Hi Civ Fans,
So I am just starting to improve at this game and I had a quick early game question I was hoping for advice with. I find that I can expand at a decent pace in the very early game but I have trouble building a military to defend that expansion early on. Do you have any tips for multitasking between building cities and building up your military in the very early game?
If you want good advice supplying a savegame is very helpful. Then we can estimate what you do wrong or just perceive as wrong. At least at the higher difficulty settings there always is some risk to be eliminated in the very early game.
One way to defend yourself is to aviod war at all in the early game. In the early game the first major goal is to leave despotism. When you enter republic, monarchy or seldomly feudalism that is the end of early game and the mid game begins. Establishing embassies helps to avoid war against you and they also enable you to sign military alliances. If someone has to be attacked it better not be you. As AI can be somewhat aggresive it help to present them an alternative target for its aggresion.
Another important thought might be that in the early game you lack the production for buildings. You need to build settlers and workers, both reduce population and thus production. Also you need to build some military, so almost no shields for buildings may be left over. Having almost no buildings when leaving despotism can be normal.
Yeah, a game file or at least a screenshot would be helpful. The rule for expansion, though, is to have a good food supply and granaries in your core cities, so they can grow quickly enough to produce settlers. I seem to recall an article in the War Academy on how to produce a good settler farm, and am trying (and failing) to track it down, but if you do it right you can produce a settler every four turns, or a worker every two.
You need to specify at what difficulty you're playing at, and what kind of map you're on, and all the other pre-game options as tactics/strategy will vary greatly depending on this.
A basic rule of thumb is to use one town for producing Settlers non-stop, the one with the best food count, while using another for producing soldiers non-stop while using all the other towns for whatever you feel needs topping up.
So the routine would be:
Settle town, produce Worker, Build whichever building suits the destiny of that town, spam desired unit - Granary/Settler or Barracks/Soldier or Harbour/Boat or Capital/Library etc.
Some common mistakes are: trying to build everything in every city from the get-go, not producing enough Workers to build Roads/Mines to generate Gold/Shields, not scouting the land well enough to find the best spots for new cities, going to war before you want to because you refuse to give an enemy a free Tech when they demand it, etc etc etc.
But you really need to specify your pre-game choices before anything really solid can be offered as an answer.
You need to specify at what difficulty you're playing at, and what kind of map you're on, and all the other pre-game options as tactics/strategy will vary greatly depending on this.
A basic rule of thumb is to use one town for producing Settlers non-stop, the one with the best food count, while using another for producing soldiers non-stop while using all the other towns for whatever you feel needs topping up.
So the routine would be:
Settle town, produce Worker, Build whichever building suits the destiny of that town, spam desired unit - Granary/Settler or Barracks/Soldier or Harbour/Boat or Capital/Library etc.
Some common mistakes are: trying to build everything in every city from the get-go, not producing enough Workers to build Roads/Mines to generate Gold/Shields, not scouting the land well enough to find the best spots for new cities, going to war before you want to because you refuse to give an enemy a free Tech when they demand it, etc etc etc.
But you really need to specify your pre-game choices before anything really solid can be offered as an answer.
This is really good advice. To expand on it just a little:
- Mine green, irrigate brown. That is, while you're in despotism, build mines on grasslands and irrigate plains. Irrigated grassland will produce 3 Food, but the despotism penalty knocks that down to 2. This reinforces Buttercup's advice about building enough workers to get the roads and mines built.
- Yes, sometimes you should give into a demand from an aggressive neighbor.
- The AI gauges military strength by looking at the *attack* value of your units, not attack + defense, as one might initially guess. So build archers rather than spearmen, and build swords when you can, to help deter aggression and to get ready for attacking a neighbor.
Is that so? F3 does weight the attack value more than it does value the defence value, but the later can be increased by fortifying, using the terrain and using either walls or city size. With the later walls become absolete. This is one reason why most players donnot bother to builds walls.
It is a crutch or a learning tool or both. For me, it helped me learn game more and assess risk of various strategies. The fun thing for me is midgame crisis that inevitably occurs.
If you are getting overpowered early you are missing something.
My only wins are on monarch, so I am still learning
Trial and error is my advice. Reload the same map repeatedly and try different combos of production. Too many military units is as bad as too few. I have tended to specialise in tiny continental maps because this gives you one-on-one play for the early part of the game, in fact until well into the middle ages or even the early industrial age (because the AI is so bad at amphibious ops). You can virtually choose your opponent as in any given quarter of Civs. you will be paired with the same one time after time. If you want a pussy cat to roll over, choose England (as the opponent). England cannot threaten you much militarily (but you can expect some threats early on) and will also build some neat GWs for you to acquire when you are strong enough to start bullying her.
Not quite: as Justanick says, it just weights the (total) A-value(s) 50% higher than the (total) D-value(s) (including bonuses). It also takes into account 'live' HP (healthy vets > healthy regs > redlined elites), and total unit-numbers. See here for the test-info. This is why at Emp+, it's normal to be rated 'weak' against most AICivs for much of the first 40-80T, until you can reach parity*.
So build archers rather than spearmen, and build swords when you can, to help deter aggression and to get ready for attacking a neighbor.
Agree with the first part (Bows not Spears), but not necessarily the second. For 20 shields, you can build 2 Warriors, or 1 Archer, or 1 Spearman -- but in terms of comparative strength (assuming the same HP-levels for all units, no D-bonuses applied):
The AI (almost) always builds the 'strongest/best' offensive units that it can, given its current tech+resources -- and it looooves researching/buying IronWorking -- so it will tend to build Archers before Iron is hooked, and then Swords afterwards. On a Pan/Cont map**, especially in the early game, under Despotism, while you still get 4 free units per town, spamming Axes can therefore be a fairly cost-effective DoW-deterrent (if that's what you want), because as long as you can build 2 Axes for every Archer the AICiv owns/builds (or 3 Axes for every Sword), their leader will continue to 'think' that you are stronger*** (bonus: 2 Axes per town act as cheap military-police). OK, in terms of actual combat, your Axes don't have great odds of beating Swords (or Spears) on the battlefield (although they do have a ~50% chance when attacking Archers on the flat) -- but once you locate/ hook up an Iron-source and upgrade those puppies (at a mere 60g per head), they will!****
Footnotes:
Spoiler:
*To reach parity quicker, encouraging the AICivs to fight amongst themselves, preventing them from trading with each other and depleting their starters-for-10, while doing as little fighting as possible yourself, can be a very useful strategy (or so I've heard! ). The AICivs also tend not to move Settlers around or build Wonders while they're at war, i.e. limiting their expansion and giving you an edge on (pre)building the GWs you most want (at least up to Emp). So contacting all AI-Civs (and getting Writing = Embassies) should be a high priority, because doing so will allow you to sign MAs (in addition to lowering your research-costs for widely-known techs, and allowing tech-brokering on multi-landmass maps).
**On a Large 70-80% Arch- or 80% Continents-map, until Magnetism or Navigation, the Ocean is your defence against DoWs
***Caveat: Unless it's Jerkses, who's just an a#$e...
****If you have Horses but no Iron, then spamming Chariots before you have HbR, and then upgrading them to Horsemen, may be a similarly useful early game tactic -- and at 30g per head, the upgrades are cheaper than Axe -> Sword. Apart from the Egyptians (and Hittites), the AI rarely builds Chariots, preferring Archers (which can't be upgraded until Invention -- if they survive that long!)
That logic might be true, but it can be somewhat misleading. One usually needs to be cautious about building up huge amount of military units as sooner or later unit support will become relevant. Some planning ahead might lead to a strategy opposing the above logic.
Actually they might even be cost efficient in battle. But you would need to use them in huge numbers and losing huge amounts of units might not the most fun.
It might be worth to note that this is not a totally safe defence. At least on Sid AIs might build the Great Lighthouse and cross oceans to settle at different landmasses even at huge 80% water Archipelago around 1000 BC.
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). The AICivs also tend not to move Settlers around or build Wonders while they're at war, i.e. limiting their expansion and giving you an edge on (pre)building the GWs you most want (at least up to Emp). So contacting all AI-Civs (and getting Writing = Embassies) should be a high priority, because doing so will allow you to sign MAs (in addition to lowering your research-costs for widely-known techs, and allowing tech-brokering on multi-landmass maps).
