Looking for Advice, Includes SS's

[SickCycle]

I'm trying to get better and up my play a little bit and I'm hoping some of you guys can find it in your hearts to help out.

This game is set to Monarch/AggressiveAI/Big_and_Small.

(I most likely should be playing a difficulty lower but that is no fun gotta challenge yourself to get better)


I was wondering if I should go straight to Bronze Working as many people seem to do or if I should take a different path? All the green grassland made my eyes pop so I was thinking of going straight for pottery and laying down a few cottages now.

Bronze Working first? or maybe..

Hunting>Fishing>Pottery?
Fishing>Pottery>Hunting?

I should also put an emphasis on IW being so close to these jungles correct?

Also, If anyone knows how to set these photos to show at full size and not just attachments I'd appreciate it, as many do for there online games.

 

[Nagaash]

My god, the happiness resources will make that city the Las Vegas of the ancient world.
Tough call: fishing gives good food/commerce early on, but requires you to build a boat....going hunting/pottery will let you build a worker instead. I like the idea of not having to build a boat, so go hunt/pottery first imo.

 

[SickCycle]

Well I'd have to grab either Fishing or Agriculture to nab pottery I chose fishing because I don't really see a immediate need for a farm lol

Kind of why I posted this, the location looks beautiful, I'd like to make this a good game so I need a good start and I still mess things up alot.

I actually just moved the Warrior 1NW onto the hill and it's coastline after a few more tiles of grassland its enough for maybe one or two cities spread out correctly, so I'm thinking I may have an isolated start but I'm hoping not.

Islands are mixed in though so it cant be that isolated.

 

[SickCycle]

I was also wondering if maybe I should of moved the capital 1NE of its current position onto the Ivory? Would that of made for a better location?

I actually moved it 1W from the coast to it's current location, I didn't go north onto the Ivory because I couldn't see the northern tiles without losing a turn and this spot looked prime.

I know I should cover up the dyes with cottages as there net gain in the end will be greater but there is exactly two so I was going to plantation them both, 1 for the additional happiness and 1 to trade.

 

[Sisiutil]

I almost never cottage over dye tiles. Their happiness and trading benefits are too substantial to waste them like that. I have, however, put watermills over them if they happen to be around my Ironworks city and I have extra ones.

That is a very nice starting location; ivory for early +1 , and 1 more from dye by mid-game and War Elephants, too. Justinian's UB will also give you big happiness boost as well. You'll probably be running HR by then, but the start and UB should mean you can use your units rather than having to commit them to being military police in your cities. I'd plan on a big mid-game war to benefit, especially leveraging Justinian's UU.

1 NE would have been better in terms of production, as you would have traded a couple of grassland tiles for one more ivory and another hill, but then again you don't know what's beyond the ivory to the NE. But yeah, I would have gone 1 NE. You need more hammer tiles to leverage Justinian's Imperialistic trait for faster Settlers and some REXing. And you have no forests for chopping!

It's a tough call on your first tech target as you need two techs you don't start with (Hunting and Fishing) to benefit from the resources at hand. I'd go with Fishing because food is a bigger priority than happiness just now. Working the coastal tiles will also boost your early research a little. Hunting is cheap and who knows, you may pop it from a hut. I'd get Fishing and then Bronze Working while building a Warrior (micromanage the tile assignments so he's ready the same turn the city grows to 2 pop, if possible), a Worker, a Work Boat, and a Settler. The Worker's first job would be mining that hill. You're going to need the hammers. Once BW is done I would consider going back for Hunting.

 

[SickCycle]

Thank you.

It's a custom game and I chose the civs so it should be interesting

Boudica - Darius - Pericles - Hannibal - Hammurabi - Montezuma - Gilgamesh - Genghis Khan - Augustus Caesar

Now that I think about it, I'm terrified

 

[Sullla]

With no offense intended to Sisiutil, I think some people enormously over-analyze the starting position. One tile east or northeast are slightly better locations for a capital, but the starting tile seems pretty darn good to me.

I certainly wouldn't research Bronze Working first. Hunting and Fishing are both dirt cheap (literally: they are the two cheapest techs in the entire game) and will do you a world of good. I don't understand the appeal of Pottery so soon either; you'll want it pretty soon, but it can wait for a little bit. Unlike Civ3, in Civ4 there isn't much of a need for a granary in the extreme early going. And hooking up resources should always take priority in the early game over building cottages - thus, Pottery tech can wait.

The only real question is whether to pursue an early religion or not. As the Byzantines, starting with Mysticism, you've probably got one of them there for the taking. (Montezuma also has the inside track on a religion, but often researches something else to start. And even if he does take Buddhism, hopefully you'd be able to land Hinduism.) Obviously grabbing an early religion slows your growth curve a bit, but can be a huge help in other ways. Your call on what works best.

Please don't assume that because people on the Internet go around claiming "Bronze Working ASAP!" that it's always the best move in all situations. In fact, for this start, I would probably research a religion, then Hunting -> Fishing before even so much as touching the Mining/BW path.

 

[SickCycle]

Wow, thanks also

When I moved I wasn't thinking about production, I started the game with the intent to try and get a better feel on specializing my cities into certain groups such as Production/Commerce(coin/science) and so forth.

I see what your both saying now about the lack of production though, when I first settled it looked as if the hills to the South were actually part of an island off the coast since I couldn't see them fully until I settled and it expanded the vision.

Thank you for your insights.

I read a lot on the boards but since it's mostly a single player game this is about the only way to get real feedback from educated players.

 

[MrWhereItsAt]

Please don't assume that because people on the Internet go around claiming "Bronze Working ASAP!" that it's always the best move in all situations. In fact, for this start, I would probably research a religion, then Hunting -> Fishing before even so much as touching the Mining/BW path.

Sounds good to me. A religion first sounds like a good idea to cash in on the opportunity, but then I'd definitely set for Agriculture and Pottery. My push is always to get something for my first worker to do, unless I have reason to fear for my life (close aggressive civ), in which case identifying Copper deposits moves up in importance. Hunting I never prioritise, since early on Archery and Archers I don't find so useful, but in this case where the only specialist land-based tile you can improve is Ivory, it becomes a decent idea. Actually this start isn't so good, IMO. Sure it WILL be good after development and technology, but there's no land food or shield resources that give you an early bonus, only some happiness resources that give you some extra trade, and only one of those helps you much before Calendar. I'd push for Fishing early too, so you can build a boat - expensive in shields, but it's the only way you'll get some good 4 food tiles to feed growth.

Barbs don't appear for a while, so your cities are safe from all but particularly aggressive civs, and even Monty and Shaka have never bothered me until they have more than just Warriors and Archers to send out. I guess having Scouts early is a fair idea as long as you don't have lots of jungle to wade through and you have already got something ready for your workers to do, but again, their usefulness kinda depends on you doing some exploring first to see the lay of the land and the closeness of enemies. My suggestion is always to go for things that let you develop the land around you first, until you have information to suggest you need defenders/attackers. And don't bother getting Iron Working just to be able to work jungle just yet - hopefully you should have plenty of good non-jungle city sites to find that you would do well to settle first. Jungle sucks up a lot of worker time to clear, and you should leave it whilst you get better cities up faster. Now if you had an aggressive neighbour and no nearby Copper, that's the only time I'd push for early Iron as a defensive measure.

So I would do a Religion, if you can get it, Hunting, Fishing, Agriculture, Pottery as priorities, until such a time as the situation changes, e.g. popped Settler, nearby enemy, Barb uprising or being hemmed in by jungle/forest. Then the Mining/Bronze/Iron/Archery techs start to become important.

 

[SickCycle]

Well I put a little screenshot up and there are three elephants in the fat cross so thats where the hunting talk comes from.

I'm sorry to say Boudica is right next door and Monty is somewhere behind her and there is no copper nearby lol

You some kind of oracle..

I might post another screen shot in a few just to see what some of you guys think.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Please don't assume that because people on the Internet go around claiming "Bronze Working ASAP!" that it's always the best move in all situations.

We have to play the game that shipped. Granted, it would be nice if Bronze Working weren't the right move so often, and of course the player always has the option of trading an interesting move for an effective one.

This, however, might be the exception. Yeesh what an awful start. Something off the beaten track is clearly called for, but I'm not sure what.

I would probably attack this as a one city challenge sort of thing: Fishing Pottery Writing, Hunting Archery - basically turning trying to convert this city into your basic Ancient Era research monster, figuring to break out into the jungle later.

But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if something else were better (particularly -> BW with Settler or Warrior Settler. You are imperialistic, so maybe the "cheap" settler is right.

If you go religion hunting, I think Settler first is likely to be right. The AI's research preferences used to be influenced by wonders (that may still be true). In Vanilla, that made Hinduism a stronger choice than Meditation, simply because the competition was more likely to go the other way. When they added ToA to Poly, it was basically even. With the BtS reorg? I won't know until I retest it.

Always work your best tiles. If that means cottaging the dyes, so be it. The worth thing that can happen (tearing down a classical era town) isn't that big a deal.

 

[SickCycle]

Interesting, I wouldn't think about grabbing archery in general it goes against what I have read, a lot of people seem to consider it dead end along with HBR.

I actually did grab an early religion and grabbed a worker off Boudica, funny part is right after there was a random event that popped 4-5 archers right outside my city had a single warrior in it, so I could def see how archery would of saved me there.. Instead I used the captured worker that was still on its way home to play tag, they chased him back and forth for a good 5-6 turns before they lost interest and vanished into the fog.

I got lucky

 

[madscientist]

Well I am a little late here, but this is the advice I just wrote until I read you last post.

I would go for one of the religions, followed by hunting/fishing/archery. The Byzantines start with Mys and the wheel? An early worker will only get you roads no resource for a while so I would work the elephants tiles and let the pop grow. Start the worker so you can coincide him popping out when you get hunting teched. You can build camps for all the elephants which would help speed up building workboats. I would not go for BW, you might get lucky with copper in the BFC but with no trees to chop you lose one of the early advatages. And you have no big food sources until you discover how to fish, so replacing the slaved population will take alot longer.

 

[oyzar]

hunting then fishing since you need production to get out that workboat anyways and right now you got none.

 

[SickCycle]

I had another question if anyone pops back in this post, figured it'd be better just to post on here then start another thread and clutter the boards more.

If you don't have any military resources and you obviously are going to need some at some point such as Iron, Copper, Horse, what exactly should you do? Since now catapults cant actually kill a unit is there a strategy you can employ to take a city that holds one of those resources or is there a unit I'm not thinking of that would allow you to mount an offensive?

The only thing I've been able to do in my games is emphasize naval and try to find a island containing a needed resource.

I was also wondering how you use monarchy effectively? Most of them are pretty straight forward and monarchy is as well but to use it correctly to grow your cities past the normally low happy cap you must leave the units stationed in the city, this has the effect of massing units in your cities which cost gold so your effectively turning into but it also means that you cannot pull your units out of your cities without resulting in massive unhappiness, I've always found this to be a major problem with using it.

How do you guys combat that? I read VoU's post on slavery and I must admit I found the tactic of (I believe it was) using slavery combined with a massive food surplus to pump out units at a dramatic rate then at the very last minute building the globe theater to eliminate all the unhappiness you have generated which could be substantial and just pulling the units out at almost no penalty.

Brilliant