Early build orders?

[Yushal]

I find my build order on Monarch/Epic to be set in stone and I cant see any way to break out of it/find something else/better.

My capitol goes worker/warrior/warrior/settler, warrior until growth then settler, barracks/archer/archer/settler

My secondary cities almost invariably go worker/monument/barracks/archer in some order.

Is there a better way? Should I be chopping settlers instead of saving the forests for wonder-chopping which I end up never doing?

Also, tech choices are giving me some trouble. I find pottery for cotages to be invaluable and a must have early acquisition. Archery is also a must for barb activity. In fact I generally get everything to do with resources before I ever go for bronze working. Is it better to head straight for upper techs even when you could use the resouce techs?

 

[MrCynical]

Presumably since you're bothering with barracks this early you're going for early warfare? They aren't necessary at this stage if you're only defending from barbs and so on. The order seems reasonable, though personally I favour a second worker before the settler. This is because I chop rush settlers (virtually never wonders), which is very effective I find.

Techwise there are hardly any circumstances where you should research anything other than bronze working at the start (or mining if you don't start with it). Bronze working gets you chop rushing and slavery for faster production. It also reveals copper and allows axemen. You seem to be favouring archers at the moment? If you have copper reasonably nearby then bronze working gives you a superior unit to archers at an earlier date, and is more than adequate to deal with barbs. Unless I have no copper or iron I never bother with archers or Archery. I'll never research archery unless I have already got Bronze working and found I've no copper, and quite often I never bother with that tech at all.

Pottery should be a fairly high priority, though for granaries as much as cottages at this stage, but still after bronze working. At Monarch level it's a lottery whether you can bag a religion even if you start with Mysticism, so I wouldn't follow that line of techs that early unless you're after Stonehenge. Agriculture/Animal Husbandry should come quite early to get food resources up and running, ditto the Wheel for connecting them and getting pottery. Fishing/sailing depends on where you are relative to the coast, and will either be the second tech to get or largely irrelevant depending on whether you start near seafood. Hunting is the lowest priority tech at the start. Scouts aren't that great and it doesn't allow many good resources to be improved. It's only needed as a prerequisite for archery which as I've made clear is a last resort for defence when all other options have failed, not a priority.

 

[Yushal]

I'll try going BW first and chopping. I only do archers as they seemed to be the quickest way to combat barb archers that tend to appear by the time my first city gets plopped down and I usually have hunting already.

I suppose I am also holding myself back by not whipping in the capitol? It seems silly not to, now that I think on it as it is so effective in other cities, but I know that I don't.

 

[jimbob27]

I go down 1 of 2 routes normally. If it's a landlocked start, I'll usually do the same "get copper asap" as most people tend to do.

If I've got a coastal start with sea resources, I'll research fishing (if I don't start with it) and build work boats asap. Work boats are better than workers in this situation, because the city can grow whilst they're being built. Costal starts are usually low on trees as well, so this route often beats the standard bronzeworking beeline. On monarch, you can usually get away with waiting till your 3rd city, before linking up bronze, and still have enough time to fend of the barbs and have a major axerush early on.