Build Order. Settler/Settler or Spearman/Settler

[handy900]

I am winning on Regent level and planning to move up soon. My typical build order in the early expansion phase of the game has been Settler/Spearman, then they walk together to found a new city. This has worked fine for me on Regent. I've noticed though that even if barbarians attack & beat a spreaman in a city, while they take my gold, they Do Not Raze the city. A bummer, but not a disaster. So if I found a new city with an unescorted settler, it may get robbed but not razed. OTOH, an unescorted settler can easily be captured by barbarian horsemen.

Bottom line, I'm wondering if I should be more aggressive and build more Settlers & less spearmen to allow me to expand faster. In other words go found a city with an unescorted settler, & then immediately build a spearman in the new city. One obvious downside is if I do this my new spearman will be a regular & not a veteran. I usually build barracks before units because the veteran units are so much better in the long run as they eventually become veteran mech infantry. Anyway, I am wondering if any of you more experience players have any thoughts on early Settler building.

Any comments on how this would work on Regent level or higher are appreciated.

On a totally unrelated topic, why can't you airlift artillary? Does it make sense you can airlife MA & MI but not the big guns.

 

[jack merchant]

To really move up, you'll nneed to learn granaries before settlers !

 

[Ville]

Yep, something like warrior>warrior>granary>settler>settler>warrior>worker>spearman>settler

 

[wilbill]

And genrerally don't worry about barracks so soon, either.
IMHO, an unescorted settler is a wasted settler. Not only are you open to barbarians (one or two sackings may not seem bad, but if you leave an undefended city and get an "uprising" you'll probably want to reboot before they finish) but if one of the militaristic civs is nearby, it may be too much temptation for them not to take your city with their warrior.

 

[Grandraem]

You could always set up sort of like a perimeter of defended cities and then build some settlers to make a few undefended cities in between until they can build their own defense.

 

[handy900]

Thanks Ville. I Forgot to mention in my post I build a granary first so I can pop out settlers faster. And I also build a couple warriors to go scouting.

 

[ivory]

You say "Settler/Spearman, then they walk together to found a new city", so I understand the settler waits while the spearman is built, which is wise. But if you build Spearman/Settler, the combined production will be quicker because then the city size does not drop until the end, and the spearman can even walk ahead to reveal terrain if not done already and if he meets a barb and gets killed (more likely on higher levels), you have not lost your settler.
Granaries are a good thing, the town that has one can usually build settlers nonstop, but if there a number of AI's on the continent it can get crowded pretty quickly anyway, so a true settler factory is not always necessary. Just position the new towns strategically. I often try to build from the outside in, that is: first the places where the AI is likely to send his settlers, then nearer the capital.
Barracks are not needed in the early stages. The AI's main concern is whether there is *a* unit in your new town, and a regular spearman has plenty of time for promotion chances.

 

[sabo]

I usually do warrior, settler, then spearman or granery depending on the city, then if the city doesn't have a granery it's alternate settler/spearman, of if it does have a granery or is on a flood plain, it's settler settler. with this build order I can keep up pretty good with the AI even at higher levels.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Unless the map is really crowded, the first couple of Settlers usually do fine without an escort. When Barbarians begin to turn up in some numbers, you can walk a Spearman there, or have the city build one itself.

I usually play with Raging Barbarians; but I think this should be valid on the other settings too.

 

[Chieftess]

Moved to Strats & Tips

If you have 2 cattle (one mined, one irragated), you can build a settler every 4 turns with a granary. (usually, after warrior->warrior->granary...)

 

[cracker]

I make this same comment that this question is raised and that is:

"Ignore any and all advice that tells you should use a memorized or fixed build order on any diifculty level of Civ3. Even if this advice is correct for one specific civilization on specific type of terrain with certain neighbors and for a cretain victory condition, this advice will be wrong in 75% of all the specific examples that you will look at."

First, invest your time in just understanding what it takes for you to manually control the moves of your workers and assignments of your citizens to get the maximum total power output from the specific terrain squares that will be inside your working area of the start position.

Regardless what you choose to build, you will win 20 times more often by understanding this issue than you might win by trying to follow a recipe from someother player who was only partially successful in a low difficulty game that may have little or nothing in common with the game you are currently playing.

Begin with the "Opening Plays" article and the "Settlers" article and when you can recite and apply key buzzwords from those articles you will be surprised how quickly you will be granted the secrets of success in the game.

 

[Renata]

I like ivory's tip about moving the escort (whether spearman, warrior or archer) a step or two ahead of the settler in some cases. I often do this myself if the city I'm about to found is only a turn or two outside my current borders. The benefit is that the escort will find any barbs first before the settler comes into their range of attack. (On higher levels, barbs can and do defeat settler escorts, and if the settler was on the same tile, *poof* no more settler.) Then the settler can scurry back to the nearest city and keep safe, even if the escort is lost.

I *don't* do this if I'm sending a settler a long way away, because settlers and other non-military units do not suppress barb camp appearance. In other words, I could walk my leading escort across a piece of territory that appeared to be clean, then when my settler go there two turns later, have it walk right into a barb camp.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Often if your planned city location is in a 'safe looking' zone, it's ok to send the settler unescorted.

Something I do alot is use a current city's garrison to escort my settler. A settler is more vulnerable than a city, as (1) the settler is going out into relatively unknown territory, (2) a barbarian will destroy a settler, but not a city. So the city can do without defenses for a while, and it can build some more.

If you're expansionistic, you can send a scout ahead of a settler just to make sure there are no barbarians ahead, and if there are, the settler can either retreat or emergency-settle.

On harder levels, with high barbarian settings, I have often found it more useful to guard my settlers with several warriors rather than one spearman. Short of a barbarian uprising, it's not that likely that two or three horsemen are suddenly going to come out of the fog and attack your warriors defending the settler. If only one comes, then you can counter-attack with your remaining warrior, and if he fails, then you can emergency-settle.

-Sirp.