initial build strategy

[Sam_Catchem]

OK..my tactics are for s#it!

They were wonderful on Warlord..but this weekend I was playing Regent and it is a whole new game. The AI spreads wayyy to quickly, impossibly quickly. I determined that you have to engage in war early and knock somebody out. This is not my usual way of doing things..so I have encountered problems. I get behind the tech race when I wage eaarly war...so I am probably going to have to cut spending down to 0-10..and just go shopping with my neighbors.

Any other tips for a newbie stone age killah? Good civ to play? Babs are coolio..but there Bowman seems to weak. I am thinking of going with the Iroqouis. Looking for help here...anyone?

Thanks in advance,
Sam

 

[dozenlong]

I just had a load of fun last night with the Persians--I got Iron working right away, and commenced cleaning off my continent. I lost about one immortal for every 5-10 enemy units I'd get--this in cludes regular and veteran immortals as well. Ancienct spearmen just don't stand a chance...

 

[nikitos]

The early game is where you make or break your civ. Here is the order I build 90% of the time and it seems to work for me.

1. warrior - exploration/barb management/contact w other civs
2. settler - usually by the time he's built you hit the 3 pop mark, you just gotta time it right if you're growing too slow make another warrior in the meantime.
3. warrior - another warrior for more scouting in a different direction
4. settler - get those settlers out asap! using the warriors' scouting you should know where to send these guys. I do admit there is a risk here as there is not much defense, but this early in the game the only worry you have is the barbarians.
5. spearman - your first defensive unit, helps with defense and also will squelch unrest which will come soon if playing at high difficulty
6. temple - unrest management and culture boost

all this time the worker is either building a road to your other cities or building mines next to the capital. The reason for that is pretty soon your offspring cities will be the ones cranking out the settlers and you capital will start its wonders. Try building the mines on grasslands with a shield first, so you get 2 shields from those tiles as well as good food. When your city is busy building its wonder and you see you're about to grow too big and get unrest bring in your old scout warriors or build some spearmen in other cities and bring them in to your wonder city to keep 1 citizen content. Remember in despotism you can have up to 3 'peace keepers'.

In all your offspring cities build a temple asap. It will give them a jump on culture and its real important to expand your borders, so you can get better tiles/resources available and also to keep the ai away from your towns.

The main key is rapid expansion and military is a close second. After you've build a solid 6-7 cities with a temple and a spearman depending on your cituation, find a weak neighbor and crank out some fast units. Egypt with the war chariots is GREAT for this. In actuality you dont need that many of these to go to war. Build 5-7 quickly, rushing pop if needed and start taking 1 town at a time. You will most likely not lose many, if any! since they will retreat right before they die. I find usually it takes 3-4 to take a town defended by spearmen. once you take it, put your injured chariots in. They will squelch resistance while at the same time healing up. In my last game i pretty much doubled my empire by taking out the russians early and it gave me such a boost that no other civ was ever able to catch up.

After the first war, if you havent finished off that civ, make peace with it, and concentrate on city infrastructure. Rushing construction works great here, as food in much more plentiful in civ3 than shields due to corruption, _and_ when playing prince+ difficulties you dont wanna grow too quickly anyway due to unrest. The wonders you should concentrate on are the happy wonders for sure, and pyramids are nice, but not essential, you'll see your cities sitting on 6 population waiting for aqueduct too soon anyway, so its not a big deal if you dont get it. Great library is good too mainly to keep it away from a civ more than for your own benefits. Go for oracle and hanging gardens and michaelangelo's and st. bachs are probably the best wonders overall.

Playing a religious civ is great, you get cheap temples and cathedrals pretty much assuring you a cultural superiority and keeping people happy.

I find i usually dont need more than 1 defender per town, but will put extras in 'hot areas' where there are tensions with other civs. if there is a confict i usually rush build extra defenders or bring them in from other cities via my well developed road network. You can in a time of crisis leave cities undefended in the interior of your empire since now other civs cant use your roads it would take them a long time to get there anyway.

Well this is my strategy. I do admit I carried over some of my old civ2 strategies for this but they work for me. Rapid expansion + keeping people happy are the main keys. Enjoy this great game!

 

[knowltok]

I think some people's problems wiht the AI out expanding them comes from not having enough opponents. If a world will comfortably hold 80 cities it is better IMHO to have 9 cities and 7 other civs than to have 16 cities and 3 other civs. The difference is slight, but the AI is going to beat you in the expansion game, esp. at the higher levels. Better that the world fill up faster so that you are only a little behind than a lot behind.

PS Behold the power of the Granery. Try rushing this when you can. you will thank me later. It might be the thing that makes expansionist a viable ability. Warrior, Granery, Settler, Settler, Set... you get the picture. You don't have to have an intervening unit. If you can get a spot with good food, you are set. Use the whip early and use it often.

 

[ERIKK]

Hi guest,

You seem to have no profile! Didn't know this was possible!

Oh well, happy posting anyway!

 

[BiBaBo]

I think that it all depends on the situation, your civ traits, your opponents and available land mass. The smaller the land mass, the less settlers you need in the beginning. So let's say for a small archipelago map....

warrior-temple-settler-2 spearmen-settler-wonder or military

 

[axxessdenied]

I like to get a granary as early as possible. Makes it easy to just keep pumping out settlers. In my current game as the babylonians, I was able to block the American's expansion toward me by having of my main cities pumping out settlers constantly(without having to build a unit in between, thanks to the granary). The area was fairly big, so It required about 6 settlers, but it worked well, and I was also able to cut off the germans expaning south east of me with two settlers(small area). Since the beginning I've already taken out the Germans and am in the process of exterminating the pesky americans. I was able to take Washington on the first turn I attacked, since my border was right beside washington, and I was able to gain the oracle as well

Just entered the Industrial age too.

 

[edawstwin]

Axxess is right - get that Granary ASAP! Unless you have a couple of high food (3+) tiles, getting your city to grow quickly is extremely important. Plus, by the time you get your first settler after the granary, you should have explored enough territory to know exactly in which direction to expand first. You may fall behind a bit at first (especially on higher levels), but that granary will really pay off when you are pumping out settlers with no fill units (have another city supply the spearman). You should be comfortably ahead on lower levels, and very close to even on higher levels, by A.D. times.

Nikitos, do you play on Warlord or lower? Build orders shouldn't be followed exaclty 90% of the time - it will vary on your difficulty, starting location, and map size, and several other factors. But I try to follow something like this (Expansionist Civ substitutions in paren):

1. Warrior (Scout)
2. Warrior (Scout)
3. Warrior for defense.
4. Granary.
5. Spearman
6. Settler (yes, your city is likely size 5 or 6 now, but you will produce settlers much more quickly than the AI now)
7. Temple (if religious or high production)
8. Spearman
9. Settler, Settler, Settler, etc...

By 9, I have another city making spearmen/workers (or one on each if you popped a settler from a goody hut). Make sure your initial worker builds a road to your second city site - this can save 2-5 turns.

I may make 1 settler before the granary if I discover an AI very close so I can cut him off, but I never wait for the granary longer than that.

I mostly play on Monarch and Emperor running min science and trading techs with civs I meet and don't build much in the way of improvements in the beginning (obviously don't go for cultural win this way). I win handily at Monarch, and am doing pretty well so far on Emperor using this strategy. I did very poorly using the 3 or 4 settlers before granary method on these levels.

Hope this helps someone - finding this out helped me a great deal.

 

[pnp_dredd]

WOW so many words!

1) You need to tailor your strategy to your difficulty level. For example: A) setting research to anything but 100% at lower levels is going to slow you down - research as much as you can. B) trying to build wonders at Diety level is nearly always stupid. These are things that can only be learned by experience. Try following Succession Games (found under the "stories and tales" forum) for some good tips at different difficulties.

2) Use the lands that you have. If you have really good starting squares (say 3 grassland cows) then build 2 cities really close together where they can always work those squares, and micromanage - that gives you a HUGE bonus at the start of the game. Keep expanding until you have a reason to stop - eg. nowhere decent to put a city, a war for a resource, its an island so you need to research etc.

3) Decide you strategy ASAP. The key to efficiency is specialisation.

4) Keep upping the difficulty level

 

[bewareofgnomes]

hey edawstwin,
why don't you just build that spearmen first. earlier defence and same time to build the both of them

 

[O_o]

Originally posted by liupang
But I still find sword a much better option.

Hey man plz answer me a few things about your tactics:
1.When do u start attacking AI ? ( #of your own cities, kind of units u have)
2.Which civ abilities r best for such a gameplay?
3.When do u change goverment and to what?


Help~~

 

[Sirp]

You should almost always build a granary before your first settler. The only exception to this is if you're on a sardine can of an island with other civilizations and there's only a couple of available city sites. Otherwise, it's much more economical to build a granary. It doubles your population growth, and population is power.

Remember, the thing that takes ages to do is to get your city to grow large enough to build a settler. If you don't have any bonus food tiles, then it will take 20 turns to grow from size 1 to size 3. That's far too long. Chop the growth times for a settler down to 10 turns.

What's more, if you build a granary you'll get your capital up to 5 or 6 by the time it's done. This is a better size for the capital anyway. Have it varying between 3-6, rather than slamming it all the way down to 1.

It is very rare that an immediate granary isn't the best strategy.

Also, remember the most important aspects of choosing a city site, they are:

- Access to fresh water. This is the most important consideration. If your capital is on fresh water, it can shoot up to size 12, meaning that you get more commerce than your rivals, have more chance of building wonders, and so forth.
- Access to bonus food tiles. Any tile that can produce more than 2 food under despotism is a huge advantage. If you see a forest/game tile, always cut down the forest and irrigate the land, this will make it into a bonus food tile.
- Coastal access.
- Good defensive location, resources, less terrain etc.

If you're expansionistic, always move the scout on the first turn before settling. Usually move your worker before the settler.

The *most* important thing to remember though, is the granary. Unless the AI is about to sieze land really near your capital, the difference between having a size 6 city and a size 4 city and a second city of size 1 really isn't that much: just a handful of shields which can be made up in a few turns and the time it takes to move the settler there. The thing that really matters is how fast you can grow your total population, and building a granary is the best way to do this.

-Sirp.

 

[troytheface]

build four cities tight- build troops with uu's. wait for a civ to start getting close to u. attack
Monarch thru diety
anything lower and u can use whatever strategy u want, ai is a sitting duck.

 

[eddfire3]

If you want a Despotic victory, play as the Egyptians and whip your people to crank out temples and War Chariots. Building the Pyrimids will help cities reccover from pop rushes and it might trigger a Golden Age which would be very helpful.

To bad Egypt isn't Militaristic....

 

[daleus]

I am very interested to se the comments about an early Granary and frequent application of the whip for rushbuilds - two ideas I'm going to try after work today.

For you elucidation this is my current strategy which is working fairly well.

Crank out Settlers, build cities, forget making a cohesive block on the map; get those cities built on fresh water, near horses and iron and any other resource you will want later in the game.

Starting with the very first turn, before clicking to end the turn, crank research up to 100%. Then head straight for The Great Library.

The Great Library will give you any tech discovered by any other two Civs. This allows you to slack off on your own research while building madly and accumulating massive wealth, which you already know how to employ through trading with your fink neighbours and rushbuilding.

When you get the discovery, put your best producing city on building the Great Library. In fact, it pays to start *any* Wonder when you can - even if you have no intention of finishing it, there will be alot of shields there waiting to jump on the Great Library when it come sup for construction.

When you build the Great Library, Squash research back to 20%. If you feel compelled to spend money this early in the game, devote the cash to increase citizen happiness - this reduces riots, war weariness, and provokes "We Love the Leader" days and their obvious effects.

Any cities who are overheating at this point are great for churning out Workers. Your goal is to have a road in every square by time tyou get Steam Power. They will develop your land, build railroads and clean up pollution as quick as it occurs.

In the meantime, build no City Improvements except the Barracks. Build units first to explore, defend, develop, then conquer. I like 1 defender, 1 Attacker, then crank out Settlers/Workers.

As your early Civ grows, keep your bank in good shape, never making money and keeping research maxxed.

Your next research step is highly individual. If the backstabbing traitors I share the map with are leaving me alone, I will head straight for Monarchy, followed by Iron Working, Construction and then the rest of the trash as needed. However the Great Library should scoot you quickly into the next age.

You will soon reach the point where there is no more land to grab. The next (second) city improvement *everywhere* is the Library. Watch your borders zoom outward), followed by Aqueduct to take you over the City Size 6 hurdle.

At this point it is about a 50-50 chance that the calendar is barely at 0 AD, you have 1500-2000 in cash, most cities are at 6, or rocketing toward that point or better, and you will easily have absorbed some minor enemy cities.

Now is the time to build cultural, economic and military strength and follow your favourite strategy!

Have fun all!

 

[Fatalis]

To make short...

1. I play regent
2. I ALWAYS take an industrious civ.
3. I NEVER start a game whithout any grassland cow square.
4. Mine & road on the cow ASAP (thanks to the industrious trait !), then mine&road 2 or 3 grassland squares. Then build the road to your second city
5. Search potery
6. 3 warriors (or 2 scouts + 1 warrior) : 2 scouting/ 1 defending
(or, if you're the lucky man - 2 cows or more !! - you can often build 4 warriors/scouts)
7. Granary
8. Enjoy your settler farm ! (3 or 4... depends from the number of cows... and the neighbourhood situation !)
9. 2 spearmen (when your farm needs to "regenerate" !)
10. settlers
11. worker
12. Temple
13. worker (if you have time enough...)
14. Pyramids

Of course, if :
- you have a too close neighbour, build archers and blast it. But your garrison city should be your second or third one, not your capital.
- you discover luxuries, rush to build a city (especially if you find 3 or more squares of them in the same area)
- you need an urgent settler (another civ REALLY too close), build (only) one before the granary.

And, of course 2... I love the egyptians...

 

[cavemanf16]

I don't keep a 'set in stone' build strategy. It always depends on the terrain you start on, the type of civ you're playing as, and what your initial goals are. Always set goals for your civ though. If you want to be a brutal slash and burn type, then by all means build up that military! If you want to build and win through culture, make sure to build those Wonders early and often! If you want to win through diplomacy, befriend your neighbors and research Writing ASAP for ROP with your neighbors!

Just be flexible when you're neighbors aren't adhering to your goals and need to be "taken care of" for the grander goal of winning >

 

[Rellin]

Generally...

Warrior
Warrior
Settler
Granary
Settler
Temple
Settler
Settler
Wonder or More Settlers

Varys quite often but generally something like that.

 

[cej]

Mine breaks out as follows:

(1) Warrior
(2) Worker
(3) Warrior
(4) Settler

You have an option at this point:

(A) Repeat 1-4
(B) or build up
(5) Temple
(6) Settler
(7) Granery
(8) Settler
(9) Wonder

You option based on your situation. If you're getting crowded in, then switch to miliatary units.

 

[TedJackson]

There is no "magic bullet".

Your choices are determined by your start location, nearby resources and the level you're playing on.

Look at Cracker's opening plays for some ideas on how to assess your initial position and apply those ideas to your game. Remembering to keep re-assessing new territory as it becomes availlable.

I repeat, there is no "magic bullet". Play and have fun. When it goes badly try and figure out why.

You'll soon be a better player.

regards

Ted