slobberinbear
Ursine Skald
This is a proposed newbie article. Please comment.
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Early Game Gambits (for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword)
At the onset of a Civ game, opportunities are present to put yourself on the path to victory. Here are some common strategies for the early game.
Early War
The concept is simple: find a nearby neighbor and conquer him very early in the game (i.e., before 1000 BC).
Benefits: You have reduced competition on your continent and likely captured an excellent city (your neighbors former capitol).
Costs: You must dedicate your entire empires research and production to swift victory. If you fail to achieve a timely victory, you will have lost substantial ground to the non-warring civs in the game.
Suggested Civs/Leaders: any civ with an early unique unit, any leader who is Aggressive or Charismatic
Caution: If your opponent is Protective, or switches to Slavery and has copper in his borders, you should strongly consider changing targets or abandoning this gambit. Additionally, you should consider razing most enemy cities due to maintenance costs. Keep only your foes capitol, holy cities, and cities with wonders.
What you need to succeed:
Build 6-8 axemen or swordsmen with the City Raider promotion and keep making more until your victory is assured.
Early Religion
In this gambit, your goal is to found an early religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism.
Benefits: You enjoy increased happiness and culture plus the opportunity for additional commerce if you build the holy shrine with a great prophet. If you spread the religion to your neighbors, you can solidify good diplomatic relations. Having your state religion and a temple in a city gives you +2 happiness and costs you no maintenance, unlike Hereditary Rule and other civics that increase happiness. The extra culture from an early religion is great for border expansion, choking your neighbors, providing a barbarian early warning system, and keeps you from having to build monuments or Stonehenge.
Costs: Your religion may be hostile to that of some of your neighbors, triggering conflict. Also, if you shoot for an early religion and fail, you will have likely made a large technological investment with no payoff, and may be forced to continue to beeline to other religious techs while your military and worker technologies fall behind.
Suggested civs/leaders: any civ who starts with Mysticism. The Spiritual trait is also handy to remove the anarchy for switching religions and to build cheap temples.
Caution: If you are playing against other Spiritual civs, there will be a race to the early religions. On higher difficulty levels (Monarch and above), you will lose the tech race against a religious opponent unless you have a high-commerce tile in your capitol that you can work immediately. For this reason, at Monarch and above it is generally suggested that you target Hinduism (via Polytheism) so that if you are beaten you can still get to Judaism (via Masonry & Monotheism).
What you need to Succeed: A decent commerce tile adjacent to your capitols tile
Research the religious path until you get a religion. Unless you start with another worker tech that you can use immediately, dont build workers until you get the religion you need to grow the city to get extra commerce to get the religion faster. Build scouts or warriors instead.
Once you get the religion (and after you have gotten some of your worker techs researched), you will want to learn Meditation, Priesthood and Monotheism for Monasteries, Temples and the Organized Religion civic. With these tools, you can use your religion to grow your cities, expand the religion to other cities, and increase your research. Temples also allow you to run a priest specialist, which can generate a great prophet with which to build your holy shrine.
Early (Ancient era) Wonder
The Wonder gambits are built around leveraging the strengths of particular wonders. While each gambit is different, the basic concept is the same: focusing production on a city to crank out the wonder before your foes.
Benefits: Each wonder grants substantial unique benefits plus extra culture and great person points. The ancient era wonders are:
Costs: If you attempt a wonder and are beaten, you have lost a substantial amount of production. Even if successful, there is a large opportunity cost for building a wonder, simply because it takes a lot of production that could have been used for settlers, workers, military units, and buildings.
Suggested civs/leaders: Industrious civs get a +50% bonus to construct wonders. Expansionist civs can make faster workers, which are handy for wood chopping and mining to increase your wonder citys production.
What you need to succeed (optimally):
Ideally, you are Industrious, have nearby wood, nearby stone or marble, and are operating under Slavery. The more of these elements you lack, the longer your Wonder will take, thus increasing your opportunity cost for building it. If you have most of these elements, you can build the wonder as soon as it becomes available. Otherwise, you should wait to build the wonder until you have built 1-3 other cities. Put another way, if you build a wonder and delay expanding your empire, you greatly risk missing out of expansion opportunities.
Caution: If you are opposed by civilizations that are Industrious or have stone or marble in your borders, you need to consider hurrying or abandoning your wonder plans, or switching to a wonder that requires the other resource.
Specific Wonder tips:
Stonehenge: a cheap wonder that is great for expanding borders. The great prophet youll get is very handy for lightbulbing a religious tech, founding a shrine, or enhancing a citys commerce and production. This Wonder is particularly handy for civs with a monument-based unique building or Charismatic leaders.
Great Wall: another cheap wonder that makes you barb-proof. This is especially useful on isolated starts where you begin play alone on a small continent. The great spy can be settled in a city early on to generate espionage points, providing a great passive look into your foes research.
The Oracle: a fun wonder that, if timed properly, can get you a tech thousands of years early. Try to build it so that you have a good tech choice when it finishes. Suggested reachable techs to take: Code of Laws, Theology, Monarchy, Metal Casting, Feudalism.
Pyramids: a very expensive wonder that lets you choose any government civic. Since the government civics are quite diverse, the Pyramids are handy under either a peaceful or warlike strategy. The great engineer generated by the Pyramids can be used to build most other early wonders instantly, making the Pyramids a meta-wonder.
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Early Game Gambits (for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword)
At the onset of a Civ game, opportunities are present to put yourself on the path to victory. Here are some common strategies for the early game.
Early War
The concept is simple: find a nearby neighbor and conquer him very early in the game (i.e., before 1000 BC).
Benefits: You have reduced competition on your continent and likely captured an excellent city (your neighbors former capitol).
Costs: You must dedicate your entire empires research and production to swift victory. If you fail to achieve a timely victory, you will have lost substantial ground to the non-warring civs in the game.
Suggested Civs/Leaders: any civ with an early unique unit, any leader who is Aggressive or Charismatic
Caution: If your opponent is Protective, or switches to Slavery and has copper in his borders, you should strongly consider changing targets or abandoning this gambit. Additionally, you should consider razing most enemy cities due to maintenance costs. Keep only your foes capitol, holy cities, and cities with wonders.
What you need to succeed:
- 2-4 cities each with a barracks
- Trade routes between your cities
- Mining and Bronze Working techs (or Animal Husbandry if your unique unit is a chariot-type unit)
- Copper or iron hooked up (or horses if your UU is a chariot-type)
- A road to your enemy
- The Slavery civic (optional, but handy)
Build 6-8 axemen or swordsmen with the City Raider promotion and keep making more until your victory is assured.
Early Religion
In this gambit, your goal is to found an early religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism.
Benefits: You enjoy increased happiness and culture plus the opportunity for additional commerce if you build the holy shrine with a great prophet. If you spread the religion to your neighbors, you can solidify good diplomatic relations. Having your state religion and a temple in a city gives you +2 happiness and costs you no maintenance, unlike Hereditary Rule and other civics that increase happiness. The extra culture from an early religion is great for border expansion, choking your neighbors, providing a barbarian early warning system, and keeps you from having to build monuments or Stonehenge.
Costs: Your religion may be hostile to that of some of your neighbors, triggering conflict. Also, if you shoot for an early religion and fail, you will have likely made a large technological investment with no payoff, and may be forced to continue to beeline to other religious techs while your military and worker technologies fall behind.
Suggested civs/leaders: any civ who starts with Mysticism. The Spiritual trait is also handy to remove the anarchy for switching religions and to build cheap temples.
Caution: If you are playing against other Spiritual civs, there will be a race to the early religions. On higher difficulty levels (Monarch and above), you will lose the tech race against a religious opponent unless you have a high-commerce tile in your capitol that you can work immediately. For this reason, at Monarch and above it is generally suggested that you target Hinduism (via Polytheism) so that if you are beaten you can still get to Judaism (via Masonry & Monotheism).
What you need to Succeed: A decent commerce tile adjacent to your capitols tile
Research the religious path until you get a religion. Unless you start with another worker tech that you can use immediately, dont build workers until you get the religion you need to grow the city to get extra commerce to get the religion faster. Build scouts or warriors instead.
Once you get the religion (and after you have gotten some of your worker techs researched), you will want to learn Meditation, Priesthood and Monotheism for Monasteries, Temples and the Organized Religion civic. With these tools, you can use your religion to grow your cities, expand the religion to other cities, and increase your research. Temples also allow you to run a priest specialist, which can generate a great prophet with which to build your holy shrine.
Early (Ancient era) Wonder
The Wonder gambits are built around leveraging the strengths of particular wonders. While each gambit is different, the basic concept is the same: focusing production on a city to crank out the wonder before your foes.
Benefits: Each wonder grants substantial unique benefits plus extra culture and great person points. The ancient era wonders are:
- Stonehenge: Free monument in each city
- Great Wall: Barbarians cant enter cultural borders, +50% great general points for battles within borders
- The Oracle: Free technology
- Pyramids: All government civics available
Costs: If you attempt a wonder and are beaten, you have lost a substantial amount of production. Even if successful, there is a large opportunity cost for building a wonder, simply because it takes a lot of production that could have been used for settlers, workers, military units, and buildings.
Suggested civs/leaders: Industrious civs get a +50% bonus to construct wonders. Expansionist civs can make faster workers, which are handy for wood chopping and mining to increase your wonder citys production.
What you need to succeed (optimally):
- 2 workers
- Forests near your city and inside cultural boundaries
- Bronze working technology
- Stone and/or Marble hooked up
- The wonder-granting technology
- The Slavery civic
Ideally, you are Industrious, have nearby wood, nearby stone or marble, and are operating under Slavery. The more of these elements you lack, the longer your Wonder will take, thus increasing your opportunity cost for building it. If you have most of these elements, you can build the wonder as soon as it becomes available. Otherwise, you should wait to build the wonder until you have built 1-3 other cities. Put another way, if you build a wonder and delay expanding your empire, you greatly risk missing out of expansion opportunities.
Caution: If you are opposed by civilizations that are Industrious or have stone or marble in your borders, you need to consider hurrying or abandoning your wonder plans, or switching to a wonder that requires the other resource.
Specific Wonder tips:
Stonehenge: a cheap wonder that is great for expanding borders. The great prophet youll get is very handy for lightbulbing a religious tech, founding a shrine, or enhancing a citys commerce and production. This Wonder is particularly handy for civs with a monument-based unique building or Charismatic leaders.
Great Wall: another cheap wonder that makes you barb-proof. This is especially useful on isolated starts where you begin play alone on a small continent. The great spy can be settled in a city early on to generate espionage points, providing a great passive look into your foes research.
The Oracle: a fun wonder that, if timed properly, can get you a tech thousands of years early. Try to build it so that you have a good tech choice when it finishes. Suggested reachable techs to take: Code of Laws, Theology, Monarchy, Metal Casting, Feudalism.
Pyramids: a very expensive wonder that lets you choose any government civic. Since the government civics are quite diverse, the Pyramids are handy under either a peaceful or warlike strategy. The great engineer generated by the Pyramids can be used to build most other early wonders instantly, making the Pyramids a meta-wonder.
