I always underexpand

[pesgores]

I alaways underexpand in my Custom Games, no matter what scenario it is or which size it is, and I end up waaaaay behind in tech by turn 120.

At what rate should I expand, guys? Should I build stupid filler cities on crappy terrain? Seriously, I have played many many times, been a regular player for more than a year, and I keep underexpanding! And then, you know, I get behind in tech so badly that I end up loosing my big obsolete army to small waves of more advanced units.

Please help.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Sounds like you're building too much army and not enough settlers.

Maps and difficulty levels make it impossible to give one true answer to "how fast should I expand". If, on a particular map, at a particular difficulty level you find that your opponents all have 5 cities while you still have 2, then you're not expanding fast enough. If you're getting stomped by superior tech, then you're not teching fast enough (or trading properly). If your power rating falls too far behind, you'll simply get stomped militarily.

I would suggest playing at a specific map size, at a specific speed/difficulty, with a specific leader and try to develop a sense for pacing. It's more of an art form then hard and fast rules. You need to balance expansion, military strength, research and commerce along with diplomacy, religions and tech/resource trades in order to stay with the pack.

My rule of thumb for the commerce slider is that anything between 30% research (beakers/turn) and 70% research works. The lower number for when I'm in an expansionist phase, and getting back to 60-70% after consolidating the new cities.

 

[CivMcNut]

I would go a step further and say that if you run 60% research and you're still bringing in a lot of gold you should try expanding, be it through conquest or using settlers. If you're having to run below 60% to keep money flowing in, you probably have enough cities, you just have to make them more economic, (build cottages or run more specialists).

 

[Malchar]

If you underexpand, you just need to be able to use whatever else you were building to help you retake the lead. For example, if you have a surplus of military instead of building settlers, use your army to capture some cities. If you built wonders instead of settlers then you'll have to be able to utilize the culture, great people, and other bonuses to get yourself back on par.

As long as you have peace, it doesn't matter if you fall behind in tech. The longer the game goes, the biggest advantage goes to the player with the most land. That is, don't worry too much about falling behind if you are able to grab a ton of land. Once you get everything up and running, you will be able to quickly tech back to the top and also outproduce your enemies.

 

[6K Man]

If you have a big, obsolete army, use it to take your neighbours' cities before it qualifies as obsolete.

My rules of thumb:
- have 8-10 cities by 1 AD. I don't always get there, but I usually come close.
- if my science slider is above 70%, I don't have enough cities.
- if my science slider is below 20%, stop expanding.

I'm not sure what you consider a crappy city. Build cities with food specials nearby (or floodplains). Even without food specials, anything with a lot of grassland or green hills has the potential to be a good city, provided it has a freshwater supply. The only crappy cities, IMO, are those with a lot of plains, desert, ocean, or peaks.

 

[Herrhals]

IF you can chain irrigate a city (even if not near a fresh water source, nor food resources) filled with green grass tiles, thats awesome.
post civil service, those tiles can produce 3 food. IF that city is lacking mines, build some workshops (with guilds and Civil service those WS's produce 1F 3P (grass hill mine!!) increases with chem) Post bio, those irrigated farms produce 4 food. That city can easily reach 15+ pop with decent production.

 

[GreatEngineer]

I would suggest playing at a specific map size, at a specific speed/difficulty, with a specific leader and try to develop a sense for pacing. It's more of an art form then hard and fast rules. You need to balance expansion, military strength, research and commerce along with diplomacy, religions and tech/resource trades in order to stay with the pack.

You mean play with one leader until you win? Yeah, I'm down with that I guess. I definitely have a short list of leaders I favor more than others, but eventually I think you have to branch out and try other leaders. I found that as I used one leader more than others (say Qin Shi Huang) I would get really good at a strategy that worked for him best. Usually I would go cultural with him and/or medieval war, and then when I switched to other leaders, I found myself pursuing the same strategy even though a better one probably existed.

 

[lilnev]

Trying playing a few games through 1 AD with barbarians off and the self-imposed rule that you build nothing besides workers, settlers, workboats, and 1 warrior per city. At first, play as a Creative leader. Then non-Creative, adding monuments to the list of things you're allowed to build. Then turn barbarians back on, and learn to expand with a minimal number of warriors.

Civ is a game of alternating phases -- grow, then conquer, then grow, then conquer, etc. The first phase is always grow. And don't try to do both at once -- know which phase you're in and pursue it fully.

 

[Malchar]

Yeah, it's a good idea to practice a single strategy with a preselected leader. However, if you still get stuck, try a different strategy/leader. I was stuck on monarch for quite a while because my old strategies from prince wouldn't carry over. Eventually, I started picking random leaders and playing lots of different maps. It worked pretty good.

 

[yanner39]

At what rate should I expand, guys? Should I build stupid filler cities on crappy terrain? Seriously, I have played many many times, been a regular player for more than a year, and I keep underexpanding! And then, you know, I get behind in tech so badly that I end up loosing my big obsolete army to small waves of more advanced units.

Please help.

No, but a tip I recently learned was if you have little islands near your continent, preferable one with seafood, try and settle a city of one of them. With sailing, the trade route income is a little higher. This will help your science slider.

Furthermore, I had the exact same problem. I was always 2 or 3 or 4 cities behind the AI. I always had a comfy science slider at 70% or 80%. Then I was told that if my slider was not at 30%, I was not expanding fast enough. Plus, make sure you are building units/buildings you actually need. Example:

You have a city that is generating 6 beakers. Should you build a Library? Or you can use the food and hammers to build a settler to settle a new city next to some valuable resource.

Also, just like producing settlers, you need to force yourself to build workers.

Anyways, that was a big issue with my game. I focused way too much on vertical expansion and less on horizontal expansion. My reasoning was that by building workers and settlers, my cities didn't grow. In the long term, you need to invest in settlers and workers, get the slider down to 30% and work out of it at 1AD.

 

[Gliese 581]

Something's not right here. Expansion usually comes at the cost of a decreased tech rate not the other way around. Unless you're talking about you post-rennaissance situation where the size of your land will really start to affect your teching.

 

[Gary King]

No, but a tip I recently learned was if you have little islands near your continent, preferable one with seafood, try and settle a city of one of them. With sailing, the trade route income is a little higher. This will help your science slider.

Furthermore, I had the exact same problem. I was always 2 or 3 or 4 cities behind the AI. I always had a comfy science slider at 70% or 80%. Then I was told that if my slider was not at 30%, I was not expanding fast enough. Plus, make sure you are building units/buildings you actually need. Example:

You have a city that is generating 6 beakers. Should you build a Library? Or you can use the food and hammers to build a settler to settle a new city next to some valuable resource.

Also, just like producing settlers, you need to force yourself to build workers.

Anyways, that was a big issue with my game. I focused way too much on vertical expansion and less on horizontal expansion. My reasoning was that by building workers and settlers, my cities didn't grow. In the long term, you need to invest in settlers and workers, get the slider down to 30% and work out of it at 1AD.

I think that investing in settlers and workers is more of a short-term goal. You should be focused on both early on in the game. Really, once you can master the early expansion part of a game, then you've jumped over a huge hurdle. It's by far the hardest part of any game for me, at least.

 

[yanner39]

I think that investing in settlers and workers is more of a short-term goal. You should be focused on both early on in the game. Really, once you can master the early expansion part of a game, then you've jumped over a huge hurdle. It's by far the hardest part of any game for me, at least.

Yeah, I guess you are right. What I meant to say when I said long-term was that By getting a bunch of settlers out early and by having a low science slider early, in the long-term as these cities become productive, everything will shoot up because you have more cities. More cities - more trade routes - more commerce - more production.

 

[dirtyparrot]

Something's not right here. Expansion usually comes at the cost of a decreased tech rate not the other way around. Unless you're talking about you post-rennaissance situation where the size of your land will really start to affect your teching.

Sounds like he's probably not developing his land properly (i.e. not enough workers and too much military that isn't conquering people). There's no use in playing like Sitting Bull in building a large army that never attacks.

 

[Orzio]

When you lose money at 0% teach rate you should consider maybe stoping expanding. There is no harm in running 20 turns with silder on 0% if you can recover from that later.

Also one important thing to remember 10% teach with 100 bpt is sill better than 80% with 80 bpt % isnt everything.

 

[trc]

I alaways underexpand in my Custom Games, no matter what scenario it is or which size it is, and I end up waaaaay behind in tech by turn 120.

At what rate should I expand, guys? Should I build stupid filler cities on crappy terrain?

My early mistakes:

1) Making large empires with few cities. Now I worry about core cities for production, commerce, and GP. Then I fill in trying to make a bunch of 7-10 sized cities, that have some food sources, so I can whip the needed buildings for research, espionage and if applicable, commerce.

2) Use the power graph, the AI does. My game changed once I started using this, it's now invaluable. There's no need to build a defensive army twice the size of my neighbor, even if it's Monty.

3) Build stuff you need, nothing more. Does a +6 happy city need a colosseum? Probably not. (Unless you need the culture points).

4) Have a plan. I tend to settle city one, and start scouting for city 2, bee line for bronze working so I can start chopping out settlers. Cover needed techs, and then it varies. Usually shoot for Code of Laws for a religion so I can fund the empire, Civil Service for Bureaucracy, Education to start building/whipping Universities, Chemistry and the Liberalism to get free steel. Plans change, and it might be different, but have one from turn 1.

5) Whip whip whip. Make small cities with little but food productive. A bunch of small (7-10) cities with libraries/universities/observatories/monasteries goes a long way. Plus they may great guided missile pumps in the modern game.

6) Specialists. Ignored them in my early games. I've learned. People much better at this can probably go into it in better detail. If you a library, and resources to support the two scientists it allows, and you aren't, you're letting the AI win the tech race.

 

[noto2]

If you underexpand, you just need to be able to use whatever else you were building to help you retake the lead. For example, if you have a surplus of military instead of building settlers, use your army to capture some cities. If you built wonders instead of settlers then you'll have to be able to utilize the culture, great people, and other bonuses to get yourself back on par.

As long as you have peace, it doesn't matter if you fall behind in tech. The longer the game goes, the biggest advantage goes to the player with the most land. That is, don't worry too much about falling behind if you are able to grab a ton of land. Once you get everything up and running, you will be able to quickly tech back to the top and also outproduce your enemies.

-exactly. You need to get an advantage. This can be a long-term advantage, like grabbing the most land, or a short term advantage, like getting a tech lead or grabbing an important wonder. If you build a small empire and have the tech lead, remember that you have a short term advantage. Another civ with more land will eventually catch up and pass you. Thus while you have the lead you need to translate it into more land, or a better prospect for the long term. This is usually done by building advanced military units and conquering. You could also use a tech lead to settle other landmasses (first to astronomy) or take cities via culture, but military conquest is usually the only practical option.
Alternatively, you can expand aggressively and found many more cities than your opponents. You will almost certainly fall behind in tech doing this. However, if you have the most land, and it's good land, if you can just defend it and develop it you should be able to build the strongest economy and get a tech lead, it'll just take time.