Epic Ancient start on Temperate world

Mendel

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
10
I'm having trouble when starting with a Temperate world. It seems that everything at the early game takes far too long to build, even with optimizing the hammer production in the city. I've seen some games where I've only managed to build 1 warrior, 1 scout, a barracks and 1 settler (usually in that order) by 0 AD. The starting city size will be anywhere from 3 to 8, depending. I'll usually have 15-20 technologies in the same time. This doesn't seem to be related to any specific leader, although Catherine and Julius Ceaser have been my most recent attempts.

Any advise?
 
I don't see mention of a worker in there. The only fast way to grow is through workers. Well, with one excpetion that I will note. You basically have three options:

1) Research mining/bronze working first. If you start with mining, build a worker first. If you don't start with mining, build a warrior, then a worker. In either case, it's critical that the worker pops about the same time you get bronze working. Use the worker to chop rush settlers, more warriors, and more workers (the mix varies on personal taste). The key here is that you grow cities through chopping trees.

2) Grow organically with workers. I would still build the worker first, even though this stalls growth. Simultaneously, research the tech that will give you the biggest boost in production. That would be agriculture, if you have grain, animal husbandry if you have animals, or possibly mining. Use your worker to maximize food primarily, and shields secondarily. Most early tiles only provide food+shields=3. You want to get tiles that give you food+shields=6 ideally. Once you have a couple of these, city growth will take off and producing settlers becomes a 7 to 10 turn process rather than a 20 turn process.

2a) If you are on the coast with 2 or more seafood resources, a good variant on #2 is to research fishing and build 2 work boats before a settler. The advantage is that your city will grow while the work boats are being built. The extra commerce from the sea tiles is nice as well.

3) 1 city rush conquest. The Incans are built for this. Build a barracks (optional, but I prefer it) and start churning out quechas. Don't build any workers or settlers. Use the quechas to capture workers and conquer a neighboring civ. This is often a faster way to 3 cities than building settlers yourself.

In most cases #1 is the fastest way to get a second city. In some cases (when your starting city has 3 or more accessible animals/seafood/grain) #2 is better long-term. Your first city is a little slower, but you will catch up rather quickly and have a better developed city as a result of not using your forests. You are then free to chop the forests to rush wonders.

Unless you have posted incomplete information, your problem is no worker, yet you waste time to build a barracks you aren't immediately using. Either rush early, or get the worker out their to chop or improve. I'd probably skip the scout as well.
 
Another idea besides the excellent advice already given, is to found your city on a plains hill. The additional production this provides can really speed up your early development, especially if you decide against chop rushing...
 
I usually do warrior-obelisk-(sometimes another warrior)-worker-settler, and start chop-rushing it around 2000bc on Prince level.
 
Thanks for the advise so far. It seems I'm having really bad luck on Temperate worlds, by getting wide expanses of grasslands, deserts and plains to start. Without nearby forests, chop-rushing anything isn't viable.

One of the other things I'm seeing with Epic scale that appears to be a bug is that the years start clocking at 20 years a turn, then it slips to 25 years a turn somewhere between 2500BC and 1500BC (when I noticed it).

I've assumed the barracks was my time problem. The barracks costs 90 hammers, and the build time is:
90 turns / 1800 years at 1 total hammer production (THP),
45 turns / 900 years at 2 THP,
30 turns / 600 years at 3 THP,
23 turns / 460 years at 4 THP.

I haven't had many, if any starting cities with 4 or more hammers. Many times, I can only achieve 2 THP at the start of the game, no matter how I distribute the production. This is particularly true in a plains environment (1 food, 1 hammer).

Walkerjks, I have tried throwing workers in the mix at various points, but it has seemed to slow me down more than not, unless I get a lot of 'development' technology advances from tribes. I was hoping someone was going to talk me out of the barracks, I guess, so I didn't mention the worker. Besides, workers don't seem to have many very early options to increase hammers.

It seems prudent to restart the game if you start if there's fewer than 4 forest tiles for the home city, but that forces the game to revolve around the Random Number Generator in the Map generation, and somehow, that doesn't seem right. There should be another startup strategy to deal with low-THP situation.
 
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