[BTS] Have to be brutally honest

[Phoenix Master]

I failed yet again. I was playing as Washington of America on a continents standard-sized map on noble difficulty. Unfortunately, my immediate neighbor to the north was Gilgamesh of Sumeria whose leader traits are creative and protective. I want to start a new game as either Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia or Cyrus of Persia. I kind of think I tend to overdevelop my early cities too much when I should be expanding with new cities. With my early cities, I have been focusing on food first then production and commerce later. This probably sounds stupid, but I don't know how to upload pics of my current game to this website. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sampsa]

What I do is take a screenshot during game with the "Print Screen" button and simply attach them to the forum with "Attach files" which in the bottom left when writing a message. I'm sure there are other ways, but that is the simplest. You can attach a savegame in the same way.

Expand to 3-4 cities asap, focus on food sounds good.

 

[Tecumseh1]

Maybe you can upload your game file as well? It is located in your Documents\My Games\beyond the sword\Saves\single

 

[Gumbolt]

If you want to learn about the game you need to engage more with the people posting here. From your post history you usually do a one line post and stop responding.

You can upload the saves.

Generally your first build should be a worker. Techs to improve nearby food resources like Corn/wheat or pigs. Grow the city to size 3/4 while building a warrior. At which point switch to a settler.

Second city on a strong start can be 2800bc give or take 2-3 turns. I usually try to have 3-4 cities by 2000bc. Don't be afraid to get bronze working early on after key food techs are researched.

Noble AI get second city around 2000-2200bc. So you could easily have 4 cities before they have 2.

City placement is normally 2-4 tiles apart. 2 tiles can help work cottages for capital. You should always aim to have food in inner ring of city.

Do look at Fippy's guide at how to play Civ 4 games. You won't improve your game unless you embrace the community.

Civ 4 can be a fun game but is more complex than the likes of Civ 5/6. You have to understand how whipping and other features work.

 

[floydmcw]

Second city on a strong start can be 2800bc give or take 2-3 turns.

I struggle with getting my first city out early and I wonder what I am doing wrong. 2800 BC is Turn 30 (standard). In my previous 5 games I've founded my first city on T41, T42, T43, T40, T38.

Generally I try to do exactly what you said, worker first, food techs, grow to size 3 or 4 then switch to settler. But it takes 15 turns to get a worker and ~5 turns to improve the first food resource. That's 15 turns of no growth, 5 turns of growth on unimproved tiles, and only 10 turns to get to size 3 or 4 AND build the settler.

I play on Emperor (which is the same cost as Noble? Unless the food box is slower to fill).

 

[sampsa]

I think past T40 is slow for 2nd city and should not be very common. I very rarely grow to size 4 before starting a settler, simply because your capital doesn't have 4 tiles worth working (yet).

 

[Tecumseh1]

I'm usually looking to chop or chop + whip first settler. Sometimes it makes sense to slow build it if you don't have 3-4 good tiles and can still get a settler by turn 35 by slow building most of the way.

 

[floydmcw]

Thanks everyone for the comments. Here's one example (T38 second city with an IMP leader).

Julius Caesar, worker in 15, Ag -> AH. On T23 Rome has just grown to size 2 and worker is 1 turn from finishing cows. Could start settler at that point, which would finish T33 (and found a city, 5N1W, on T35). In the actual game I grew to size 3 which let me work the gems.

Is that a reasonable plan given the map? Should I forget about AH and just concentrate on farming the wheat, mining the gems, and chopping the settler at size 2, on say T29-30?

 

[Tecumseh1]

I agree with delaying AH a bit to get a faster settler. Those chops are worth 30h with IMP leader so I want to utilize that asap. Also gems speed up AH

 

[Tecumseh1]

Also with so many plains tiles I suspect ivory might be close by and hunting speeds up AH if you delay.

 

[sampsa]

It's a bit special because you have gems, a tile with weak /-output but one that you want to work all the time. Either settler size 2 working wheat+gems (delay AH) or do as you did and grow to 3 even if it delays your expansion a bit.

 

[antimony]

I think one more advantage for BW before AH here is that after improving the cow and gems, without BW or a new city, the worker doesn't have much to do for a while (could mine more hills but that would not have much impact).