Any good early game strategies?

[Kerosene31]

I play on king as well and here's just some general things I learned:

-Learn to manage which tiles your city is working and manually control your workers. On prince you can get away with automation, but once you hit king, you have to get your cities doing exactly what you need, when you need it. I don't have any direct advice for managing your cities, but early on food is key for growth and you'll want a few hammers to give you enough production.

-You do build a scout first which is key. Your early strategy is probably going to be dependent on the map and current situation. If you scout around and have lots of open space around you and no civs right on top of you, you can maybe go for the great library and not focus on your military for a bit. On the other hand if you have close neighbors and not a lot of room to expand, you'll probably want to start grabbing land in a hurry as good city locations go fast. Now, grabbing land near your neighbors will often make them hostile, so make sure you have a defensive army.

-Even though you try to avoid war (I often play the same way) you have to have a strong defensive army. If any civs see your army as weak they will attack you eventually. Check your military advisor often to make sure nobody's army gets too big. In previous games you could play the diplomatic game and get away with a smaller army, but that is not usually the case in Civ V where someone is eventually going to backstab you most likely. (Actually you can have a smaller army and just fight off the AI civs because they often aren't very good with combat, but if you want to avoid war, build an army). Don't neglect military techs either no matter what victory condition you are going for. Having a small but advanced army can help keep the AI from attacking you.

-Very early on archery is a great tech to have. A few archers can easily stop early invasions and make it easy to deal with barbs.

 

[Matthew.]

Get a worker early and finish a luxury improvement ASAP. Then trade it off for gold right away. By the time you will need the happiness, the trade duration will be up. A luxury will sell for 240 gold. That along with any gold saved up is enough for two archers along with your first warrior.

Don't waste time on granaries unless there are wheat, deer, or banana tiles. The base yield without these tiles is 2 food for 1 gold. Very minor, and that time is better spent building libraries. The same goes for water mills. Get these buildings when it doesn't interfere with initial city development.

While food and growth is important, don't neglect production. There is an indirect boost to food and growth from high production. Check the city management tab to compare. Having an empty 3 hammer/2gold mine for an extra +1 to food is silly. Put the citizen on the mine, and you will more than make up for the loss of 1 food (e.g., you can build those granaries/water mills quickly).

 

[Putmalk]

On King you pretty much should outtech the AI doing almost anything you want to do. You have until like turn 420 to win - that is plenty of time to crush the AI.

 

[Sonic Boom]

Thank you for all the advice, I would keep on posting pictures of said game (I haven't advanced past the last point where I posted), but since I've become busy with school work as of late, I just haven't been able to find the time to post some more pictures and I don't know if I'll have some time for it later

I am taking all the advice into account though, thank you for that. Also, puppeting or annexing cities? I hear that puppeting gives you more culture without actually making it worth more, but doesn't not being able control make it not worth it or anything? Whenever I've been DoWed on, I just start buying units en masse and I at least end up conquering a city of theirs before they come and ask for peace.

 

[Tachii]

Puppeting a city doesn't increase culture cost as opposed to annexing or settling a new city. The culture they produce is really miniscule though, their main purpose is a gold farm for your core cities. With a few puppets you will no longer have any gold issues. Fire away on producing buildings and units, heck even buy some and ally city states with it.

 

[revelation216]

What's wrong with going Honour?

 

[Syntax Error]

I am playing a King, Pangaea Plus All Standard game as Siam. I'm going for a modified four-city approach: Get Liberty First, then Representation then the free Settler. Settle 3 more cities quickly, then pop Legalism for free Wats. It helps that I can get two Natural Wonders (Cerro de Potosi and Sri Pada) within my borders very quickly. Granted, my BPT is abysmal (getting your settler captured sucks. Lesson learned: Never leave settlers abandoned until they found a city), but I expect that to change when my second city can finally work Cerro to fuel my GPT, which I can use to rush buy stuff (The map kinda makes me wish I had rolled Spain, though).

Tech Path is Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Lux Tech -> Archery -> Writing. Build Order is Scout -> Worker -> Monument -> Shrine. Archers when you run out of stuff to build. Or attempt to get a Wonder.

 

[Calouste]

Hi,

I think you are probably right about the Pantheon.

Ideally I wanted you to post the screen shot after you'd moved your initial worker and before settling your first city but hey-ho!

Turn the tile yields on!

From these screen shots I cannot see your research or surrounding areas - near the natural wonder etc so it is hard for me to advise if you should rush a settler over there or not. Don't send him unguarded if you do. Does the site around it have any additional luxury resources that you don't already own? If so then go for it.

Your first build should be the scout. If you are talking rushing for the wonder to grab the faith why are you building a worker instead of the shrine which only takes 7 turns? Get that shrine built after your initial scout and start clocking the faith. The longer you leave it, the less chance you get of founding pantheons / religion obviously. What are you going to use this worker for once he's built? I assume you have yet to research mining and masonry anyway? You don't want him built with nothing to do. If he does end up being built before you've got to masonry then get those farms built next to that river. PS. You will soon have enough gold to buy the worker anyway so why waste turns at this stage? Would it not be better to have spent a few turns on that settler instead? You could always steal a worker from the blue city state anyway.

Remember to get those farms up next to the river, quick. Improve those resources, get a mine on that hill.

You are next to the river so a water mill will be excellent here - extra food and extra production. Built it fast. Build the granary. Are you going for GL or not? It's achievable here but you need to be on your way to writing.

Me personally in this situation would have gone:

1) Pottery for the shrine and granary.
2) Mining for the hill and to be one step closer to masonry with the stone in mind.
3) Writing for GL and by the time this is researched you could have had your mine built on that hill to help with production.

Hope this helps.

I am sure some better players will be along shortly to help.

Thanks.

It's Ethiopia. Just build a Stele and don't bother with a shrine.