Good starting strategy?

[jjones]

If you let your city develop to the point where building a settler takes as long as growing another size, then you aren't wasting that growth point, since you've created a mobile point of population.

Ok, hold on a second. In simple terms that's optimizing for production, because at 5-20 turns into the game it's safe to ignore everything but shields/food. So, we can't ignore the fact that a new city provides 2 pop worth of production for the price of 1 pop.

So I think the real question is "What is the production potential of 2pop at the new city site vs. 1pop in the starting city". Assuming the `standard' build ( warrior/partial barracks to pop2/worker/complete barracks+partial stonehenge to pop3/settler ) the best time to build a settler is actually.... it depends. If your warrior has located a new city site where the production output of 2 tiles (size1) is better than 1 pop at your old city site, building settler asap is the best thing.

I almost always find a such a site nearby. I have my worker improve tiles around the starting city, then build a road to the new city site and prepare tiles there. Maybe someone will write a small program that takes the tile info and distance as input and tells us the exact turn to start a settler build...

 

[Kolson]

I generally never build any buildings early on, since I need to build military units on higher difficulty levels. Barbarians WILL conquer you in Civ IV, no more paying tribute like in older versions. You can expect on average 1 barbarian archer/warrior popping up ever 3 rounds. You need to get at least 2-3 upgraded military units out killing barbarians and reaching 10xp.

I generally build pure warriors until I hit population 3/4, when I start building a settler. I start at 3 if I have decent commerce, but wait till 4 if I think I need an extra commerce point to help recearch my way to founding a religion.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

Ok, hold on a second. In simple terms that's optimizing for production, because at 5-20 turns into the game it's safe to ignore everything but shields/food. So, we can't ignore the fact that a new city provides 2 pop worth of production for the price of 1 pop.

So I think the real question is "What is the production potential of 2pop at the new city site vs. 1pop in the starting city". Assuming the `standard' build ( warrior/partial barracks to pop2/worker/complete barracks+partial stonehenge to pop3/settler ) the best time to build a settler is actually.... it depends. If your warrior has located a new city site where the production output of 2 tiles (size1) is better than 1 pop at your old city site, building settler asap is the best thing.

I almost always find a such a site nearby. I have my worker improve tiles around the starting city, then build a road to the new city site and prepare tiles there. Maybe someone will write a small program that takes the tile info and distance as input and tells us the exact turn to start a settler build...

The two pop being for the city centre, right? I do agree and it's something I overlooked that you get an extra 2/1/1 for a new city. From that perspective settlers do obviously have even larger benefits then a mobile pop, since they are one worked tile plus the city square so any real calculations would require that being worked in, and probably makes it advantageous to start settlers even earlier. Also, I was reading the Sulla/Sirian SG thread who were both beta-testers and they said that population increases from 20 + (2*pop) in excess food. That means it to grow from 1 to 2 requires 22 food, but from 2 to 3 requires 24 food. Each growth in population means you will need another 2 excess food more then the last growth to gain a population limit, whereas the amount of shields/food for a settler will remain the same so it's not nearly as simple as I earlier thought it might be. I'm not at the computer with my game on it so I can't go look at things yet, but once I am I'm gonna look and think about the numbers a bit. For instance I don't even know how many food/shields it takes to build a settler right now so I'm gonna have to wait for any real conclusions.

 

[Cptobvious1]

Ok i tried taking in advice from all these strategies plus Sulla's and Sirian's guides...one game out of about 4 starts ive tried on noble so far I managed to take the lead early and keep it for a while by doing the mass religion strategy Sirian had done with 3 religions in main city, and then 2 more later on...what happened later though and what always happened in every other game I tried is the enemy next to me ALWAYS blockades me in and prevents me from expanding and getting some farther out but valuable resources. His influence starts to move right into my territory and eventually we go to war and ill take a good beating and fall way behind in points...even if I manage to take one or two of his cities, the other civs will fly right past me and ill have no chance at winning. Whats the best way to place your cities out in the start, and to prevent things like the enemy from expanding into valuable resources and your own territory.

 

[Kolson]

First off I think that going for that many religions is probably not the best priority. I think the only time I would go for 2 religions early is if I start with Mysticism. That way I can go Polytheism/Masonry/Monotheism. As soon as you get that first religion (or 2 if starting with Mysticism), make sure to get technologies that unlock things like Copper and Iron. If you get these soon then you can expand in the direction of these resources. If you wait until after founding 3-5 religions to start researching Bronze Working then you will not know where to build your cities, and your success will be largely based on luck of the draw.

 

[dh_epic]

There's more than one good starting strategy, in my experience. Sometimes a worker is good, but sometimes trying to spam scouts is good. And other times, letting your city grow before you produce that first worker is helpful. Sometimes it makes sense to put out a worker before your first settler, and sometimes it's the other way around.

A lot depends on your starting techs and traits. The more techs you have, the more helpful that first worker is. One time I put out a worker and he had nothing to do because he didn't have the techs to do anything!

 

[TheDervish]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I am quite the newbie, so build priorities is an important thing for me to learn.

 

[Dragoul]

my rule of thumb is i wait for the number of turns to grow a new population is equal to the turns to build the settler, sometimes it is 4, sometimes if i settle in an area with much food it can be 5.

hmm, thats interesting but when i thought of it dont you forget to take into account that once you have a second city that grows too. And the later you build the second city the later this second city grows. If you want to maximize your growth in a city you shouldnt build a settler at all

 

[mrjepson]

First build worker to chop trees work out really nice if you have a lot of forests around. Once your work is done and you have researched bronze working then you build warriors and settlers very fast by chopping trees.

 

[fastspawn]

I have thought of that too, but it is just a rule of thumb. So far i have only played noble settings on Huge maps, and it is quite forgiving.

The reason I don't build a settler at 3, is because I do need a decent size city. And frankly, i don't think spending 20 turns on building a settler is worth it.

But still if i have roughly equal food and hammers, that is i settle in a forested area, my growth time would be equal to my build time at a small population.

Again i play philosophical civilizations, so one of my priorities is to get stonehenge up as soon as possible, so my strategy would vary from yours.
(After settler is stonehenge).
I guess it is a complete paradigm shift from ICS in I and II and III, but actually there are advantages in IV to have large cities than small cities.

 

[EridanMan]

I'm suprised I haven't heard this mentioned-

So far I've only played Noble (generally large-huge), and this strategy will not work for some of the more advanced levels because of barbarians, but-

I always build a worker first. while that worker is building, I make a technological bee-line for bronze-working (a civ that starts with mining helps a great deal here). After the worker is finished, I immediately start building settlers, and send my worker out to harvest ALL local forests. I find that 2 forests = one settler. Cutting down 2 forests takes ~10 turns, so very quickly (within 30 game turns(20 for the worker, 10 for the settler)) I'm turning out settlers which I immediately send out (protected by my starting warrior) to found new cities. Repeat this process until all local forests are exhausted (use your new cities to create new workers/settlers if you have more forests to exploit)... I've found that I can have a burgeoning 5-6 city empire by the time most ai opponents are laying down their 2-3... once out of forests, I go to work improving the terrain, and quickly make up the ground I've lost in terms of development/trade/technology because I have such a strong resource base.

Any Comments? Anyone else try anything similar?

There are definitely a few pre-reqs here, most notably a good supply of forests close (I.E, your not near the equator).

Even with other stratagies, does anyone else use forests as early game 'boosters?" I've found those 45 shields in 4 turns are of HUGE benefit early in the game.

 

[bobbobjack]

For the game i'm currently playing, i changed my normal expand/infrastructure similar to those mentionned to a more military strategy. Bee-line to Iron Working, plus archery, horseback riding, etc, then, when i had 3-5 cities, built only horse archers/swordmans and few axemans in 3 cities near the AI to attack. In a few hundred years, i captured 6 or 7 cities, killed the AI and more than doubled my empire. The next step was infrastructure and trying to get a better place in the tech race...

 

[cAPS lOCK]

Build a worker ASAP. If there aren't some goodies around your city, then you shouldn't have built there in the first place.

I'm also run into major maintanence problems when I've built more than 5 cities to start. This gets me behind on tech and that means a loss. Fewer cities in really prime locations seems to be the way to go.

 

[fastspawn]

I'm suprised I haven't heard this mentioned-

So far I've only played Noble (generally large-huge), and this strategy will not work for some of the more advanced levels because of barbarians, but-

I always build a worker first. while that worker is building, I make a technological bee-line for bronze-working (a civ that starts with mining helps a great deal here). After the worker is finished, I immediately start building settlers, and send my worker out to harvest ALL local forests. I find that 2 forests = one settler. Cutting down 2 forests takes ~10 turns, so very quickly (within 30 game turns(20 for the worker, 10 for the settler)) I'm turning out settlers which I immediately send out (protected by my starting warrior) to found new cities. Repeat this process until all local forests are exhausted (use your new cities to create new workers/settlers if you have more forests to exploit)... I've found that I can have a burgeoning 5-6 city empire by the time most ai opponents are laying down their 2-3... once out of forests, I go to work improving the terrain, and quickly make up the ground I've lost in terms of development/trade/technology because I have such a strong resource base.

Any Comments? Anyone else try anything similar?

There are definitely a few pre-reqs here, most notably a good supply of forests close (I.E, your not near the equator).

Even with other stratagies, does anyone else use forests as early game 'boosters?" I've found those 45 shields in 4 turns are of HUGE benefit early in the game.

Well, the downside of building worker's at once and making beeline for bronzeworking, is where are your defenses?

Maybe in Noble and below settings, it might work where the barbs aren't offensive. But in some scenarios (i forgot which difficulty i chose or maybe i chose raging barbs, the attacks were non-stop, the AI sending 2 barbarians every eight-ten turns at my capital's borders.)

And your population doesn't grow when building worker, so let's say you settle in a good square, and produce 4 hammers (making it 90/4=23), you will only be using that square for the duration of production of that worker.

If i was to build a warrior and then a worker, i might be able to get to the worker in the same amount of turns as you, because i might be using actually twice as many squares (population 3 instead of 1) producing the worker in maybe 12 turns.

Chopping down forest is not that good an idea for me though, i like forest
1. Production, i need a balance of forest+grassland+hills.
2. Health, forest generate +0.4 health. It is counter to the high food growth areas like flood plains that generate ill health.
3. Environmentalism in late game is something i shoot for, because of the high happiness and health.

But of course that could be different for me than you.

The thing is, it is not just the fact that it is hard to produce a settler, (although the non-growth is a serious drawback, as you have to balance between growing the city to an acceptable size or expansion)
but also the civic management.

Many small cities do not generate revenue for your city (100% research rate, means no gold generated), and you start of with 0 gold, so you will have to lower research rate by at least 10% for your first city, if your first city is small, am i not wrong?

 

[omni2226]

Heres a tip, I have played a dozen or so games on prince setting and using the custom game I make myself partners with 1 to 3 of the AI civs.

Then I did nothing much but watch them build, to see how the game does things.
Talk about advantages, sheesh they start with two scout/warriors and a settler. But anyway on to strategy. The AI always,always and I mean almost always builds two to 3 more warriors (to scout with),then a worker, then an archer/settler to start founding citys.

When the second or third city is population level 3 or 4 they usally switch the settler production to that city then improve the capitol city.

As far as outrushing the AI to several of the religions....aint gonna happen unless you use custom or worldbuilder to cheat a little as the AI gets a huge boost to resources,which in turn boosts research. I look at my tech tree, mmmm 26 turns to monotheism, but my AI partner/partners are researching it.....and its only 16 turns for them. Same for any other tech, they can do it many turns sooner than I,unless I build the same tech they are,then for some reason (not sure how the game mechanic works on this) I can build it in the same time (which is useless because being partners we share techs).

Anyway enough of my ramblings,if you want some good starting tips just use a custom game and make a partner or two and watch what they do,and adopt what will fit your playstyle.