After my first game: beginner questions

So, I have just completed my first game of CivIV BtS: A domination victory in 1802AD, (would easily have been conquest though) playing as Hannibal on a small pangea map on Settler. It was really easy, I struggled a bit to take out my first AI but that was because of my lack of knowledge of how combat works. I had a basic score of 5200, not that it matters at Settler. But a lot of questions cropped up while playing, so I decided just to put them all into one thread.

For my second game, is it better to go on chieftain or warlord or straight to noble? I found Settler ridiculously easy, have a long RTS background, and used to play Galactic Civilizations 2 several years ago.

Early Decisions: When should I build my first worker and settler? I know this is an important decision as city growth stops when you build them. And how fast and often should I start new cities? I only got my 1st one 360BC, thats probably quite late.

What about Wonders? When should I start building them?

Culture: How do i get culture early on? I really struggled with this. Once I could build theatres and had a large empire and was building wonders, it was ok, but early on, I got out-cultured and my opponents had a lot bigger borders.

Religion: I pretty much completely ignored this until I founded Christianity 75BC, and even then, I neglected to spread it outside my few main cities. How important is it to adopt a religion and spread it early on? I heard it plays a big role in diplomacy but I havent seen this yet.

So basically, I need some advice on the early game: when to do what, build what, and in what order. I know in Settle i could get away with almost anything, but I want to know whats a good basic "build order" to start with, I guess you could say.

And I am going to read some articles and look through all the intro courses at the War Academy, Ive learned a lot just through this one easy game and also reading Sulla's walkthrough, very useful and lots of little tips and strats there. For example, after a seemingly endless war to take out one "stack of doom" on an opponents Capital city, I read about the usefulness of Catapults and collateral damage... Would have saved me a lot of time and effort if I had known earlier.

 

Although I am not the most experienced here (no where near it), I will attempt to answer some of your questions how I have found it.

Workers are extremely important. The more workers you have the quicker the land gets improved and worked inside your cities borders. You need to hook up those luxury resources ASAP. Get your foods connected up etc.

I always like to get my workers to start building roads to the AI's borders allowing me quicker travel when the time comes to declare war.

Settlers is a toughy depending on your strategy. My personal strategy after I have founded my capital is to beeline to bronze working, build axeman and capture my nearest neighbours cities (usually their capitals) at this point. By doing this early you usually get good locations (as capitals are nearly always in good places) and sometimes even capture their workers.

Also, with this tactic you defeat an enemy or three early doors giving you more land to settle and helping you along with your primary objective of winning the game.

By using the axerush strategy I tend to forget about wonders initially - just concentrating on my early military to capture those cities.

It's always good to get the pyramids (enables all of the government civics) allowing you to switch to Hereditary Rule early doors. Hereditary rule gives you a per military unit stationed inside your cities. This is important to stop the .

Monuments are always a good way to increase culture in the early days as are some of the wonders like Parthenon, Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus etc. When asking you what to build in your cities scroll over the wonders and normal building to see what increases this.

Theatres for example, also provide happiness if you have access to dye. It's very involved!

Again, usually put on the back burner for me while doing my axe rush but it is good to found a couple of religions like Christianity and Taoism etc. It's still achievable to found these while doing an early rush. The more you spread these into your other cities the richer you will get when you can build the key building in the holy city. When you get a great prophet or whatever it is you will be able to build the special building (eg the church of nativity for christianity) in the city which founded the religion.

Granarys, Librarys, Barracks for military then when your tech allows it courthouses, markets, grocers and banks - these give you the £$£$£$£$ to support a larger economy.

You are quite right, the War Academy is brilliant. They are also some really helpful people on this forum that assisted me no end.

Hope I have been of some help.

 

ToXiN, first off I have to admit that I haven't thoroughly read all of Mozzington's post. But for your questions I can highly recommend reading the report of an old Succession Game on this forum.
It is a fun read and one can really learn a lot about the game. The thread can be found here!

Welcome to the forum, btw!

 

First of all welcome to the forums! I would suggest warlord. Noble AI can be pretty stingy.

The first build in your capital can very well be a worker. Just make sure your worker(s) don't run out of work. If you see corn, rice or whey: research agriculture. If you see pigs or cows: study animal husbandry. Bronze Working is something that you usually want to have as quickly as possible for three reasons.

1. It reveals copper. An important resource that lets you build Axemen and Spearmen.
2. It allows the civic Slavery. Which is a handy tool that lets you turn your people (food ) in to hammers (military, buildings).
3. It allows chopping. If you have lots of forest near your cities you can turn those forests in to hammers by chopping them with workers.

First city in 360BC is really late. I usually like to grow my capital to the happy cap (the point where growing cities comes pointless because it will not give you a working citizen ) and just start pumping out workers and settlers and continue until there is no good land to claim. 1.5 workers / city is a good rule of thumb.

Settle your cities near food. With enough food you can do almost anything with your cities. One or two food resources in the city fat cross (the 20 something workable tiles that are available after the first border pop) and your good to go!

I would recommend not to build any wonders until you really understand the benefits it will bring to you. A good way to get wonders is to invest the hammers from wonders to military and taking them by force from your neighbors.

Around the time I am founding my second city I usually research Mysticism. This allows the building Monument that will give you the necessary culture for border pops.

Founding a religion and building a shrine (you need a great priest to build it) will net you one per city with your religion in it. It can net you a lot of cash but the problem is that when you are building those missionaries (to spread the religion) your neighbor could be using those hammers to build military and come knocking on your door.

Religion plays the main role how AI decides who are his friends. Sharing the same religion with other nations will make them like you. This is something you can use to your advantage. You could for example adopt the religion that has the most powerful nations behind it for protection. If I have two neighbors and they both have a different religion I will usually adopt the religion of the nation that I am less likely to invade. Some leaders will literally love you if you share the same religion with them and some don't really care. Religion is a big part of the diplomacy game.

The most important build in a new city is a Granary. You can build Granaries with the tech Pottery (which is an important economy tech because it also unlocks the improvement cottage). It will double the speed your cities grow and is something you usually want in every city.

Make sure you specialize your cities. I usually have three kind of cities. Lots of Production and Commerce cities and a GP farm.

Production city only needs farms and mines and after you have build a granary and a barracks you just want to pump out military out of these.

With commerce city you just want to spam cottages with your workers. Commerce cities build libraries, universities that convert commerce to research and markets, grocers that convert to .

The GP farm needs lots of food to feed the specialists. So the city cite that has the most food resources should be this usually. This city needs only buildings that enables you to work specialists like engineers and scientists. Library is the most important build as it allows you to assign to scientists very early. If you have a good GP farm you'll be getting tons of great scientists very early and you can put those to good use.

Anyway. Just follow some games in the strategy section and read the war academy and your good to go!

Have fun and enjoy the game!

Edit: I used a lot the word "usually". That is because it always depends on the situation. If you always play with the same strategy, the same tech path etc. You are not playing optimally. There are so many factors in CIV that has to be taken in to consideration. Your traits, your neighbors, the land you have or maybe the victory conditions you aim to. So try different things and learn different ways to accomplish your goals.

 

Opinions are like rear ends we all got em! There is no "one way" to victory as you have already noted there are numerous victory objectives that can be met.
Yes bronze so you can axe rush is a good basic way to go, this implies an early addition of a worker. As far as wonders, I go with the great wall in my cap to keep the barbs off. My cap will become my unit production center especially thru B-ocracy! My second city hopefully will be located near stone (or the regenerator button may be in play) and I will go right in to Stonehenge and the Oracle in that city which will become my religious center getting an early start on Great Prophets, one which will build the special building of whatever religion I found if its late and I need to found a religion the I use the first one to bulb Theology (Christian). As noted above; the monument is great for culture ... Stonehenge = a monument in every city thus you don’t need to use time building em (I know they are cheap but its time none the less)! Oracle gets you a free tech .. take the most costly ... usually for me its metal casting! I like religion ... early game religion has some nice cultural and tech buffs (monastery = 10% tech per city) .. its nice to have a neighbor or 2 under the spell of your religion.
For me the Pyramids are no big deal as far as the all inclusive political stuff goes ... in good time you will possess the right politics ... now as far as establishing an "engineer generating" city it would be nice ... and I certainly have paid the price for not having great engineers generating regularly, specially by the time plastics arrive and I want to build corps and jump start 3 gorges dam ... The higher level you play the less your going to "get away with"!