Buying Settlers early games

[Iberian]

Yep I'm usually building stonehendge and great library in my cap, and by the time stonehenge is built I usually have more than enough gold for city states and an early settler.

What level you playing? I have tried beelining/rushing stonehenge with the Egyptians and the SP with +33% and had a hut to pop that second +30 culture and stil didn't get it.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Stealing workers, sure. Open borders, possibly... but the luxury trade I don't agree with. People often dump 500 gold into city-states for both their luxuries and the bonus. 150-300 per luxury is an exploitive at all and luxuries matter in the early game where you only have a handful of happiness to settle just about 2 cities.

Once I realized that selling luxuries to the AI is actually Pareto-improving (it triggers Golden Ages faster for it, that's where the crazy GPT surpluses come from), selling luxuries started to bother me less. The AI more than makes its money back, it can't be sure who my first victim is going to be, and if it isn't my first victim then it is clearly made better off by the bargain. It gets a lot more than 300 Gold back from the accelerated GAs.

 

[Makaz]

I'm finding that it's much better to build Warriors and kill the nearest AI.

The opposing capital is generally a tastier site than anything you're likely to settle, and three Warriors can waste a city. On Deity, three Warrior builds will yield two cities and the Workers to improve your cities. That's a lot more efficient than building them yourself.

You can then defer settling additional sites until you need to hook up Horses or Iron. By then your cities will be large enough that deferring growth for a few turns isn't a big deal.

Strange how the more I read these forum, the more I believe deity is easier than immortal.

In immortal by the time I have 1 warrior out, the closest AI usually has 2 warriors 1 archer one scout. And by the time you get 3 warriors on their way to the ennemy; if you are unlucky; they already have multiple cities.


Or is it one of this strategy that requires to reload if you don't get a starting plain and gandhi or siam as neighbour ?


The only way I can see this done is by abusinig their capital after they DoW on a city state as they like to and loose everything there.

 

[bluedevil99]

I agree with buying a settler in principle, avoiding those turns of zero pop growth makes it a much better investment than the gold/hammer ratio suggests. However, recently I've preferred to save the gold to buy a horseman immediately when HBR comes in, so I can level him up and begin taking cities immediately when my second horseman finishes (sometimes even before). My early game sequence is usually (continents map):

scout, worker, monument, settler, worker
settle second city near horses (even if horses already in capital)
send 1st worker with settler to hook up pasture, second worker finishes improving capital horseman kill everything on continent
begin teching to astronomy