First Game

[manu-fan]

For this early in the game, 3rd in Advancement is really good. You'll overtake them all eventually.

Cheers.

 

[Nash]

Ok, well thank you for the help , I'll work on another scout at mecca after stonehenge and a worker in medina,

edit: Chopping forest really speeded stonehenge up.

reduced it a bunch of turns

 

[Joshua368]

Yeah, IMO you probably should've waited until bronze working to build stonehenge as chopping would help speed it along, you certainly need another worker right now. By the way if you don't want to hurt your city's health cap, you can chop forests outside the BFC and still get production, although its slightly less. You can even cut forests outside your cultural bounderies for production! (though you'd have to look out of animals...)

By the way, when the choice is possible, I'd recommend cutting grassland forests and leaving plains forests. Grasslands make for great cottage sites, while bare plains won't be of much use for quite a while.

You also need to get a scouting warrior to explore the lands east ASAP... there could be some excellant city sites there and you'd completely miss them. In the future, have your initial scout/warrior explore in a large arch or circle around your capital so you can find the best nearby locations.


By the way, since this is your first game, do you have any idea how to work your economy? (primarily research) As in, how to use specialists early to keep your science high until cottages take over in the second half of the game? This is the most important part of the game, having a strong science rate is the difference between barely surviving and thriving ahead of the pack at any difficulty level. (though at this point its a bit too early to worry about, but soon you'll have to start enhancing your research to keep up as techs get more expensive)

 

[civvver]

for medina, let it grow to size 2 at least before building a worker. Size one cities shouldn't build workers and I usually don't build settlers in anything under size 4 except maybe the first one in my capitol.

 

[Nash]

@Joshua

The tips are great thank you for that.

About the specialists I don't have that much of a clear idea.


BTW
I just saw a border of cyrus to the west of my capital as soon as my scout is ready. I'll go and explore there. Maybe i could even cut him off with a city of my own (its pretty narrow there)


edit:

With animal husbandry I discovered horses in reach of my capital. Next i research pottery

 

[Nash]

screen:

 

[Nash]

ok scout was done so i started to work on a settler in Mecca (after warrior in medina i'll make a worker there) But after exploring i found this:

Cyrus has cut me off of going to that direction, any ideas how to proceed ?
maybe scouting to the west more and see how the environment is there ?


save game:

 

[Siesta Guru]

For this early in the game, 3rd in Advancement is really good. You'll overtake them all eventually.

Cheers.

Hes last, not third

Anyways nash, it seems more like your cutting him off then the other way around, if I spotted it right theres a bit of coast at the end of the river. Maybe you could have a look there with your scout to see where cyrus can go.

Settling a few more cities might be a bad idea since the land around your empire isnt that great so you might want to wage war with cyrus, scout his lands a bit first and get a nice army of horsearchers (tech archery and horsebackriding to get them), use them to crush cyrus.

But if cyrus turns out to be too strong (more then 2 archers per city on average might be a stretch this early). You should cut cyrus off completely by settling on both coasts and not opening borders with him. You can still expand but he wont be able to so you can kill him off later on (with elephants for example).

The best city to found would be the sheep + fish city at a coast (1N of the sheep), this cuts cyrus off and has at least two resources + coastal acces, with some luck you might find some more seafood there.

 

[Nash]

Hmm, For now I am gonna call it a day and continue tomorrow.

Thank you for the great advice, It really helped think of this in a different view.

 

[Gliese 581]

I think it's really about time you start thinking about your military. Right now you only have warriors and the barbarians are liable to attack at any moment (I don't know the time for Noble). Hook up your horses asap so you can build chariots to better hold them off (also great for scouting all of your continent). Don't let your chariots stay in your cities, send them out to hills surrounding your lands to fogbust so the barbarians spawn further away from you.

 

[dankok8]

Use horses to build some chariots to fight barbs, but make sure you settle a city near copper or if not present iron (you need iron working) and build a few axemen to defend yourself. Caesar is Buddhist so he will likely hate you and can attack with praetorians. You need at least a few axemen to be safe from him early on. Otherwise good start.

 

[Genv [FP]]

To prevent you from coming to an early death in the game.


Check the Power graph, not the score, the power graph

If you're at the bottom, you WILL Get DOWed

 

[Amao]

Also, the barbs are about to pop up. Get copper (through Bronze Working) to build axemen or research Archery to get archers ready for the defense.

 

[Gliese 581]

Also, the barbs are about to pop up. Get copper (through Bronze Working) to build axemen or research Archery to get archers ready for the defense.

He found horses in his capital's BFC so he doesn't need to research archery. Copper will of course be good to have in a little while.

 

[Joshua368]

Settling a few more cities might be a bad idea since the land around your empire isnt that great so you might want to wage war with cyrus, scout his lands a bit first and get a nice army of horsearchers (tech archery and horsebackriding to get them), use them to crush cyrus.

I don't think he needs to do an early attack on Cyrus. While its hard to tell because his explorer didn't get very far before getting killed, he has a lot of land to expand to the west, and some of it doesn't look that bad, lots of floodplains.

Looking at the post-Stonehenge map (which shows your exact location in the world) it appears that Cyrus is backed away into a corner of a continent. It should be easy to choke him into a hopefully small empire. If you place your next city in some good spot directly south of your capital and block off the entire passage, leaving your borders closed. Unless he has a decent amount of room back there, this will leave him crippled for the rest of the game, to be destroyed at your convenience.

Though you might want to open borders for a build to scout out his lands or spread your religion... just make sure you close them if you see a settler scuttling past your borders.

At any rate, as of now you aren't in danger of being closed off, just keep expanding south and west. An early rush can be tricky to do and I wouldn't recommend it on a first game, before you've ever fought a proper war with seige.


Edit: And don't worry, you're doing fine. The three major mistakes I've noticed people make early on (including me!) are...

1. "Collect all the shineys", building every wonder they can left and right without selectively building the few that'll actually help you in your situation. In easy difficulties you can get away with this, giving you a rude awakening if you try to move up.
2. Woefully under-expand, expecially if trying to place peaceful. Just because you're going for space race doesn't mean you can get away with a four or five city empire. (unless you really know what you're doing) This typically results to strong starts due to little maitenance but falling way behind in tech and power at the end game.
3. Neglect your military until you get a rude awakening by a twenty unit stack on your borders. Whoops!

I have to admit that I fell for all three of these in my first game, which I purposely played without reading guides or threads here just to see how well I'd do on my own. Lost my military in poorly fought wars, left me unprotected... in retrospect I find it kind of surprising that 20-man stack appeared at chieftan/warlord level... wasn't very nice. And after introducing my friends to the game and reading some "just moved to noble-- need help!" threads, these seem to be the most common factors.

Avoid these and you should be golden.

 

[vicawoo]

Your worker could have build a mine instead of roads. Don't build roads early when you can be improving tiles you can be working.

I'd skip early wonders until you learn how to play without them. Then you will better understand their tradeoffs and benefits.

 

[pigswill]

First thing is to build a pasture on the horses, second thing is to build a road on the pasture. This will do a couple of things. First it connects your two cities as the road and river between them form a continuous trade route, the trade route gives free commerce (no empire can have too much commerce), the second thing it does is it allows Mecca and Medina to build chariots.

Built at least four chariots, use three for border defence/barb bashing, use any spare (at least one) to explore your continent.

Also seriously consider researching masonry soon (maybe even immediately). You can research masonry straight away and then go back to finishing pottery without losing any of the beakers you´ve invested in pottery. Once the worker´s pasturised the horses and built the road he can quarry the marble for extra hammrs and a couple more beakers.

 

[Nash]

Thank you all for the great advice and help.

 

[Nash]

So I started to build a pasture, and explore the south a little this is how it looks:

Cyrus has a 1 tile wide passage. So maybe my 3rd settlement should be little more SW then directly S ?


OVERVIEW:

 

[Sian]

i'd build a city on the hill 3SE from Medina ... its plain hill so you'll get two hammers in the town, it got fresh water (+2health if i remember right) and as far as i can see it's on the coast so you can build lighthouse and other coastspecific buildings ... might not have any spectacular bonus reasouces (though there is a chance of some in those spots you still have to explore around of the city) but it'll block Cyrus off and do for a very decent town