General Tips for an "experienced noob" :)) Some questions regarding game mechanics!

[Archerinho]

Hey there, civ veterans and experts. I'd like to ask you to share your experience. I read various articles and threads here, but I'm not even sure about those abbreviations that I read, so I am a noob, and I need some guidance, although I play it since civ 2, and should be quite a veteran, but I'm not!..

I play mostly on earth pre-set maps (downloaded here from pre-made maps), mostly with fixed resources, fixed starting locations and fixed CSs. I don't know why but I feel like playing some historic maps, not just standard ones, although I do realize that these are specific and sometimes you can't get to use civ full power and UAs at their best.

So, I generally play at immortal level (I think the level above king is this), and I do manage to stay on top of the game, but I think I have some things that I don't understand.

So I'll start listing my concerns:
1) At the very beginning, I tend to found my capital at the exact location where my settler stands. Do you find it better to move it and find a better spot and found the capital 1-2 turns after the beginning?..

2) I never make a worker and I go for a liberty. But even there, I'm making the free settler path, not a worker. Several times, I've stolen a worker from a city-state but I'm not sure whether this is a good thing to do. My question is, when should I make a worker, and more than that, could you please write a normal build order for a standard gameplay? Last time I played as Bismarck.

3) I don't usually make scouts... I don't know if they're that important or not. I go for a monument and then a granary (Obviously I do pottery first). Should I start making scouts? Are they cost-effective at the very beginning?

4) Religion - I'm not fully into it, and I don't know if I should build a shrine and when to build it. With Bismarck, I could choose a fine founder belief, that is +2 science with interconnected cities, but I never made it to the religion. I kind of view these shrines as waste of hammers, or shouldn't I? Even when I had religion with celts, I was not sure what to do with it, I do not understand the concept of "pressure" and how it works and I do not know what beliefs to take (I understand they vary in accordance with the terrain I face).

5) Please list a standard tech tree, in many alternate cases (or victory condition aims). I have a general approach to almost any civ. When I played on King difficulty, I had big cities (I always encourage growth, I don't even know if this is right) and I tried to get the hanging gardens for the food bonus. With Bismarck on Immortal, I managed to build a Great Library and an Oracle, no other wonders. I obviously realize that construction is something to be achieved ASAP, because when I build wonders and I tend to prosper, neighbors declare war on me and I need those composite bowmen for defense. However, I now have a good tech lead (at least compared to my neighbors) and a fine army, however currently battling against Byzantium, Austria (which is very weak already) and India (which is no real threat, although is the game leader in terms of points). To sum up, I need a general recommendation about the tech tree - in the current situation I just beeline rifling and will soon be there, I think it will make sure I'm not losing any wars.

6) My general aim is to go for wars and conquer lands. I don't actually know what penalties I actually take when adding cities (I mean I don't exactly know) and when I should found a city or not. I'm not sure when to expand or not and how I should decide on that. I'm not sure when to build a settler. Could you please tell me general guidelines about them. I usually tend to win by science victory after my empire is very wide and I have tremendous science. I don't know how to play otherwise. Please tell me some tips about going "tall", not wide.

7) Military tactics: Obviously I try to build barracks and then train army. That is not applicable to the situation when I'm defending, but does when I'm on offense. However, I find it really hard to take cities, at least the ones that are not backward in the tech tree. How do you usually take cities? I find AI smart enough to attack my ranged units first (and in certain situations my catapult/trebuchet just can't hit the target because the city defense destroys it first). Is there any cost effective tactic, that would, for instance take the focus of enemy city on your infantry rather than ranged unit? (which generally dies faster).

8) Improvements - Almost on all grasslands and plains I place farms. I am particularly not aware of the benefits of the trading post - I don't place them. Only on marsh or other unimprovable tiles I do. I place mines and quarries on resources (and mines on hills as well). And forests - I do not know if I should remove them or not, I generally don't remove any of them and place lumber camps, unless there is an improvable resource, which requires me to remove the forest. Is there some way that people do it? Should I start doing trading posts? Is growth of cities the ultimate thing to achieve? (Because I find it difficult to stay competitive in terms of hammers with low pop cities).

9) How can I improve my play, generally, are there some types of recorded games that I can watch? I am an age of empires player at high level, so I used to watch recorded games there. I don't know if such things are possible here.

10) Citizen management: I generally manage citizens so that they focus on food and growth. I do not manage specialists - should I? I don't even know the basics of it...

11) Conquered cities - I usually puppet them and continue as puppets. Do you take them under your direct command? If so, how do you manage with unhappiness it provides?

12) Diplomacy - I usually ignore those requests of "free resources" and stuff. I also tend to declare protection of city-states and spoil my diplomacy with other civs in favor of CSs. Even if I'm not befriended with them. All in all, I don't pay much attention to diplomacy. I don't even know the mechanics of denouncing - how it works. Does it mean that when a civ denounces you it will declare a war at least after a certain number of turns? Or does it just affect other leaders and is only a diplomatic turn? And how to deal with "don't settle near me" situations, should I do "I settle where I please" or promise them not to do so and then break a promise?

I'm done at this point. I guess there are lots of more to come, but I'll write them from time to time. I know it's a long read, but I'd be thankful for any hints, and you can answer me on certain sections, not on the whole set of questions Thanks for reading this in advance! I just want to improve and get to understand some things which I don't.

 

[Mozzington]

1) At the very beginning, I tend to found my capital at the exact location where my settler stands. Do you find it better to move it and find a better spot and found the capital 1-2 turns after the beginning?..

I'd say over half the times I move my first settler. Usually only 1 move and then settle o nturn 2. Usually when looking for a hill & river start combined.

2) I never make a worker and I go for a liberty. But even there, I'm making the free settler path, not a worker. Several times, I've stolen a worker from a city-state but I'm not sure whether this is a good thing to do. My question is, when should I make a worker, and more than that, could you please write a normal build order for a standard gameplay?

I personally usually go for SCOUT, WORKER, SHRINE, WARRIOR, SETTLER. Stealing a worker is also a strategy a lot of people use too. The more workers early game the better.

3) I don't usually make scouts... I don't know if they're that important or not. I go for a monument and then a granary (Obviously I do pottery first). Should I start making scouts? Are they cost-effective at the very beginning?

Yes, knowing the land is very important. I always built at least one, sometimes two depending on circumstance.

4) Religion - I'm not fully into it

Get into it, fast. Founding a religion will provide a lot of benefits later on.

5) Please list a standard tech tree, in many alternate cases (or victory condition aims). I have a general approach to almost any civ. When I played on King difficulty, I had big cities (I always encourage growth, I don't even know if this is right) and I tried to get the hanging gardens for the food bonus. With Bismarck on Immortal, I managed to build a Great Library and an Oracle, no other wonders. I obviously realize that construction is something to be achieved ASAP, because when I build wonders and I tend to prosper, neighbors declare war on me and I need those composite bowmen for defense. However, I now have a good tech lead (at least compared to my neighbors) and a fine army, however currently battling against Byzantium, Austria (which is very weak already) and India (which is no real threat, although is the game leader in terms of points). To sum up, I need a general recommendation about the tech tree - in the current situation I just beeline rifling and will soon be there, I think it will make sure I'm not losing any wars.

6) My general aim is to go for wars and conquer lands. I don't actually know what penalties I actually take when adding cities (I mean I don't exactly know) and when I should found a city or not. I'm not sure when to expand or not and how I should decide on that. I'm not sure when to build a settler. Could you please tell me general guidelines about them.

So you general aim is to build armies and conquer lands but you are also building Oracle and GL? Doesn't make sense. Sometimes best to forget building wonders, concentrate on more important thing and capture wonders.

7) Military tactics

This is just applying common sense really. Plenty of siege, plenty of melee units, some ranged to give a good balance.

8) Improvements - Almost on all grasslands and plains I place farms. I am particularly not aware of the benefits of the trading post

Trading post equals gold, and lots of it. A lot of people will farm river and plains tiles and trading post other tiles. Trading posts in jungles are also very good.

9) How can I improve my play, generally, are there some types of recorded games that I can watch?

Go watch SBFMaddjinns youtube videos. You can learn a lot.

10) Citizen management: I generally manage citizens so that they focus on food and growth. I do not manage specialists - should I? I don't even know the basics of it...

Always a good idea to manage citizens and concentrate on what you need at the time however it sounds as though you need to get a grasp on some of the more basic gameplay elements before doing this.

11) Conquered cities - I usually puppet them and continue as puppets. Do you take them under your direct command? If so, how do you manage with unhappiness it provides?

To puppet is generally considered the best practise. Don't take too much too fast is they key I guess and make sure you have sufficient happiness before taking anything. A good idea with puppets is to trading post most of the tiles as you don't want them growing too big - so turn all the AI's farms etc into TP.

12) Diplomacy

It's important really to check the glocal overview. If you want to be friends with one civ you need to make sure you are not trading with their sworn enemis etc. Again, common sense really.

 

[Browd]

Too much to respond to in one go, but here are some thoughts:

1) At the very beginning, I tend to found my capital at the exact location where my settler stands. Do you find it better to move it and find a better spot and found the capital 1-2 turns after the beginning?..

I'd say over half the times I move my first settler. Usually only 1 move and then settle o nturn 2. Usually when looking for a hill & river start combined.

Maybe not half the time, but quite often. Move your initial warrior first to expose more of the map before deciding whether to settle in place. Can be useful to turn on the hex grid (hit "g" to toggle the hex on and off) and count 3 tiles in all directions to confirm what tiles a particular city site can work.

2) I never make a worker and I go for a liberty. But even there, I'm making the free settler path, not a worker.

Stealing a worker is also a strategy a lot of people use too. The more workers early game the better.

I usually start Tradition, unless I know I'm going to leap out to 6+ cities, when I will take Liberty. Don't be seduced by the "free" stuff in Liberty. Tradition offers real benefits, even for somewhat wider empires. Take a look at these threads: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477636 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=468487.

But, however you begin, you need workers to develop your city's tiles and eventually build roads. Two in your capital fairly early, and overall one per city is a rough yardstick. Rather than building an early worker, you can buy one (with CS meeting gold, gold from ruins and proceeds of a loan (45 gold for 2 gpt is the "full price" ratio)). There are also various threads discussing worker stealing, but the punchline is you can do it with impunity once early in the game (usually CS workers begin to appear shortly after turn 20), but only if the CS is not allied with, or under the protection of, another civ (unless you want an early DOW, in which case go for it).

3) I don't usually make scouts... I don't know if they're that important or not. I go for a monument and then a granary (Obviously I do pottery first). Should I start making scouts? Are they cost-effective at the very beginning?

Yes, knowing the land is very important. I always built at least one, sometimes two depending on circumstance.

Agree. Unless I know I'm on an island, I always build a scout first. In addition to knowing the land to identify future city sites and grabbing your fair share of ruins and CS meeting gold, it is important to meet as many other civs as possible as early as possible. The beaker cost of a new tech goes down the more civs you have met who have researched that tech, and you maximize the number of trading partners you will have. See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477569

4) Religion - I'm not fully into it, and I don't know if I should build a shrine and when to build it. With Bismarck, I could choose a fine founder belief, that is +2 science with interconnected cities, but I never made it to the religion. I kind of view these shrines as waste of hammers, or shouldn't I? Even when I had religion with celts, I was not sure what to do with it, I do not understand the concept of "pressure" and how it works and I do not know what beliefs to take (I understand they vary in accordance with the terrain I face).

Religion can be a very useful tool to enhance your game, even if you don't aim to found your own religion. There are some threads in this forum that discuss pressure mechanics (a recent one is http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477267, but there are others).

When I played on King difficulty, I had big cities (I always encourage growth, I don't even know if this is right) and I tried to get the hanging gardens for the food bonus. With Bismarck on Immortal, I managed to build a Great Library and an Oracle, no other wonders.

...

My general aim is to go for wars and conquer lands. I don't actually know what penalties I actually take when adding cities (I mean I don't exactly know) and when I should found a city or not. I'm not sure when to expand or not and how I should decide on that. I'm not sure when to build a settler. Could you please tell me general guidelines about them. I usually tend to win by science victory after my empire is very wide and I have tremendous science. I don't know how to play otherwise. Please tell me some tips about going "tall", not wide.

Again, opening Liberty may not be the best choice if you like large cities. Nothing in Liberty rewards large cities -- those policies are optimized for a larger number of smaller cities (additional hammer per city, spam settlers at lower cost, work a larger number of cities with 25% fewer workers, and offset two of the main costs (happiness and culture) of founding additional cities). You don't say how many cities you usually found, but if you are going pretty wide (6+ cities), you don't need a bunch of large cities. If you are only founding 3-5 cities, and focusing on growing them, you are pursuing a "tall" (or "tall-ish") strategy, which can be very consistent with a conquer-and-puppet strategy (where you are letting other civs take care of city founding and wonder building for you). Hanging Gardens, in particular, is IMO rarely worth pursuing, and provides no useful benefit to a wide empire (since it benefits only one city, and unless that city is your capital and you've taken Tradition, can only lead to happiness problems).

11) Conquered cities - I usually puppet them and continue as puppets. Do you take them under your direct command? If so, how do you manage with unhappiness it provides?

Yes, puppet, or consider razing at the time you conquer (if the city is not worth keeping). You should only consider annexing until after the city is no longer in revolt, and only if you have a strategic reason why you need to control the production of that city. See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477656

7) Military tactics:

For military tactics, there are numerous threads, but see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477705 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=477604 to start.

 

[Dentalfury]

I too started my dirty love affair with Civ2 back in the 90's. And it's never too late to learn more. I keep learning new things about Civ5 all the time, mostly from these forums.

As for your questions,

1 - I only move my settler about 20% of the time, and that's only after I move my warrior to a nearby hill to get a wider view. I might take more time if i'm playing a OCC (One City Challenge) game where the land around my capital is all i'm getting for the entire game.

2 - Building a worker can be an important choice in the early game. For most games I play regardless of my Victory Condition I go into both Tradition and Liberty social policies. As such I usually build a worker, then get the free one from liberty later in the game (Once I have 2-4 cities up) to start unlocking that later parts of that tree. Stealing one from a local City State is an option but I try to keep good diplomacy with them for as long as I can. That is unless they have lots of resources I want and i'd just conquer them, worker and all.

3 - Most players start with building 1 scout to get more information about their surroundings. After that, the build order for your city is based on that information, or your pre-conceived goals. And, not only will that scout give you more information, you have a chance of finding ancient ruins which give you a random and sometimes very useful bonus.

4 - Religion is usually pretty beneficial and very much worth pursuing unless your playing at the highest levels when the AI gets massive bonuses which make it near impossible to compete with them in most categories. I sometimes build a shrine before building a monument, or shortly thereafter, depending on what technologies I have at the moment.

5 - Can't really comment on that.

6 - As for wars and what to do about cities there after, I typically play Tall for most of my games because for every city you found it slows the rate of cultural policies. You should decide whether or not you want to puppet, annex, or raze cities you capture. Each options has pros and cons. I prefer to puppet most cities but raze those obviously worthless cities the AI tends to found with predictable regularity. These puppets help you with both science and culture and I find that they provide a good buffer to allow your core empire to focus on whatever you want in the long term.

7 - As for military tactics, whether or not you want to invest in training facilities for your army is entirely up to you. Your army benefits regardless if your on the offensive or defensive. I personally don't bother building them until mid-game or if I know i'm going for a domination victory early on.

There are a few key points when it comes to taking a city,
- Bring a diverse mix of units, siege, ranged, and melee. Even naval vessels are welcome if the city is coastal.
-Destroy as much of the enemy army as you can before attacking an enemy city. Having to fight enemy units as well as a city's ranged attack and the city garrison is a sure fire way to shred what ever units you've brought.
- Plan around the 1UPT (Unit Per Tile) rule. This is largest change in Civ5 compared to all previous Civ games and really means you have to pay attention to your units location, neighboring units locations, and all of their relative movement points.
- Attack all at once! The key to taking over a city, especially in the early to mid game, is to coordinate your attack between all your units. On the same turn you should move as many units as possible as close possible. The longer it takes your units to get in position to attack the city the more to the city, and it's garrison, gets to bombard you!
- Bring a Great General! If you already have generated one through combat, or you got a free one from the Honor tree, it sometimes can really make the difference when attacking those really problematic cities.

8 - Mozz and the previous posters were all right when it comes to improvements. Try to maintain a balance between all three when appropriate.

9 - Youtube has lots!

10 - If your are going out of your way to create Great People manually setting up your citizens, and more specifically specialists, is the way to go. I only occasionally do myself. I tend to change the 'focus' of my city based on what the short to mid-term goals are at the moment. I usually stick with default though.

11 - Unless you really need the production, just keep them as puppets.

12 - I would recommend finding a relevant thread here in the forums. Civ5 diplomacy can be rather hard to predict sometimes and not all the modifiers are clearly listed to the player. In brief though; try not to break promises, only pledge protection if you think you can defend the CS or that no one is going to threaten them, and avoid getting entangled in foreign relations unless you have a clear goal (Such as getting Research Agreements).

 

[Archerinho]

Thanks for those replies. I will try and put those advices in my play.

conquer lands but you are also building Oracle and GL? Doesn't make sense. Sometimes best to forget building wonders, concentrate on more important thing and capture wonders.

Yes, kind of.... GL for additional tech and science, like... you still have to build a library and it provides a free library, so why not if you are sure you can build it...

and, the oracle, because, I did not "waste" population to build a settler and built an oracle (nothing else to build), +1 policy is great, but I do understand building settler might be better.... The land was very small so I preferred that, but I ll think about small sprawling cities, as I said I always encouraged growth, I never thought about having pop 3-4 cities, and many of them.

I personally usually go for SCOUT, WORKER, SHRINE, WARRIOR, SETTLER. Stealing a worker is also a strategy a lot of people use too. The more workers early game the better.

I think you kind of missed your monument here. I was always building it first, but yesterday I tried to go with scout first. Looks like it's cost effective.

To puppet is generally considered the best practise. Don't take too much too fast is they key I guess and make sure you have sufficient happiness before taking anything. A good idea with puppets is to trading post most of the tiles as you don't want them growing too big - so turn all the AI's farms etc into TP.

Yes, I also used to puppet, but never thought about building TPs around them. Sounds fine for me. I guess it'll work fine. Thanks.

I usually start Tradition, unless I know I'm going to leap out to 6+ cities, when I will take Liberty. Don't be seduced by the "free" stuff in Liberty. Tradition offers real benefits, even for somewhat wider empires.

Yesterday I started with Maya and then took a tradition, then I also took liberty. Let's wait and see what it will be like. On prince, with Rome it worked awesome, but I thought of Tradition as much of a liability or waste of culture. But I really like the capital grower policy (forgot the name).

But, however you begin, you need workers to develop your city's tiles and eventually build roads. Two in your capital fairly early, and overall one per city is a rough yardstick. Rather than building an early worker, you can buy one (with CS meeting gold, gold from ruins and proceeds of a loan (45 gold for 2 gpt is the "full price" ratio)). There are also various threads discussing worker stealing, but the punchline is you can do it with impunity once early in the game (usually CS workers begin to appear shortly after turn 20), but only if the CS is not allied with, or under the protection of, another civ (unless you want an early DOW, in which case go for it).

Yes, I managed to start with a pyramid. I think it's worth building. But I even made one before... BTW, if you have fish around your capital, but you plan to beeline a different tech tree rather than fishing, when would you research it? I researched it fairly late and then bought fishing boats. I'm just wondering whether this is optimal or you should take those fish ASAP.

Yes, puppet, or consider razing at the time you conquer (if the city is not worth keeping). You should only consider annexing until after the city is no longer in revolt, and only if you have a strategic reason why you need to control the production of that city.

But, what's the point in razing a city? Is it worth to sacrifice your army taking a city and razing it? Yes, you would remove an enemy's obstacle, but then what, any city should provide some benefits, at least some science, so I guess all cities are worth to puppet, or not?..

I would recommend finding a relevant thread here in the forums. Civ5 diplomacy can be rather hard to predict sometimes and not all the modifiers are clearly listed to the player. In brief though; try not to break promises, only pledge protection if you think you can defend the CS or that no one is going to threaten them, and avoid getting entangled in foreign relations unless you have a clear goal (Such as getting Research Agreements).

Yes I also agree, I took a different approach in my new game. Of course somebody already declared war on me, but still, it's going pretty well on immortal.

As for wars and what to do about cities there after, I typically play Tall for most of my games because for every city you found it slows the rate of cultural policies. You should decide whether or not you want to puppet, annex, or raze cities you capture. Each options has pros and cons. I prefer to puppet most cities but raze those obviously worthless cities the AI tends to found with predictable regularity. These puppets help you with both science and culture and I find that they provide a good buffer to allow your core empire to focus on whatever you want in the long term.

Hmm... Just thinking about that razing option... It sounds something like unacceptable for me at the first sight. I should think about this)))

Thanks!
I will probably see those youtube videos that you told me.
I just want to get into religion concepts first... I'll see what will happen. Thanks to all three of you, you've been of great help to me! The one thing is that I'll obviously go for a scout in the beginning ))
Got to think about liberty though.

 

[Mozzington]

Yes, kind of.... GL for additional tech and science, like... you still have to build a library and it provides a free library, so why not if you are sure you can build it...

In the extra amount of turns it takes to build the GL you could possibly build 2 archers/2 warriors/2 horses etc?

and, the oracle, because, I did not "waste" population to build a settler and built an oracle (nothing else to build), +1 policy is great, but I do understand building settler might be better....

As above IMO. You should be able to buy a few settlers from trading away luxury resources and concentrate on building other things - like army.

I think you kind of missed your monument here.

Nope, a lot of games I don't bother till later and all the important stuff is built. Yeah it's good for culture but sometimes when you are going for domination victory you will have that many cities that building a monument might not make any noticeable difference to social policy costs really.

Yes, I also used to puppet, but never thought about building TPs around them.

Yep, you don't want them growing massive and taking your happiness.

Yesterday I started with Maya and then took a tradition

Yep, a strategy I have used many times to get the extra culture, free monuments, extra food and happiness buff.

But, what's the point in razing a city?

If it's in a terrible location, you don't have the happiness etc.

Yes I also agree, I took a different approach in my new game. Of course somebody already declared war on me, but still, it's going pretty well on immortal.

Does not matter about the early DOW if you have the army to defend against it. You might not have the army if you are building GL's, Oracles, monuments etc.

In closing there is no right and wrong way to play. Every game is different. You have to consider your territories, the civ you are playing, your opponents and adapt accordingly. You can see from above, sometimes I don't bother with monument, sometimes I take tradition to bag them for free. Depends on the game I am playing.

 

[Syntax Error]

Difficulty above King is Emperor.

1. I move the warrior onto a hill, to see the surroundings. If I'm content with the surrounding 3-tile ring, I settle in place, if not, I move the settler in the opposite direction to see more land. I found my capital in places without luxes if: a) there's a nice stretch of river and b) the land is fertile (granted, it's a given with the river, but Riverside Grassland Wheat or Bananas, even in jungles or Deer can make it better.)

2. Workers, you can steal or buy (use a GPT loan). I tend to go with the worker if I want to develop early. My build order is usually Scout -> Worker -> Shrine -> Monument. Truthfully, it's dependent on the situation. I've found myself knee-deep in barbs and a lack of archers seriously delayed me (it increased the chance of Worker capture, which is a baaaaaaad thing.)

3. Scouting early reduces tech cost and gives you gold from CSes and trading partners. This can make or break your game!

4. Religion is not a requirement to win, but can provide great boosts when you go for it. You have to pursue it from the get-go if you want a shot at it on the higher levels.

5. Early tech is dependent on the land. This is the reason why jungle starts are usually not favored. It's quite a long way to Bronzeworking and beelining it means you will run out of useful stuff to build.

6. As a general rule, the later you expand, the longer it will take for the city to be useful. This will change in the later eras, when there are a lot of bonus hammer and food buildings and gold/happiness is no longer an issue. If you want really tall cities, expand early, expand fast.

7. Military tactics: on defense, kill the melee units. That's my only rule. The AI can't take a city if it has no unit to capture it with. On offense, make sure that you can get into position so ALL units can attack in the same turn. Chipping down on a city is not the way to go. You'll essentially want to take a city in one to three turns.

8. I go for food in the first 150 or so turns. The more people a city has, the more tiles I can work and the more specialists I can field.

9. Maddjinn's LP's are the way to go. All diety, All the time.

10. Specialists give you Great People. What I do is to set the city to Production focus, but assign the citizens to food tiles. What this achieves is to give you hammers the moment a citizen is "born". When a citizen is born, I then move him immediately to a food tile. This is quite handy in the early game, when there is no food overflow.

11. Puppet and tradepost the heck out of them. I annex only if there's strategic value in doing so (like being an overseas frontier for purchasing units to set up a ground invasion).

12. Global Diplomacy Overview. Use it often. You can track who has which wonders, their SPs, and who's friends with who, and who are at war with each other.

 

[aluelkdf]

3) I don't usually make scouts... I don't know if they're that important or not. I go for a monument and then a granary (Obviously I do pottery first). Should I start making scouts? Are they cost-effective at the very beginning?

A scout is always the first thing I build. Scouts are extremely important, and if you wait a few turns to build a scout they lose their effectiveness as other civs have already started exploring and finding ancient ruins. Use your scouts to search for ruins, they can help a lot by giving you a free tech, upgrading military units, free gold, etc...

You also want to explore to see what the geography/terrain is like, and what resources are out there, and find other civs in the game. This will help you start thinking about a long term strategy, where you want to expand, spots that will be easy to defend, civs you will likely go to war with, etc... There is so much you can learn and gain from scouts it's hard to list everything.

If you don't build scouts, you will eventually discover everything out there, but you lose out big time if you are discovering this stuff in 500 AD as supposed to 3000BC. So a scout really is extremely important. You always want to build at least 1 as soon as possible.

 

[Archerinho]

Thanks.

I tried the scout start - it is definitely useful.

I played on immortal - started with Maya. Now I kinda have a lot of cities, Started the earth map, all three neighbors of course declared war on me. I took 1 city of iroquious (now they have declared friendship with me) and America is only left with their capital. I expanded pretty nice south taking the 3 large inca cities including the woderous capital.

I succeeded in doing religion, and created a religion with "interfaith dialogue" - seems to be good with many cities, + messenger of gods.

I did not finish any of the policy trees though. I went to start with tradition, then went on liberty, then took the commerce opener, then went on rationalism and opened order for happiness. Civilization is in happy mode now, with many small cities. Now I kinda started to grow my capital... I don't know if it's correct, I'm not gonna go tall now, but want a better production so I'm growing the city while I can afford it. Those small cities lack production though, and my army is not as big as it should be, for such a big empire. I think I should go domination in any case, although I'm kinda not very backward in science, I guess it would be better to go for domination. Don't know how this will evolve, but I'm around 800 in score, while the nearest opponent is atilla with 600 or so.

well, the advice regarding NOT doing a monument was good, I never thought about it. I went a scout and a shrine directly. Was quite decent in terms of expansion.

 

[Smote]

1. My rule of thumb is if you are in an open area (no mountain range or ocean around), you must build a scout. The best time to build a scout is turn 0, as this will maximize ancient ruin gain. If there is substantial difficult terrain and you have high starting production (city on hill with 2F/1H hex), you may even want to build 2 scouts.

If you are in a closed in area, like against the ocean or a mountain range or an island, I find monument start is more advantageous because the warrior is likely to find most of the ancient ruins anyways, and you have natural terrain to help you vs barbarians. You still need an archer later though, for extra help vs barbs.

After the monument or scout, granary only if 2+ granary resource, otherwise worker. If on high difficulty with a lot of CS, time spent building workers is a waste (there are plenty to capture), and you may want to dive right into settler production, or granary, or archers or something. You should aim to take every worker from every CS, and maybe from the AIs as well.

Significant advantage can be found by finding a barbarian encampment before turn 8 and having a warrior+scout to attack it with. A barbarian will spawn on turn 11, so kill the camp before this. Use the instant heal promotion.

I generally can't spare the hammers for faith, unless I'm playing Maya (+2faith/+2sci shrine). I sometimes end up with a pantheon anyways because of finding faith CS (+8 faith if first to find), or settling a natural wonder.

 

[tommynt]

U may watch one of my videos for good standard starting bo and all else - for a tradition start I suggest the maya one for a liberty one just one of the duels