Lets move onto Prince shall we?

[Peachrocks]

Currently, I am sitting at Noble and winning easily. I honestly know I should move up but I know the AI starts getting advantages at this level and that to be honest bugs me... However I see players winning games comfortably on higher levels.

- You can skip right to the starting position if you want, the rest is just background info.

I figured that based on how the help on these forums has easily advanced other players up perhaps the same can happen for me.

To ease me into this move up, I'm using my favourite civ, Inca, and try shoot for Space Race because I generally prefer to get technologically advanced, though it doesn't have to be this way. If this is successful next time I'll take on a totally different civ and go for another victory condition.

I feel my main three weaknesses in the early game at least are as such...

1. I don't scout enough
I find if I don't start with hunting, I get very slack with my scouting because other things take precendency over getting the hunting tech and then building the scout and then he's usually killed by a random panther that I couldn't see wasting my investment, but I know that perhaps I should not be put off by that chance. So unless I'm able to get a few woodsmen II scouting warriors/quechuas, I'm not likely to find that much territory.

2. I don't tend to take enough territory quickly enough nor plan anything beyond third city.
Generally I'll plan a first military target if I'm going to attack early, but even if not, I don't exactly plan my city placement well and therefore don't build enough cities, and end falling a bit behidn in production, unless I take them from opponents.

3. I play too fast.
Sometimes especially in the early game, I get caught up in the sequence of hitting enter over and over but then miss something vital and hate myself for it . Perhaps playing at this forced slower pace and awaiting the feedback of more and greater more experienced players alone will help this flaw.

Anyway lets get on with it... Starting positions are another problem, I seem to always settle in place without really looking anywhere, and this one in particular actually got me to think about it.

It's in BTS, Pangea, choose religions with Vassal states off (I keep meaning to turn them back on, but I really want help with this starting position so let's just have them off this time). I turned them off because I always found it a pain where you are just finishing someone off, you war weariness is through the roof and... oh noes Vassalised, you can't stop the war now :|, but I could have vassaled them myself.

Fish is the only visible resource (next time ill turn on that resource bubble thing), but settling in place as per usual would mean giving up the fish, but a lot of flood plains, nice for a Fin leader, so where should the Quechua and/or Settler move to? Personally I think Quechua SW, check what's there, if nothing really horrible then Settler 1NW and settle.

Thanks for any help .

 

[mice]

Settling on spot is pretty sweet. 5 cottages with a farm possibly on the grassland tile and two plains hill mines + indusrious = commerce and wonders.

Some civ geniuses may recommend a move east or west but I'd just settle there

Health will be the limiting factor later on.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

I'd probably move one settler NW to get the fish (for food and health) and coast (+ health from harbor) if quechua doesn't reveal anything fancy.

 

[DrJambo]

Move quechua 1 NE or SW to scout terrain. Settler should almost certainly move to coast to claim fish and make capital coastal.

 

[Peachrocks]

I moved Quechua SW. No reason to move him anywhere else because all of the decent early settling space is clearly visible... (and damn I forgot to put the bubbles on again... okay doing that now).

Yay cows! Yup no doubt about it, I'm definately in favour of going NW and settle now, I lose 1 FP tile but gain fish, cows, still keep 4 FP and get 2 plains hills, I might not be able to work all of those for a while.

I won't get to do it until about tommorow however I'd still like to get an idea on what tech/first build we should do. Inca start with Mysticism and Agriculture giving us a fair list of solid first tech options, fishing, animal husbandary, or early religion are to me the obvious choices, but maybe something else might be helpful?

 

[DrJambo]

Yep, definitely move 1 NW with settler. The only thing is you may be rather short on production there...

However, Inca start with good techs for that starting location. First build should definitely be a workboat for the fish. Then worker for working the flood plains and cows. At the same time you might want to consider researching the tech that allows cows to be worked (Animal Husbandry?). Cows provide hammers and as mentioned above my main concern is that the capital will be fairly production poor, unless that is, there are any hills located in the blacked-out area to the SW? With this in mind I'd seriously consider saving what forests you do have located around the proposed capital site for chop-rushing the Moai statues. If your capital is production poor, I'd use it primarily for worker/settler building, since food, and not just hammers, helps with these.

Indeed, priority should be getting another settler out fast to find and settle a production city, so that you can make use of Huayna's Industrious trait and build some wonders.

 

[Peachrocks]

Inca don't start with fishing. It's one of my first choices, not something I start with .

We've got 8 hammers from the plains hills, and 2 from the grassland cows. That's 10 hammers early on, not too bad. I guess forest wise, we aren't looking so great if we make that move, but its so good in so many other areas...

 

[Roxlimn]

Looks like 1 NW it is! Animal Husbandry first for Cows, but after that is a tossup. Fishing might be attractive, but Mining is also a priority for production purposes, as is Pottery for Cottaging.

 

[DrJambo]

Oops, that's what you get when you read a post too quick! My bad. Took your quechua to be where your settler was to settle and then also misread the starting rechs.

So without further ado, back to the start. Without fishing, the workboat is a less immediate option. So I'd suggest worker first. The worker can farm the flood plains immediately as you have agriculture. Given that have cows and you do actually have hills, I'd go mining or animal husbandry first. With the flood plains irrigated, the hills mined and the cows worked, you can think about fishing and the workboat and pottery and cottages. I'd probably go with the former after mining and AH.

At Prince and with Mysticism you also probably have a good chance of bagging an early religion if you so desire? I've forgotten what it's like to go the early religion route since I play at Emperor where getting one of the early religions is nigh impossible. Spreading religions no longer imparts city visibility as it used to do in Warlords so I'm not convinced the early religion route is as solid as just concentrating on the techs which improve your cities.

 

[Peachrocks]

Okay, I got to play a little more through.

I went with the original plan and decided on animal husbandary since I like workin' them cows early . Tribal villages proved friendly, giving me money and...

... this helpful guy. When Animal Husbandary was done, I headed for mining. By this stage Taoism and Buddhism had been founded (choose religion ), and I ran into both of them pretty soon and learned the Buddist was rather close to me.

Definately an early target if there's a holy city under him and with east being the only way the Inca empire is able to expand it might become a matter of when rather than if...

Because of this, when mining was done, I decided to delay fishing, and the wheel-pottery to see where bronze was located as horses were nowhere to be seen. My worker completed and has worked the cows, and finished one farm and is now heading to build a mine, while i've got 3 Quechua and a scout.

Oh and speaking of the scout... look what he gave me.

Not too bad.

Oh and contest number 2 showed up, founder of Taoism, yay...

Might be interesting dealing with this guy... especially if I choose to go to war with India, who have now also founded Hinduism and gone to organised religion. So it's pretty clear they are none too interested in military techs, but they will have that holy city culture to break through. This is the world to the Inca empire as of current and where I stopped.

Yay I remembered the resource bubbles. Might be too soon for dot mapping but I can only expand one way. India's borders are just to the right of the far east cows and I don't know where Brennus is yet. I've researched Bronze working, Animal husbandardy, mining and hut popped hunting and started with agriculture and mysticism. So the way I see things as far as tech go are either fishing then wheel-pottery (or the other way around). Are the other any possible considerations, and should I settle far to get that bronze or leave it and play out a peaceful early game until cats/something come around? Or again, some other alternative?

Oh... and my screenshots appear too big IMO, is there a good way to make em smaller?

 

[xanadux]

Asoka is quite far for early war. Being financial with at least 3 very good cottage sites available, I would suggest rapidly blocking off your part of the continent ... 3 cities should do it. Cow/rice in the north (cottage city), cow/corn in the middle (cottage city), and copper/fish/fish in the south. You can backfill the rest of the area later. With all the cottageable land, supporting these cities will be easy. Don't worry if the science slider goes even down to 0 ... it won't take long to get the economy up and going.

Since you are financial and have stone, I would suggest squeezing in the Great Wall and Stonehenge. Great Wall so you don't need much military right away and can expand quickly. Stonehenge to quickly get the new cities borders popped to block off Asoka.

 

[Peachrocks]

Your right... There is a lot of good advice, and I can see a lot of mistakes I make already. The major one is found another bad habit is that I get into early wars when I really shouldn't because I really get irritated about facing Longbows, I try avoid war until they are well and truly out of the way (i.e Knights at the earliest).

I agree with Stonehenge/Great wall too. I might not get them both however even though I am Industrious.

So if I have to choose, which should I go for? Stonehenge is nice for the extra culture push to give me more land if I'm going to passively try wall off Asoka, but Inca has terraces which can serve similar purposes. Great wall reduces the amount of military builds I'd need and stops those irritating axes bugging my improvements and without chariots, this might be a really good idea.

 

[pawelo]

Though I can't see marble around, try grabbing the Oracle too.

Edit: sorry, I can see, but pretty far. Will be just in time for a Great Lib though

In my games since patch 3.13 got out, it appears VERY VERY LATE. In the last one, the Shaka challange here on the forum, it was gone in 400 AD! It should be still available around 700 BC.

If you are brave, your industrious / financial skills, powered by all the cottages around, should allow you to do a Civil Service slingshot.

For this, you start your Oracle and tech Mathematics & Code of Laws. Once you got them both, just finish the Oracle and grab Civil Service. An early Bureaucracy, givin your traits and the land, will give you a HUGE advantage over your neighbors.

Gonna lurk your game

Good luck!

 

[Peachrocks]

Yeah I knew about it but if I mainly win cus I got the Civil service sling to work, I don't think I'd achieve a big jump in my skill level. I think at my current ability I could probably win if I got that sling shot. Huyana is the best leader to do this with of course because he can claim the Oracle quickly and then take advantage of Bureaucracy with Financial. It's a great idea though .

That doesn't mean I won't try for the Oracle to get Metal casting or COL, but it won't high up on my wish list. Besides they also give you great prophets and if we are going for stonehenge that's fine, but if we go for great wall too (or just the GW) it might give us some unpredictability in which GPs we get.