starting build order

[lordmacroer]

lists, or links to good threads both appreciated. thanks.

[elthrasher]

Originally Posted by lordmacroer

lists, or links to good threads both appreciated. thanks.

Warrior
Warrior
Research Horseback Riding
Horseman
Horseman
Horseman

(always rush the above with gold when possible; hammers are too slow)

Research Alphabet, Writing, Code of Laws using your capital, 100 gold city and the cities of the AI/other players you take with your horse army.

Settler
Settler
Settler
...
Fill up your land and put these guys on gold so you can get more settlers out faster. You are aiming to get to where you can do about 75 science per turn. Don't build defenders unless you need to. Use chokepoints and your horse army to defend. Most of your cities should be empty for the entire game.

Research Literacy (if you still need it), Democracy (switch), Currency (if you still need it) and Banking. Use your Great Scientist to get Industrialization.

Research University.

Oxford University

Bomber
Bomber
Bomber

Until you win. It won't take long.

[lordmacroer]

thanks,

now how about for maximum economic advantage, what would you build then?
and what do you make your thrid citizen you build in the capitol do, farm, cut trees, or fish?

[elthrasher]

If you want an economic victory, you want to reach the Industrialization and Corporation techs first for the 5 gold per city per turn bonuses. That's obviously huge if you have a lot of cities. Get them both with 20 cities and that's 200 gold per turn for free on top of any other gold you're earning. This bonus is affected by Democracy and markets. So you want a bunch of cities, those techs and markets (buy them because they will pay you back quickly). You may consider Banks in your high-output cities but you don't really need them everywhere since you only have to get 20,000 gold.

If you don't want the economic victory, then markets aren't really needed. Get the free one for currency if you can, but other than that just the ind/corp bonuses will give you plenty of money for rushing units.

Generally the buildings in CivRev aren't that worth building. Yes, you do want markets for an econ victory, libraries for a tech victory and temples for a culture victory, but they aren't needed if not on your victory path. The general problem is that these buildings are 40 or 60 hammers while a settler is just 20 so you can always get more gold/science/production by founding a new city.

As for how to manage your capital, the main thing to keep in mind is that you should focus on one task at a time, especially in the early game. If you want to grow your city, then grow it. Most of the time you don't need to grow your cities much. Use Irrigation or a Humanitarian to grow all your cities. Growing one city isn't that big a deal. The exception is some Greek or Egyptian strategies that involve having a powerful capital. Much of the time when I play, my capital just stays at 2 population unless I get free growth. I usually use my capital for building units in the early game then whatever later on. Your capital is just a starting point and should be ideal for kick-starting your game. Its importance past the first 20 turns wanes considerably.

So if I grew my capital to 3, it would probably be because I wanted to build a settler before Code of Laws. It might be because I have three forests to work and want to be able to work all three or it might be because I have three sea tiles and want to work all three. A lot of the time I will just assign my citizens to work forests and I'm done for the game. Of course, I'm playing MP and those games tend to be fast, many ending in the ancient era. If I'm in for the long haul I will probably wind up growing someway, somehow.

[lordmacroer]

Originally Posted by elthrasher

So if I grew my capital to 3, it would probably be because I wanted to build a settler before Code of Laws.

WTF, how are you even gonna research code of laws with one size 2 city? your wack man




on a different note, i dont mean economic advantage purley in means of coins and economic victory, im talkin about like production capacity. like how is the best way to get lots of powerfull cities with good buildings the fastest.

like obviously, building a bunch of warriors and horsemen right off the back is not gonna be the best start economically because all of your production is going towards units instead of settlers and buildings.

[elthrasher]

Originally Posted by lordmacroer

WTF, how are you even gonna research code of laws with one size 2 city? your wack man

Indeed, but I'm also very good at this game. I wouldn't research CoL with a single 2 pop city. I would use my capital, my 100g city and some number of cities I've taken from the AI/other players. If expansion is my goal, then spending 5 turns growing before researching a 60 beaker tech isn't going to get the job done any faster. Smaller cities grow faster than large ones so I can replace my lost population (if I feel that is necessary) faster by not growing.

In a typical game I would have my capital (2 pop), 100 gold city (2 pop) and AI cap (3 pop) so I can do 14 science per turn. That's Alphabet in two turns, Writing in three and CoL in five.

If for some reason I only have two cities (perhaps an island start), then I would grow one of them so I could do 10 beakers per turn instead of 8. Obviously it's more efficient to earn multiples of 10 when all the techs cost multiples of 10.

Originally Posted by lordmacroer

on a different note, i dont mean economic advantage purley in means of coins and economic victory, im talkin about like production capacity. like how is the best way to get lots of powerfull cities with good buildings the fastest.

like obviously, building a bunch of warriors and horsemen right off the back is not gonna be the best start economically because all of your production is going towards units instead of settlers and buildings.

Warriors then horsemen is very much the best economic start because there's so much treasure on the map to be had. You earn gold for taking out barbarians and you can conquer other civs. You may also find artifacts. The most important thing to do in the early game is explore and get to all that gold. It won't be waiting for you very long.

No matter your goal, the best way to build an economic advantage is to just get out there. Instead of researching Alphabet so you can build a library and tech faster to reach Code of Laws faster, you build a horseman who takes out a barb hut for a free galley that quickly finds Angkor Wat yielding the Great Pyramid in your capital which lets you switch into Republic immediately (though I would tend to favor Fundamentalism).

An aggressive stance just works best in this game, whether SP or MP.

[lordmacroer]

ok that makes sence. is it possible to be successfull without playing so aggresively?

does anybody even ever build temples for military victories?

why is code of laws so important?

[elthrasher]

Originally Posted by lordmacroer

ok that makes sence. is it possible to be successfull without playing so aggresively?

Well, not so much in MP if your human opponent(s) aren't joining you in playing passively. Aggressive always beats passive in this game. It's just how it's balanced.

But if you are playing SP, you can certainly adopt a more passive posture. In this case, you'll still want to start with warriors because barbarian gold is so plentiful in the early game, but then you could either start expanding (especially as Rome) or grow your city huge and mighty (Greece, Egypt, Japan in particular). Just be aware that this is a less efficient way to play. The fact that settlers are only 20 hammers and there's no real drawback to settling zillions of cities (like happiness/economy issues in Civ4&5) means that the settler is pretty much always the best build, other than military units of course.

Following a route like this on deity probably means you'll be fighting a lot of AI legions for a long time. Eventually when you gain enough of a city/tech advantage, the AI will turn cowardly and stop sending troops to be slaughtered. If you stay small and don't get a big tech advantage, you may wind up overwhelmed, especially with enemy units all over your productive tiles. That's why it's best to strike early while the AI is weak and then expand at a much faster rate than the AI is programmed to. Doing this basically puts the AI into turtle mode and you can basically do whatever you want after that.

Originally Posted by lordmacroer

does anybody even ever build temples for military victories?

There isn't much point, however grabbing the Ark of the Covenant for free temples can be pretty nice. At 40 hammers and a game that rarely lasts more than 60 turns, you just don't get enough bang for the buck in hammering out temples. Plus, if you expand heavily, use a scientist for Industrialization as soon as you can (generally around 500 AD, but in the BCs in a good game) and then get Oxford University, you will have bombers vs. pikemen and won't have any real need of culture.