Ideal Expansion rate early game

[Uniqueuponhim]

Hey,
I'm still too used to Civ III, where the best strategy was always to expand as quickly as possible in the early game, and place as many cities as possible. This game, however, is clearly very different, as I have read on these boards and personally experienced.

In my very first game, playing as Egypt in a Large Archipelago map, on Noble, I made the mistake of expanding too quickly. While in the early game, I was able to fill up one entire continent and half of two others, my economy took a huge blow, causing me to lower science to 10% and slowing research to a crawl. As a result, I ended up way behind in techs and nobody would trade theirs with me. Next thing I know, the Aztecs declare war on me, and I have to switch to slavery and rush build tons of defensive units on the continent I share with them just to keep my cities. While I actually ended up doing fairly well (The war with the Aztecs started around 900AD, and the tide didn't turn until around 1600, and then it was around 1800 before I finally defeated them. I later took on the Chinese, and stopped playing in 1930 with about twice as high a score as anyone else.) I would have done so well in a game of higher difficulty level.

Now, I'm starting a new game, as Gandhi on a continents map on Prince, and my starting position just happens to be in the corner of a fairly large continent. My question is, at what rate should I expand to ensure that I get a fair chunk of territory without crippling my economy like I did in my first game?

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

Best advice is probably to play it by ear. Watch your income. Let it slip to 90% science, and no further. Don't found any new cities unless you have a few gold of positive cash flow. If you have a commerce-rich start (river, coast, gold, etc.), you should be able to expand at a comfortable pace. The important thing is to make sure you have space for 4-5 good cities. You can conquer anything else you want from there.

 

[jzimo]

I usually try to get 5 cities up and running very quickly so there is not a huge diffrence between commerce and tech in all my cities. If everything goes to plan I'm making very good money and will usually end the game with 10 cities. Most of the time I end up with more then 10 cities because I usually culture flip at least 2-4 cities if they build close to my main 5, which usually always happens

I also noticed that the AI builds way more cities then I do and really all this does is make it a pain to take them out.

 

[Jazz_Newton]

I like building lots of cities... five isn't enough to start with for me. 10 cities running at 50% science will still probably earn you techs faster than 5 at 100% science, simply because you'll have more health and happiness resources, meaning bigger cities.

My advice on expansion (that I've been learning the hard way lately) - If you like larger empires, the balance isn't so much expansion vs. economy (although you've still got to be careful). The real catch is balancing your expansion vs. your military.

Last game I was sharing a continent with Ceasar, Napoleon AND Genghis, plus 2 others. My large production base meant that I was miles ahead in score, and I was in control of the tech race (i had gone down one path, and most of the advanced AIs another one, meaning I could broker and haggle all i wanted). Everything went to peices though when Nap and Genghis decided my cities weren't quite well enough defended.

Large empires with long borders need an abundance of units to keep them safe!

 

[DaveMcW]

1/3 of your citizens must be working on cottages. If you plan on expanding, overbuild cottages to compensate.

 

[dh_epic]

It's really a question of how fast your empire can accomodate it. If you're a financial civ, or you're near a lot of rivers and coasts, or you've built a lot of cottages, or you have a religious holy city ... these things make it easier for your economy to handle the burden of new cities.

The best thing to do is watch your science slider. On average, you can let it slide to 70% before you need to consolidate your expansion and wait for your next chance. But sometimes I've pushed my empire down to the 40%-50% level, and other times I've played a small nation game and never dropped below 80%.

 

[KAuss]

If you don't have any income that is contirbuted through any means other than worked tiles (like shrine income) then setting the slider to 100% research will earn you 0 gold...

So eventually, with your 3rd city you'll always be down to -1 gpt...

With the slider at 90%, then you're taxing 10% of all worked tiles and their multipliers... This is how cottages help, but if you plan on doing 100% research, cottages won't contribute...

Having a city create wealth is another way to support 100% science whlie having a city pay for the empire's maintence... This transforms hammers to gold which is not considered a worked tile...

The commerce from a city like this will most likely help you found another city... If early land grab is your game and you can't build a shrine to support your cause... Then having a wealth building city might help you... Once your wealth builder is big enough, then have them build infrastructure while your satellite cities build wealth...

I mean even if they get taken over, at least you didn't spend time building it up for the AI right?

Having a big army is going to cripple you WAY more than having too many cities... Not because the gold it takes, but because of the time...

 

[Sir Toma]

If you don't have any income that is contirbuted through any means other than worked tiles (like shrine income) then setting the slider to 100% research will earn you 0 gold...

So eventually, with your 3rd city you'll always be down to -1 gpt...

With the slider at 90%, then you're taxing 10% of all worked tiles and their multipliers... This is how cottages help, but if you plan on doing 100% research, cottages won't contribute...

Having a city create wealth is another way to support 100% science whlie having a city pay for the empire's maintence... This transforms hammers to gold which is not considered a worked tile...

The commerce from a city like this will most likely help you found another city... If early land grab is your game and you can't build a shrine to support your cause... Then having a wealth building city might help you... Once your wealth builder is big enough, then have them build infrastructure while your satellite cities build wealth...

I mean even if they get taken over, at least you didn't spend time building it up for the AI right?

Having a big army is going to cripple you WAY more than having too many cities... Not because the gold it takes, but because of the time...

This isn't that useful though as to build wealth you need currency which is a fair way up the tech tree. So unless you rush to currency by the time you get their all the good land will be gone.
What i usually do is find a place i can use to seal off alot of land from the AI with one or two cities. I build these ones first and then fill in the gaps when i can afford it. This means although by the time my cities are founde they're 10-20 turns behind i'm still near the lead in the tech race and i'm not extremely vulnerable to invasion

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Don´t forget that trade routes can also earn you money. Harbour and Airport mean +1, currency and corporation? (not sure here) also bring you one. Depending on your city improvements they can earn you about 5 per city and route or so (Maybe even more I don´t pay too much attention here).

 

[dar]

Don't get stuck thinking you need to run at 100% research. With a large early empire with sufficient cottages I may be running at 50 or 60% research, but I'm still putting a hell of a lot more into research then if I had only gotten 4 or 5 cities and ran at 100%.

 

[VladTepes]

I'm sorry, how exactly does expansion cost moneywise? I have been having cash flow problems, but I thought that was due to small city size, too large of a military and nascent cottages.

 

[sgrig]

I'm sorry, how exactly does expansion cost moneywise? I have been having cash flow problems, but I thought that was due to small city size, too large of a military and nascent cottages.

Have a look at
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138473

The guy in this thread gives a detailed analysis of how much city upkeep costs.

 

[VladTepes]

So cities have maintenance in simply existing? I thought it was intriguing that you could explot every tile within a cultural radius, but like an idiot never put two and two together. How do I know when to place another city? Will the game tell me (like it did in a game I quit) "our civ is ready to expand?"

 

[André Alfenaar]

I think one should still expand as quickly as possible. Just don't build too many cities. As a rule of thumb I count a city radius of 4 squares (5 with the city itself) and I place as many cities as suffices to control the area.

The timing of building of your settlers and workers is very important. They are are paid by the surplus resources so you had better wait building your first settler when the surplus is close to or at its maximum. That is when you are alone on the continent... But time is against you when there are more civs around. In my last game I built my first settler even before building a warrior just to get to this key spot first.

So in the end: there are no rules...

 

[Mathduck]

I still try to build all cities that i can. I even manually set every single working tile on gold with 100% taxes to afford my expansion. Of course this may not be a long lasting situation. Workers are my key, they build cottages wherever possible. So after some turns income gets better.

I play Mongols (Kublai Khan) and won Domination on Prince with Pangea standard size so far with this tactic.
I don´t build any moneyimproving buildings, i simply build smithy, library, baracks, units. Nothing else until midgame.

My problem was: Too few health so I build health buildings, after that too few happiness, I build happiness building. But most urgent i need science building so i build science buildings. Well and while i tried building every building from the new techs, my neighbors declared war on me and killed me because i had few units.
Short time ago i realized that simple tactics often work very well: smithy, baracks, library and then units, units, units. Even if i am technologically backwards my army is large enough that i conquer any city even with old units, even if i loose 10 the other 15 will take the city

 

[Gufnork]

Never use the science slider as a measurement of expansion. Use the time it takes to learn a new tech as a guideline. When you notice that it takes too long to research the next tech, pace yourself a bit. And of course make sure your empire is well defended at all times (but only your border cities and possibly your coastal ones as well).

The most important thing to do in the expansion phase, however, is to claim as much territory as possible. Cut the other civs off wherever you can. Once you have claimed everything you can, you may relax your expansion. But not until then. With a larger empire you can always catch up technologically.

 

[tharg]

Cities should be considered initially lost making investments. Once they grow large enough they will be net contributors but that takes time.

The problems comes when you start a large number of new cities at once; paying a start up cost (settlers or units needed to capture cities) and then have to run the new cities at a loss.

All things considered, it’s likely to take hundreds of turns before your expansion starts to show a net profit. Once that is over though you’re likely to find yourself in a strong position. The question is can you survive the period of stagnation.

Suggestions might include. Aim for Code of laws first, build cottages, make sure you don’t waste money on unnecessary units, play a financial leader or even an organised leader! (Washington anyone).

Concentrate on money not science.

 

[tempuraki]

One way to get the science back is to have a specialist city with scientists. One that has:

- plenty of food
- plenty of forest to rush the great library

then what you need is build cottages all around it, build library and start adding up the great scientist points. then use the great scientist to build an academy, and the next few as super scientists. When you get literature, rush the great library in the same city so you get two free scientists. If you can rush for the pyramid early, then you can switch to representative goverment and each of the specialists you have will provide 3 more beakers. All the cottages will start yielding money soon, and that will get magnified by the library and academy as well.

Since you are on the edge of a continent, one option is to explore and build your initial expansions further away from your capital. If you do this without open border with other civs, you can block yourself in BGH style, and fill in the blanks later when your econ is ready. You will probably want to build the stonehedge to increase the culture border if you want to go this route.

 

[MacAllen]

Thanks for the link, fantastic reading!

I love the complexity of this game! For example, one can focus on religions and get holy buildings for gold, at the cost of going for Code of laws. Or go to Code of laws to get courthouses at the cost of construction. Or Drama for theatres and colosseums.

I'm a REX I have to admit. I use city placement as a strategic blocking mechanism, throwing them out to prevent the other civ's nearby from expanding, then fill in the blank spots. I came to this thread to discover why I kept tanking my economy and now have a great understanding of it.

Now I get to take the data learned here and adopt it to my own strategies

Thanks again

Mac

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

One way to get the science back is to have a specialist city with scientists.

This is good advice. In a game that I was playing, I expanded fairly quickly, and saw I needed to drop my science rate to pretty low levels. In the mean time, I wanted to get some GPP, so I tossed in a scientist or two in a city. Since it was fairly early game, the 1 or 2 scientist actually contributed to 2 fewer turns or so of research, which was significant.

This is something to consider if you find yourself already at a point of too rapid expansion, and little science.