Just for fun, here are the "recommendations for peaceful expansion" written down for a new player more than 12 years ago. Much of it is based on the material available on this and Apolyton's site. While not a comprehensive guide, it shows quite a bit of passion for a game already more than a decade old at the time of writing. Experienced players might find the detail a little boring and will certainly be able to offer critical comments.
Building the First City
Once the game has started, your first task is to find a suitable location for your tribe to settle. You should not try to find a perfect spot. Every turn you spend wandering in search of a location other civilizations are collecting taxes and building items. Still, it is worthwhile to look at the visible terrain and find out whether there is a better spot in the immediate vicinity.
Now, what exactly are you looking for? The priority should be food, because the faster the population of the new city grows the sooner it can work additional squares or send out new settlers to improve nearby terrain and found additional cities. A second concern is resource output which you need to build both settlers and some military units for exploration and defense. Trade is nice, but relatively unimportant at the start of the game.
When looking for fertile land, remember that, if possible, the city square is automatically irrigated when the city is founded. However, grasslands and rivers do not benefit from irrigation at the beginning of the game because of Despotisms production penalty. For this reason, the most fertile squares are oasis squares, grasslands, rivers, plains, hills and forests with game. An oasis produces three food units per turn, the other squares produce each two units per turn.
Among the fertile terrain squares, forests with game, plains with horses and hills with coal have the best resource output. In the absence of these squares, oases, dimpled grasslands and ordinary plains are the best spots for founding the city, as they all produce one resource in addition to the food. Some river squares also produce a resource. However, settling on a river is risky since there is no way to tell beforehand whether the square will have any resources. Without resources from the city square early production will be slow.
While the city squares productivity is crucial for a citys early development if it is low you cannot send workers somewhere else instead the nearby terrain is also important. Special resources are always useful, but they should not necessarily affect your decision where to settle. This is because most special resources can only be harvested at the expense of food or resource production. Early on, they are temptations to be resisted. This applies to gold, oil, gems, fish, and, to a lesser extent, coal and horses. In the absence of a forest with game, a river is the perfect terrain to have near your city. At least some of the river squares will have resources, and the river will allow you to irrigate adjacent squares later. If there is no river nearby, dimpled grasslands are the best squares you can hope for. Ordinary grasslands produce food, but theyre empty calories, since they dont produce any resources. Plains squares are acceptable in the long run, but you will need to irrigate them before they can feed the city. If your settler is located in a dimpled grassland square, but there is a lack of other such squares nearby, consider moving to a plains square and settle there. The plains square gets irrigated as the city is built and the grassland square can be worked by your citizens. This is preferable to settling on the grassland square and having slow population growth until a first settler is built and has irrigated the plains.
When you have found an acceptable city square and two more decent squares for your citizens to work, you can usually ignore the rest of the terrain. There will be time enough to improve it when it is needed. The only exception to this is an inordinate number of infertile squares (arctic, tundra, mountains, hills and ocean squares without fish). In that case, it might be helpful to move a square or two away from this area in order to give your first city a perspective of growth in the long term. There is no reason to be deterred by jungles and swamps; in the long run, they can be turned into fertile grasslands.
On rare occasions, you will have two settlers at the beginning of the game. It is not normally a good idea to have the second settler improve terrain near the city founded by his colleague. Of course, it is helpful to have such terrain improvements early and, more generally, to have a settler that does not require support. However, these benefits can hardly compensate for the lost opportunity of having a second city producing food, resources and trade within a few turns after the start of the game. For that reason, it is much better to look for a second city site a few squares away from your capital.
Early Defense and Exploration
After the first city has been founded and its citizens have been assigned to harvest as much food and resources as possible, it needs to be garrisoned. You cannot know whether there is an immediate threat looming in the darkness that surrounds the city, but, if you fail to prepare for that eventuality, the city could soon be conquered by rivals or barbarians, its ruins left for archeology. A minimum of defense is therefore necessary.
Early in the game land barbarians attack with cavalry units, while sea raiders tend to arrive with legions. Against this background, a single fortified phalanx (modified defense strength of 3 in the absence of terrain bonuses) should be regarded as minimum defense for a city. Before the discovery of Bronze Working, militia will have to do, but you should not feel terribly secure with these amateurs guarding your city.
Your city should build such a garrison unit immediately. When completed it should, without moving away more than a single square from the city, reveal any part of the city radius still covered in darkness this may allow you to reassign your citizens to a more productive square and then fortify inside the city.
Once the city is secure, it is time to send out an explorer. The more you know about the continents geography, the better you will be able to plan ahead. Beyond the citys immediate surroundings, there might be attractive sites for settlement, minor tribes to visit and even rival civilizations to meet.
The perfect unit for exploration is cavalry. It can move swiftly through open terrain, and its attack value can be helpful when it encounters trouble. It is likely, however, that you have no idea about Horseback Riding at this point, and in that case a militia unit will have to do. While it is not a natural explorer, it is cheaper to build and will be finished earlier than cavalry.
The explorers task is to uncover hidden territory and visit minor tribes as quickly as possible. If the unit is destroyed in the process, it should be replaced as soon as convenient. If the continent turns out to be really large, a second explorer should be sent out later.
Population Growth
Around the time of your explorer leaving town, the citys population increases for the first time. A new citizen appears on the city display and starts to gather output from a third square. The question to ponder now is whether to let the population grow further or to put a few people on a wagon train.
In order to increase the citys population by one increment, you have to fill the food storage box by arranging the citys production in a way that results in a food surplus every turn. As long as your government is Despotism and its likely to stay that for some time , you can have a maximum food surplus of two food units. This is because, under Despotism, any square which would normally produce three or more units of an item (food, trade, or resources) produces one unit less than normal. This is a minor effect for trade and resources, but for food the results are far-reaching. In effect, the penalty cancels the benefit of irrigating fertile grassland and river squares. Therefore, with the rare exception of irrigated oases, squares produce at most two food units. This means that working a square is at most a break-even proposition for food, because every citizen in a city requires two food units per turn. The only source of extra food to be stored away is the city square, which is worked for free and will give you at most two extra food. Working a square that produces just one food, such as ocean or forests, costs you one of your extra food, slowing population growth. Working two such squares would halt growth.
The importance of this limit to surplus food becomes clear when it is combined with the fact that the amount of food required to grow the population depends on the size of the city. Every new citizens costs ten food units plus ten more units for each citizen already in the city; this amount is halved if the city had a granary before the last population increase. A size ten city spends 110 food to make a new citizen, or 55 if it has a granary. A size one city spends 20 food to make a new citizen, or 10 food if it has a granary. Since the amount of surplus food is fixed under Despotism, it takes increasingly longer to grow the citys population.
The mathematics of population growth under Despotism provide a strong incentive for building any settlers you might want to send out as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the larger the city will be and the longer it will take to replace lost population, so there is a strong case for beginning to produce settlers as soon as the explorer has left town.
When arranging the production of settler units, it is important to take account of the fact that the settlers completion will cause the citys population to drop. Since smaller cities have smaller food storage boxes, any food stored beyond the maximum amount for the city size after the population decrease is lost. It is inefficient to produce surplus food beyond that amount. The consequence to draw from this is to assign the citizens so that the required amount of food (20 for a size two city) is reached exactly when the settler is completed. When that happens, the city will immediately regain the lost citizen and the process is repeated. Effectively, the city will stay at the same size until it has built all the settlers it needs.
Horizontal Growth
While population growth inside the city (vertical growth) is difficult in the early game for the reasons given in the preceding section, there are enormous advantages to growing your population horizontally, i. e. by founding additional cities. The most obvious one is, of course, the strategic advantage of taking control of the territory before someone else does. However, there is also an economic advantage to horizontal growth: the free use of the city square. While it is true that by building a settler and founding a new city you take one citizen away from the home city and make him reappear as the first citizen of the new city, the rule that the city square does not need a citizen to be worked means that by giving up production from a single square in the home city you gain, in the end, production from two squares in the new city. The total output of your empire rises, so spreading your population is a very profitable operation.
When looking for new city sites, you can generally rely on the principles discussed earlier with regard to the location of your first city. The main difference is that now you need to take other cities both exisiting and planned into account. While your cities are small at the moment, you do not plan to keep them small forever. With that in mind, you should found cities roughly 3 or 4 squares apart so that their radii do not overlap too much. Also take care that any special resource squares are included in some citys radius. You might not be able to work these squares right now, but it would be a shame to leave them inaccessible. Finally, while ensuring that each new city has a minimum of food and resources, you should try to occupy sites that you may later need for specialist cities. For example, coastal sites within reach of several fishing grounds might eventually become large trade centres. Locations with a good mixture of fertile terrain and hills can be turned into production centres for wonders and military units. A few port cities at opposite coasts can also be useful in the long run, as they allow you to spread the unhappiness, which ships at sea will cause under representative governments, making it easier to cope with. (Your tribesmen, who probably have no clue about Mapmaking, let alone Navigation, might talk a bit about your obsession with coastal sites, but after all, you are supposed to be the guy with a vision.) If the continents geography permits, build a city on an isthmus. Such a city operates like a canal, with ships entering from one side, leave to the other, and can be extremely helpful in naval warfare later in the game.
It is an interesting question when and where garrisons for any additional cities should be produced. There are basically two methods to do it, and you either have to buy safety at the expense of speed or vice versa.
Safe Expansion: You build the garrison in the city sending out the settler that will found the city to be garrisoned after building the settler itself. The settler can spend the period of the garrisons construction improving terrain near the home city and constructing roads toward the prospective city site. The disadvantage of this approach is that it delays the founding of the new city. Also, the home citys production will be slowed down by support costs during of the settlers journey.
Fast Expansion: The garrison is built by the city that needs it. This approach avoids the delays involved in the safe method, but leaves new city unguarded for a few turns. Also, there is no time for terrain improvement around the settlers home city.
Of course, these two approaches can be combined in various ways, for example by doing fast expansion from the home city (which, after all, also supports the explorer) and then switching to safe expansion.
A city should send out settlers until it is surrounded by friendly cities. Once it is no longer on the frontier, it is more efficient to leave expansion to the other cities. The city has now become a core city (see below). It should build one more settler (which it will permanently support) and then begin to concentrate on its own growth.
Managing the process of peaceful expansion described in this section is your most important task during the early game. Other things are going on at the same time, but they have a supportive role or can be considered preparation for later stages of the game.
Harnessing the Power of the Land
The last settler built in a city that has acquired the status of a core city will have the permanent job to improve terrain. As the city will now be allowed to grow, the settlers first task will be the preparation of additional squares to be worked by new citizens.
Its likely that you will need to irrigate some squares now unless the city has many river or grassland squares with resources inside its radius. Though its not spelled out in the manual, you can only irrigate a square that has a source of water. Initially, this means squares adjacent to an ocean or river square. However, irrigated squares also count as a source of water, so you can steadily irrigate inland. The free irrigation you get in a city square doesnt count for this purpose. It is not necessary to maintain the chain of irrigated squares. If, for example, you irrigate a hill, irrigate an adjacent plains square, and then change the hill into a mine, you will not lose the irrigation in the plains square. Irrigation adds one to the food in a square. However, under Despotism this has no effect on actual production in grassland and river squares; only plains, deserts and hills benefit from irrigation, but deserts are extremely infertile even when irrigated and irrigating a hill is useless because such a square only produces the food it costs to work it.
While the movement benefits of roads are nice, the economic benefits are more important. Roads add one trade to a grassland, plains or desert square. Roads and rivers are the primary sources of trade for most cities.
The ideal square under Despotism produces 2 food, 1 resource and 1 trade. To achieve this, a dimpled grassland needs a road, and a plains square needs irrigation and a road. Some river squares start this way, but you cannot improve those that do not.
Normally, terrain improvement will proceed faster than the city can grow; at this stage it has just one surplus food because it supports the settler, and before a granary is in place, growth will be very slow indeed. Since it is inefficient to boost the output of squares that will not be worked for many years to come, the settler should now help building a road network connecting your cities. This has the immediate effect of speeding up the movement of garrisons and settlers and will be invaluable in wartime. While building roads, the settler will probably move to other parts of the empire. When you see a nearby square that can be improved to the immediate benefit of another city that works it, do not hesitate to put the settler to work. The settler is no longer just its home citys engineer, but part of your empires civilian army that can quickly be sent whereever urgent work needs to be done.
When the road network is in place and the squares currently used are optimized for production under Despotism, there is still no reason for your settlers to rest idle. Their next task is to prepare squares for an eventual change of government. This means irrigating grasslands and rivers, but also mining some hills that you will be able to work given the increased food surplus. It is a reasonable goal to have about ten squares ready for each city. Priority should be given to frontier cities who will necessarily lag behind the cities in the interior in respect to population and infrastructure.
Core City Management
Cities that no longer send out settlers to new city sites have been described as core cities. This classification has no geographical or military implications; it merely indicates that such cities are free to concentrate on their own growth and infrastructure.
Since core cities no longer build settlers, they will eventually grow beyond size two. On the other hand, they have to support a settler, so they normally have a surplus of just one food unit. As a compensation for low food surplus, a granary is an ideal improvement for core cities.
A problem linked to city growth is that of unhappiness. There are various methods of dealing with this problem, and choosing between them requires a thorough understanding of the issue. At this point, a detailed discussion of the mechanics of citizen unhappiness is in order.
Depending on the difficulty level, the first few citizens of a city are automatically content. At Chieftain this is 6, at Warlord 5, at Prince 4, at King 3, and at Emperor 2. After that every new citizen will be unhappy.
Also, under versions 3 to 5 of the game, additional unhappy citizens will appear in random cities for cities founded after a certain limit of cities has been reached. When you have a number of cities twice the limit, each will have one more unhappy citizen than they would have if you had not exceeded the limit. For each new set of cities, unhappy citizens are added to all cities. Eventually, unhappy citizens even get turned into "very unhappy" citizens who need to be subdued into "simple" unhappiness before they can be contented. Needless to say, at some point, building or conquering additional cities just is not worth the trouble.
The city limit beyond which additional unhappiness occurs depends on the difficulty level and the form of government. At Emperor level, the limit is 6 cities for Despotism. Things start to get critical once you exceed a number of 12 cities which is the limit beyond which even the founding citizens are made unhappy by additional cities. This is another reason not to put your cities too close together because covering space with less cities means that it will take longer for you to reach the limit. If you do get beyond 12 cities during your early expansion phase, it is highly advisable to build the Hanging Gardens which turn the first unhappy citizen back into a content one and should keep you comfortable up to 18 cities.
As you can see, the need to suppress citizen unhappiness depends on the size of your empire, the government and the difficulty level. We know that you govern by Despotism during your early expansion, and we'll assume for the following discussion that you play at Emperor level and that you are planning to have either up to twelve cities or up to eighteen cities and the Hanging Gardens. That means that all citizens of a city but the first start out unhappy.
In this scenario, the second citizen (who is the first unhappy one) is easily dealt with. Under Despotism (as under Monarchy and Communism), you can suppress up to three unhappy citizens simply by having a corresponding number of military units in the city. Since you have a garrison unit in the city anyway, this is exactly what happens to the first unhappy citizen.
It is tempting to deal with the next two unhappy citizens in the same manner. In some cases, that is your only choice, but it has a drawback. Martial law works only under repressive forms of government and by depending on it you reduce your flexibility to change governments at your convenience. For this reason, it is preferable to build a nice temple. If you have Mysticism, it will make two citizens content and let your city grow up to size four.
As the city begins to grow towards size five, the ideal, but unlikely scenario is that you have already discovered Religion. In that case, you should attempt to build J. S. Bachs Cathedral. Otherwise, you have two choices. You could build the Oracle which doubles the temple's efficiency. The problem about the Oracle is that its effects are cancelled by the discovery of Religion which is an extremely valuable advance for maintaining civic peace. Therefore, the Oracle may have a rather short shelf-life. If you build it anyway, do not allow yourself to be reluctant about researching Religion. If you are the one to discover it first, you have at least a good chance of replacing the obsolete Oracle with J. S. Bachs Cathedral. The other choice is to resort to martial law. To a lesser extent (because you already have the temple and are therefore not relying exclusively on the military) the drawbacks mentioned earlier still apply; the difference is simply that you have now run out of attractive alternatives. When you use military police, remember that you are not building these for defensive purposes, so non-veteran militia units will be quite sufficient. Two of these permit you to let the city grow up to size six. (Remember that this limit is higher if you play on a lower difficulty level or are aiming for a smaller number of cities.)
This is about it for the early expansion phase. Theoretically, there are other options to increase the population limit even more, but they are not recommended. Colosseums are too expensive to maintain at this stage, and luxuries are inefficient under Despotism because, with a standard trade income of one arrow per square, you need to turn the trade income of two squares into luxuries to afford one more citizen. More importantly, the luxury rate is a very crude tool anyway, because you cannot limit its effects to the cities where luxuries are actually needed. Creating entertainers is a local measure that can be useful in an emergency, but they are extremely inefficient, because on top of their absence from the fields (which cancels out the benefit of having an additional citizen), they cannot feed themselves, so they cut into your food surplus.
From the discussion of unhappiness the following recommended build-order emerges for core cities: First, build the granary to facilitate growth. Then build a temple to keep the growing city under control. Finally and unless you decide to use a wonder, build additional garrisons.
An important aspect here is the timing. While you are probably unable to speed up the production of granaries and temples, you can slow down population growth by reassigning citizens. Before the city grows to size three, the granary should be in place, so it can save you half the surplus food required to grow to size four with a food surplus of one food unit per turn that means twenty turns. The necessity of a temple before allowing the city to grow to size three depends on whether the city already suffers from unhappiness. You can check the happiness display to find out whether your garrison alone is keeping the city from falling into disorder. If that is the case, there is no point in allowing the city to grow without a temple.
Special Purpose Cities
A core city that is properly garrisoned and possesses both a granary and a temple has about all the infrastructure it needs under Despotism. Such a city can be turned into a special purpose city.
The Barracks Town is the most immediately useful of these. This city, ideally one with an exceptionally high resource output, builds a barracks and then takes over the production of garrison units for other cities. This can significantly speed up the production of settlers and, as a result, your expansion as a whole.
The Wonder City starts building a wonder of the world. The most important wonders in the early game are those stabilizing the mood of your citizens, i. e. the Hanging Gardens and the Oracle. Needless to say, resource output is most important here.
The Science City is destined to become your primary place of research. The plan is to build both the Colossus and Copernicuss Observatory in the same city, creating a city which produces lightbulbs at a fantastic rate. Many players overlook these two Wonders because they only affect one city. Taken together, though, their effects multiply, making them twice as effective as two separate cities each with just one of these Wonders. Its full glory will only become obvious when a library and a university have been added, but at that time, the science city will produce as much research as about four other cities with such improvements. The city should have the long-term prospect of excellent trade income and, because you want to grow this city as large as possible, good food supply.
Other core cities, after they are done with their infrastructure, should simply build caravans to help with any wonder that may be under construction, giving priority to wonders for the science city. Of course, be careful to send in the caravans just prior to the wonders completion, so their value is not lost if you are forced to switch to a less expensive project.
I think Genghis Khan and Shaka Zulu are far more dangerous than Ghandi...
