Early Growth production paths

Great topic... but should it be moved to the Strategy forum? Just wondering...
 
Source? Neither the manual, nor any of the screenshots on Arioch's site show any kind of prereq other than Calendar as a tech.

You are right ... I was mixing it up sorry

That should make the French the best civ for early wonders, way better than Egypt. It's a shame :).
 
From the Livestream:
Turn 0, with 2 food from city tile while the 1 pop is working on plains (+2 food) (see 16:08), so I guess 2 food is eaten -> 8 Turns to grow equals 15 or 16 food to reach Size 2

At turn 7 (one turn before growth) he gets an additional pop from ruins.
So he should have 14 Food accumulated
(27:10) To get to 3 he needs then 4 turns (with 2 additional food). The additional citizen is also working on food and consuming it at the same time. As he has 14, this means he needs 21 or 22 to reach Size 3.
(36:13) He reached Turn 12 now and the city has a size of 3. And he needs 15 turns to grow. We can see that from the city nametag. As he gets one more gold as before, he must either work on a plains+river or on a tundra+river or on a plains+river+horse.
A monument costs 60 and he needs 12 turns now instead of the 15 before. Meaning he has 5 production now and the worker is on plains+horse+river, adding 2 food and consuming two. Meaning that each turn there is two bonus food. Making it 29 or 30 Food needed.

(56:53) With A city of size 4 he has 0/40 to grow. (he as 10 food, 8 eaten, making 2, equals 20 turns)

So my guess is:
1->2 15 or 16 Food
2->3 21 or most probably 22 Food (6 additional)
3->4 29 or most probably 30 Food (8 additional)
4->5 40 Food (10 additional)

next ones could be:
5->6 52 Food (12 additional)
6->7 66 Food (14 additional)
7->8 82 Food (16 additional)
8->9 100 Food (18 additional)
9->10 120 Food (20 additional)

If I made any mistakes, tell me.
 
Yeah, I'm definitely thinking Scout > Worker, but after that I'm going to go with my gut.

I'm probably going to even put a warrior in there for good measure b/c I tend to play with Raging Barbarians. After that, if I've popped a lot of gold then I'm going with a settler after buying a second warrior or scout. If my scouting efforts have not given me a bankroll then I might do another scout before I make that settler. I'm sure the early settler might be excessive, but I'd much rather get two cities up ASAP so I can focus on wonders with my capital and push military with my second. After that I will def. stagnate more than I did in IV, but without that second city pushing me forward I can't see stagnating for a dozen or more turns while building a wonder.
 
scout, worker, settler, settler

tech for nearby luxuries and get the worker to improve them spending money earned from meeting city states and exploring ruins to buy the tiles. The happiness boost will take care of the extra unhappiness from three quick cities. Snap up as many resources as possible with my two new cities and save my fourth when I can see where iron is at.
 
scout, worker, settler, settler

tech for nearby luxuries and get the worker to improve them spending money earned from meeting city states and exploring ruins to buy the tiles. The happiness boost will take care of the extra unhappiness from three quick cities. Snap up as many resources as possible with my two new cities and save my fourth when I can see where iron is at.

Did you keep in mind that for each settler you need additional culture when acquiring new social policies? It's probably not that clever to pump out so many cities that early.
 
I kind of assume worker first... Generally speaking, making your land more productive is always going to give you benefits. Granted, improvements aren't worth a damn anymore so who really knows?
 
I kind of assume worker first... Generally speaking, making your land more productive is always going to give you benefits. Granted, improvements aren't worth a damn anymore so who really knows?

It's still worth a lot. Without improvements you will very much stagnate.

All tiles basically give only a value of 2 (2 Food, 2 Hammer, 1 Food+1Hammer)
A Citizen consumes a value of 2 (2 food)
Basically nullifying the work he does.

So basically an improvement isn't "just a bonus of 50%" but actually the increase from 0 to 1, which is worth even more.

In case of an bonus ressource like a Horse, you Increase it from 3 to 4, subtracting 2 consumed by the citizen it's an increase from 1 to 2, which is a 100% increase of efficiency if you see it like that.

Yes, the values of Boni decreased. But so did basic values of everything else, basically keeping the relation between the both the same.
 
Did you keep in mind that for each settler you need additional culture when acquiring new social policies? It's probably not that clever to pump out so many cities that early.

+30% more per extra city. That's why I'd limit it to two.

Provided monuments were built first, you'd see a net gain in cultural spending for the course of the game and it'd probably be a wise investment to expand earlier than later since the incubation period required for a new city to reach it's fullest culture potential will grow as later cities are introduced with poor infrastructure and more culture buildings to build.

It'd do better as a long-term investment to expand earlier. When The monument is taken into consideration... Each city constructed will increase the cost of a policy by 30% yes... but once the monument is complete, you'll be gaining culture at a rate of 10% faster than before. You lose a bit of opportunity cost in getting your first few policies a handful of turns earlier, but I think the net gain will result in both faster and a great amount of social policies as the game progresses... Which naturally means a faster culture win if that's your goal.

Example to illustrate what I'm talking about;

1 city with a palace (manual says 1 culture) and monument (2) = 3 CPT, The manual states the first policy is 25... which you'll probably get before your second city no matter what... So let's just use a random number for example, let's say the next one is 50. It'll then take you about 17 turns to get to that policy. When you construct a city, it'll take about 22 turns... so you lose 5 turns... but that total is then modified again once you build a monument in the city and it goes to 13 turns... Which meant... if you could snap your fingers and plop a monument down there the net gain is greater.

Obviously, we can't do this... The reason why expansion becomes favorable is because when temples come, we can do this. If we expand appropriately to out limits with disregard to the costs of policies rising (which fall back into balance after the monuments are built anyway...), when temples come online, we can proceed to construct them in as many cities as we see fit at the same time, resulting in no incubation period.

Further, when considering that 1 city with a mine can construct a monument in 20 turns... You figure in less than that amount of time, the city will recoup the culture "lost" due to the increased cost... granted no culture is actually "lost", so much as the opportunity to get a policy a few turns sooner. I think it may be more efficient to establish the core of your cultural empire quicker rather than later... cause once the cities are established and their monuments setup... the net gain will cause you to gain policies quicker than if you had remained small. After that point you can increase each city's culture accordingly as you develop new technology.

The period of net cultural loss due to increased costs is made longer for new cities when you discover more and more cultural buildings because it takes longer for a city to reach it's full potential.

So in sum, if ever I were able to expand; I would as soon as possible.
 
Makes sense.
Just had a little fun with excel/open office and also found out that, assuming you put your first 2 citizens on river/plains and the third one on forest you will have (when my assumptions are correct):
City Size 3 at turn 21
Scout at turn 7 and Worker at Turn 23
First Social Policy at turn 25
First Science Discovery at turn 10

If you wondered how high the science costs are, it's btw:
40 points for the first tier, 60 for the second, and 112/168 for the third.

So what Social Policy would you take at Turn 25 (or Turn 9 if france)? 50% Speed increase for the settler you just started building and the one after it?
Any guess for the first hand full of science discoveries?

EDIT:
Looked a little further.
If you take Liberty you got your first settler at 31 and the second at 37 (thats insane)
Assuming you need 6 turns to put them into the right spot and found the city, you will have:
Turn 37: Main City (3) + Second City (1) = 2*2+4=8 Unhappyness.
Turn 44: Main City (3) + Second City (2) + Third City (1) = 3*2+6=12 Unhappiness, which is already a problem if you don't have any luxury ressources (Worker is assumed to be "idle" since turn 38 though)
Turn 46: Main City (4) + Second City (2) + Third City (1) = 3*2+7=13 Unhappiness

And so on, meaning you already will have a problem when founding them if you cannot find luxuries right at the beginning (which need to be at the first city or in the 7 hexes of the second or third city)
If you are going straight to philosophy without taking anything else, you will probably get that at around turn 40. Which won't help you much if you arent Egypt (Burial Tomb)
In the ancient era however aren't any happiness buildings. For happyness buildings you would need a colosseum or a Circus which are both completely different science paths. Both will throw you even further back in your goal to get up to date with social policies. So, if you don't have Luxury Goods which you can work on pretty fast, you will most probably lose lots of growth.
 
Oh, I'm not saying wait forever, but personally I'm going to have my second city do the settler pushing rather than my capital. Capitals have seemed to be strong production/commerce locations in the screenies I've seen. Scout > Worker > Warrior > Settler allows me a quick boost to exploration (the thing you need to do more than anything else in the early game) and that second settler can be settled solely for food production (allowing a fast pop boost in between settler spam.
 
Its says you need a monument to build a temple. I haven't seen prerequisite for Stonehenge. Can anyone else confirm or deny this?

If so, my French strat will admittedly need to be reworked...

PS-I don't remember ever having prereqs for an "ancient" WW. I'd find it very strange if you actually have to build monument and temple before Stonehenge.

PS2-Sorry, should have read pg2, you already stated this is not confirmed. ty
 
Interesting data here, especially from Kordanor.

Based on these assumptions I made me a build path for Egypt:

7 Scout,
8 Size 2
21 Size 3
23 Worker,
25 Tradition (+1 food)
33 monument (switched temp to 1 hill tile for that)
35 worker built 2 farms lead to 5 excess food for settler
44 settler
now beginning Stonehenge
46 Aristocracy (+33% wonder)
53 -57 stonehenge finished (depending on working hill/mine or ressource available or not)

Not bad, at least I got an early settler. But france will be able to build stonehenge with Aristocracy bonus and then pump out settlers with Liberty bonus really quick.
Of cource scouting will make this whole plan obsolete as you could get extra culture from huts or population which change this order to the better.
 
I agree with Jaldaen:

If any moderator could move this thread into the STRATEGY subforum I'd be very pleased.
 
Is the gold from CS gifted only if you are the first civ to contact a given CS? If this is the case it is very unlikely to get this bonus on higher levels because of all the extra units that the AI has and 2 moves for all units. I don't think Greg received any gold from the CSs he met.

Even with that in mind scout before worker will probably still be better because it will allow you to explore more before barb activity increases.

Early worker seems like a no brainer considering that it does not stop city growth.
 
I am also thinking about pushing out 2 scouts in the beginning, especially when playing on Large/Huge Size.

Unfortunately I have no clue about how many Gold you get from a babarian camp/ruins and have no idea how much it costs to speed up your production. I think Greg did that in the second part of his video but I can't find it atm.

@Cyberian
Looks nice so far. But how do 2 farms lead to 5 excess food for the settler? A farm only improves a tile by 1. (and only with higher techs by 2).
The City produces 2, 2 worked farms will give you 4, tradition giving you 1, making 7 alltogether. As you got 3 citizens 6 of these are consumed. So basically what you have left is only what the 3rd one produces in terms of food +1.

I don't think pushing out 2 settlers quite early is a bad decision, I just think that pushing them out in the first 40 turns, will make you stumble over your own feed. You will need to decrease growth in all cities with focusing them on production. Newly found cities without palace and no improvements won't do much efficient work. Not taking the 50% speed increase but 1 food bonus will probably not make it much better, though your worker might have a better time for improving any luxury ressources (given you have the tech for it, which is rather unlikely).

I think I'd wait with my 3rd settler until I see where I can get iron. If you push these settlers that early you might also be screwed if you don't have any iron as you can't afford to build a fourth city for sure.

Edit: Forgot Tradition and put it in
 
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