How to get cities out faster while still building National Wonders?

This is one thing that has been bothering me in most of my games. I've looked at strategy guides that suggest getting a national college by turn 80 while having four cities in same amount of time. I'll typically only have three cities up by then and I usually don't get my national college until turn 120. So how can I get my cities up in reasonable amount of time without sacrificing early national wonders?

My build order usually goes something like this:
Scout------>Monument------>Shrine------>Worker------->Settler-------->Temple of Artemis------>Library------->Granary------>Settler------>Oracle------->Settler

Are there any changes that you would make to that? I usually play on Emperor btw and this strategy is sufficient for that difficulty. I want some tips so I can move up to immortal.

 

Wonders are big investments. If you wouldn't build ToA and Oracle you would end up with turn 90 NC easy. Also i don't think it's nessecary to build Oracle pre NC on Emperor. You can just build it after the NC and get it just fine(or in a secondary city after the Library).

 

I am of the proponent of just moving up now. Although it may not be fun for some players to get smashed by the AI for awhile I do believe that it will make you stronger in the end. However, we all learn differently and if you feel you have to master Emp before moving up I can understand that. This all depends on how you want to play your games. On Emp you really do not have to worry about a specific B.O. (IMO). If you want you can just build a 1,2,3, or 4 city Empire and build a bunch of Army and go crush the AI. I mean crush them on Emp for sure. If you want to play more peaceful you can build things like ToA/Hang Gardens and grow like mad and win any of the VCs. If you are looking for very fast turn time wins you will need to do some investigation on strategies and LPs and learn how the masters do it. Most likely your best bet is to learn the 4 city Tradition Strategy and go from that point. After getting the hang of that you can move onto other strategies.

Most players rush buy the 4th Library but on Emp your gpt might be a problem. Either way it is not really going to matter since you should be leaps and bounds above the AI in tech very soon.

 

So I should just delay getting the Oracle? What about the Temple of Artemis? I've started getting this wonder upon stepping up to Emperor since the AI doesn't really go for it (I go for any wonder that the AI doesn't compete with me for). Should I keep it in my build order or just scrap it for a earlier college/settler?

 

I could probably move up without losing horribly since I've won every Emperor game I've played except for the very first one (signing DoF with Dido was my first mistake). That being said, I enjoy being the strongest (or at least one of the strongest) civs in the game and I'd probably be near the bottom of the scoreboard for the whole game if I just moved up now. Optimizing my build order in Emperor for a few games should put me in the right state of mind for the coming challenge.

I typically end up doing four city tradition in most of my games anyways so that concern is moot (unless all other available locations are awful in which case I settle with three).

 

Your build order should be scout->scout->choice->settlers/units
choice:
monument if you find no culture ruins
granary if you have wheat/deer/bananas
shrine if you have faith producing terrain

Workers should be stolen from AI civs and/or CS(only DOW once)

You have to make a decision on how many cities to found before building the NC, if you have an excellent production capital settle 4, otherwise settle 3 then settle your 4th city after the NC.

Civs to try:
Spain: if you find a NW first that's a free settler.
Poland: you can do the Tradition/Liberty mix with them.

 

Worker stealing isn't very useful on Emperor for me since by the time the AI gets them, I'll have already built one. Obviously this strategy will be more useful once I move up to Immortal. Abandoning that monument in my build actually seems tempting now that I remember tradition can give you a free one (although I'd have to give up early wonder production bonuses). I'm a bit dubious on the value of the extra scout though. The first scout and the starting warrior seem to give me enough ruin bonuses for most of my games. Or is the 2nd scout for a different purpose like meeting all the civs or scouting the best city locations?

 

The wonder is certainly nice, but if i would want to improve on my NC date or my early game in general i would not plan on wonders like that every game. DOesn't do you any good for higher difficulties anyway. Just play a couple of games without building a wonder, just trying to improve the other stuff imo.

 

Not a problem Vegito... you have to play how you want and what makes you feel comfortable but when and if you do move up you will find that these Build Orders will not work the same for Immortal and Deity and you will need to re-learn once again. Basically you can pretty much build whatever you like on Emperor but I can understand you wanting to learn how to be more optimal. You can't always get these wonders on Immortal or Deity although on Immortal they are much easier. I think one wild game on Deity I recently played... Wonders were going off at amazing turn time rates like Petra on turn 54, Oracle 65, PT 145...etc. Sometimes on Deity you can get certain Wonders every game but you will run into these games where you have no chance at the early Wonders but you can always change your game plan and go take those Wonders that the AI decided to build for you.

 

I am also playing on Emperor, lately I have approached the 3 city NC strategy. I used to have 4-5 cities before NC, then I used a 2 city NC strategy but I found that 3 city NC works better.
My build order in capital is: scout - monument - (sometimes shrine) - work on granary until i reach size 3 - settler - settler (try to chop one forest if there is abundance) - finish granary - a wonder like Stonehenge or ToA (if I get an Archery ruin) with 1-2 chops - library - NC (try to use at least one chop). After that I usually go for the Oracle or Hanging Gardens.

Of course depending on the course of the game things may change. If I play Pangaea I definitely build a second scout (also I don't really focus on getting ruins, I get what I can spot, my first priority is scouting the area for city location and second finding my neighbors to plan where to expand).

 

if it's wonders you seek then 1 city NC (block land with scouts and archers) is the way to go...
if you go for early wonders AFTER you build settlers you probably won't get them (since you've wasted turns in which you could be growing and hammers to build those costly settlers)

On emperor I recommend buying all your settlers from gold while selling stuff to AI while building nothing but wonders (maybe a granary and some archers or so... workers if needed if you can't steal any) for maximum wonderwhoring fun. There's no point expanding before civil service or at least before you have granary + caravan IF you don't worry about AI taking up your land.

 

I usually can't get the AI to sign DoF that early to get the lump sums of gold needed to buy out those settlers. That's why I've been playing Spain and Songhai lately; that early gold lets me build those wonders without spending time pumping out settlers and I can usually straight out buy libraries in my satellite cities sometimes for a quicker college.

 

No growth while a Settler is being made is probably the worst thing. In the early going you will get your cap to pop 5 fairly quickly with an early Granary, perhaps some wheat and that policy in Tradition but if you delay your settler that long, you might fall behind.

A way to improve this from what I've seen is to try scout/scout/monument/settler(by this time your cap could be 3 pop)/settler and have your expos work on Libraries as soon as they're online. If there's some woods around, chop them all down to speed it up and that should get your NC in the 75-80 range. It would be advisable then to buy a Settler and start working on Oracle because it's all kinds of useful in the early going

 

Get the world wonders after your expansion phase. Especially if you hard build your workers.

Also it's often a lot better to expand early than late. Sure you may spend 10turns making a settler instead of 7 by going for it on size 3 instead of 4-5 but these lost turns will be somewhat transfered to the earlier founded city. A city settled on turn 35 gets 15more turns of production than one on turn 50 !
It also helps you secure land faster.
In my book both of these advantage far outweight the loss of 3-4 extra turns the settler took to make.

Try this:
-Scout Monument Worker (Shrine if good pantheon) Settler x2. Add a scout before or after monument if you want, it can also help you defend your settlers/worker.
Use the worker to chop forests to speed up settler production and make sure to work hills when you build your settlers (dont hesitate to buy one hill).

Once your expansion is done your capital will have the time to build a wonder while your expansions are getting Library + granary.
If you don't steal workers, you probably should make 2 more before trying to go for ToA. On emperor ToA may still be available after that !

I recommend that you get Granary + Library in first expansion while getting Granary + buy Library in the second one. Meanwhile get to Philosophy.

 

Is it worth skipping the Monument if you are already going to get legalism?

 

If you somehow get 2 culture ruins, definitely skip it. Though I have to believe even one is enough

 

If you get at least one culture ruin to get the opener it's okay (you'd have the same culture as liberty: 4). Not making a monument is probably a loss of around 40-50 culture since you run at least 20-25 turns without one compared to somebody that would make one. Expansion shouldn't be affected as Legalism will come around the same time. It probably delays tradition finisher by around 3-4 turns. Not a big deal and I'd seriously consider it if I were to make workers.

If you don't have a culture ruin though it will hurt since you'll wait 25turns just to get the opener.

 

On Emperor the AI indeed gets it's workers late but after your initial one you should consider stealing the rest.

Scouts are for scouting, and your warrior(preferably upgraded via ruin) are for escorting settlers/clearing archer barb camps. You never know where a barb camp will spawn, only where it won't(inside your borders). If there is a warrior inside the barb camp you'll need an archer or 2. Meeting other civs and CS's have the benefit of cheaper techs and free gold. In saying that you should involve your scouts in a bit of barb fisticuffs so they get promoted, I prefer having the extra slight on mine. Having survivalism means they are better escorts

 

You would probably be better off testing different strategies to get comfortable with them on Emperor than streamlining your build order. The game is so much different on the last two levels the build order can change drastically in a hurry depending on neighbors. On Emperor you can do pretty much whatever you want and any neighbors are still not going to compete.

 

Yeah, I'm going to try a game with minimal wonder-whoring and just going for a fast victory of sort. My first few Emperor games involved building huge militaries and conquering everyone since I didn't know how use trade caravans for food and I would go liberty despite building 3-4 cities most of the time. I'll probably try something like that again only with more citizens in my cities this time. I can't really think of any alternate strategies other than different builds though for my case. Most of the time on Emperor, I can win 3-5 different victory types within a couple turns of each other so focusing more on a particular victory (rather than just timing) won't help.