Epic Speed, Warlord difficulty :blush: , and auto assigned to Napoleon.

http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/8753/closeworldjs2.th.jpg (http://img384.imageshack.us/my.php?image=closeworldjs2.jpg)

This is where I started on the Earth2 map. I popped a worker from a Goody Hut that was 1N of where i settled. 5 turns in and i've discovered no resources apart from food, and only 1 of those food resources is on land.
What should I do now? Should I research Mining to get to Bronze Working and see where other resources are, or should I get Animal Husbandry so I can put the sheep to use. Another reason to go for Bronze Working would be that i could start to cut down the forest's which are kind of closing me in.
Where should I put the Settler when it's built? Should I stop the settler and build something else?

Save file attatched. I use BUG mod and I think i'm up to date on patches :)

Any help appreciated.
KiTBOH

I would go with Mining->BW. You already have lots of seafood resources so you don't need to work the sheep just yet but you could use some chopping and mining.

Would...

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5275/civ4screenshot0002tg8.th.jpg (http://img160.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0002tg8.jpg)

...the drawn on blue BFC be a good location for a second city? I would then aim to militarise and take Cyrus' city in order to get the elephants and allow further expansion north. Would I be better making the city on the other coast? Or even making it in the middle of the landmass. I'm not entirely sure because it only has one special resource :/

Thanks

I think where you've drawn it is a good choice. If you've got BW you should be able to chop those forests down quickly and pump up your military.

Worker from a hut? Is that possible? I have never had one.

You should have razed Cyrus's capital right after your first post. I'd settle 1S of where your Warrior was in the first screenshot for a decent production city.

Worker from a hut? Is that possible? I have never had one.

I think you can pop Settlers and Workers at Settler/Chieftan/Warlord levels.

Warlord and below you can pop Workers and Settlers. I think you stop poping Settlers at Noble+, as I've gotten a Worker once. Once.

I have had 2-3 settlers pop in a row before, but then i've never really played above... the one above warlord ;) all my games are on easy modes because i'm still quite bad.

However, Cyrus went down easily, I built 4 Axemen in one city (with barracks) and 3 axemen 1 spearman in my capital. He had 3 cities, 1 was destroyed and i settled in the other 2. The capital will have 'naners and rice? in the BFC and I'm thinking settle in between the Stone and Iron, so as to stop BFC's overlapping and get 2 resources. Are there any problems that are glaringly obvious to the more experienced eyes of CFC members?
Also what techpath should i follow.

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/9296/civ4screenshot0003hr7.th.jpg (http://img264.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0003hr7.jpg)

http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/737/civ4screenshot0004va0.th.jpg (http://img359.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0004va0.jpg)

Thanks for the replies btw :D

Whenever you settle a city the primary thing you should look for is food. The more food a city has the faster it will grow and help your empire. Settling there just to get those two good resources should be fine, there's even a freshwater lake to farm... but scout around a little more, hopefully there's some seafood.

With Cyrus out of the way it looks really good for you, just don't stop expanding! You can afford lots of cities easily at the warlord level. Is Napoleon organized? I can't remember, but that'll make it even better. Expand like crazy, preferably until you run out of room. Fill up the area around you and then when you're ready, head to the jungle-- jungle tends to have lots of great riverside grassland underneath, all you need is a large worker army to cut it all down. If you want to have a cottage economy, cottage spamming the jungle would pay off big time.

As for techpath, writing is good, get those libraries up. Then I'd recommend following one of the paths to code of laws to get it asap. Courthouses will help your expansion even more, and with your traits you'll get them cheap.

Here are the probabilities for settlers/workers in goody huts. This is for Warlords, but it's probably the same on BtS.

Settler/Chieftain: 10% Worker 10% Settler
Warlords: 5% Worker 5% Settler
Noble-Deity: 0% Worker 0% Settler

OK thanks for the tip Joshua :)

Sounds like you have started to grasp the "rush" concept, which is good. You are also learning the price for keeping enemy cities. As you go up in difficulty, it becomes more and more economically painful to keep enemy cities once you take them out. In fact, on Emperor, I will often even raze an enemy Capitol if it has no wonders or isnt a Holy City, with the intention of resettling it later when I can afford it better. Now, that trick doesnt work so well when there are other AIs competing for the available land, but if you find yourself on a landmass with only 1 other AI, and you want to take him out, but cant afford to keep his cities, just make a mental note to re-settle later, maybe after Currency, or you build the GLH, or Code of Laws, when maintenance wont hurt you so much.

I'm getting a lot better at understanding the military concept in this game. I came from the Total War series whereby you could win a war with the right tactics and a much worse army. In this game doing that is nigh on impossible.

I'm trying to get a proper grasp on placing cities in the right spots. I have sisiutils .pdf guide on my lappy and i was using it to try and make cities for a particular purpose. Needless to say my commerce cities ended up with more hammers than my production cities, which were stuck at size 3 due to a lack of food :<

I also have problems with Research paths. I understand that some things are good like Civic Service and Code of Laws but i dont understand why for anything other than the quite obvious bonuses, i.e macemen from Civic Service...i think :P It'll come eventually from trial and error and people helping me out on this forum ;) but it's coming slowly, I have yet to win a game from anything other than having the highest points in 2050 :S

with regards to winning prior to 2050, I'd suggest that you opt for either domination victory or space race victory since these are the ones usually easiest to learn.

Learn what units that works well together and what their counterparts are.

When I started out on Civ, I think I played ~20 games with setting "small and normal speed" on a pangea map. What I usually did was to start off with an axeman-rush to learn how that worked and what you needed against their opposition, then I either teched to pikemen+trebuchet or musketmen + trebuche/catapults. That is usually when your next attack will come. Make sure to build a few extra siege weapon since you will need to sacrifice them to inflict collateral damage. Also, sacrifice newly built units and make sure your old veterens get more experience and inflicting the killing blows.

After that I usually attained a tech lead, went for liberalism for free tech which was spent towards rifling. As soon as I was able to build riflemen I started mass producing and shortly thereafter everything was destroyed... Usallly around 1700-1800 AD

I think the easiest way to win is to early get a tech advantage (done by having more cities that produce lots of tech) to gain those cities you usually have to fight in the beginning and conquer land. And then utilize that advantage to build superior units and run over opponents. And when you have done that sufficent times so you feel that you can do that almost depending on what start you have, you then move up to next skill level ;)

I'm getting a lot better at understanding the military concept in this game. I came from the Total War series whereby you could win a war with the right tactics and a much worse army. In this game doing that is nigh on impossible.

Your army can be inferior as long as you learn how to use seige. People have won wars with technologically inferior units by bringing along plenty of catapults. They aren't needed for an early rush, but anything after that they are a nessecity as cultural defenses rise and you'd have to suicide dozens of perfectly fine units attacking otherwise.

Not sure how much you've played before to know about using seige, but just making sure. Many novices ignore it and get frustrated very quickly. (I would know. :p )

As for research, just look at what the technology gives you and what other technologies it leads to (and what they give). For example, if you want a medieval war, you'll want to focus in on all the medieval war techs... civil service (from mathematics and code of laws or feudalism) and machinery (from metal casting) for macemen and crossbows, engineering (machinery, construction) for pikemen, trebuchets and better roads, fuedalism (monarchy, writing) for longbows, guilds (feudalism, machinery) for knights, etc. The tech tree branches out in many directions with multiple routes so find what you want and go for it. If you can focus in on specific military techs you can easily get a large advantage in a war, attacking before they can build newer units.

Some techs also give you things if you're the first to reach it, so there's a bit of a race there. Many techs along the religious route found religions if you reach them first... some like music and physics give free great people for the first... the biggest tech race is "liberalism" (requires philosphy and education) which gives the first a free technology, which is pretty huge. So once the medieval era is winding down it often makes sense to beeline it before the AIs grab it.

OK then, thanks :)

As for siege I learned about the necessity of bombarding cultural defenses down pretty early on.
I didn't grasp the concept of then suiciding said units in order to cause collateral damage. I still try and do it as little as possible, though, because having to constantly produce 60% catapults in all of your cities gets tedious after a while :/

as for keeping a tech lead, i'm not very good at that :S i find by the 1900's i'm behind EVERYONE.
I'm generally 2nd-3rd when coming up to the end of the game and find myself building up armies to destroy as many cities in the last few turns as possible.

I think i'll try playing on a small map with AI's in order to get used to certain methods and tactics.

Thanks :)