First City build order?

[TrevorB]

I've been reading several posts here to try and find a good build order for your first city. A lot of the strategies seem to depend on game difficulty (and number of barbarians). I know the answer here for many seems to be "it depends", but I'd like to try to figure out some things that are consistent.

Using workers to chop down forests seems to be a consistent strategy. But how large should your city be before you build that first worker and stop city growth.

For the record, to date I've only played on Noble. I used to be a heavy Monarch player, but don't feel like I have a good enough sense of game mechanics yet to go any higher. The games feel close enough as they are.

Personally I feel uncomfortable sending out settlers without units to defend them. Wolves seem to find those settlers very tasty.

At present my strategy has been to build scouts (to explore, max 2) and warriors (to explore nearby regions, defend new settler expansion positions, to be upgraded to archers ASAP) until my city size has reached 3. Why 3? I'm uncertain.

After size 3, my build order goes Worker, Settler. Usually I'll start a repeating cycle: Archer, Worker, Settler, until I've expanded as far as I can go, then focusing on defensive and worker units until my road network is built.

My question is, what are other people doing in those first 50 turns or so? Assuming you want to find a good balance between scouting out new city spots, settler production, and continued wolf starvation, is there a better strategy?

Everything else I've read here seems to indicate I should stop automating my workers, but I think I'll post another thread about that.

 

[CrackedCrystal]

I usually build a worker first thing. Even before any warriors or scouts. In fact I often play farmer's gambit and not build warriors at all. Animals will not come into your boarders, and barbarians will not show up for a couple dozen turns.

I never wait for my city to grow for that first worker. If you have no improved tiles for your new citizens to work, the benifits of letting your city grow are not as great. if you build the worker first, you'll be able to have two improved tiles at just about the same time your city grows to use both tiles.

My general build order is...
1) Worker,
2) a partial build of a structure or a warrior until size 2 or 3 *depends on situation*
3) settler

Then I make a choice, either max food production in the capital for a worker/settler factory, or use my new city for that.

 

[TrevorB]

I usually build a worker first thing. Even before any warriors or scouts. In fact I often play farmer's gambit and not build warriors at all. Animals will not come into your boarders, and barbarians will not show up for a couple dozen turns.

I never wait for my city to grow for that first worker. If you have no improved tiles for your new citizens to work, the benifits of letting your city grow are not as great. if you build the worker first, you'll be able to have two improved tiles at just about the same time your city grows to use both tiles.

My general build order is...
1) Worker,
2) a partial build of a structure or a warrior until size 2 or 3 *depends on situation*
3) settler

Then I make a choice, either max food production in the capital for a worker/settler factory, or use my new city for that.

Just for the record, what difficultly level are you playing on? That seems a critical question to a lot of people playing the "farmer's gambit"...

 

[xenikos]

CC - I'd love to always build a worker first, but most of the time it simply isn't viable. There are so many side constraints to take into consideration:

1. What use would it be? How significant would having that worker out 8 turns earlier really be? Is there a rice paddy that can be turned into a full loaf, and cause the city to skyrocket? Sometimes it doesn't do enough good to put everything else on hold.
2. Can the worker be helpful yet? Sometimes you have to wait on techs, culture expansion, etc. to do anything truly useful.
3. What are you giving up? Sure you can sometimes delay having a warrior sitting around, but not always. And you are usually giving up a turn or two on discovering that first/second tech due to lack of growth.

 

[remconius]

Worker, settler.

Use the worker to change one 3 tile yield into a 5 and you're on track. If you have bronze working you can do a forest chop and kick ass in the beginning.

 

[Bezhukov]

You can get away with this start (especially if you beeline to bronze working) even on the higher difficulties. You're more at risk of another civ stumbling upon you defenseless (especially in MP) than you are to barbs before 3000 BC.

 

[Mujadaddy]

I've only played on Noble so far... but this is what works best for me...

Build a WARRIOR. Have the FIRST Warrior go exploring for huts & a second city site. While building a warrior, my city will usually grow, giving me MORE food &/or production. This, to me is VITAL--2 pop > 1 pop in every way...

Then, it depends on what techs I have already, and what resources are in the area. If there's some juicy beef down the way, yeah, I'll shoot for a worker, but I'll time it so my Animal Husbandry research and my worker pop at the same time.

By this time, I've already got two warriors, right? So *IF* there wasn't a good resource nearby, I make the settler instead of the worker, and don't have to worry about barbarians, b/c I HAVE a garrison warrior already.

Then, I build what I didn't build, ie, a settler or worker, respectively, and hook up the two cities and all the resources in the vicinity.



That's what *I* do, anyway...I don't consider five or so turns of delay (while making the 2nd warrior) a drawback, as I'm GROWING the city in the meantime...sometimes, if my techs are coming slow, I'll even let the city grow to size 3...

 

[werttrew]

In games where I built a worker first, I'm often beat to polytheism.

If I reload the exact same game and wait for 2 or 3 population to build a worker, I find I can get polytheism just fine. (This is on Prince level.)


A worker-first strategy, in my mind, will crucially cripple you in getting those first sciences, especially when on a polytheism/monotheism track

 

[dar]

A worker-first strategy, in my mind, will crucially cripple you in getting those first sciences, especially when on a polytheism/monotheism track

It depends on your starting location and your starting techs. For example: I've been playing Rome (mining) and China (mining, agri) a lot lately and theres been a few times when I've started out with gems/gold/silver & a food bonus in my city radius. In that case its sheer madness not to go worker first. The mine gives a gold bonus that increases your research by 50-60% (as well an extra hammer) and the food bonus aids growth.

 

[lastchance]

I think there are only 3 builds that work early: You can worker-chop for settler, go warrior-settler, or settler-warrior.

I strongly advise you get the second settler ASAP. As soon as you can protect it, a quick second city gives you a large advantage.

So, my builds are all about how quickly and safely I can get that second city. Building more than one Warrior or Worker, before that key second settler, is a waste.

In fact, one pretty much has to go worker, settler, warrior in some mix until things actually kick in.

If you haven't tried it yet, try going Bronze Working + Worker and chop down a few forests for a nice settler build.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Yah, if the stars align like "dar" says, I usually do that... but NOT if I have to wait for the tech...then I go for the warrior

 

[Mujadaddy]

If you haven't tried it yet, try going Bronze Working + Worker and chop down a few forests for a nice settler build.

Yeah, when I realized that worked for Settlers, it changed my early game CONSIDERABLY

 

[Paradoxus]

I dont understand why 3 seems to be everyones magic number.
I get my Capital really humming and a few specialists going before starting to expand.
Even on Noble the AI takes forever to expand and I dont see the rush. Maybe the Civ3 mentality dies hard. They tried to change nearly everything that was common place in Civ3 so I figure there is no set strategy yet. I purposely watch the AI and they are happy to get their capital pumping and be well defended before they start expansion.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Three isn't really a "magic" number, but it's desireable to have as many (defendable) cities as possible as early as possible... for a variety of reasons. "Expand as fast as you can...but no faster"

 

[lastchance]

I dont understand why 3 seems to be everyones magic number.
I get my Capital really humming and a few specialists going before starting to expand.
Even on Noble the AI takes forever to expand and I dont see the rush. Maybe the Civ3 mentality dies hard. They tried to change nearly everything that was common place in Civ3 so I figure there is no set strategy yet. I purposely watch the AI and they are happy to get their capital pumping and be well defended before they start expansion.

The biggest reason not to expand is due to maintenance costs. Those only hit after your third or fourth city. Until then, you should expand as quickly as possible, IMHO.

That's why I think my builds make the most sense. Getting multiple city + warrior to defend/scout + workers building stuff is entirely what the extreme early game is about. The worker chop build does this extremely well (at the expense of tech).

 

[GreenMonkey]

My best game recently (I've aborted quite a few games early when my strats didn't work, like my Roman Pyramid-Rush) was with Peter of the Russians.

My starting city was in a decent starting spot up in the frosty north. A lake nearby would provide 2 farms within range. On the ocean. With 1 deer within initial range, and 3 within extended range.

Thanks to all the forest/hill type tiles around, I could produce a worker in 15 turns. But bronze working was 21 turns away. So I went for animal husbrandy...warrior/worker/warrior/worker bronze working chop settler.

As far as 3 the magic number, my capital was kind of food deprived for a while. I ran at size 2 for a long time. I had 3 cities established before my capital hit size 4.

 

[Wlauzon]

My typical pattern is build worker first, then barracks (I don't really need the barracks, but want to give the city time to get to 3 or 4), then settler, then archer. I almost never build warriors.

The barbarians do not spawn until around turn 35 on Noble, so you are safe for about 40 turns.

But lately I have been playing custom games with barbs turned off anyway, after a while they are just a pain.

 

[Ace4nyC]

when i start brand new game first thing i build is 1 war and barracks by the time this is done, my city as at 3 and grown culturly and i manged to, explore next city site, i knock out a settler run toward the site. by the time my settler is there worker is done. I send the worker to create road to the next city and start on farm/mine production. Around the new city to give it a boost to grow, then i have both cities nock out 1 worker, and 1 settler each.

While settlers setting up new cities, 2/3 workers are on auto development and 1 is conecting the cities togather. By this time i'm half way done with tech tree and my gold is on the rise.

 

[Nemovadit]

Even on Noble the AI takes forever to expand and I dont see the rush. Maybe the Civ3 mentality dies hard. They tried to change nearly everything that was common place in Civ3 so I figure there is no set strategy yet.

Funny that you said that, it seems at Regent level the AI strategy is a settler rush. I certainly hope the AI here makes the all around settler rush strategy obsolete in Civ IV.

 

[remconius]

The main argument for two cities or more is that multiple cities grow faster than one, produce more and generate more income. Maintenance really kicks in from city 4 or 5. In either case whether you are cultivating one city or multiple, a worker makes a huge difference. Changing a 3 yield tile into a 5 will really help.

So my basic starting order is Worker first. Except maybe on coastal cities with fishing as starting trait. This worker basically takes 15 turns. During those 15 turns I research whatever I need to work my closeby resources, unless I already have them as starting trait. If I start with mining I tend to go with Bronze working (12 turns) to allow forest chopping. When the worker is done I start a settler. The worker improves a resource tile to improve total tile yield from 4 to 6, which allows the settler to be done 7 turns earlier. Then the worker moves on to chop 1 forest to have the settler done around turn 29. A few warriors are prabably next some protection and exploration. Meanwhile the worker is improving a few tiles around the capital and the new found city. Then I build another worker and settler to get city 3 and 4 founded.

That gives a nice base to I start expanding.