Hurry Production with population

[adamschroeder]

This is probably the best strategy that I have found to date. Early in the game corruption makes nearly all trade and shields useless even relatively close to your capital city. The only thing not affected is your food supplies. Focus entirely on maximizing food production and then just hurry everything you want to build. You need to be carefull to never let your city get above 3 or 4 people and to garrison it with 2 military units and a temple, otherwise it will be constantly in civil disorder. Any population higher than 4 will most likely need to be entertainers because the people are so upset at you contantly sacrificing them to the labor gods.

Even better is to find a city with some wheat, cattle, or floodplanes. These are the only terrain units early on that when irrigated give you more than 2 food under Depotism goverment. Its even possibly to get 4 or 5 food from a floodplane that contains wheat. Build a granery in this city and you should be growing every 2 or 3 turns.

You can build a swordsman or my favorate (an immortal) every two turns with a good city. Every other turn you hurry the production by sacrificing a person, well every two turns you also gain a new person. You can also build almost every other city improvement by waiting until you can sacrifice 3 or 4 population points, which is only 6 or 8 turns. Compare that to 40+ turns on a far away city getting only 1 shield after corruption. Or you could have an army of 10 of nearly any available unit in only 20 turns from only 1 city.

This technique is so powerful that if the AI doesn't do they will be at significant disadvantage. Games on the Regent (Prince) level have been easy for me since I have discovered this.

 

[Diety]

Prince level, huh ? I wonder if this will be viable on deity too, managing a big city there is really impossible untill you got luxuries, so this could be a real good thing...

I'll get back to you after I'd tried it

Great sigh BTW

 

[ecofx]

Exactly my planned strategy, but I haven't got the game yet. Even without knowing of the corruption and waste problems I was thinking of slaveing a city of size 3 with a granary permanently back to size 2 and making sure it couldn't be unhappy. I just don't know the repeat rate. Does a 2 growing to 3 with granary save 15 food, or only 10 (big diff if you only need 20 food to grow again after the slavery takes you down to size 2 again!)?

Also, the cities can be really close together, because they're hardly using squares at that size. From reports you can even work a square 2 away from the centre without having culture, as long as it's within another city's border (makes utilisation easier on a city-crowded area).

 

[Gray]

This strategy has help me alot as far as building a solid infrastructure as well as expanding my domain quickly. WIth Civ3 I have found myself staying in despotism for a while instead of switching to Monarchy or Republic because I can expand, build up my cities and armies, and still keep the pop. under control.

Switching to Republic without marketplaces and temples killed me in my first game, because my cities kept growing and then they kept trying to burn themselves down, while I tried to build aqueducts and such. Of course you do want to have some cities that you can use to build wonders, so they have to have a larger pop, but entertainers and temples and colosseums worker wonders there... literally.

Once you have expanded and set up your infrastructure Republic is a good way kick out a lot of science fast in Ancient and Middle Ages...

 

[Diety]

mmmm...

Try this : build your cities close to each other, so that they only have the 8 squares around them. Don't build aquaducts, so they stay small, and always use the extra 'food" for settlers and workers. When you have 20-25 cities of 6, then build aquaducts in your border cities.

It might work, I'm not sure

If it works, give me credit ! If it doesn't, well, what can I say ?

 

[adamschroeder]

Until a city reaches size 7 it only needs 20 food for each population point. With a granery you only need 10 food for a population point.

So if your city can produce excess food of 5 or more per turn you can grow every other turn. I think a population point is equal to 20 shields. You want at least one natural shield before you hurry anything, otherwise you pay double. But since you are guarenteed at least 1 uncorupted shield a turn it works out perfectly.

A good strategy is to use this method on your border cities and then develop you cities close (very close) to your capital naturally so you can use them to build wonders and accumilate money/research.

 

[Diety]

Mmmm, i donno... I'd go for only 2-3 production cities, no need to have high production in 10 citites, is there ? You need science more then ever...

My 2 cents : use your strategy to expand fast, then use it to rush-build the basics (granery, marketplace, temple, library,...) in every city and in 2-3 cities for wonders.