Influence me

[Victoria]

I have been looking at influence generation in the early game, sure you pick up some to start with Neo but I mean ancient in particular. It is easy to outpost zones around your cap but they don’t give influence while a second city does but costs 160 to place. Attaching 1 zone to your cap can help a lot but with escalating influence cost laying too many outposts seriously delays a second, very useful city, especially as +4 on pottery is a real nice early influencer as well as the +5 on plaza.
So convince me, influence me, tell me the way it should be done.

 

[Infixo]

I try to start 2nd city asap, approx. 2 territories away from th 1st.

 

[Victoria]

I try to start 2nd city asap, with approx. 2 territories away from th 1st.

What does ASAP mean? Do you not spend any influence at all… civics? Extractors? 1 teeny territory with a horse you can attach to your cap that has +25 FIMS?
I keep trying not to but every game I give in and spend, then regret it. You have not convinced me not to though.

 

[Siptah]

While I don't know how things should be done, this is what I do in most of my games:
Usually, I have 3 outposts settled in the neolithic era. I upgrade the best one on ancient turn 1 and attach the other one (if possible, often it is, sometimes takes 1 or 2 turns). Pottery is the first thing I build. I take the influence vs. faith civic when it pops up (rarely have I chosen the faith option, although I can see situations where it is good). I pick the other civic and choose cheaper outposts as soon as I can (I will change it later on to the other option). I try to scout a lot of good places and also the AI to see on which sides I need to be quick - if there are horses and iron while I have none in my territories, I might found another outpost. Otherwise, it's 2nd city as soon as I have the 160 influence, get another outpost and attach a territory there. Also build the pottery first (except if I am desperate for a unit). Afterwards, it's more relaxed. I put down some outposts, but don't attach more than 3 to a city (yet, but I rarely play with > 6 territory cities eventually). I usually influence-buy all extractors from then on, also harbors if I have the tech and a good spot. 3rd city is rarely built but a conquered/assimilated IP city. Next important step up in influence output is the +5 on territory that follows your religion civic.

Of course, playing Assyrians, things are a bit different as I will buy a Dunnu in each territory, even the 2nd one before attaching it. Playing Olmecs might relax things a bit as well, but I don't play Olmecs

 

[Taefin]

Does anyone else detach regions, influence buy all new extractor and harbors (esp EQ) and then reattach? I find at classical I have the influence for this, and it seems like a hidden perk for harbor EQ cultures.

In my Carthage game I postponed more cities/attachment in order I put down EQ in more territories for the gold.

 

[Siptah]

Extractors: no, usually I buy them with money.
Harbors: Rarely, because I'm not necessarily at the stage when some thousand influence don't matter when this is most effective (Carthage, Norsemen). But as said, I will always buy harbors before attaching new territories except for the early game or when there aren't enough coastal tiles.

 

[Infixo]

What does ASAP mean? Do you not spend any influence at all… civics? Extractors? 1 teeny territory with a horse you can attach to your cap that has +25 FIMS?
I keep trying not to but every game I give in and spend, then regret it. You have not convinced me not to though.

As Soon As Possible.
But it doesn't mean that it is just 1 turn after 1st one. I settle outposts at the same time. Extractors are less priority, I set them up e.g. when I need a bit stability. 2nd city is big, you can boost influece even more and then do all the rest. The moment you finish extractros, and stuff, cities are 8-10 pop, with 100+ industry.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Natural wonders are +5 influence too. In my current game I had the choice between founding my first city with +27FI, or with +20FI and +5Inf. I went with the first one because it had a territory I could attach next door but not sure what the best plan was. I would try to settle second city on natural wonder if it is half decent.

I do the same as Siptah, though I can imagine there would be times that waiting for the 2nd city is better than attaching the 2nd territory to the capital.

A lot of the mechanics of this game are very situational - you can tell a lot of work has been done on balancing in some areas at least!

 

[NombreyApellido]

focus on liberty ideology for +2 on emblematic quarters (quoting from memory)

related: to me, horse ranch is high priority so domestication is 1st tech with the 25% discount from a narrative back in neo. then calendar for unlocking extractors and aim to buy with INF those +5 IND from dyes and other strong ones. AI wants to buy? request pay upfront

 

[PSG]

There is an advancement that gives you +1 influence per territory that you can get really early. I try to ignore civics or whatever they are called early on unless they give me more influence. A trivial bonus delayed 50 turns in order for me to get a few extra outposts/city is a good trade. Even putting off a wonder for a bit is worth it.

 

[Victoria]

+1 influence per territory

Paltry IMO. The difference between +2 influence per happy citizen versus +1 for only 90% stable seems more relevant, especially when using your pop for war. I do not believe your troops count as ‘influence’, at least not in a cultural way.

 

[NombreyApellido]

the beta rebalance makes Founding Myths rather expensive

to me, it makes more sense to trigger Professional Armies

 

[PSG]

I'm seeing the opportunity to buyout a city for like 334K influence. I don't think I can make that between two entire games.....What are they thinking?

 

[bc1]

build tons of influence up front during neolithic era shooting down mammoth : use 2 tribes for each kill in manual mode to avoid losing a tribe, each kill also yields a new tribe...
after building your 1st city, spread your immense scout fleet to build outposts and capture neutral cities when they just spawn helpless with zero citizens : who needs influence ?

 

[fortydayweekend]

build tons of influence up front during neolithic era shooting down mammoth : use 2 tribes for each kill in manual mode to avoid losing a tribe, each kill also yields a new tribe...
after building your 1st city, spread your immense scout fleet to build outposts and capture neutral cities when they just spawn helpless with zero citizens : who needs influence ?

I haven't worked it out but I think having a few scouts running around no man's land popping curiosities in Ancient/Classical is a good influence income too.

 

[Taefin]

I'm seeing the opportunity to buyout a city for like 334K influence. I don't think I can make that between two entire games.....What are they thinking?

That must be a very large city!

From my observations, merging cost seems to be an aggressive formula based largely on the number of districts to which new infrastructure will be applied. Two cities with identical infrastructure will tend to be the cheapest to merge. Given that combining existing infrastructure is one of the better uses of merging cities, this strongly incentivized merging before building top tier infrastructure.

This design seems flawed to me. It’s as if the devs want to balance against the strategy of building half the infrastructure in one city, and the other half in the other, and then merging to have all of them. However, given that the new city will simply add the production of both cities, and infrastructure cost doesn’t scale with city size, it is equally efficient production-wise to build before or after the merge. So it is advantageous to combine infrastructure to avoid building it twice, but it doesn’t really save production to do this before the merge. To me this means it shouldn’t affect merge costs.

It’s possible it’s just based on before/after yields and that infrastructure just ends up causing greater discrepancy, but something seems off. I guess the way to test would be to see if having more per pop/district EQ makes merging more expensive than flat bonus EQ.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I try to start 2nd city asap, approx. 2 territories away from th 1st.

I think this is the way to go. You put down 2 outposts in neolithic, 2 territories apart. The first spot costs only 5 influence, the second costs 20 no matter how far from the "capital" (cause you don't have a capital yet ). You should try to get influence from mammoth hunting and using the "neolithic loitering" strategy to the extent you are comfortable with it (see own thread in this forum).

By doing the above, you can have 2 early cities up, first building should be pottery-thingy of course for the additional +4 influence. I usually also get the civic early that gives +5 influence on plaza. You can also settle excess scouts into the capital for a cool +2 influence per pop. Doing it this way, you can reach 40-50 influence a turn relatively early which will set you up well for further expansion.

If you need to choose between attaching 1 territory to cap or getting second city first, I believe you are best served with setting up city 2 first as the territory extension does not give you any means to increase influence yield (though admittedly it boosts your cap significantly).

 

[Victoria]

choose between attaching 1 territory to cap or getting second city first,

For the price of 30 influence that doubling of the cap is mighty handy, especially if you want to plop 3 scientists in there from the start by sacrificing 3 scouts out of your many. There is not enough food otherwise.
This science boost I feel is better than the influence boost 1-2 turns earlier.
So triple science and double prod is hard to turn down.
I also feel settling your first city closer to the enemy is important, especially is attacking before you get roads.

 

[EscapedGoat]

For the price of 30 influence that doubling of the cap is mighty handy

Well you have to count the price of the outpost as well, so it's at least 50 influence to attach the first territory. Of course, that might just mean you get the city around 4 turns later, so maybe that is a better option. The player with 2 cities first will generate 50 influence in that time period though, essentially financing the first city expansion. Guess it comes down to what is most valuable at that stage in the game: influence or science. I usually rate the city yields early in the game 1. influence, 2. food, 3. prod -> money and science but that's subjective (obviously not taking into account neolithic food requirements here).

I also feel settling your first city closer to the enemy is important, especially is attacking before you get roads.

I play mostly peacefully on pangea, I build outpost 1 and 2 in Neolithic, and I always move towards the centre/other players so that I can backfill the seaside and "middle of empire" territories later. It's the best way to grab land, I find the AI rarely wants to settle "behind" my lines.

 

[Victoria]

I play mostly peacefully on pangea,

I play to survive on civilisation continent level, maybe that’s the difference. If you lag behind, you die. I am still balancing out early luxes in this formula. The advantage of continents is you always have an option for an early rush to that continent with Biremes