Help with French opening gambits

[stealth_nsk]

Liberty can wait for SP #3 for two reasons:
(1) It's not useful as first SP since at turn 9 I don't want to build a settler yet.
(2) My second build in the capital will be a monument to push for culture early, so SP#3 will show up quickly enough.

1. I'd say by the time you open your 3rd SP you should already have 4 cities on French. Price increases quite significally.
2. You need not only opening SP on Liberty as early as possible, but others as well, like 50% of food in storage.

So, IMHO, you should get Liberty first or not get it at all.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

1. I'd say by the time you open your 3rd SP you should already have 4 cities on French. Price increases quite significally.
2. You need not only opening SP on Liberty as early as possible, but others as well, like 50% of food in storage.

So, IMHO, you should get Liberty first or not get it at all.

I think France can definitely wait to pick Liberty until SP#2. Tradition gives the biggest initial boost, and timing things so that the French earn their 3rd SP at the time the settler is ready to found the 2nd city shouldn't actually require waiting too long due to the speed of early French culture production. So I'd say:

Tradition -> Liberty -> Collective Rule -> Aristocracy

...if you want to get settlers out earlier, but then you're running the risk of not building Stonehenge, though it's hard to say how much of a risk that is. I tend to think that holding back just a bit on settlement in order to ensure completion of Stonehenge is a good idea, but it could be that such a beeline is unnecessary.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Tradition gives the biggest initial boost

Not for French. Fast capital growth will strike happiness cap, which would be much better to spend on new cities.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

Also, it looks like Stonehenge only costs 120 hammers to build (the cost of two Monuments), making a rush strategy for this Wonder more viable than it was with the estimated 150 hammers, and the chances of losing it to another civ greater, as well.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

Not for French. Fast capital growth will strike happiness cap, which would be much better to spend on new cities.

Not necessarily. Starting happiness looks like it has a good bit of room for expansion in it before the cap is hit. Also, Paris with Stonehenge would be expanding very quickly, giving earlier access to whatever luxury goods are in the vicinity. 3/4 cities may be the best number for France's initial expansion push, which shouldn't bring them into serious happiness problems early on.

It's still impossible to tell how the math will work out, but I think an early food bonus in the capital will be desirable for almost every civ.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Also, Paris with Stonehenge would be expanding very quickly, giving earlier access to whatever luxury goods are in the vicinity. 3/4 cities may be the best number for France's initial expansion push, which shouldn't bring them into serious happiness problems early on.

For resources you need not only tiles, but also workers and techs. Plantations, for example, are quite far and removing forest requires bronze working.

With 4 cities of the 2nd level you'll have -10 unhappiness, which is already "Unhappy" on Immortal.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

For resources you need not only tiles, but also workers and techs. Plantations, for example, are quite far and removing forest requires bronze working.

With 4 cities of the 2nd level you'll have -10 unhappiness, which is already "Unhappy" on Immortal.

This is playing at a very high difficulty level without a single bonus to happiness. Just one luxury good puts you well into the black, and there are three luxury goods available for improvement just with mining: silver, gold and gems. If none of these are around, then it may be necessary to tech to trapping and harvest fur or ivory, if available. If not one single luxury good is available with early techs, then yes, this is a problem, but having bad starting luck is always a problem.

 

[stealth_nsk]

This is playing at a very high difficulty level without a single bonus to happiness. Just one luxury good puts you well into the black, and there are three luxury goods available for improvement just with mining: silver, gold and gems. If none of these are around, then it may be necessary to tech to trapping and harvest fur or ivory, if available. If not one single luxury good is available with early techs, then yes, this is a problem, but having bad starting luck is always a problem.

We know about 15 luxury resources. 7 require plantation, 3 mines, 1 quarry, 2 camp, 2 fishing boats. So in 2/3 cases your nearby resource requires either plantation or fishing boat, both are quite far. And if they are located on forest, they require Bronze working as well

Surely all this depends on starting conditions.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

We know about 15 luxury resources. 7 require plantation, 3 mines, 1 quarry, 2 camp, 2 fishing boats. So in 2/3 cases your nearby resource requires either plantation or fishing boat, both are quite far. And if they are located on forest, they require Bronze working as well

Surely all this depends on starting conditions.

Wait...wait...plantation is only a 2nd level tech. You get it with Calendar, the same tech that unlocks Stonehenge. This gives the French player even more reason to rush: worker/Calendar/Stonehenge because the tech he unlocks to get Stonehenge also unlocks about half of the luxury improvements in the game. So forget about Trapping. By following the Mining -> Pottery -> Calendar tech progression, you unlock 10 out of 15 of the possible luxury goods in the game, giving you a very good chance that one of them will be available immediately within the (relatively large because you're French) radius of your capital.

Also, going Tradition early for the +2 food will expand your capital population faster, and with it your tech progression speed. There is a happiness penalty to growing, but if you're going straight to Calendar, you'd have to be quite unlucky to be over the cap by the time your first luxury resource becomes available.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Wait...wait...plantation is only a 2nd level tech.

Yes. Sorry. While still it will require Bronze working if it's on forest, as reported by one of playtesters.

Also, going Tradition early for the +2 food will expand your capital population faster, and with it your tech progression speed. There is a happiness penalty to growing, but if you're going straight to Calendar, you'd have to be quite unlucky to be over the cap by the time your first luxury resource becomes available.

My impression is what adopting Collective Rule earlier will grant more people (and tech) than Tradition with early expansion, but need more precise counting. We don't know all values yet. Plus this could vary on starting position.

 

[iop]

1. I'd say by the time you open your 3rd SP you should already have 4 cities on French. Price increases quite significally.
2. You need not only opening SP on Liberty as early as possible, but others as well, like 50% of food in storage.

So, IMHO, you should get Liberty first or not get it at all.

It depends a bit whether your want to put more weight onto rapid expansion, or on getting SPs. In the latter case (which I'll go for at least with my first game), you don't want to occur the many-city penalty too early.

However, while I'd like to get in Honor as #2, I realize that I likely won't have the time. I'm a bit torn about collective rule, though. You gain about 4 turns for growing from 1->2 (after which it won't be useful anymore), and I simply don't know how good that is, i.e. how much I'll need to hurry to compete for resources.

Tradition brings a very useful boost, IMHO - you can grow your capital to 4-5 quickly, after which you can start working mines to boost production, or, later, have the possibility to assign a specialist for free.

For city sizes, it's going to be 5/3 till the first luxury resource comes online, then 5/4/2 or 6/3/2 till the second one. Also, if you grow your capital to 9 or more, Legalism gives you enough happiness to found another city. In fact, I'd make Paris a science city, and city #2 (Orleans?) a production city, since Tradition helps me get a capital with huge population fast (note that few large cities seem better for science than many small ones: you get science per population, and each city costs 2 population worth of happiness. Furthermore, there is less building maintenance). Third city might then focus on gold, and fourth on production again.

I think with the French it is important to keep in mind that the culture boost per city doesn't mean that you should get lots of cities to get more culture. If Paris has built Stonehenge and a Monument, the second city will just barely provide 30% additional culture once it has built the monument, and city 4 will only produce 25% additional culture once it gets a monument, and half of that beforehand. Thus, the culture boost merely reduces how much it hurts to get additional cities.

What the culture boost does help with is grabbing tiles. With monuments, you're expanding 100% faster than the competition, with temples everywhere it's still 40%. Especially together with oligarchy you will have a good chance of stealing quite a bit of territory without incurring gold or diplomatic costs.

At any rate, you ideally get in a few SPs before you found your additional cities. Depending on how badly the additional cities end up increasing SP cost (we know there is a factor ~1.3 in there somewhere), it may even be better to go
Scout -> Monument -> Worker -> Stonehenge -> Settler -> Settler -> Great Library
so that you get 4-5 SPs before you build your second city, which means that you can get Tradition, Aristocracy, Liberty and Collective Rule done for sure, and maybe even Honor for defense, or Oligarchy for faster land grabbing.

My dream start would allow me to time the Great Library such that I get Iron Working for free in time for settling city #4 next to a massive iron deposit. Then it would be time to start making puppet states.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

I'm a bit torn about collective rule, though. You gain about 4 turns for growing from 1->2 (after which it won't be useful anymore), and I simply don't know how good that is, i.e. how much I'll need to hurry to compete for resources.

Well, if it's really just a 4/5 turn growth bonus, then it's probably not worth the trouble, but we'll have to see how long it takes an unimproved city on a normal tile to reach 2 pop before passing judgment. If the growth boost is twice what you're estimating, then Collective Rule is likely a very good SP. We shall see. If Collective Rule ends up being crappy, then the only Liberty SP I see myself taking besides unlocking the tree is maybe Citizenship, but that's probably only if I fail to build the pyramids.

Tradition brings a very useful boost, IMHO - you can grow your capital to 4-5 quickly, after which you can start working mines to boost production, or, later, have the possibility to assign a specialist for free.

Yes, Tradition is looking like by far the strongest of the ancient era social trees.

At any rate, you ideally get in a few SPs before you found your additional cities. Depending on how badly the additional cities end up increasing SP cost (we know there is a factor ~1.3 in there somewhere), it may even be better to go
Scout -> Monument -> Worker -> Stonehenge -> Settler -> Settler -> Great Library
so that you get 4-5 SPs before you build your second city, which means that you can get Tradition, Aristocracy, Liberty and Collective Rule done for sure, and maybe even Honor for defense, or Oligarchy for faster land grabbing.

I think building the Monument in that progression is silly. It's a very temporary boost when you're beelining to a much bigger one very quickly and it's a good number of hammers at a time when you don't really have them to spare. In fact, I would wager that you end up with less overall culture within 20 turns if you build the Monument, because by building it, you are slowing down the construction (to the tune of half the construction time) of Stonehenge, which gives you a return four times as large. No, building a Monument before Stonehenge makes no sense for the French unless the numbers work out way differently than they look right now.

 

[iop]

Well, if it's really just a 4/5 turn growth bonus, then it's probably not worth the trouble, but we'll have to see how long it takes an unimproved city on a normal tile to reach 2 pop before passing judgment.

It took Greg's first city (Berlin) 8 rounds to hit 2 pop. If you do get Citizenship before you found your second city, then it might just be worth it, but yes, the effect sounds rather weak to me.

I think building the Monument in that progression is silly. It's a very temporary boost when you're beelining to a much bigger one very quickly and it's a good number of hammers at a time when you don't really have them to spare.

Scout -> Worker -> Stonehenge? That... actually makes more sense than what I suggested, since with Aristocracy (which you'll just get in time), Stonehenge is only 20 hammers more expensive than a monument - and doesn't cost maintenance. Good catch!

 

[Spark026]

Im going Tradition(Turn 9), Aristocracy(Turn 24).

So build Scout->Worker->Scout or Warrior(if can be completed before turn 24)-> Stonehenge

Tech: Animal Husbandtry(if near Grassland/Plains) or Mining(if start near more hills); then Pottery; then Calender(must be researched by Turn 24, so plan accordingly)

I do not think rushing settlers with France will be a viable strat, but I could be wrong. I think you'll be better off making Paris a super city early, and then starting your settler rush once you get your 3rd policy: Liberty. Stonehenge will be completed very quickly at just 80 hammers(with bonus), so you can actually get in another cheap early WW before the settler rush begins. Allowing you to capitalize on ur single super culture city, through efficient progression up the SP trees.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

It took Greg's first city (Berlin) 8 rounds to hit 2 pop. If you do get Citizenship before you found your second city, then it might just be worth it, but yes, the effect sounds rather weak to me.

Well, then that suggests it's a mere four round boost, which is crap.

Scout -> Worker -> Stonehenge? That... actually makes more sense than what I suggested, since with Aristocracy (which you'll just get in time), Stonehenge is only 20 hammers more expensive than a monument - and doesn't cost maintenance. Good catch!

I would even go so far as to suggest worker -> scout -> Stonehenge. The extra time with a worker on the ground will probably allow him to improve a hill for more production which will speed up the construction time of Stonehenge by quite a bit. Getting a quick farm improvement up in the capital is also always a good idea. I can live with somewhat slower scouting in order to capture the enormous culture lead which a French Stonehenge would entail as quickly as possible. I think the extra turns of culture generation will outweigh the extra turns of scouting, but that is extemely speculatory.

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

Im going Tradition(Turn 9), Aristocracy(Turn 24).

So build Scout->Worker->Scout or Warrior(if can be completed before turn 24)-> Stonehenge

Tech: Animal Husbandtry(if near Grassland/Plains) or Mining(if start near more hills); then Pottery; then Calender(must be researched by Turn 24, so plan accordingly)

I do not think rushing settlers with France will be a viable strat, but I could be wrong. I think you'll be better off making Paris a super city early, and then starting your settler rush once you get your 3rd policy: Liberty. Stonehenge will be completed very quickly at just 80 hammers(with bonus), so you can actually get in another cheap early WW before the settler rush begins. Allowing you to capitalize on ur single super culture city, through efficient progression up the SP trees.

Yeah, I think you've got it, though I'm not at all sure that Calendar will be finished by turn 24 is Mining is researched first. I think tech progression may be the chokepoint in this plan. Agree that settlers shouldn't be put into construction until Liberty is unlocked. As far as the early WW, with the Pyramids now looking useless (basically just starting a golden age), I guess the Great Library would be a good idea. If the free tech is any researchable tech, then going straight from Writing to Philosophy is probably the best strategy, followed by immediate construction of a Library and a National College in Paris for a major research boost, and then maybe the Oracle.

An early French culture grab, if correctly leveraged, could be pretty powerful, it seems.

 

[Spark026]

With worker costing 70 hammers, and you likely starting with 3-4 prod, 4-6 prod after Turn 9 pop growth; I'd estimate a worker to take around 15 turns to build. This is a very long time.

I think most of the time the scout will come first, especially on larger maps with more goodie huts to conquer! Building the worker first will be at the cost of missing the scouting window entirely.

The exception being if rushing the worker out early by gold purchase is at all possible. Or perhaps if your warrior comes across enough gold from goodie huts that purchasing a worker becomes feasible.

 

[Duo]

I am going to play as the French for my first game. I am thinking of expanding as much as possible and focusing on teching to calendar and philosophy early for stonehenge and oracle. Beyond that I don't know enough about the policy branches and so on to be totally sure of how I will play, but it looks like techs and social policy branches that favour culture will be essential when playing as France. Looks like they're going to be strong!

I am going to assume that worker first will continue to be the best long term strategy, and the game can correct me if I am wrong in that assumption... But I can't imagine scouts would be an essential long-term investment. There is probably something I am not aware of.

 

[Spark026]

I think tech progression may be the chokepoint in this plan.

This could be true, but AH or Mining can be taken out if need be, but they're pretty necessary for worker being able to help you early. But 3 techs by turn 24 seems reasonable, and as long as its within 2-3 turns there's no problem really. Not sure how much Calendar will cost though...

Find out Tuesday!!!

 

[Le Roi Soleil]

With worker costing 70 hammers, and you likely starting with 3-4 prod, 4-6 prod after Turn 9 pop growth; I'd estimate a worker to take around 15 turns to build. This is a very long time.

I think most of the time the scout will come first, especially on larger maps with more goodie huts to conquer! Building the worker first will be at the cost of missing the scouting window entirely.

The exception being if rushing the worker out early by gold purchase is at all possible. Or perhaps if your warrior comes across enough gold from goodie huts that purchasing a worker becomes feasible.

You are probably right about that. Waiting to build the worker until you've got a few more hammers is probably wise, and yes, most of the goodie huts, Natural Wonders and City States will probably be found by the time your scout is out if you build the worker first.