[BTS] Going for 1st prince win

[Hot_Dawg]

I'm currently on T53. I'm not too sure how I did so far. I couldn't settle 1SE of rice because it was within 2 tiles of berlin. I marked where I believe a good City 4 would be. I really don't know where else I would put it. I'm also not sure where City 5 would be. Besides that any general thoughts would be great.

Spoiler :

 

[SittinDown]

Well, you got pottery, but I don't see any cottages. It looks like you built too many roads.
The best simple advice I can give you is this....

Worker priority is

1. Improve Food Specials
   
2. Improve Specials
   
3. Chop
   
4. Cottage River tiles
   
5. Build Roads
   
6. Anything else

As for settlement choices.....

• Better to move your 4th city 1N so you get the Cows and the Wheat in the first ring.
• 1E of Wheat is also a nice spot - Wheat, Clams in 1st ring, and green flat bronze in 2nd ring. Good food, good hammers.
• Another fun option would have been to settle #3 by the horses, and use your gold mine + river cottages to get to Horse Back riding quick, and do a HA attach to crush your rivals. I wouldn't go that route now, though at Prince, it's still probably viable with 4th city.

 

[SittinDown]

Nice work getting 3 cities and a 4th settler out by turn 53 though. You did good to chop those forests by Hamburg.

As Sampsa said on the last page - don't bother wasting hammers on a barracks yet. Granary, Warrior, Worker, or Settler are all higher priority. Probably Warrior - you got a lot of open land around you, and you might want to fog bust a bit.

Also get your warrior out of Munich - and over to the forest by the Cows - you don't want barbs spawning where your settler is heading. You don't need a city garrison at size 1. (or until 4 really, or if you think someone's going to declare war on you).

 

[SittinDown]

To elaborate:

The reason the roads aren't needed yet is that your cities are small enough that you do not need the +1 or +1 that connecting the resources provides. You might not know it, but improved resources next to a river connect without a road. And cities can road to a river, and connect to the rest of your network. So Hamburg could get the Corn and the Rice with a single road to its NE. [But you wouldn't want to do that yet anyway!]

Gold is more reasonable to road, since you had to burn a turn climbing the hill anyway, and the +1 happiness will help Berlin pretty soon.
Connecting the cow can wait a long while.

Corn and Rice here + granary + fresh water provide plenty +6 , without any roads at all!

It won't cost you much on Prince, it is something to fix as you move up.
You will want to have worker management basics mastered to have success at Monarch and above.

 

[Hot_Dawg]

Thanks SittinDown, I'm still getting use to the concept that I don't need roads early game. I didn't know I just needed an improvement on a rivertile to connect Berlin and Hamberg, so that's helpful to know. I played a few more turns and I'm on T60. For city 4 I went with option one, and I marked where I think city 5 would be based off what you suggested. If I misunderstood though let me know. Is the general idea to continue expanding until there isn't any land left? Also, are my cities too small at this point of the game?

Spoiler :

 

[migalhone]

You seem to be teching up well, and still have unclaimed land around you. Keep the worker priority list SittinDown wisely advised in mind, it's a very good reference point.

Spoiler considerations about the map from a REX'er at heart :

cottaging and working those riverside tiles to boost your economy is essential: so that you can both produce more beakers at 100% slider, and spend fewer turns accumulating gold at 0% to then run 100% slider more often);

As far as i can see, you have 4 cities and 2 workers, you should get at least one more worker;

Besides your future Clams+Bronze 5th city to the west, you may consider settling (by no particular order):
1) 2E of the Hamburg Cow tile to secure the grass horses. It's not a spectacular spot by any means but you do have some riverside grassland, great for cottaging.
2) 1W of the sugar: even without Calendar and freshwater, you may consider settling your 6th/7th city here. Sugar may be farmed to boost growth, and green tiles can be cottaged. Not ideal but the city is close to the capital, meaning a lower maintenance cost, plus with Iron Working more green tiles become available;

Speaking of IW, once that tech is obtained and more workers are built, even more city spots open up:
To the west there is more Gold, more Copper, more Rice and Bananas means 2-3 potential city spots:
- 1SW of 1st Bananas, Rice+Bananas;
- you could also settle 1SW of rice to also grab the gold;
- another one near the 2nd bananas, might have more good resources once scouted properly;
-1E of the copper on the west gives you a oasis tile, which should also provide irrigation to surrounding tiles.

To the east, multiple lakes, double Spices and Ivory may justify a city, although this one is less likely to be attained due to the nearby AI and more attractive spots elsewhere.

Finally, have you scouted south of Hamburg? Most likely there's an AI there. Still worth checking that out.

 

[SittinDown]

• I think you need another worker - probably above building a granary in Munich, or whip the granary and use the overflow for a worker, or something like that.
  
  • Try to get a worker already up to Cologne ASAP. Really good players will have the worker there pretty much on the turn the city is founded to improve the first tile. Don't road to it, just improve the wheat and cow.
• The warrior next to Munich should be out by the Bananas. He's useless inside your cultural borders for fog-busting. You're gonna have barbarian archers coming in from the jungle sooner or later otherwise.
  
• As migalhone said - you tech pace is going to suffer with a size-2 capital with no cottages yet. Usually with a river capital like that you'd want to cottage and slow grow. The gold mine helps a lot early, but you need more at this point.
  
• Size overall is relative. General advice there is don't 'whip away' good tiles. Aka - don't whip so hard you don't have the population to work your special tiles. It's okay to whip away river cottages, especially when you have helper cities nearby, though usually avoid that in the capital once your other cities get established. Usually capital is size 6 ish at this point, and the other cities are bouncing between 6 and 2 as they whip things. Whip is most efficient for smaller cities.
  
• Is Hamburg still working the Sugar (3F), instead of the cottaged FP (3F 2c). Make sure you look over which tiles each city is working every couple of turns. You can just hit 'left', 'right' arrow on your keyboard to navigate between cities, you don't have to click and find them all on the map.

Overall pretty decent - I know I said a lot, but you're getting chopping and rexing, and you seem to have a positive attitude, which is always goes a long way!

 

[dankok8]

One point that I think hasn't been mentioned is about whipping. When you have power tiles; for instance you have two of them in the capital (Corn and Gold) you should be reluctant to whip these off because you benefit a lot when the city is working them.

 

[Hot_Dawg]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm on T71 now. I will admit these last 11 turns were awkward for me, because I wasn't sure if I was doing things correctly based off what you all suggested. If not I'll go back to T60. I almost lost my scout to a barb, he's still fortified in the southeast. I lost my barb to the NW in the jungle last turn. I just settled Frank this turn. Should I go gran or WB first? Migalhone, you mentioned one option was 1SW to rice, did you mean 1SE? 1SW wouldn't reach my border even with pop. I marked it in screenshot. Would 1E of rice be a better option? Besides that, I'm still worried I'm not getting settlers out fast enough. I also don't really know where else to put anymore cities. I think the last 3 AI are in the west.

Spoiler :

 

[Hot_Dawg]

One other thing, I did trade writing to capac for fish and myst, because I wanted a WB for frank and a monument for Colg. I figured it's a better option than library for pop because it's cheaper. Good move or no? Should I trade for archery?

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

You need to be careful about trading for weak techs because of WFYABTA (we fear you are becoming too advanced). Mansa doesn't care, but most everyone else does, eventually. I can't remember what HC's threshold is, but I'm sure someone else here will let you know.

 

[Hot_Dawg]

I am loosely familiar with WFYABTA, but I haven't really run into it much myself. I know it becomes a bigger factor in higher difficulty levels though. I have looked over the link lymond provided on the last page, it gives reference for WFYABTA on emperor. But I haven't looked over every civ and their tendencies yet.

 

[dankok8]

@Hot_Dawg

You settled 5 cities and it's 1160 BC so you're definitely not expanding slowly. I see Hamburg building another Settler. You need Workers now. I'm counting only 4 so you'll probably need 2-3 more.

One potential issue is connecting a strategic resource. Frankfurt has Copper but it and Cologne aren't connected to the rest of your empire. With only Warriors you'll be a sitting duck if anyone decides to attack. Connect those cities which will also give some trade route income.

Once you have Libraries, Monuments become pretty much useless unless you're Charismatic where you may build them because they give +1 happy. Just whip those Libraries where you need them.

 

[migalhone]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm on T71 now. I will admit these last 11 turns were awkward for me, because I wasn't sure if I was doing things correctly based off what you all suggested. If not I'll go back to T60. I almost lost my scout to a barb, he's still fortified in the southeast. I lost my barb to the NW in the jungle last turn. I just settled Frank this turn. Should I go gran or WB first? Migalhone, you mentioned one option was 1SW to rice, did you mean 1SE? 1SW wouldn't reach my border even with pop. I marked it in screenshot. Would 1E of rice be a better option? Besides that, I'm still worried I'm not getting settlers out fast enough. I also don't really know where else to put anymore cities. I think the last 3 AI are in the west.

Spoiler :

View attachment 562268

My "settle 1SW of rice" suggestion was to also grab the gold tile in the 1st ring. Since thats not an option now, when IW is available the spot 1SW of the bananas is still decent.
I would settle the horse city first, then a sugar city, before thinking of settling the banana+rice city. Those jungle tiles will require some serious worker turns...
Good to see gold (too bad it's in barren land) and spices south of Hamburg. The mountains make it an awkward place to settle, but the spot 2S off Hamburg Cow could be decent, having some riverside green tiles, spices and forests to speed production.

Frankfurt i think WB 1st is better, grow the city first then whip granary later.

As @dankok8 rightly said, 5 cities by turn 71 is good! Please don't be discouraged by my greedy and over-the-top suggestions for settling spots

 

[Jarno]

monument for Colg. I figured it's a better option than library for pop because it's cheaper

Why would you even want a monument here? Border pops won't give you anything special, 30H thrown away IMO. In Hamburg however a border pop would be quite useful to get access to the copper tile. Also best to let Hamburger grow further (to size 4/5?) before stagnating on the settler.

 

[sampsa]

Yep. You need to let go of the misconception that you need to pop borders.

 

[migalhone]

@Hot_Dawg so i picked up your initial save and...

Spoiler :

played until turn 90-something, have 7 cities+1settler, teched IW, Alphabet, Currency, without too much micromanagement. If you want to check ofc

EDIT: have you considered playing with the BUG/BAT mod? It provides helpful alerts as well as insta 0%-100% slider buttons, saving a lot of extra clicking

 

[Hot_Dawg]

I'm back again, I'm on T79 now. Migalhone I haven't checked your save yet, as I wanted to reach T90 myself and then compare them. But I stopped here because I wasn't sure where exactly to settle city 7, what mistakes I made and what I could be doing better. Am I building too many libraries? I have my 7th settler in munich ready to move this turn, and I was planning to whip another settler and worker in Berlin and Cologne. Besides that any general thoughts?

Spoiler :

 

[migalhone]

I'm back again, I'm on T79 now. Migalhone I haven't checked your save yet, as I wanted to reach T90 myself and then compare them. But I stopped here because I wasn't sure where exactly to settle city 7, what mistakes I made and what I could be doing better. Am I building too many libraries? I have my 7th settler in munich ready to move this turn, and I was planning to whip another settler and worker in Berlin and Cologne. Besides that any general thoughts?

Spoiler :

View attachment 563439

Libraries in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg are good choices, since those cities have plenty of riverside tiles to boost cottages and thus your science output. Do note that buildings libraries makes sense on cities that actually produce science, since the bonus science they provide is a percentage based one, so i would hold on building libraries on less developed cities such as Cologne, Frankfurt and Essen: if they produce next to nothing science, no point building libraries there.

You have gold and ivory hooked up right? That means +2 for every city connected to the trade network. Grow those cities, and use slavery to 2-pop and 3-pop whip extra settlers/workers/granaries. You want to keep growing your cities to make use of the higher happiness cap, and you want to build granaries in all cities.

Special mention to Frankfurt: you're building a library there, but its only size 1? Have you connected the clams already (on mobile atm, cant see clearly)? If not, build a workboat. Later on when you get sailing build a lighthouse, to turn those 1F2C tiles into 2F2C, and turn Frankfurt into a decent commerce city.

There are no particular good spots for your 7th city, so i would go for the sugar one, it has less jungle tiles than the bananas one, so sugar city first, bananas city next. Obviously you need iron working to chop all that jungle, trade with an AI if possible. If not self tech it yourself. A 9th city may be available, east of Berlin, near the lake tile: if settled later you'll get double spices, ivory, freshwater and some green tiles. Only consider going for it after sugar/banana spots are settled.

After maths, i would go Alpha-Currency-IW, if not able to trade for IW.

You seem to understand the importance of workers, good! Keep in mind that when settling new spots you'll need workers to improve those cities, preferably not at the expense of the existing cities!

Hamburg seems to have good production, consider using math-powered chops to quickly pump out settlers for the remaining settling spots available.

Overall, nice job grabbing all that land

 

[SittinDown]

This looks really nice compared to the last one. It's a pleasure to give advice to someone who can incorporate it into their game - I think your Civ4 future is bright.

Good advice by migalhone. Too many libraries, esp Frankfurt. But otherwise, looking good. [You'll still want to keep an eye on city garrisons and fog-busting, it's not that critical on Prince, but as you go up in levels, knowing how to fogbust properly is really critical to keepping the barbs under control - minor thing at Prince, but mandatory skill for success at Immortal and above.]

Worker management looks pretty good - you're getting better at more tile improvements and less roads. It looks like Cologne is running unimproved tiles, so you'll want to whip there - that city looks like a nice spot to pump out settlers. It doesn't have any commerce and two food/hammer strong tiles, and no reason to get big.

The 7th city might want to go down that river off the bottom of your screen shot. I would have probably put Essen 1E, to get the horse earlier and leave another green river tile, but it's not bad.