Adreno
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2002
- Messages
- 81
Since the previous thread derailed into a flame war and got closed, I thought I would open a new thread about early game strategy in 6-player FFAs with ancient start. I'm still learning the game and I intend to use this thread to talk about multiple ideas and ask questions without starting 1000 different threads. Hopefully this will remain about early game strategy and not derail into anything else.
Hokay! First post! Today was the first day I ever settled on snow! Had some really good terrain, unfortunately England was next to me and I managed to pretty much suicide to longbows. In the future if I have China/England near me I should really consider a warrior/swords rush before they get to their special units.
Anyhow, interesting city placement decision:
I wanted to build 4 cities without sacrificing any yield from bonus resources (if you settle on a bonus resource, the yield is the same you would get without the resource. I don't know if it's improved by granary/stables/etc but it's still not the complete yield).
So I wanted to settle Ankara on the coast near the Pearls. I couldn't settle on the deer because I would lose the yield. If I would have settled on the Tundra above the pearls, I would have had to settle the 4th city on the upper cattle, losing the yield from the cattle (because you can't settle cities within 4 tiles of each other).
It kind of dawned on me that it doesn't matter if everything south of Ankara is unusable land. I still get the 2 food 1 production yield for my city base, and I can still grow the city to 6 pop on great tiles, possibly loan tiles from Istanbul, and beyond 8 pop I'm gonna have citizens working the university anyway. My 4th city had great tiles as well: 2 cattle to start, expanded to the wheat on pop 3, and later on I was loaning some river tiles from Istanbul.
In civ3 I used to build cities the "optimal distance" from each other so that each city would get the max amount of tiles - without building cities too far so that some tiles between cities were left unused. I've found that in civ5 you can micro really well if cities share some tiles. This way you can utilize all the best tiles and you have more room to maneuver when you hit unhappiness and want to maximize gold/production.
***
Unrelated, I also realized you don't want to produce great engineers in early/mid game. Since each GP costs more than the one before, producing a non scientist will limit the total number of scientists you will be able to produce in the game. You can still take a GE from the liberty finisher, and you can still produce GE/GA points from cities as long as you don't complete the units. In an optimal scenario, you would have produced only scientists up to modern era, and you would have a lot of half way built engineers and artists. When all the crucial techs are discovered, you would switch from producing scientists to producing engineers/artists. While you're mostly burning GP for golden ages, the production/culture yield at that point benefits you more than the science yield.
Hokay! First post! Today was the first day I ever settled on snow! Had some really good terrain, unfortunately England was next to me and I managed to pretty much suicide to longbows. In the future if I have China/England near me I should really consider a warrior/swords rush before they get to their special units.
Anyhow, interesting city placement decision:
I wanted to build 4 cities without sacrificing any yield from bonus resources (if you settle on a bonus resource, the yield is the same you would get without the resource. I don't know if it's improved by granary/stables/etc but it's still not the complete yield).
So I wanted to settle Ankara on the coast near the Pearls. I couldn't settle on the deer because I would lose the yield. If I would have settled on the Tundra above the pearls, I would have had to settle the 4th city on the upper cattle, losing the yield from the cattle (because you can't settle cities within 4 tiles of each other).
It kind of dawned on me that it doesn't matter if everything south of Ankara is unusable land. I still get the 2 food 1 production yield for my city base, and I can still grow the city to 6 pop on great tiles, possibly loan tiles from Istanbul, and beyond 8 pop I'm gonna have citizens working the university anyway. My 4th city had great tiles as well: 2 cattle to start, expanded to the wheat on pop 3, and later on I was loaning some river tiles from Istanbul.
In civ3 I used to build cities the "optimal distance" from each other so that each city would get the max amount of tiles - without building cities too far so that some tiles between cities were left unused. I've found that in civ5 you can micro really well if cities share some tiles. This way you can utilize all the best tiles and you have more room to maneuver when you hit unhappiness and want to maximize gold/production.
***
Unrelated, I also realized you don't want to produce great engineers in early/mid game. Since each GP costs more than the one before, producing a non scientist will limit the total number of scientists you will be able to produce in the game. You can still take a GE from the liberty finisher, and you can still produce GE/GA points from cities as long as you don't complete the units. In an optimal scenario, you would have produced only scientists up to modern era, and you would have a lot of half way built engineers and artists. When all the crucial techs are discovered, you would switch from producing scientists to producing engineers/artists. While you're mostly burning GP for golden ages, the production/culture yield at that point benefits you more than the science yield.