, since Sumerian is a fairly slow DM civ and may not be able to withstand a good rush. Just as long as you have some towers up, probably one or two around your TC, and several by any shallows or bottlenecks you have around you. After you tower up, proceed to build your siege workshops and stables. You can build whichever one first, but I recommend building the stables first, as they make a better defense against the common legion or elephant rush from the Choson or Hittites respectively. They can also tear up the forces of some fool who tries to take you out early with a rush of non-upgraded cats.
After you have your siege wkshops and stables all built, by which time your final research (heavy cats, ballista towers, etc.) should be underway, you should start making your army, simultaneously with your farms. Now you should figure out some efficient farming layout so you can pack a bunch of farms, close to a small number of TC's, all in a compact area (which should be deep behind your or your ally's lines, but not near any open bodies of water or anything). Remember, no less than 18, around 32 is optimal. Also remember to keep up the goldmining. It's usually good to have 2 teams (of 16 or more each) mining gold. 3 or 4 if you really want to outboom the whole game (which is fun to do, but risky sometimes, often tedious, and a bit limiting to the size of your army). I would only recommend that if you know your ally can hold his own for a while until you can concentrate on your military efforts, and if you know where your enemies are and where they aren't.
Anyway, with your army, go ahead and just improvise with it. Sumerian, like Hittite, has a lot of viable options. You can go with Cats and Ele's (which I most recommend for Sumerian), Cats and HHA's (if you want that, go with Hitt), Cats and Cents (usually not too wise), Cents Cats and HHA's (costly but pretty damn effective, with a fully upgraded army), or a deadly, costly combination of Cats, HHA's, Cents, and Ele's (You'll run outta gold in about 10 minutes though, so you better make it count). In case you really start running low on gold, Sumerian infantry goes one step farther than that of the Hittites, taking them all the way to longswords. Of course, these will be shredded by any force of cents, legions, or HHA's, but they still are a good defense, depending on what your enemy is using (well, they do well against heavy cats ... and axemen!).
And that's all I got to say about that! Just remember that Sumer has both awesome farms and fast-firing cats. The farm bonus is probably one of the most useful in the game, and their cat bonus is also very nice, making them the 2nd-best siege civ, after Hitt, of course. Their villager bonus doesn't much help in DM, but they do make slightly better forward builders than those of other civs, except for the Yamato or Assyrians.
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