So what are your secrets on growth?

Since my first Emperor -victory as Venice, things haven't been going so well for me on this difficulty level.

I moved up two steps from Prince because King felt just like Prince, but with a small head start for the AI's. Map seed and city placement appears much more important than before, for instance: If I'm going for anything other than an early war, I often find myself facing a warmonger AI with an army of ridiculus size early in the game. The times this happend it was partly my fault: not building enough miliary units.

But that's not what I wanted to discuss here because that's just one of my minor problems. My biggest issue is GROWTH. Again and again I find myself lacking behind in science because I fail to keep up with the AI and their insane growth. I thought I had covered all bases but appearently I haven't. These are the measures I take:
-Micromanaging of the city screens: prioritizing production when building settlers, wonders and other important stuff - focusing on food when I don't.
-Going with religious +growth bonuses
-Improving tiles rather early
-Mostly aiming for a tall empire, with 3-4 cities and a tradition opener/finisher
-Building food wonders, such as the Hanging Gardens.
-Food boosting my cities with internal trade routes

So yea... what else is it that I can do?

(I'm pretty tired of wide empires and warmongering btw - I've played that too much in the past and I wanna try new stuff).

Internal trade routes asap, i had the same problem until i read about those and everything changed.

You mean boosting your own cities with them? Already doing that I forgot to mention that in the OP.

Playing as Venice, naval food trade routes are super important. You say you use them, but not WHEN. Timing is everything if you are trying to keep pace with the AI in science. You want to beeline currency, build a market and staff the specialist ASAP to get those merchants out early. Buy the nearby CS in naval trading range, and have enough gold to immediately purchase the trade boat (granaries are usually built already).

I would also strongly advise trying to build the Colossus. It's really the perfect wonder for Venice, and on emperor should be pretty doable (I've got it on deity). Two free trade routes right there means you can use those for food, freeing up all your 'normal' trade routes for gold.

Also staying positive happiness is important. Never go unhappy for more than a few turns at a time. Just curious, how big is your capital at turn 200? turn 300?

Never go unhappy
Get beliefs that boost food
Build Aqueducts as soon as possible (if liberty)
Get Civil service as soon as possible
Settle close to fresh water sources and improve those as farm first
Build a lighthouse before workboats if there are a lot of sea ressources, beeline optics if it is the capital.
Get hanging gardens if playing on low difficulty
Send trade routes
Manually place citizens
Ally maritime CS

That's about all there is to it

Deadly_Nightshade said:

-Micromanaging of the city screens: prioritizing production when building settlers, wonders and other important stuff - focusing on food when I don't.

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This is almost for sure your problem. Focus on growth all the time - period. There are only a few wonders that are important to get, and if you are hammering down on useless wonder, then you are falling behind very early. It is hard enough stopping growth early to get your settlers out, slowing growth to get an early wonder just makes a hard situation disaster.

On your difficulty level, the AI just does not build big armies, just get a few units out between other things and you are fine - the only reason you would be having trouble is because you settled in the face of the AI and they focused on units to kill you with. Remember, early DoW's almost are always caused by poor city placement, if you are getting a lot of early DoW's then you need to reconsider how and where you are placing cities.

Things you haven't listed:

0) Settle next to Cows/Wheat/Deer/Oasis/Bananas
1) Research Pottery as your first tech.
2) Build a Granary ASAP. If you are working Wheat/Deer/Bananas, ASAP means As Soon As Pottery.
3) Aggressively buy tiles if they produce more than a tile your city is currently working.

Growth is just like real estate. It's location, location, location. A spot with grassland/rivers crossing will grow faster and further than a spot with 4 cows, 2 luxuries "all shiny" with no lakes/rivers for CS double farm yield.


I suspect that you swap tiles to hammers "too often". In particular, avoid wonders other than ToA/HG/Petra or rather, if you build them, you shouldn't really reallocate 4 yield tiles with food on them for 2-3 hammer hills. If you expect not to build it before AI, just don't go for it. With 3-4 decent city locations, your biggest growth block before renaissance/industrial should be happiness.

Typical mistakes include improving luxuries before farming a few tiles when your happiness buffer is still comfortable, working specialist slots too early/too many, simply having too few workers and locing production in city management but forgetting to manually lock the citizen on a food tile for many turns after growth.

Growth for your capital: Very easy, just start with 2 food cargo ships running to your empire and later add a third one. Combine with Tradition. This will quickly make it not really matter how much food would normally be present. (As Venice, after reaching 10+ routes I would consider a 4th route to the capital) When your capital gets big enough to work every single tile and run every single specialist slot you can switch the routes over to hammers.

Science problems as Venice: This is because each Great Merchant increases how many scientist points you need for your first Great Scientist. (Unlike guilds which don't) The "free" ones from completing Liberty tree and the Leaning Tower (along with Mayan UA) at a minimum also increase that threshold. I don't know if Venice's free one from reaching the tech and/or the liberty policy that normally gives a settler but in case of Venice gives a Merchant also does so or not.

So while you are filling merchant slots as Venice, you also need to fill the Scientist slots there the whole time they are available. If you wait until you no longer want merchants to turn off merchants and hire scientists, by then your puppets will all be so far along in their progress towards a merchant, that each and every one of them will generate a GM before your capital generates a GS.

Managed to get to 53 pop with Aztecs in GnK, but that's a semi-rigged map:

Sandstorm (Forgot if I went all-out on Faith or got Fertility Rites. I think I went faith to rush Swords to Plowshares)
Stay one city unless you have a resource you need for WLtKD within your realm
Build both food-related early wonders: ToA and HG.
Ally all Maritime CSes as possible.
Tech to early Hospitals.
Farms everywhere!
Tradition, obviously.

Result: Unemployment problem by the 250's. All specialist slots filled and all workable tiles worked.

With BNW, it's even easier due to internal trade routes. Haven't tried Aztecs yet though. I usually finish with a 35+ capital. Less if the start location is truly food-starved (ie. lots of plains without fresh water).

The frantic race to get wonders is generally always the growth trap. You feel you need to rush it so you focus on production. The build time is marginally faster but your growth rate is significantly slower. The fix is to manually work the food tiles and set the governor to production. You will generate new citizens faster that will work the hammer tile as soon as they pop. You then set the new citizen to a food tile to continue growth.

A psychological fix is to be content occasionally losing the race to a wonder.. You'll get gold.. And learn a valuable lesson which is dont go for wonders until you have a clear technological edge. You get this edge by focusing growth. It's also an experience thing. You'll know which wonders you can safely go for at certain times.

Same question but for harder difficulties. I play at immortal comfortably. Back on Vanilla and GaK I'd occasionally push it up to Deity-so I'm not a beginner in understanding most of the growth mechanics. However, what I don't understand is how the Deity players can keep their foot pressed down on the growth peddle and yet still manage to build the units and buildings it's necessary to get up and running in the first 100 turns to get to Education by 100-120 turn.

On GnK and vanilla I could do it at Deity (with a good map) because gold was easier to get and you could buy everything instead of hammering. With BNW I have less gold and find I have to hard build nearly everything. PLaying immortal pre-BNW I could always get to the rennaissance by turn 120. BNW immortal, I'm hard pressed to get there by 140. this is mostly because I occasionally have to switch my cities to hammers rather than grain and consequently slow growth.

So how do the top players do it at Deity? Hard build the buildings and defensive units, yet keep the cities growth concentrated? Any tips apart from what's been mentioned already. (i'm not talking about a Venice game- any civ)

dave: there's a misunderstanding you're having with regards to growth and production.. growth fuels production.. new citizens means more citizens which means your citizens can consequently work food AND hammer tiles AND still grow.

with regards to science a lot of early science is gained through trade routes with other civs..

Just grow your cap... (or wherever your guilds/NC are)
The satellites can take care of menial tasks like troops and whatnot

I like the Inca for growth, they seem good at it. You also have to not settle close together and you have to prevent someone else from taking your tiles is maximum city size is your goal.

City placement is probably key, I personally like to be on a hill on a river where it meets the ocean, maybe that isn't optimal for maximum city size an inland city probably is, but seeing how important trade is, I think having your capital on the sea is now more important than ever.

If your capital isn't on the sea, your second city should be.

I don't go heavy on internal trade routes, I'd rather maximize money or science from trade. I'm also trying to become more strategic with whom I trade. I've also been experimenting having one trade route from each of my cities so if I have one key friend AI I can send all my trade to his capital or best city. There is a law of diminishing returns if you send all your trade routes from one city, Venice of course must do this.

I think city placement is key, Tradition is my second piece of advice and obviously improve the land around you. You probably want luxury resources that are also food sources for maximum size so civilizations who have a start bias near certain luxury and tile types should grow best. Maybe the Inca have a good start bias, they seemed to be better before BNW.

For Venice, get those internal food trade routes going ASAP. In one game as Venice while playing on Epic, I had Venice at a pop of 70 or at least in the 60s at the end of the game.

I would like to thank Deadly_Nightshade for asking this question. For a long time I was 'doing it wrong', but as it was at the lower levels my bad habits didn't hurt until I moved above king level.

After reading this thread I have tried focusing on food and it really does pay off, I can even build wonders at emperor level (probably much more risky at higher levels.)

However my question to everyone is at what point do you go for that first settler? My instinct is any time you will get the settler before the next population point in the capital and after that use a satellite to make extra settlers or just buy them.

greygamer said:

However my question to everyone is at what point do you go for that first settler? My instinct is any time you will get the settler before the next population point in the capital and after that use a satellite to make extra settlers or just buy them.

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If you use a BO something like: scout, monument, scout/shrine, worker
with a tech order of Pottery, mining, AH/archery, calendar, >> Phylo
there is a nice window that you should hit 4 or 5 pop about the time writing is researching. I try build settlers at 5 pop, but on some maps I make them at 4. Remember, you can't starve making settlers, so you should manually select the best hammer tiles even if you are short on food.

joshua43214 said:

If you use a BO something like: scout, monument, scout/shrine, worker
with a tech order of Pottery, mining, AH/archery, calendar, >> Phylo
there is a nice window that you should hit 4 or 5 pop about the time writing is researching. I try build settlers at 5 pop, but on some maps I make them at 4. Remember, you can't starve making settlers, so you should manually select the best hammer tiles even if you are short on food.

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I play tall tradition, and so I skip the Monument. Also the maps I play on never have enough land on justify a second scout.
Library always built before first settler and normally an archer is built right before the settler.

Early techs for me are:
Pottery always first
Then a tech that would open up a luxury if a single tech would do so; otherwise a tech on its path.
Next always Literature
At that point its getting all remaining techs needed for the capital and first planed cities luxuries, then Archery and Philosophy.