General Strategies

[Shahadet]

I decided to dig around in some boxes and found civ 1. I have not played this game since I was 13 so it is taking me some time to settle back into it. Im quite used to civ 2 play but I can see civ 1 is a differant ball game in many respects. Are there any recommended strategy pages out there? I really just need a helping hand in developing a early game strategy. Things seem to build up so slow compared to civ2. I get disorientated by the city screen and I can't seem to find a decent site for a SSC. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[stormerne]

Choose a coastal site for your first city (though ensure plenty of land too), preferably a grassland+shield square since Civ1 does not give you a shield if your city site hasn't got one like Civ2 does. Rivers don't help like they do in Civ2.

Curb unrest by building settlers not temples and quickly saturate the continent with new cities. Make their areas just touch. Don't improve the land straightaway. Only do that when the city is too far from the settlement frontier. Stop building settlers when you've already got one improving your city area. Link all the cities with roads. Build roads everywhere inside city boundaries.

Go for monarchy and the wheel immediately. You need monarchy to get productive. You need the wheel to build chariots, the early game secret weapon.

Remember the AI cheats. It doesn't actually have to do any work to build a wonder like it does in Civ2 and will just do so at random.

When you meet another Civ check the number of advisors behind the central figure. 1=weak civ; 4=strong civ.

That'll do for now. There's lots of other possible strategies, including later on, but you did ask for early game.