Advice needed!

Okay, I'm Augustus Caesar and I'm playing an 8 man standard map on noble difficulty and I am in a bit of a predicament. Kind of.

It is kind of early in the game and I want to start pumping Praetorians out but there is only 1 visible source of iron in a spot where 2 other civs I believe could get to it given the time.

Now it's a crappy spot and I already have 2 production towns but no commerce towns and that's bad, if I put a city here it would be another production town and it has desserts. Now can somebody give me your input?

Also I don't know how to upload screenies to hear, all i can do is take them. Also, how do I put all those resource pictures and stuff on them? Because that is pretty snazzy.

For now, here is the save.

1 - Which civs could settle the iron site?
2 - Why bother rushing? You have more cities to settle than you could hope for.
3 - Why the hell are you building the Pyramids in your capital?
4 - Why are you playing with 8 civs, instead of the standard?
5 - Why don't you start at turn 0, post a screenshot of the start and wait for people to guide you through?

There is an iron in the desert east of Antium. You should have no trouble at all claiming it, the other civs are nowhere in sight right now. A quick tip, your workers have built some unnecessary roads.. use the worker turns to put something on the flood plains instead. But definitely road between cities to spread the benefits between them, including the future iron. Turn on resource bubbles.. I don't know the hotkey because I just hit the yellow button in the bottom right.

Why not build pyramids? or should I be claiming more land?
I am playing the standard I think, 8 civs including me.

I'm kinda nooby so I didn't know I should always be claiming new land. The unneccessary roads were when my workers had nothing to do near the beggining.

You don't seem to be in any danger of losing the iron, although you're miles behind where you could have been in development at this stage. Pyramids was definitely not the best build so early - you could have had 2 settlers, 3 workers and a few warriors for the same of hammers, and then you would have 4 cities, and still probably had time to squeeze the mids in after that, if you really wanted, although by then Praetorians might be more attractive.

Only HRE is visible and he's miles away from the iron, but you definitely need to do more scouting. It would also be good not to lose out on all those floodplains to the west. Get them cottaged up and that'll pay for lots of soldiers.

Also city 2 should have gone monument instead of granary, then it could have been working grass copper by now which is a humungous tile. And why oh why isn't the gold mine built????

I have the gold mine built now. In about another dozen turns or 2 I'm gona post a new save. I'm building Praetorians right now to go to war w/ Korea.

austincm said:

Why not build pyramids? or should I be claiming more land?

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You answered your own question ...and workers too

Now it's a crappy spot and I already have 2 production towns but no commerce towns and that's bad, if I put a city here it would be another production town and it has desserts.

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I wouldn't call Antium a production city, its more of a waste city as its doing pretty much nothing! Your capital is working a an uni8mproved tile too so get those Workers working, building all those roads distracted them from doing something actually useful like farming, mining or chopping.
By the way, grassland Cow, a Fish and Iron is a pretty good foundation for a city, despite all the desert.

Avoid the Pyramids for now, I remember you used them to run Universal Suffrage last time..... you will be far better off without them. They will be of no use to you till you learn to use specialists and realise that Representation is the only excuse to use them

austincm said:

Also I don't know how to upload screenies to hear, all i can do is take them.

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Use the Attachments icon .

That icon appears when you are authoring a message. If you don't see that icon, then you are using the "Quick Reply" mode and should first hit the "Go Advanced" button, so that you'll get access to more options, such as uploading files.

After clicking on the Attachments icon , a Manage Attachments pop-up window will appear.

Browse for the screenshots on your computer and then upload them.

For each screenshot in the Manage Attachments pop-up window, after having hit the Upload button, a link to each screenshot will appear. Right-click on the link to the first screenshot and copy the link (using the "Copy Link Location" option or something similar, depending upon which web browser you are using). Then, switch back to the window where you are writing the message. Click on the Insert Image icon . In the "Please enter the URL of your image:" text field, paste the link (Ctrl + v OR right-click and choose the Paste option). Click on the OK button and you'll get a link to that image embedded in your message.

Repeat the process for each uploaded screenshot. Here's an example, using a random screenshot:

Also, how do I put all those resource pictures and stuff on them? Because that is pretty snazzy.

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Press Ctrl + r when in the game.

Actually, press Ctrl + r, Ctrl + t, and Ctrl + y. The keys are all right next to each other and so it is easy to remember to hit them all. That way, you will turn on Resource bubbles, the Terrain grid, and square Yields, giving you snazzy, easy-to-interpret screenshots.

austincm said:

Why not build pyramids? or should I be claiming more land?

Click to expand...

As has already been mentioned, you would be a long way ahead if you had invested those hammers in expansion. Pyramids are an extremely expensive wonder both in terms of hammers and in terms of opportunity cost. With the land you have you would have been much better off skipping them. As it is, you've only got 4 turns to go on them so you may as well finish them.

I'm kinda nooby so I didn't know I should always be claiming new land. The unneccessary roads were when my workers had nothing to do near the beggining.

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Neither of the floodplains in Rome's BFC are improved yet. Your workers definitely had something to do.

If you post the 4000 bc save (it should be in your autosave folder) you'll probably get a couple of people who will play shadow games and give you an idea of what is possible from that start.