How to expand real fast?

[FredLC]

I know, i know, playing as warlord, the machine is still handcaped. Nonetheless, i can't keep up with it.

I always try to expand using a method that worked very well in one of my 1th warlord games. I create the cities, than i'll give up making lots of buildings in the early game. Instead, i'll be popping spearman and settlers, i'll be sendidng them away immediatly, and i'll fight for sqaures with the same eager that the machine does.

Half the time it works, i'll culturally assimilate lots of cities and make a nice empire, as well as grant the needed iron and horses, that will allow me to conquest a lil more later.

Half the time, on the other hand, the drawbacks of that tactic will halt me. As i won't have much workers, i'll have little money, so my military won't be much strong, and i'll be for a long time without cash.

Besides that, no matter that i'll keep working that way, the machine will always pop more cities than me. I can't figure out how it's doing that, since it's handcaped.

So, I think that something is wrong with that formula. I started to think that perhaps it would be better to make a good 5 cities, some workers, and let them grow while building an overload of spearman. After i have about 5 per city, i'll start making the settlers. They should be ready fast, because the cities will have a bigger number of shields per turn, dxue to it's larger population.

I'll keep that until i exaust my army of spearman, like leaving 2 in the capital, one per each other city, and that should give me a little more than 20 cities, what i consider to be a pretty decent ewarly game.

I haven't tried this new tactic yet, but as i know there are some people here who are quite experts, i tought i should ask it here and avoid the trouble if it's flawed.

By the way, is it better to simply build my 5 core cities, than a large army, than go conquest? I've tried it too, and altough it works, in any case i always get behind in the tech race, despite the penalty to the machine.

To make the long post short: What am i doing wrong, people?

Regards .

 

[HiroHito]

Hi,

I usually go for a quick, very quick expansion, with cities 3 squares or so from each other. Whip the peasants, so you can get fast and cheap units (and buildings), "slave camps" should be fast growth cities (near river at least, best is floodplain), use scouts early (may it units or the real scouts) to see how you could block the AI from getting the best spots (mountains' bottlenecks make good "natural frontier"). Have primary and secondary objectives, a primary objective would be: "I want half the continent...for now", a secondary would be like:" I must stop the Sioux from getting that rich area", try to fulfill as much objectives as you can, will help greatly later.

One of my favorite tactic is colonizing the lands, "outside in", send some settlers to limit your close opponents, they wont dare to get close at first, 20 turns later you should be able to handle em.

Also, stay away from wars, and pay any reasonnable tribute, who cares about primitive techs, when you can avoid a bloody war (and a lot of troubles, sooner or later), and dont forget to keep your special unit from battles, you don't need that Golden Age while you have 3 cities only, don't you ?

After you have seated yourself, either you go War or Science way, use politics in both cases to weaken opponents (try to keep balance tho, a civ eating another is never good, for you)

Anyways ask a thousand Civers, and you will get 1000 different answers, but they will all stress the same motto:

Organization and efficienty.

Hope this helps =)

 

[Razorwing]

That doesn't mean you should just build settlers. You need workers to enrich the land so that your cities grow faster and thus can spew out settlers more often. In the early days many of your cities can't grow beyond size six because you haven't discovered the Aqueduct yet. Use those cities for settler-production when they near their limit.

 

[BillChin]

I suggest the following:
Take one or two turns to select the best tile for the capital. Building over a luxury icon or on a coast or river helps a lot.

Build 3 warriors, settler, 3 more warriors, 2nd settler, plant these first settlers very close to the capital. One square away on the diagonal, or two away on the straight. Connect all with roads to share the luxury. This core of three cities gives tremendous early leverage.

Research Pottery. Pop rush a granary in the first two cities, but not the capital. (Pop rush means hurry production at 39 shields to completion at the cost of one citizen.) Use the capital to crank out warriors, the two suburbs to crank out settlers.

When you get to six cities total, consider temples in the core cities. Temples are fine in the outlying cities (4th, 5th, 6th) as the first item, workers are also good.

This start works fine up to Monarch level. The early build out is fast. Early military is strong in numbers which is what the AI looks at. Early research is tremendous if the capital is on a river. Early culture is also strong as temples go up around turn 60.

To summarize:
Initial build queue 3 warriors, settler, 3 more warriors, 2nd settler. Plant settlers very close to capital. Research Pottery. Pop rush granaries in the two suburbs but not the capital. Crank out warriors and spearmen in the capital, settlers in the granary cities. For the next three cities build temples or workers first, depending on terrain. After six cities consider temples in the core cities, then resume settler production.

On Warlord, standard size map, I estimate 12 well defended cities by 700 B. C. with an average starting position. On higher levels, preparation for war is often more important than pure expansion.

Here is another recent thread about the early, early game:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20056