Starts: Is there a dominant strategy?

Suppose your goal is to win the highest percentage of games on King difficulty.

Is there any strategy that beats:

1. Tech = pottery, writing, whatever you need next to work tiles, make sure to get calendar before GL is built
2 Build = worker until pottery, switch to shrine, switch back to worker, build GL
3. Settle only coastal tiles if at all possible

I have not played enough games to qualify to have a strong opinion on these issues, but my hunch is that this works on King practically all the time. Building a scout instead of a shrine may result in more goody huts, but the shrine frequently offers a lasting advantage. It is rare that you are attacked before national college is built and after that your tech advantage will soon protect you or let you go on the military offensive as conditions on your map dictate.

What I would like are ideas for improving on this strategy so I could experiment with them. Otherwise, I'm basically playing the same game over and over

What is the victory condition? On King you have to screw up pretty badly to lose. You get the tech lead so early by end game you can easily be 30+ techs ahead.
Pretty much any tradition or liberty start will work on King. About the only start that would be harder on King is the Honor/Commerce one simply because the AI can't produce the carpets of doom to milk for gold after the Honor finisher

The current wisdom holds that scout is always the best first choice, typically followed by either another scout or a monument. The value of scouting cannot be overstated. For example, for every city state you locate you will receive at least 15 gold, double if you are first to locate, and faith if it is a religious city state, which negates the immediate need for a shrine. If you meet all CS's in the first 50 turns or so you will have collected at least 240 gold, or as much as 650 gold on a standard map with 16 CS's. This gold will let/help you rush buy an archer or even a settler, both of which will speed up your build in a big way.

As for tech path I don't think going straight for writing is helpful, and building the great library slows you down in a lot of ways. Pottery should be the first pick in cases that there is a clearly an abundance of faith you could pick up from your location's land and resources, e.g. desert, salt/iron/copper, +4 from natural wonder or tundra faith. The other reason for going pottery may be that you spawned near exclusively plantation luxuries with a good amount of hills around and no jungle (if jungle, you need bronze working). You might also go for pottery first if you started near an abundance of wheat or deer so you can get an early granary up to make 3 food tiles.

Otherwise you should pick animal husbandry or mining, depending on the terrain. Make this judgement based on how flat the land is, how many sheep/cows are around, and how likely the land is to have horses in the area. If there is jungle or lots of forest you will clearly need mining first to chop it down (and receive hammers for the forest chops), whereas in more open and/or flat terrain husbandry will be the better option to boost your production from the tiles. Horses are a 2 hammer tile so this will be crucial to boost early production if you have spawned in a flat region with lots of grassland. If you have mining luxes mining is probably the better first choice, especially if there is stone or marble around.

"What's the Victory condition"

I wasn't specifying one. To be honest, it's almost always diplo or culture. The goal of % wins means you can't take a lot of chances. You have to prevent big mistakes.

Moving up from King level, I have to take chances to win.

The dominant strategy is scout first --> tradition 3-4 city opener --> filler policy --> rationalism.

I don't see a need to rush writing so quickly in SP, unless you want to gamble on the extremely fast-going great library. You do need writing in time to get libraries started/finished in a timely fashion in expansion cities, but you will often need happiness tech before it's time to queue up libraries.

Thanks Rev

I read this as suggesting a strategy of getting your cities built first and worry about tech later. I'm sure everyone agrees on the value of knowing the map. I've been using the initial warrior to scout until the GL build gets underway, and later sending out a unit to finish the scouting or steal a worker. I still meet the City States but likely lose out on the goody huts that were not close to my start location.

I've typically been so far ahead on tech that I usually skip rationalism for awhile and go for culture instead.

But your responses are helpful. Let me try the alternatives and see if they produce and even bigger advantage on King.

No...

On king, it really doesn't matter how you open up tbh. I'm not saying that in a condescending way, but in an informative and honest way. You could open with a worker, scout, warrior, monument, etc., and it wouldn't make much of a difference. I'll address each point subjectively.

1. This tech order would work fine for King. If you plan on moving up, you should ditch the GL rush altogether, as you'll never get it on higher difficulties. I prefer to go pottery into animal husbandry, as finding horses can boost your cap's early production and really help clarify where you should be expanding.

2. My build is always scout, scout, into either a shrine or granary. I steal workers from CS or nearby civs, though, which doesn't work well in lower levels due to how long it takes them to build one. Never skip your scouts. Scouts grab ruins, meet CS, define borders, explore terrain features/expands/chokepoints, can defend workers/settlers from barbs, can worker steal from CS/civs, and can harass/pillage a neighbor who DoWs you. They are much too valuable to skip.

3. Settling coast isn't dominant enough to warrant such a train of thought. Unless you have an abundance of sea resources, water tiles will never be worked. The reason cargo ships give more yield is because you have less tiles to work in the city compared to an inland city. Say you have 14 water tiles in your city. Each city only has 36 tiles to work, so unless you have fish/whales/etc, almost half of your tiles are useless. Even if you have sea resources, you have to deviate from your 'science' tech path (NC -> universities) to tech for lighthouses, blow hammers on work boats, and finally blow hammers on a lighthouse.

Settling on a river and/or bordering a mountain can be much more beneficial to your early game imo. Just as important is the type of resources you are given in the early game. If you spawn with wheat and salt, for example, this is much, much stronger than something like incense and stone. Not only are the base tile yields very high, but they are improved into amazing tiles at techs that are reasonable to unlock early (mining/pottery).

Thanks Ahead

Interesting how you view the coastal cities disadvantages. I have been connecting cities with harbors and sometimes have not built a single road.

But again, let me try the alternatives that people seem to be agreeing on here.

jshelr said:

Thanks Ahead

Interesting how you view the coastal cities disadvantages. I have been connecting cities with harbors and sometimes have not built a single road.

But again, let me try the alternatives that people seem to be agreeing on here.

Click to expand...

Even if you have harbors, and even if you play Carthage, you need roads for more than the connections. That extra movement is vital for moving your troops and workers. Without that mobility, your really vulnerable to any attack.

Just to elaborate on the not going writing thing, libraries don't give that much of a boost by the time you've beelined writing. Typically you''l have 3 pop by then, and that's +1 science. It's not really worth it at that point. Instead you could be building archers, shrine, granary and settlers to grab the surrounding land and call it your own before someone else does. The time spent building the library that early along with the 1 GPT maintenance makes it a bit of a drain!

Also the reasons for choosing husbandry or mining first are not just contingent on getting a worker.

As I said before, horses on the map in range adds production to your city without a pasture when worked. In addition, going mining brings you closer to bronze working which reveals iron on the map which also adds production to your city if it's in range. Even if it's not in range, you can settle another city where it will be. Early production boosts like that speed up your game, especially when there is a lot of food around to support the growth to begin working it without starvation or going stagnant.

So it's not like this strategy is part of the whole early worker steal thing you see from higher levels. Besides, on King, I don't think the AI will have a worker for you to steal as early as these choices matter, giving weight to Ahead's point about it not really mattering that much.

I would say however that going archery first does tend to hurt you in most cases, but if you do go that way I think instead of a second scout, an archer will be a better choice.

Aheadatime said:

The reason cargo ships give more yield is because you have less tiles to work in the city compared to an inland city.

Click to expand...

I thought it was for realism since it is a lot easier and cheaper to transport huge amounts of goods by ship. Caravans in history never provided enough capacity to really supply a huge population with all the food and goods.

Bulky low-valued commodities, like grain and construction materials were traded only by sea routes, since the cost of sea transportation was 60 times lower than land.

Click to expand...

For further information see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_commerce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

jshelr said:

I've typically been so far ahead on tech that I usually skip rationalism for awhile and go for culture instead.

But your responses are helpful. Let me try the alternatives and see if they produce and even bigger advantage on King.

Click to expand...

Scouts are more than just map knowledge. You meet city states faster (thus getting more gold, sooner), have more lotto shots at finding ancient ruins, have more opportunities to steal workers from city states or AI nations, and with 2 units you can block an AI settler in rough terrain from settling towards you in perpetuity. This is in addition to map knowledge, which is of course useful unto itself. Edit: to build the case for scouts, consider the expected value of the above against the expected value of a (non-stolen) worker or monument.

Rationalism for tech is the strongest pick. You don't HAVE to do it, but it's the strongest. If you finish it, you get more science and can also faith-buy great scientists to vault to a key military tech or just conjure up a faster end-game SV. This is the reason it's "dominant", which is the topic of discussion in this thread.

I thought it was for realism since it is a lot easier and cheaper to transport huge amounts of goods by ship. Caravans in history never provided enough capacity to really supply a huge population with all the food and goods.

Click to expand...

This game gives history a passing nod, at best. It's history-themed, but you're still talking about a setup where *tactical* engagements of armed forces happens over the course of centuries early-game, and still many years later, and where an army can't cross even 1/8 of the map in several years, let alone make a trip like Eurasia inside of one.

Scout, Scout, Shrine, Monument, Settler, Settler, Settler. Go 4 city tradition, steal workers with scouts. Get a faith producing pantheon. Rush National college but get luxury techs first to stay happy.

Get relatively early sailing for a 2nd trade route. Send food trade routes to your capital to make it grow, grow grow.

Rush civil service for 2 food farms and grow grow grow! Get engineering for another trade route. Get Universities for science. Possibly xbow tech for war.

CraigMak said:

Scout, Scout, Shrine, Monument, Settler, Settler, Settler. Go 4 city tradition, steal workers with scouts. Get a faith producing pantheon. Rush National college but get luxury techs first to stay happy.

Get relatively early sailing for a 2nd trade route. Send food trade routes to your capital to make it grow, grow grow.

Rush civil service for 2 food farms and grow grow grow! Get engineering for another trade route. Get Universities for science. Possibly xbow tech for war.

Click to expand...

To make your instructions clear, are you going engineering before education? For the most part, I agree with your advice, but if you're trying to gouge science I don't think the marginal extra food defeats earlier universities in most cases.

z284pwr said:

...On King you have to screw up pretty badly to lose. You get the tech lead so early by end game you can easily be 30+ techs ahead...

Click to expand...

30+ techs?

Sure, on Kind someone should be ahead in techs, but 30+?

TheMeInTeam said:

To make your instructions clear, are you going engineering before education? For the most part, I agree with your advice, but if you're trying to gouge science I don't think the marginal extra food defeats earlier universities in most cases.

Click to expand...

I've been experimenting with workshops before universities in four city tradition, and some games where you have low gold or low production, it's worth it to research metal casting before education. For liberty games, it's almost always useful because aqueducts are on the way to workshops.

There is no exact formula for start strategy, you just need to prioritize the first three points from the 4x abbreviation: explore, expand, exploit.


Prioritize scouting, growing your capital to 3-4 population before starting to build settlers so you can plant cities in good spots, working the best tiles and improving those tiles and other resource tiles. Train enough military to hold of barbs and any other threats, but don't exaggerate on early military since early hammers are very important. There are of course rushing strategies, when you want to built a massive military early, so there are variations according to situation.


Since in civ 5 science is so important, you want to prioritize growth and NC. Later on prioritize civil service for extra food, and Education. Build universities and work the slots ASAP. A good strategy for a fast NC is to get to 3-4 cities fast, maybe rush buy a library in the last one, and time building libraries with getting Philosophy so you can start on it right away.


A good build order for the initial game in the expo's would be granary (so you can both grow, and send food cargo) and library (sometimes you can switch, if you don't need the granary that fast).
In the capital usually it's not optimal to build a granary before settlers, since that delays settling your other cities, and does not really help when building settlers since growth is stagnated (it may add some hammers, but that usually does not make up for delaying the settling of expo's). After settlers you can build granary for growth, and then other stuff like caravans and units. You don't really need to rush library, just time it so you finish it when expos finish it.

Any Build Order no matter how good it is, is not set in stone. For example there is no point in building a Shrine if you don't want a religion and don't have a good pantheon that can really help you accelerate your start. Sometimes you need one scout, sometimes you need two or more. Sometimes you cans skip a monument and get one from Tradition, so you can start on your settlers faster. Sometimes you don't get to steal workers so you need to add workers to the Build Order, etc.


I would advise that in general building early wonders is a bad idea, especially Great Library, since it is very hard to get on greater difficulties, and you should be focusing on expanding at that point. On the long run this will give you more benefits. Of course there are some specific strategies that include an early wonder like Temple of Artemis, Pyramids, or others.


The tech order in the early game can vary from game to game very much. Since you need all the ancient era techs, you need to time them, and get them when you need them. Don't go for writing first if you don't need/have the time to build libraries soon, get other techs that help you now.

Prioritize techs that help with tile improvements (for example there is no sense rushing calendar if you don't have calendar resources). Techs that reveal strategic resources are also very important, because they help you make better decisions when settling, and give you extra hammers early game, which are very valuable.


Regarding your military, your initial warrior should come back and protect your tiles and workers after some basic scouting. The scout(s) should continue the scouting. Don't attack barb units early, especially with melee units, since you will most likely put yourself in bad positions. If there are lots of barbs get some archers to defend. Don't take the barb camps right away. Other barb camps will spawn because there is plenty of land that is not visible. Sometimes barbs will capture the AIs settlers so this will delay them and leave the area open for settling. Later on those barb camps may give you valuable stuff like influence with city states and/or free workers.


There are of course many more tips/tricks but usually good prioritizing and timing events is the best strategy, no matter how general it may sound.

If I was playing on King I'd go for Scout, worker until pottery finishes, Shrine once pottery finishes > finish worker > Temple of Artemis. If the opportunity presents itself I'll steal a worker from a Mercantile or Military CS and forego building my own worker.

The growth and Great Engineer point from ToA is too much for me to pass up. I'd use the GE to snag Leaning Tower later on and buy another GE from it to get Sistine Chapel or Forbidden Palace.

This strategy works nearly all the time for me on Immortal so I think it would be a shoe in on King. In fact, you could probably even snag Stonehenge alongside ToA (I've done so a couple times on Immortal) for a really quick GE and a guaranteed religion.