Ashcristokos
Chieftain
So, recently I have been making a concerted effort to become better at this game rather than just playing mindlessly again and again, but my biggest issue really is the early game. Strategy articles often highlight two key points: the importance of establishing your core cities (3-4 for tradition, 5-6 for liberty, yea?) within the first 100 turns and the importance of getting your national college up and running. I generally have a lot of trouble with both for two key reasons: hammers and happiness.
Even when playing tall, I seem to find it impossible to keep my happiness high enough to expand very rapidly. I have been trying to get out that first worker and settler earlier though, but it seems like getting all of those, plus more military units to defend the empire and additional workers to develop new cities consumes an enormous amount of time that leaves all of my cities falling behind. And then when I do get those cities up, I can never grow them too much or I become unhappy.
The other issue is then that all of those cities need libraries for the national college, which can easily take forevvvveerrr to build in new cities with low hammer production, leaving a new city investing an inordinate amount of time building libraries and not producing basic infrastructure, leading to those cities lagging far behind.
TL;DR: When I don't really expand until after I build the NC, I can get it up quickly. If I do expand and get the core cities up, however, I find it impossible to get the NC up and running early enough for my tastes. I guess my questions are:
1) How do you manage to do both at the same time, expanding while keeping the empire happy and building the libraries you need for the NC? Or are sacrifices in one area always necessary?
2) How early should I be building workers and settlers? I do understand that the answer likely depends on whether I'm going Tradition or Liberty.
3) Also, on continental maps, should I be building two scouts or one?
Thank you very much for any help guys!
Even when playing tall, I seem to find it impossible to keep my happiness high enough to expand very rapidly. I have been trying to get out that first worker and settler earlier though, but it seems like getting all of those, plus more military units to defend the empire and additional workers to develop new cities consumes an enormous amount of time that leaves all of my cities falling behind. And then when I do get those cities up, I can never grow them too much or I become unhappy.
The other issue is then that all of those cities need libraries for the national college, which can easily take forevvvveerrr to build in new cities with low hammer production, leaving a new city investing an inordinate amount of time building libraries and not producing basic infrastructure, leading to those cities lagging far behind.
TL;DR: When I don't really expand until after I build the NC, I can get it up quickly. If I do expand and get the core cities up, however, I find it impossible to get the NC up and running early enough for my tastes. I guess my questions are:
1) How do you manage to do both at the same time, expanding while keeping the empire happy and building the libraries you need for the NC? Or are sacrifices in one area always necessary?
2) How early should I be building workers and settlers? I do understand that the answer likely depends on whether I'm going Tradition or Liberty.
3) Also, on continental maps, should I be building two scouts or one?
Thank you very much for any help guys!