The startup.

yasic

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 26, 2005
Messages
14
So far, I won a couple level 4 rounds, and am moving to level 5, so sorry if I am not high up in dificulty, but I wanted to share my findings.

For some reason, I became obsessed with the starting ages. What the best opening strategy is. I got some good empires forming in higher levels, but I got bored, and decided to re-start them.

I just wanted to share with you a couple of my findings (For a single player game):

Important ones:

1. When you just made your first city, do not make any warriors or explorers. The map around your area is all that you need (To see where the best places to make another city are), so the starting explorer or warrior is more then enough to get it. The rest of the map will easily be gotten later.

2. First thing you want to do, is rush your city pop to at least 3. Do this by picking the tiles that have the greatest food output, ignoring any gold or labor. Also, do not build a worker or settler at this time, for it will hault production of population.

3. Do not worry about city defense. At first, nothing will attack you (neither civ nor barbs), and slightly foreward in time, you should expect only a few barbs, if that. My rule: Get archery around the 4th tech, and right after that, build 1 archer for every city. (If you plan on going to war soon, build 2 for all cities). I have yet to ever lose a city (before getting into late swordsmen times) useing this strategy!

4. Unless someone here can disprove this, I claim that you will not be able to defeat an enemy civ before you enter late swordsmen times, on a dificulty level of prince (5) or higher. And in the rare off chance that you do, it would come at too high a price, that will ultimatly cost you your game!

Simple reason behind this:
-You cannot pump enough warriors to the borders of an enemy civ in time to capture a city from them. (by the time you do, they have archers defending)
-If you try pumping archers, you are sure to expect a good defence of archers in their cities, which gain city bonuses from the city itself, as well as their city protection unit trait.
-If you pump enough archers to take the city (which can be done), you will end up having little advancements in your cities (Few wonders, libraries), and the opposing city will also be war strung, so you will have alot of useless cities, which will fall fast before your opponents.




Now, when it comes to what you should build first:
I did not try going economy in the game, so I don't have any tips for that...

-If you try going a diplomatic route (Which I enjoy most):

Technology
You cannot have diplomacy without religon. I seriously think the effect religion has on your frindship is much too high. As such, for this route, I seriously advise a spiritual leader. And I encourage you to give your best effort to get as many religions as possible to your civ.

If you have a spiritual leader, the first thing you should do is research meditation or polytheism. (Do this on your first turn by clicking on the icon on the top of the screen, do not wait until it askes you for it. This will cause you to have a greater chace of discovering it first). I recomend polytheism, as that gives you a head start later on for monotheism.
(Also, this is underhanded, but after you research one, save, and research the other. If someone gets to it before you, load your game, and get another useful tech, but if nobody gets it, you just saved yourself a religon, and a ton of trouble.)

If you do not have a spiritual leader, research mysticism, then get whatever relgion remains.

Afterwards, you have 3 options:
1. Research tile techs for improving your civ. (If you have alot of fish, research fishing, god, mineing, ect, the basic stuff) Do this one if you have alot of material around you.
2. Push for monothiesm. (this is needed if you do not have a spiritual leader, and missed the buddism, and hinduism)
3. Push for the alphabet tech. Don't do this if you are in contact with at least 3 other civs, or are at least not expecting to be by the time you get it researched.


Production
There are sevral paths you can take here:

1. Relgious friendship.
2. Emprire building.
3. Kingdom building.

1. If you slipped a relgion, you can bet it came from a spiritual leader who wants to do this himself. So your in a race even if you dont know it.

You want to get as many other civs into your religion as possible. If you get them to convert to your relgion, you will start a friendship that can last even a later relgious breakup. If you let the other relgions get them, they will have a greater chace of becomming enemies, which will force you to abandon your diplomatic dreams.

To convert them, you need to do 1 of 2 things: Either build a trade route between your civs, or send missionaries. Eventually they will both converge, but you need to pick one for starts.

Trade route:
Though I advised against this before, this is the one time when you want to build a warrior (Or explorer if you can) for map info. You will not be connecting your first route to the capitial of another city, but to a new city they build, so you need to keep updating your map. During this time, keep food maxed.
Once you finished building a warrior, start a temple. As soon as you get to 3 pop, this is where you must make a risky choice:
You need stonehenge, It will give you moses, who then makes his special relgious building. however, you also, need a worker to build roads, and a settler for a second city. You need to build all 3 of those, but pick the order, If you decide not to build stonehenge first, pray nobody else is building it.

Build your city from your settler in the direction of the closest civilization, and build a road between your 2 cities. (Ignor farms, mines, ect). Then from your second city, build a road to the outskirts of another civs farm (2 spaces away), their workers will handle it from there. Do this again for anther civ close by.

Then continue on...

Missionary route:
For this one, follow the above the same, but have the order be (Wonder, settler, worker, temple). Then produce a couple missionaries, and enjoy spreading your religion. (Also, dont build roads to your opposing civs in this case, use the worker for your own means)







This will be finished tommorow... Thanks for bearing with me

Also, suggestions or improvements for this guide are welcome :)
 
Thanks for your systematic thinking and writing. For one thing: I am guessing that earlier wonders are hard to get at higher levels, like in civ3, so we'd better adopt a safer way. That means settler and worker before trying wonder. Maybe a key tech is metal casting for forge and engineer. With an engineer specialist running, you will get a great engineer for sure, and rush a wonder.
 
I remember a strong Civ 3 strategy was to ignore wonders all together, so your play wouldn't get dependent on them. It's even harder to get wonders in four, because your production washes out in monies like you just won a cheap slot machine prize when you were going for the jackpot.

This stops cascading wonders, and that's neat. It used to be when someone built one, four others got built that turn since people just switched the production to the "next best" wonder.

More risky now. You really have to decide you want a wonder early on, and make sacrafices to get it. Then build a strategy that makes it worth it.
 
Path said:
I remember a strong Civ 3 strategy was to ignore wonders all together, so your play wouldn't get dependent on them. It's even harder to get wonders in four, because your production washes out in monies like you just won a cheap slot machine prize when you were going for the jackpot.

This stops cascading wonders, and that's neat. It used to be when someone built one, four others got built that turn since people just switched the production to the "next best" wonder.

More risky now. You really have to decide you want a wonder early on, and make sacrafices to get it. Then build a strategy that makes it worth it.

In civ 4, I find it very hard to get by without wonders. mainly because I often times only build them in 1 city (Due to the risk of having them lost for cash, I find it safer to build them in the top producing city...), and thus have their build times get down to like 17 turns. (I had 4 wonders take exactly 17 turns to build on my last game of prince)
 
True, and with marble, stone, and leader benefits...don't you start to feel like making your capital a wonder factory? It feels right, but I wonder if its worth it :p

Mostly I want the pretty movies.
 
Path said:
True, and with marble, stone, and leader benefits...don't you start to feel like making your capital a wonder factory? It feels right, but I wonder if its worth it :p

Mostly I want the pretty movies.

I wanted the movies, but they all had that staggering bug. Seems after seeing a staggered movie 20 times, they fix. (Stonehendge doesn;t bug for me anymore), so that might be good now :p.

I still find it funny that the most important wonder for my game style is stonehendge, as my relgious cult rests upon my getting of moses or not..
 
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