Hi, I am new to the game, I dont know what techs should I prioritize

[bradebuque]

Hi, there are a lot of techs in the game, and I pick the ones that takes less time to research, without other strategy. What techs should I prioritize, generaly speaking? And in a diplomatic victory scenario? And in a cultural and scientific scenarios?

I have read somewhere in the forum that you should prioritize luxury, happiness and food growth techs. Is this valid in every single game?

 

[zxcvbob]

I usually start with Pottery while doing my initial scouting. Then hook-up your most important luxuries. Find horses and iron (Animal Husbandry and Bronze). Writing (for a library.) Archery, for defense. The rest of your luxuries, if you have any (Calendar, Trapping, Masonry, etc) Civil Service is a big one, next is Philosophy (national college, temples, Oracle) I usually have to take a detour to research Commerce before Civil Service so I can build markets, because about that time I run out of gold.

You want to prioritize science and food growth the most, but don't neglect your military and economy.

If you have the BNW expansion, pikes are a very good substitute for swordsmen if you have no iron, but if you have no iron you should move Gunpowder up on your priority list.

 

[Nizef]

Here are some things to consider:

1. It is dependent on the map type. On a Pangaea map you can delay Sailing and Optics a lot (many times until after National College or even later), while they are very important on watery maps. 2. It also depends on what you want to achieve in the early game. For example, if you want to go to war early, Iron Working and Construction should be priority targets. 3. And it also depends on the level you are playing on. On Settler and Chieftain, you can do what ever you like, while a Deity game requires hard beelining (usually the early game is about settling 3-4 cities and building the National College) just to catch up to the AI. 4. As zxcybob pointed out, it also depends on the land you have to work with in the early stages. 5. It also depends on your neighbours. If India or Morocco is close to you, you can expect a more peaceful early game than if Shaka is your neighbour.

And yes, tiles with 3 food (or even 4 or more when they are improved), will help you grow faster and thus set you up in a better position for the rest of the game. More population will help you to produce things faster and it also helps you to research techs faster. This is why Salt is such a good resource to hook up as soon as possible. Even if the base value (2 food, 1 hammer and 1 gold) is very good early on, the improved tile is just awesome (3 food, 2 hammers and 1 gold).

For scientific (SV) and cultural (CV) victories you generally focus on same techs on the upper half of the tech tree with Philosophy, Education, Scientific Theory and Plastics being natural beelining targets. For CV you will also want to research Archaeology (also Acoustics and Architecture) quite early. A Diplomatic (DV) victory is slightly different (but only slightly). The underlying necessity is money. Thus techs that will enable you to hook up luxuries to sell or to set up a new trade route are worthwhile targets.

 

[mbbcam]

As noted above, playing on the lower levels allows a lot of flexibility. By the time you get to Deity you have to be ruthlessly efficient, which means that the game can become quite formulaic at the beginning (think of classic chess openings). I imagine you are playing at lower levels, but if you want to progress to the higher levels, I would say it is not a bad idea to learn approaches that will be applicable later, rather than trying to break old habits when they no longer work.

Received wisdom seems to be (and there are always exceptions) that you need to settle three cities by about T50, get National College by about T85-90, Education around T105-110, and then it depends. But common strategies seem to be to beeline either Dynamite, Navigation, Industrialisation, or Scientific Method (or whatever it is called -- memory fail) depending on the map, circumstances, the neighbours, etc.

Received wisdom also seems to be that the strongest approach is to complete the Tradition tree as soon as possible, followed by Rationalism, all the while growing like crazy. This is probably the easiest approach for a solid game.

Again, as noted above, it is important to know who your neighbours are, and what to expect from them. Some Civs are programmed to be very aggressive, and WILL attack you, even though they are supposedly friendly.

I found it very useful to read some guides from the forum, such as these:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/tradition-three-cities-approaches.25617/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/liberty-domination-walkthrough.503931/

An unconventional one:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-city-industrial-era-domination-guide.529482/

For domination:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/domination-on-immortal-deity-a-noobs-guide.547630/

And a good video:

Acken's China DCL 16 video

You might find it useful to read the descriptions of games in the Deity Challenge Lineup series, which are posted in various places in the forum. People playing the same start can have surprisingly different experiences because of the random element in the game. And on that note, if you want to learn, it can be very useful to replay the same game a few times and see how different choices have different outcomes. It can be useful to set the game to save after every turn and keep 200-300 saves (go to options to set this) so that you can go back and replay sections of a game to learn what you could have done differently.

There is a lot to learn! Good luck with it!

 

[Nizef]

As usual, mbbcam and myself are aligned in our comments and the guides he is suggesting, WILL increase your understanding of the game faster (compared to the individual trial-and-error-approach). I would like to make a side comment on the timelines, though. On lower difficulty levels it is still viable to reach Education as late as t120-135 and still be fine.

 

[mbbcam]

Good point. I had my Deity head on.

 

[zxcvbob]

Unless you are just pathetic you will have a couple of policies between finishing Tradition and unlocking Rationalism. There are lots of good possibilities, depending on the map and your neighbors. But if you're going to pick Honor for your spares, take the opener early (maybe your 2nd policy after the Tradition opener.) It will help with keeping barbarians from killing your scouts and overrunning your cites, tell you when new camps pop up, plus you'll get some of your culture investment back by killing barbs. (as the game goes on, barbs seldom go totally extinct but they do usually kinda disappear)

Edit: the Honor opener never pays for itself in culture from killing barbs, not even for Montezuma. But it can be a worthwhile pick anyway if taken pretty early. The rest of the Honor policies are all good, but maybe not as good as policies elsewhere like in Patronage, Commerce, or Aesthetics. It's an opportunity cost thing, you can't take all the good policies (well, Poland almost can.)

 

[bradebuque]

thank you guys, I am literally wrinting down everything for later.

 

[so_what]

Used to be a tradition player too, but I have now become much more flexible. Liberty (half of the times) and honor (some rare cases) can work better than tradition (on deity) for SV. However, it is good to start from tradition as a new player.

Similarly, tech pathing is flexible depending on playstyle and victory conditions, but generally civil service and education are key techs. After which is ideology tech, either via industrialization or radio. For Science, you will then go for plastic, for Culture archaeology to the internet, and for domination it can be either plastic or dynamite. For domination, usually you should be winning asap, before or at most a little after ideology (this is a good practice since at diety the AI will spam lots and lots of units as it gets later)

 

[zxcvbob]

This might not work at deity level, I don't know, but India is very good at atomic era domination (I'm not talking about the Nuclear Gandhi meme.) The AI cities are well-developed and when you capture a decent city your happiness will go up instead of down. When you capture a crappy city, you have plenty of spare happiness to get you through razing it, even 3 or 4 cities at a time. About that time you should also be able to bulb scientist after scientist and rapidly advance to the information era and those juicy late-game units, like XCOM, modern armor, rocket arty, etc.