1 city NC vs 2-3 great city sites (but lagging tech)?

Artifex1 · Apr 23, 2014

So this is a dilemma I notice. Get good sites but then you are building a 3-4 city NC and seriously lagging tech.

Or you can wait and lose out on decent city sites and maybe even only ever get 3 cities up but get a 1 city NC.

This my friends is a dilemma. Tech or land, To be or not to be,

What do you like?

Memoryjar · Apr 23, 2014

Land or 3 cities NC and a settler ready to create a city next to NC.

danaphanous · Apr 23, 2014

National College isn't until Philosophy. You can totally get 1-2 cities up, and have at least 1 build a library by then. Then you can buy the other for 400 and get started.

How long do you wait to push out settlers?

budweiser · Apr 23, 2014

If you are going to get multiple cities at the start, its best to get them going ASAP, like by the t50 to 60 range. You might need to alter the starting build order in such a case. You wont really lag in science, multiple mid size cities with a Library can put out equivalent beakers to 1 tall NC city.

joncnunn · Apr 23, 2014

1 city NC doesn't work well unless it's a Great Library one. (And that tactic starts having problems even on King)

When you have to research the tech, minimum should be 2 city. With BNW, which makes early gold difficult to come by, some starts work better with 3 cities first and then NC. (Second city you found not having much gold but having a bunch of production and so it can hand build a library from than you getting 400 gold; say the AIs are running deficits.)

chazzycat · Apr 23, 2014

totally dependent on the lay of the land, IMO. If the sites are really nice and the AI is also close by, you want to expand ASAP. If the locations are more marginal and/or the AI is far away you can delay more and get NC up with only 2 cities.

3-4 cities before NC shouldn't really be killing you in science, assuming you got enough unique luxes connected in time to prevent unhappiness, and get libraries pretty quick.

Calouste · Apr 23, 2014

The game isn't over at Philosophy. (Good) land over tech any time.

Nick Carpathia · Apr 24, 2014

I dislike 1-city NC. Yes, you get ahead in tech at first, but then you are forced to stagnate your tech while pumping out catch-up settlers anyway.

I'm a population is king player, so I like having a decent population base to work off before I start the NC. Not to mention it both blocks off land, and gives you more empire-wide production to work on other things.

1 city NC vs 2-3 great city sites (but lagging tech)?

Artifex1

Warlord

Memoryjar

Emperor

danaphanous

religious fanatic

budweiser

King of the Beers

joncnunn

Senior Java Wizard

chazzycat

Deity

Calouste

Deity

Nick Carpathia

Unleash the HAARP

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