Fine tuning the early game. Maximum REX or Maximum City Development?

[Hereditary Rule]

Lately I’ve been obsessed with early game REXing and maximizing early game production and available resources.

If you had to choose IMP’s +50% Settler Production or EXP’s +25% worker Production + Double Speed Production Granaries, which would you prefer in most situations? Forget about the other benefits of the traits.

The obvious answer seems to be IMP as you want to grab land ASAP, but most players here advocate sending at least one worker with every settler to immediately improve the tiles, which is a plus for EXP. I engage in this practice frequently as a city without improved tiles is usually just damper on research. Granaries are always priority builds in new cities giving another plus to EXP.

The tradeoff thus seems to be,

Place the most cities possible vs. Place almost as many cities but have them develop faster.

Which do you find gives you the stronger opening in your games?

 

[lilnev]

You left out an option: CRE's free border pops. Look at it as saving 30 hammers per city for the monument you don't have to build, plus you get your best tiles about 8 turns sooner (assuming you would have chopped 20 hammers into the monument and worked a high hammer tile for 3 turns to get the other 10 hammers). I think CRE is stronger for REXing than either IMP or EXP.

 

[Hereditary Rule]

You left out an option: CRE's free border pops. Look at it as saving 30 hammers per city for the monument you don't have to build, plus you get your best tiles about 8 turns sooner (assuming you would have chopped 20 hammers into the monument and worked a high hammer tile for 3 turns to get the other 10 hammers). I think CRE is stronger for REXing than either IMP or EXP.

I like CRE quite a bit actually but the reason I didn't include it is that doesn't provide a constant benefit from game to game the way the IMP and EXP are ("benefit" in terms of saved hammers during the REX period). It is usually a great benefit to every city but not always. My best tiles in a new city may not be in the outer ring.

With IMP,
A new city will always require a settler (ignoring conquest), thus I've saved precious early hammers with the bonus.

EXP makes workers and granaries cheaper for faster city development.

If I peacefully REX and found 6 new cities, CRE will save me 180 hammers. But how many would IMP have saved? What about EXP for a worker and granary in each city? (I can't do the math as I always play EPIC and am not sure what the hammer costs on normal are). The math gets even fuzzier when you have to take in account that the worker and settler bonuses are hammer only.

 

[Single Malt]

Both EXP and IMP bonuses are on , not . Your first few workers and settlers usually are built mainly using surplus from improved food resources. The trait bonus only kicks in when you are producing 4 or more . Maybe CRE is more useful. I would rate EXP higher than IMP for REX as the essential granary is much cheaper.

 

[Alexfrog]

I find the Imperialistic bonus of 50% to settlers a lot better than 25% to workers. Workers are faster and 25% of just the production part (not food) isnt much. You might not even get anything if you have too few hammers.

Both bonuses do the most when you are whipping or chopping out the settler/worker, since then youre doing it with a lot of hammers.

For an imperialistic civ, you should build a settler by using the food to grow a size, then whipping the population into 30 hammers (which is 45 with the bonus). 22 food to grow to size 2 then is worth 45 hammers, instead of just being worth 22 if you spent it on the settler. So you build settlers by alternately growing a size while making a warrior or whatever, then switching to settler and doing it really fast with a whip + chop. You can do this for workers with expansive but its only 25% and they are cheaper so you dont benefit as much.


However, the rest of the expansive benefits are much better than Imp.

I actually find that the best techs for helping an early Rex are Financial and Organized. They let you do it without wrecking your economy as much, which then results in faster techs, which speeds you up.

 

[Hereditary Rule]

I think it's pretty obvious that CRE, IMP, and EXP are great at accelerating early game expansion, growth, and development.

To put it simply,

IMP will attain the 6 extra cities the fastest.
EXP will have the 6 cities growing the fastest (but the cities may be founded later)
CRE will have the 6 cities borders pop the fastest, and access outer ring resources the fastest (but the cities may be founded later).

In most game situations which advantage is the most preferred in your experience?

 

[Iranon]

I prefer IMP. It makes settlers a lot more convenient to whip, and I tend to get by on a relatively low workers:cities ratio because I place them very close together and will happily do 4:2 whips until the cows come home. I also compulsively settle tiny islands that won't require workers.

Another benefit: Awkward starts where a worker would remain idle for some time become a lot less awkward if you can scrape together 4 hammers. Quite useful for leaders with questionable starting techs, like Charlemagne.

Also: Hate CRE; my least favourite civilian trait.

 

[Single Malt]

I find the Imperialistic bonus of 50% to settlers a lot better than 25% to workers. Workers are faster and 25% of just the production part (not food) isnt much. You might not even get anything if you have too few hammers.

Both bonuses do the most when you are whipping or chopping out the settler/worker, since then youre doing it with a lot of hammers.

For an imperialistic civ, you should build a settler by using the food to grow a size, then whipping the population into 30 hammers (which is 45 with the bonus). 22 food to grow to size 2 then is worth 45 hammers, instead of just being worth 22 if you spent it on the settler. So you build settlers by alternately growing a size while making a warrior or whatever, then switching to settler and doing it really fast with a whip + chop. You can do this for workers with expansive but its only 25% and they are cheaper so you dont benefit as much.


However, the rest of the expansive benefits are much better than Imp.

I actually find that the best techs for helping an early Rex are Financial and Organized. They let you do it without wrecking your economy as much, which then results in faster techs, which speeds you up.

Organised doesn't really help much early, as it halves civic maintenance. Civic cost is negligible until the AD times and the costly civics are enabled/you have lots of cities. That's far from early REX.

 

[KingLoraxII]

Also: Hate CRE; my least favourite civilian trait.

Its a crutch when you first start and it does help but once you find out you can chop out stonehedge (on lower levels anyways) and get the same effect over your whole empire or libraries after writing for each city if you dont get stonehenge. It just doesnt do alot - it just help before you know how to work the culture borders.

 

[vicawoo]

Organised doesn't really help much early, as it halves civic maintenance. Civic cost is negligible until the AD times and the costly civics are enabled/you have lots of cities. That's far from early REX.

It's more than you think if you expand a lot.

The problem with 2 pop whips is that you have to build a granary before it becomes efficient.

 

[Andvare]

I use cre to not compromise the placement of my second city (strategic resource), but then, I play very aggressively.
Were it really shines is in AI blockages. Put down a few cities, and in no time the AI is blocked, and you are free to REX at your hearts desire.

 

[azzaman333]

I prefer IMP. It makes settlers a lot more convenient to whip, and I tend to get by on a relatively low workers:cities ratio because I place them very close together and will happily do 4:2 whips until the cows come home. I also compulsively settle tiny islands that won't require workers.

Another benefit: Awkward starts where a worker would remain idle for some time become a lot less awkward if you can scrape together 4 hammers. Quite useful for leaders with questionable starting techs, like Charlemagne.

Also: Hate CRE; my least favourite civilian trait.

I've always used CRE is an agressive trait. Take more land, hurt the AI's settlements, even settling land next to an AI's capital if they've left decent land there. And it's much faster to take control of the cities culturally after taking them in a war.

 

[Joshua368]

Yeah creative is pretty great.

But if you aren't settling all up in the AI's faces with it you're sort of wasting it. Show them what those borders are made of!

 

[azzaman333]

Lately I’ve been obsessed with early game REXing and maximizing early game production and available resources.

If you had to choose IMP’s +50% Settler Production or EXP’s +25% worker Production + Double Speed Production Granaries, which would you prefer in most situations? Forget about the other benefits of the traits.

The obvious answer seems to be IMP as you want to grab land ASAP, but most players here advocate sending at least one worker with every settler to immediately improve the tiles, which is a plus for EXP. I engage in this practice frequently as a city without improved tiles is usually just damper on research. Granaries are always priority builds in new cities giving another plus to EXP.

The tradeoff thus seems to be,

Place the most cities possible vs. Place almost as many cities but have them develop faster.

Which do you find gives you the stronger opening in your games?

Depends on the surrounding lands. If you have a great capital, but not much else, you focus on pumping it up. If you have strong surroundings, you take as much of them as you can get.

 

[30+]

It's level dependent. Settler-Prince where the AI is slow and city maintenance is very cheap Imp > Exp. Just get more land and use your greater Health resources to make up the difference.

Emperor-Deity Imp is almost useless because the AI will always beat your settler out regardless....... while Exp is quite handy. Monarchy is one of those inbetween levels, lol. Not hard to play at all, yet not simple.

Organised doesn't really help much early, as it halves civic maintenance. Civic cost is negligible until the AD times and the costly civics are enabled/you have lots of cities. That's far from early REX.

I disagree. At emperor, with 5 total cities, 4 of them being 5 tiles from your capital will cost you a grand total of 18g if you are not Org. Org cost will be 13g. 5g difference equates to a 30% research differential and a minimum of 3extra turns to research a given tech. And I am not talking AD times for the 5 cities. I am talking 1000-800 BC. Simply put, Org can afford 1 city more than Non Org for the same price.

 

[EmperorFool]

Organised doesn't really help much early, as it halves civic maintenance. Civic cost is negligible until the AD times and the costly civics are enabled/you have lots of cities. That's far from early REX.

Are you sure that it doesn't affect the other parts of maintenance. I always thought it halved it across the board.

Edit: Oh right. I was picturing the "-50%" line when hovering over a city's maintenance total on the city screen once you've built a Courthouse. Brain fart!

 

[Iranon]

Re CRE: There are enough ways to discourage AI encroachment. Often a blocking city will do without the trait (who cares about the culture pressure. By the time it threatens to flip it'll have one its job and supplied me with plenty of units). If all else fails, there's low-level warfare.
I hardly ever build monuments anyway... if I don't have stonehenge or a religion, I'd rather spend the hammers on settlers and settle in a tight pattern. Don't need a second ring then.

I regard it as a trait that makes my life easier rather than one that brings meat to the table, and as such it's only really useful to me when I'm struggling and a way to cut corners is welcome. Don't mind it on Deity and crowded Immortal starts, otherwise... yuck.

***

Re the balance between EXP and IMP: I find the value of IMP actually increases on high levels, similar to CRE: claiming the land is a higher priority than actually making it productive beause it's easier to fix an economy strained by underdeveloped cities than to break out of a squeeze.

***

Re ORG: The only thing ORG does for city maintenance is giving a hammer bonus for courthouses. It does halve civic upkeep though, which combined with the building discounts makes it the top economy trait for me.

For a detailed comparison against FIN see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=303912 - there are some relevant early game examples towards the end of the thread.

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

Re: CRE

I was just playing a game with Surayavaman and the CRE trait comes in quite handy. Remember, you also get half-priced libraries and theatres (as well as colloseums, but I hardly ever build those). Cheap libraries means your science comes on line faster after getting writing, and cheap theatres means the thing is easier to build/whip when taking over enemy cities. Definitely a nice trait.

NPM

 

[Skallagrimson]

Its a crutch when you first start and it does help but once you find out you can chop out stonehedge (on lower levels anyways) and get the same effect over your whole empire or libraries after writing for each city if you dont get stonehenge. It just doesnt do alot - it just help before you know how to work the culture borders.

On the higher levels, writing + libraries. You won't get SH, and you need the libs anyway.

 

[futurehermit]

I think one of the main advantages of creative is often not exploited (by myself included, and I love cre): Cheap theatres and cheap coliseums for from the culture slider.

Creative, overall, is a great SE-warmongering trait. And, if you are not using it in that way, imo, you are not getting your money's worth from it.

SE: Cheap libraries; cheap to grow cities from culture slider; no need to go down the mysticism route for HR and instead can focus on the aesthetics-drama route for and GL-NE-HE goodness.

War-mongering: Ideal second city placement. No need for mysticism, so can focus on bw/ah instead. Can focus on construction before/after aesthetics path. Construction gives important military strength and also cheap coliseums for

Of course, Cre is also handy for rexing, as has already been suggested.