Do you still have to Settler-Rush?

[damxam]

Do the earnings of a large Empire not counter the costs of such an Empire anymore?

BlytZ

They definitely won't if your cities aren't highly developed, so pumping out dozends of undeveloped hicksvilles will get you in the red fast.

 

[EridanMan]

Do the earnings of a large Empire not counter the costs of such an Empire anymore?

BlytZ

In my humble experiences (having not yet played into modern times), a large empire is just as valuable as it always was... Its just that building a large empire is far harder than it used to be - un-checked expansion (massive wars of conquest/settler rushes) can easily sink an empire if you bite off more than you can chew.

 

[Mujadaddy]

I love this game.

Quoted for Redundancy

(note, I am a big proponent of using forests to ramp-up settler production early in the game to hit your 'denial-of-access' points before your oppenents get there... my thinking is that the larger empire/resource base allowed by 'getting there first' _FAR_ outweighs the lost milled forest tiles.)

I never thought of using it for a SETTLER... usually I make a settler BEFORE I ever get a worker, as I can't bear to stop "growing" for the worker too early...

So now Isabella with 2 cities is way ahead of me, with 8 cities, in research. But she's resource-poor so I can still crush her if I can just get Catapults built fast enough...how long was it again until I get off from work and can play some more?

This is fun, and shows how hard and long Firaxis and friends worked to play-balance this thing.

Also, Quoted for Redundancy

 

[Pinstar]

Organized civs can get away with a classic settler pump. For the rest of the civs, I reccomend (in the very begining) expanding only to prime locations, and to secure resources. This normally makes for about 5 cities (including your capital) before all the prime real estate is taken up. After about 5, I normally bunker down for awhile and build up those cities, once they are a good size I do another settler pump and fill up all the non-prime locations that are left.

Another strategy, one that works if you are on the edge of a contenent, is to build your 5 cities up front inwards tword the main land to create a seal on your part of the land, leaving alot of empty space behind it. Deny any requests for open borders. Once you have your finances in order you can backfill your land slowly. Once you have filled in your slide of the world, you can go ahead and open your borders back up to all.

 

[Rellin]

The AI seems to aggressively expand towards my boarders every game. I do feel I need to rush out settlers to get that land before them, but at the same time, what everyone is saying is totally true. If you grow too big you will fall way behind in science.

 

[Marquis Mark]

In multiplayer, spreading yourself thin with cities early is asking to get clobbered. You'll lose the tech race so fast your head will spin.

 

[Rustypipe]

I find its still nessary to grab land as fast as possible but the typical "settler rush" isn't what it used to be. Like said above you are usally capped out around 7-12 cities and if you spread yourself to thin or over populate your maintance costs are through the roof and you end up far behind the tech tree so I don't think you have to worry about this as much.

On a side note if you don't want to build as many settlers pick a Civ with Creative. This gives you an instant +2 culture in all your cities making your boarders expand very fast making it less nessary to pump out settlers for the sake of grabing land.

Also like mensioned above Civ 4 cities are more about quality then quanity untill mid to late game anyhow

Also try settler pumps on difficulty settings around Diety it doesn't happen the comp just has to much of a handcap and can expand faster then you no matter how hard you try

 

[Robben]

To me it seems Civ4 is much better balanced than older versions - I played a lot the original Civilization and settler rush was the key to victory there. Here I have found it may even hinder your progression - you have to expand but do it with consideration. Expand first towards your neighboring civilization - don't let them claim that land area, but still try to find only very good locations for all your cities. This may be harder than it seems - at least I have found the places where I wouldn't have even thought of building a city in older Civs may become prosperous cities in time.

 

[BlytZ]

I remember in CIV3 I would expand fairly quickly in Ancient Times and I would be able to keep myself safe with a strong military whilst catching a few wonders but the Middle Ages was always a bleak time of huge debt!

Industrial ages were always what brought me back up and out of the slump though.

I've noticed that units you cannot afford are automatically disbanded, is that annoying, uncontrollable?

Also with Corruption out the window (thank the Lord) is your Empire now faster at developing? Would this not mean that although new cities cost you money that you may not have, they will be paying for themselves sooner than in past CIVs?

I've heard many people quoting figures of 10-20 cities at the most in their Empires and as I prefer the longer game on the largest maps, I was used to CIVs of 50-80 cities as the norm in CIV3, is that simply an impossibility now? Does that mean armies are now also smaller? As I only really play it for the military conquest reward after all that hard city development!

Sorry for all the Questions,

BlytZ

 

[Wlauzon]

Despite the changes, it appears that settler rush is still needed - in fact maybe more than ever in some situations.

The key now is that you NEED to lock up all the real estate you can early. In one game I just finished I settler rushed on Pangea to basically make a "Maginot Line" of cities so the other major civ to the south could not build cities in "my" territory.

But that depends. In general, it seems that you are better off stopping at around 10-15 cities max and making quality not quantity. But I am still playing with this idea.. Next game I was going to take my time, get the best locations, and make only about 8 cities and do all I could to max them out to see what happens then.

I have tried a couple of games with 25+ cities and saw no real problems though - until I moved off continent. Since most wonders and some other things only work on your home continent, it seems that overseas cities are much more likely to flip.

 

[mrjepson]

On the harder setting leaving big holes to fill in later is just asking for barbarians. On easy way to claim resources is to conquer the AI cities. They will no doubt build in good locations and only have a couple units defending their cities while they pump out a worker to improve the tiles (just like most humans would, only we would only have one unit). Just walk up delcare war and take the city, they can't move their production over so they will be building new units from scratch so its easy to take out their cities. Barbarian cities are even better as they have no religion and no defensive bonuses and are almost alway in excellent positions.

 

[Arkanin]

The organized personality trait is sufficient for a much larger empire to be profitable. That definitely doesn't make it the best trait, but I'd just throw out that if you're a big fan of the settler factory, it may be for you.

Right now, I am simply playing on monarch, so take this with a grain of salt. From what I understand, expansion has to be performed much more cautiously because of barbarians. You want to have an archer in each city, generally, unless you can see all of the fog of war and you are on a small island (in which case, good for you, tiger >=D).

 

[Bezhukov]

The organized trait makes it much easier to settler rush, as the main impedement (high maintenance) is cut in half. Cheap lighthouses mean you can easily work lots of water tiles to pay the bills as well.

Other traits are better suited to taking things slow - an aggressize civ can win the game without ever building one settler! Playing Mali (not aggressive, but good early UU) on monarch, I got three solid cities established and then put my skirmishers to work.

 

[duxup]

Early to mid game there is a fine balance between too few and too many cities. When you found a city and your budget drops 8-12 gold per turn you might need to hold off until later in the game when civics and banking starts kicking in. I found out the hard way that an early over expansion crippled my R&D leading to a pair of Space losses. Sadly it seems that the AI never aggressively tries to restart their expansion in the late game. 8-10 cities is all I ever see from them.

I think that is what happened to me last night. I had what looked on the map to be a great nation but economically I was crippled for a long time and did not recover before some other problems caused me big problems (nobody wants to be buddhist, and everyone hates me for it).