A few questions from a newbie...

[andersw]

I dont really rush to bronze working but slavery is indeed powerful...

So what is the optimum city numbers in standard maps and how quickly I need to get them?

BTW MrCynical I read your article about The power of sushi and it is indeed a great article...

This is one of your faults.

1. start with worker (yes there are a few exceptions where warrior or workboat are better but they are rare).
2. First research the food techs needed for the resources in your capitals fat cross and let your worker work these.
3. Research bronze working , chop forest and whip population a lot.

Slavery is VERY powerful, while a large city is better for economy, you regain pop faster the fewer pop you have.
However it's often best not to whip below the amount of food resources in the fat cross.

Whip as much as you can until you have 6-8 cities.
If you have a close neighbour you can easily build barracks (for city raider promotion) and 6-9 axemen (with copper) or chariots (with horses) to wipe him out. Below noble less will probably do.

Edit:
Forgot one question.
Often 6-8 cities are a good amount until you get techs for economy.
Currency is good, extra gold w/o buildings.
Code of laws is decent, lower cost per city where you build courthouse.
Sailing is not to be shunned, if you build coastal cities you wont need to connect them with roads for trade routes.
Civils Service will allow you to run Beurocracy wich will give you +50% income from capital.

With these you can continue to spam a lot of cities, the optimal amount is ALL cities.

 

[Elrohir]

Well I usually go with a double warrior cause I feel the urge to defend my cities and use one of the warriors to scan the area... I go with a granary to speed up the pop increase... But what JTmacc99 what you say is right, go for a worker and start tile improvements immidiately...

Honestly, I'm not sure there's ever a circumstance where building a granary before a worker is a good idea. The "standard" early build orders are either scout/warrior until size 2, or worker first. I'd try those, until you're comfortable enough to play around with that a bit. (Oh, and building a workboat first if you have seafood and fishing is fine. But Warrior-Warrior-Granary is....well, probably not a good idea. )

@Elrohir: I Generally leave tech slider to 100% until I start to lose money and slide down till I get to +min. money... I usually get 4 or 5 cities till 1AD, yea I suck badly :S, I tend to build my cities near resources and get near hills with resources, or coastal lines... But I never compete with AI about expansion, since they pop like mad... In many games I end up with 8 or 9 cities maximum but on average I get 5 or 6...

Yeah, but how far do you move the slider down before you stop settling cities? Or do you only stop expanding because you've run out of room?

What map settings are you playing on? Just regular, with a regular number of AI?

 

[MrCynical]

I think the AI starts to get bonuses at Prince....maybe Monarch? I'm not sure. But I know the AI has no bonuses at Noble or below.

The AI does get a few bonuses at Noble, but the impact of them is very small compared to those it gets at higher levels. At Noble, relative to the human player, the AI has the bonuses:

10 free hammers in first city when it is founded.

15% greater bonus when fighting barbs

50% lower unit supply (NOT maintenance).

20% lower inflation

20% lower war weariness

50% lower unit upgrade costs (this is the most noticeable)

The human receives a concealed -1 to relations with all AI.

These bonuses are present to some degree at all levels (though they are reduced below Noble). Below Noble however, the human gets bonuses vs. the AI which more than outweigh these. The bonuses to production, research and growth are the main ones, and even a 5% shift in these has a major impact. Above Noble the AI gets those bonuses in addition to the ones listed above to make it harder.

So to be strictly accurate the AI receives a few bonuses at Noble. Below Noble both human and AI get bonuses, with the human getting much better bonuses. Above Noble only the AI gets bonuses (much better than those at Noble). Noble is therefore the closest to a Neutral difficulty setting available.

Well I usually build one or two warriors and then start working on granary... Why not build a granary? Isnt it great for boosting the city growth?

Two real problems there. Firstly a worker can often double the food surplus of the city by improving a single food resource, and then it can go and improve something else. The granary can't do more than the first bit. Second issue is that pottery is not a usual tech to go for initially - it doesn't allow any resources to be improved, which is generally the most important thing to go for first. Particularly for civs that don't start with the wheel (though you do get that tech free at low difficulty levels) I wouldn't go for pottery until I at least had bronze working and the techs necessary to improve nearby resources.

Worker first is a very reliable rule of thumb. The only common exception is where you start with seafood and Fishing, when a workboat is usually better. If you go for a religion from the first turn, and start with no resource techs, you might just be better off killing time with warriors, but even then the worker is well worth considering.

 

[Bleys]

You could always check some of the walk-through games on these boards, quite often they go into great detail in the opening stages of the game, since its vital to get off to a strong start, especially on higher levels.

It can be especially educational to actually play the game yourself, and compare your actions to others who have played the same map.

Believe it or not, a Granary can actually be a waste early on in your first city. Slavery is a powerful production tool, and most of the time you will grow back the whipped populations before the whip-anger is gone. A Granary will make that growth even faster, so that 60 (or 90 on Epic) hammers is almost always better spent on a 2nd worker, or part of a settler.

Learning how to whip and chop more efficiently will give you a huge boost in your REX speed. Properly executing a timed chop or a 2-pop whip into a settler is a strong skill. You use the settler or worker to halt growth while the whip anger is fading, and once its faded, dont be afraid of re-starting it. My first city is almost constantly in a state of whip anger. I watch the growth carefully, and insert a Settler in front of the queue a few turns from that anger fading, so I can 2-pop whip it the minute it opens up.

So try some of the series games. The LHC and Nobles Club both offer games you can play with your own preferred MOD, speed and difficulty settings. See how the players expanded in the early game, how they kept their tech rate up while doing it, how they used cities to block off AIs or grab vital resources. You will be REXing in no time, then trying to figure out how to keep from going broke to do it, heh.

 

[brades]

This is a general outline of how I start my games, I usually click play now and play on emperor/epic, but have won a handful of games on immortal.

I would say 90% of the time I start with a worker first in order to start improving my land, subsequent workers and settlers will be built a lot faster if you have some improved food tiles and mines. As opposed to letting the city grow by working unimproved tiles, and then building workers and settlers.

With your first warrior/scout you should use him to find the lay of the land, where the good city sites are, and where your neighbors are. I try and found my 2nd and 3rd city in a spot that blocks that AI from my land, and then I'll refuse to open borders with any AIs until I have backfilled all my land at my leisure.

Your first city does not need to be defended until your approaching the happiness cap, animals will not enter your territory and even when barbarians first appear they wont enter your land until about turn 40 or so (on epic, I'm not actually sure of the number, but it is later than you might think).

Eventually fortify your warrior on a forested hill near your capitol, no fog, no barbarians. A fortified warrior will generally beat archers, and with a few woodsman promotions he can stand up to axeman. But, if you properly fogbust your land barbarians won't appear.

Like many have been saying, prioritize bronze working. The best way to build settlers is to never 'build' them at all. What I mean by this is have your worker chop a forest, when it is 1 turn from completion switch to your settler, now all those hammers go to the settler, next turn switch back to your warrior or whatever you were building. Move the worker to the next forest and begin chopping there, when its almost cut down switch back to your settler, rinse and repeat. What this allows you to do is to continue growing your cities while still getting those settlers out quick.

Well this is starting to look like a wall of text, so I'll stop here and let you read and digest it all. Welcome to the forums, which took me from being stuck on monarch for a long time to a budding deity player in around a year.

 

[macmert]

Hmm I thank you all, it seems that my strategy was all wrong!

Yesterday I started with the Turks, I have to tell you, having a worker right away rocks! I had a hut nearby and a worker popped out of it I still built granaries thou, but having a free worker really compansated that. I chose Suleiman, so I rexed quite fine this time and got 7 cities early in the game... I have a coastal city and I plan to make it a GP farm, built the Collossus and the Great Lighthouse there but built Moai Statues elsewhere... I am trying to build up a sizeable force to crush Caesear my neighbor, since I forgot how to warmonger, I need to practice a bit, I chose Hereditery rule, vassalism, Slavery and Organized religion... Maybe I can post a save here if you people would like to take a look at it...

BTW I want to ask something, It was said that every race has a prefferable civics, like the Russians prefer communism... Does it apply to human player too? like if I try to run free market instead of state property or hereditery rule instead of communism, does it give me a penalty or happines decrease or something?

 

[Siesta Guru]

Hmm I thank you all, it seems that my strategy was all wrong!

Yesterday I started with the Turks, I have to tell you, having a worker right away rocks! I had a hut nearby and a worker popped out of it I still built granaries thou, but having a free worker really compansated that. I chose Suleiman, so I rexed quite fine this time and got 7 cities early in the game... I have a coastal city and I plan to make it a GP farm, built the Collossus and the Great Lighthouse there but built Moai Statues elsewhere... I am trying to build up a sizeable force to crush Caesear my neighbor, since I forgot how to warmonger, I need to practice a bit, I chose Hereditery rule, vassalism, Slavery and Organized religion... Maybe I can post a save here if you people would like to take a look at it...

BTW I want to ask something, It was said that every race has a prefferable civics, like the Russians prefer communism... Does it apply to human player too? like if I try to run free market instead of state property or hereditery rule instead of communism, does it give me a penalty or happines decrease or something?

No your free to choose whatever you want. BUT! Ai players might like you more if you choose civics that are the same as theirs or their favorites. Usuaully you should just pick whatever you want, but in some cases it would be better to get that extra bit of happiness.

 

[macmert]

Hmm alright thank you... I want to thank everyone here for helping me out, I was really frustrated since I was only able to play on Chieftain difficulty... I managed to sort out SE, so I guess my game will not be that hard after all

 

[ChrisFromLux]

I am trying to build up a sizeable force to crush Caesear my neighbor, since I forgot how to warmonger

All in all, attacking your neighbor is a good idea ... but you should be careful when attacking Rome early on, because of their Preatorians

Ai players might like you more if you choose civics that are the same as theirs or their favorites.

Not quite exact! They only like you more if you run their favorite civic, other civics don't matter. And only if they also run their favorite civic already.

 

[Siesta Guru]

All in all, attacking your neighbor is a good idea ... but you should be careful when attacking Rome early on, because of their Preatorians




Not quite exact! They only like you more if you run their favorite civic, other civics don't matter. And only if they also run their favorite civic already.

Really? I thought every similar civic counted if both of you are also running the favorite one

 

[Joshua368]

Yesterday I started with the Turks, I have to tell you, having a worker right away rocks! I had a hut nearby and a worker popped out of it

Just keep in mind that this is a handicap for your easy difficulty level, on noble and above you don't get this major boost (workers or settlers) from huts and will have to plan your initial builds more carefully.

 

[macmert]

I actually dont care about civics but religion is really a big factor here, I used to find one religion but I decided to adopt one of my neighbor is better since I wouldnt bother to build missionaries...

I am trying to build a sizeable army cause I am afraid that romans might attack soon since I had a similar case in a previous game, Greeks attacked me very early and we were not even neighbors and they attack me for no reason... The army's purpose is for defence not offance, but if it grows enough I might punch the romans in the face...

 

[Elrohir]

The AI does get a few bonuses at Noble, but the impact of them is very small compared to those it gets at higher levels. At Noble, relative to the human player, the AI has the bonuses:

10 free hammers in first city when it is founded.

15% greater bonus when fighting barbs

50% lower unit supply (NOT maintenance).

20% lower inflation

20% lower war weariness

50% lower unit upgrade costs (this is the most noticeable)

The human receives a concealed -1 to relations with all AI.

These bonuses are present to some degree at all levels (though they are reduced below Noble). Below Noble however, the human gets bonuses vs. the AI which more than outweigh these. The bonuses to production, research and growth are the main ones, and even a 5% shift in these has a major impact. Above Noble the AI gets those bonuses in addition to the ones listed above to make it harder.

So to be strictly accurate the AI receives a few bonuses at Noble. Below Noble both human and AI get bonuses, with the human getting much better bonuses. Above Noble only the AI gets bonuses (much better than those at Noble). Noble is therefore the closest to a Neutral difficulty setting available

I stand corrected. I knew Noble was the closest to a neutral setting that there was, but I thought there were zero AI bonuses, and so it really was completely neutral. Thanks for the information!

 

[JTMacc99]

Greeks attacked me very early and we were not even neighbors and they attack me for no reason...

Heh. There's always a reason. One of the Greek leaders is a bit of a war-monger, and has a higher probability of attacking "for no reason". The actual reason is the computer's way of looking at an opportunity to win the game the same way you are looking at a way to win the game. If the computer program says that it thinks it can take some of your cities (by looking at the size of your army, technology, city improvements), and after factoring in personal reasons (measured by things like your religious preferences, choice of civics, who your friends and trading partners are), the computer builds an army and declares it GO TIME.

 

[brades]

You can tell if rome is preparing an invasion, click on his name to trade with him and then mouse over the leaders under the section 'Declare War'. If it says in red "we have enough on our hands already" then he is 100% going to declare war on someone, if you are his neighbor it will probably be you.

 

[manu-fan]

I never go worker first, but that's just me.

I always wait for size 2 to start a worker, and size 3 to start a settler.

Now, you could say that I'm not that successful a player, but I absolutely dominate (usually in the 1600s) on Noble.

I usually start with a Warrior (for more scouting) unless there is a seafood resource, when I'll start with a Workboat.

If the city is going to be used for military production, I'll start a barracks if I haven't reached size 2. As soon as it reaches size 2, I'll switch to a worker. If it's not going to be used for military, I'll probably go with another warrior until size 2 and then switch.

The key to me winning is not so much successfully REXing, it's successfully taking out the opposition. Find the closest neighbor, war, recover, rinse and repeat.

Cheers.

 

[macmert]

I am trying to win a peaceful game but at some place AI attacks me regardless, so I need many cities and good production cities to protect myself, I managed to do one GP farm and commerce cities but I am not good at production and unit spammers...

Other than that I am going quite well for the time being...