Best starting off strategy in general?

[dasaard200]

For Our Great Friends, lindsay40k and Acken; the Barbarians suffered greatly in my Rightful Wrath, being killed or driven back, as I relentlessly chased them; the AI cities were incorperated into my Realm, by Right of Conquest; and the CSs Liberated; while a Cultural VC was won .

I did have to be careful in NOT meeting the other 3 AIs, as my fued was with the barbs; I could take their captured settlers and workers all day, but I wanted/needed the former AI cities to have the resistances die down, and working for me .

CS workers were sent home, AI workers worked their way through CSs improving all CS tiles; and then to MY cities, improving tiles as they passed through, also doing road and RR work as needed, when all was done; cashed out, to thin the herd of excess workers .

Game took about a week in real time, but it was "Tasty, Crunchy, and Filling !"

 

[Matthew.]

Why does everyone stress the importance of a national college? Is it really that important to get?

Education is the most important tech in the game. The fastest way there is typically with a fast NC. Though every so often you can get a game where you can spam out cities with Liberty and reach Education at a decent benchmark, but it is map dependent. NC isn't map dependent, so the reliable choice.

 

[Special Places]

My opinion is this: Your start depends on who you are and what your environment looks like (map size, tile composition, etc).

For example, with Egypt on quick/small or standard/large I like to shoot straight for writing with the city builds of: Scout, Worker, Great Library, grab Philosophy, National College, Shoot for Math, grab hanging gardens. It's a really slow start, but if you can make it work it's really incredible. I'll either go down tradition, liberty, or the combination.

For China, I don't even really care about the national college or hanging gardens. For China, I tend to go Scout, worker, possibly library, settler, settler, settler, shoot for libraries for each city, build up to 15 Composite bowmen, head to Machinery while picking up Currency, then upgrade all the Composite bowmen into cho-ku-nos and take the continent.

For Venice I tend to shoot for National College like Egypt, grab Hanging Gardens, then shoot for Composite bowmen, upgrade them to crossbowmen, then either take city-states or the nearest neighboring civ.

For mongols I don't care about science and shoot nearly straight for Keshiks and go to war as early as i can. I'll go down a mix of liberty and honor.

If I am Carthage, I'll shoot for a mix of liberty and exploration while starting to research both science and naval techs.

These strategies for me definitely change on a map-by-map basis, but that's my general starting point for these civs. I'm not a deity-beater, but I try frequently.

Totally depends on a lot of factors.