General Settlement Timeframes

[fantsu]

Just started my new game, playing Spain.
100% of my games I tend to keep my "empire" as small as I can.
This time I forced myself doing something bigger.
I'm planning to build at least 5 settlements, probably more.

I'm really rusty in this game right now, so I decided to let myself easy and picked only conquistador difficulty, you know, because Spain. Normal speed (300 turns+declaration war).

It is turn 90 already and I'm still at three settlements and none of them are really that good either. I usually play with only three settlements so it is really attractive to leave only those three settlements up and finish the game, but I want more this time.

My settlements right now are pretty much:
1 for food
1 for lumber
1 for ore

If I went, lets say for five settlements, what turn would be the latest deadline to hook them up? Right now it feels that it takes to maybe turn 140 to make these settlements strong and maybe a bit more if I go for newspapers in all of them. Right now they don't have much infrastructure, well the capital (lumber city) has college, dock, armory and church.

My food city has no buildings but dock and is building some extra political point.

My ore settlement has warehouse.

I was thinking that if I hook up my fourth city (also for lumber) around turn 130 it would be possible to get it run pretty fast. The fifth settlement would go near turn 200, and thats the point when I usually start to build my army of SotL's, this time I would still be struggling with basic infra. At this point I really can even think of settlements 6 and 7. Anyone who builds that many?

Is there a person who loves big empires would give me some basic timeline when to build last settlements if you want them to matter in the game and not just drag your defense under the carpet...?

 

[dalgo]

In my last game I had 16 colonies before I declared Independence. However that is higher than normal, I usually have about 10.

 

[fantsu]

Wow, thats a lot. Normal speed?
You aren't going for three elder statesmen in every settlement, or do you spam schools for getting those? I think you prefer landwar over ocean supremacy, that cuts some time I guess?


I usually have around six population before I get my second settlement running. 1 guy at church (unless I'm France). Two fishermen or farmers. Scout for scouting, pioneer, someone doing lumber and/or ore and one making hammers, carperter if have afford of him.

This usually takes to turn 30-40. Depends if I have to clean area of natives or if I have to seek good starting spot longer.

EDIT:
OK, so I started all over.

Decided to go for Spain again, with Jose de San Martin.
Upped the difficulty to Governor. Conquistador just felt like cheating, I still consider myself Revolutionary, even it has been too long since I really played on it, and actually won the game.

Normal game speed.
New world map script.
Standard, temperate with medium sea level.

I played the first 175 turns just to try new things out.

First of all I was thinking what things I should give up just to build bigger empire faster.
I decided to go with:
1. Less FF-points. Not really trying to beeline any FF's at all. No FF-point production. Let 'em have those.
2. Not focusing missionaries. I wanted to create strong food settlement fast to start pumping up my own people at the very start.
3. Forget scouting, I need every man to grow my empire. Exploration FF-points are pretty bad also.
______________________


Here is some overview of the game so far:

Well. The game started really bad. I did found my 1st settlement on turn 7, right by Sitting Bull.
There was no room to expand, so I had to get rid of him, fast. Isabella was an OK town. Right beside Silver actually. One good fresh water forest tile too.

I bought cannon from the king and also one soldier. Bye bye gold. I started up with Church and at the last turn before Immigration, choose another veteran soldier. Spain starts the game with one veteran also, so I had one cannon and three veterans to crush Sitting Bull.
Sitting Bull had three towns, I crushed them, didn't get any unlucky rolls. So I pretty much had one veteran too much. Oh well.

Turn 20 and I still had NOTHING GOING ON.

Turn 23 I finally settled my second settlement, for that food remember? Really bad spot for anything else. Santo Domingo with two fish tiles and cotton that I would never use. One bad tundra tile and rest are ocean tiles.

Logan was right north of me. I like him. He backstabs sometimes, but I really like Mentor. Oh wait, I wasn't supposed to use missionaries... Well, F* that. I just immigrated Jesuit Missionary.

Turn 35, I finally got enough gold for Carpenter, just bad people coming from immigration, two petty criminals in a row. Harsh for early game. Logan teached them to be fishermen.

Turn 49 founded San Salvador. Ok, my three towns. Turn freaking 49. Will I ever get close to 10? This one is my ore settlement this time. So I wasted my gold to silver miner and ore miner. School up in "capital".

Turn 86 Finally my empire is running well. But I still have 3 settlements. Isabella has lots of buildings too. So I start to plan out my next one.

Turn 103 Veracruz founded. Ok too a while. I needed few more ore miners and fishermen. This will be my lumber settlement to finish all buildings. At this point I had few Printing Presses online.

Turn 120 Logan got weapons from France. I'm on an island with him. He has bunch or armed braves. He is building units. Oh no.

Turn 126 Just in case I rolled my cannon to San Salvador and all my three soldiers too. They stopped working, so a minor setback.

Turn 150 Looks like Logan isn't going for it. He has those mountains to do it, but I'm not using dragoons and I'm defending with veterans. That would be a suicide.

Turn 152 Havana founded. More lumber. Maybe a port city too, havend decided yet.

Turn 176 (still thinking about this turn a bit). Ok, I have 5 towns, more than I usually have. My plan is to start pumping up Elder Statesmen now. 10 of them. Also my capital starts to build SotL's at turn 200. That way I should have barely enough of them online when I declare independence.

Few pics of the situation, please feel free to help out. And critisize.

 

[fantsu]

OK, I actually won the game, but I only had those 5 settlements. I would have hoped for more, but just getting those Elder Statesmen would have been impossible. Europe was paying only 8 gold for the silver and other prizes were dropped too, so buying them was not an option.

I have to say that getting more towns makes the game much harder.
I actually got Nathaniel Hawthorne just barely to get those three remaining Elder Statesmen, but getting him was quite a setback military-wise.

In the end I got 14 SotLs against 14 Manowars.... almost got screwed, thankfully I got two more built up so I dominated the seas and sunk most the enemy infantry.

The landwar was very harsh, I actually almost lost it. King took my food city on the 3rd turn of the war and got huge warlord there also to defend it. I quickly rushed two cannons, but they never even made there before he killed them both due to my stupid missclick

I'm not sure if its really wise to build big amount of cities on normal speed. Feeld like you wont have enough time to build up decent army just because getting LB's takes longer and you need so much more Elder Statesmen.

Maybe I'll try huge colony someday with Patriot difficulty. I wouldnt be sure if I could beat this on Revolutionary, just not my style of gameplay.
BTW. Dom Pedro I got the last turn, he didn't do anything.

 

[dalgo]

Congratulations on winning your game. I play a very different style of game, winning with dragoons instead of ships. This is one of my games:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=374623