Looking for Feedback up to 2000 BC

[ccccc]

I'm normally a Noble player, in fact I often run into a lot of difficulty even on Noble. I'm hoping to get a little better, and I feel that my problem is often that I don't really know how to start. So, I tried a start on Prince level, and documented it pretty nicely, and I'm looking for feedback to help me improve. Let me know what you think.

Version: Warlords 2.08 with HOF patch
Difficulty: Prince
Map: Fractal, Standard size
Civ: Random, so I got Brennus, Celts
Traits: Spiritual and Charismatic
Starting tech: Hunting and Mysticism.

My first thought with this guy is that early military is not so great, and I'll try to steal a worker from someone mean while spreading an early religion to my friendly neighbors.


The starting location

Two of my biggest weaknesses are fear of chopping and fear of whipping, but I've been told that I need to chop around. I can never bring myself to move from the starting location, so I found in place and plan on worker --> warrior --> chop for a worker --> two chops for a settler. My research path is Mining --> Bronze Working and I figure I'll go get Monotheism for my religion, hoping that I don't live too close to the other two religionholders.

Founding in place

Goody!

Goody huts were everywhere, three of them giving me some gold to start off with and a fourth handing me Animal Husbandry, which is good since I was about to finish a worker in the middle of the floodplains with no knowledge of Agriculture or Pottery. At this point I'm wondering if maybe I should have started out calm, with no workers, researching one of the very first religions instead since I'm on a river -- then pottery instead of going for bronze working.

Shepherding

I round up the sheep just in time for my workers to be outfitted with newfangled shiny forest-chopping tools -- and my military men to be outfitted with oldfangled dull clubs.

Chop chop chop
There goes the southern forest! And both workers are now busy mining the only relevant hill, since that's all they know how to do. The settler will be done now, and it will head north to grab what looks like an amazing production center (lots of hills, trees, and marble plus wheat and deer, and a bonus silk).

There is no copper in sight.

New City

Fighting off some bears on the way up there, the workers and settlers start chopping away the forests to make a new home for themselves. Of course, we still don't know how to do this crazy "farm" stuff, so the deer will have to do for food, for now. I start building a Monument, because I apparently forgot that I was researching Monotheism.

Jewization!

I manage to make it to Monotheism first, and that plops the culture down into my second city. Notice that my first scout got eaten by wolves in the forest, so I still don't know any other civilizations at all.

2000 BC

I seem to have accomplished my goals here -- two cities are up and running early thanks to chopping, and I have two workers (one of which will go back to the capital once it learns how to make farms). I built a scout and another warrior to scout out a location for a third city, but after that I think I will try to develop the cities I have into some kind of useful centers. Capital and City3 will be good for money, while City2 will be good for military production. Health is going to be a serious issue here, so I don't think early Monarchy for HR is necessary.

The lack of copper is disturbing -- should I go for Iron Working? Pottery?

Help! What should I have done differently / what am I planning wrongly? I usually find myself way behind the AI very early, so go ahead and be as ruthless as you like. Thanks!

 

[pigswill]

Its fairly standard practice to have a military resource in one of your first two cities. In this instance maybe you should have gone for horses in second city and started building chariots for barb bashing and exploration. I also think you missed a trick by not going for pottery earlier, a couple of cottages on the capital's flood plains would make a major difference to your tech rate in the early game.

 

[GeneralGab]

I usually go for "worker" techs first, since I want my workers to have something to do; pastures, farms and cottages early can have a big impact. You also need roads to hook up resources between cities.

Like Pigswill said, cottages on those floodplains have a big impact on research in the beginning. You should hook up the horses and build some chariots to defend against barbs, and also do some exploring.

I usually skip the early religions in favour of worker techs, then grab Confucianism via the Oracle, which is very doable here, especially with marble.

 

[ccccc]

My workers were definitely feeling neglected until pottery came out.

My research path was:
1. Bronze Working
2. Monotheism
3. Iron Working
4. Pottery

Would you have put pottery between 1 and 2? Or before 1? It seems hard to squeeze in since I wanted that religion (as it turns out, the religion was a stupid idea, but ... yeah, I didn't know that until more exploration).

I appreciate the advice! Keep it coming!

 

[Nials]

Its fairly standard practice to have a military resource in one of your first two cities. In this instance maybe you should have gone for horses in second city and started building chariots for barb bashing and exploration. I also think you missed a trick by not going for pottery earlier, a couple of cottages on the capital's flood plains would make a major difference to your tech rate in the early game.

I spot Horses in the third ring of Bibracte's culture. Hook those up and you won't have any barb problems! Chariots should be fine for dealing with barbs until Swordsmen start showing up, which will take a while.

Going for IW I am unsure of. Probably still too inexperienced to make the call on that one I suppose it depends on whether or not you are planning an early war (pre-catapults), of course that depends on the contacts you establish.

 

[KnightCato]

In this situation I would go for mansory instead of IW, hook up that nice white marble get preisthood and build the oracle for CoL. As Nials said you have horse inside your borders and chariots would do fine right now.

As for pottery I think for your starting position it would have been one of my first techs as cottaged flood plains does wonders with your early economy.

With mysticisum as a starting tech I would consider the possibility of going an early religion. But with marble in the close neighbourhood I think I would have gone the mansory-road for oracle and later that nice great library instead.

 

[pigswill]

Going for early BW is definitely worth it. There's a good chance (usually) of finding copper around; even if you don't slavery and chopping speed up your initial expansion.
If you've got horses then IW can actually wait a bit so I'd have gone for pottery before IW. If you want a religion then going monotheism before pottery is fair enough.

 

[lilnev]

I would have moved the capital NW onto the plains hill. You still have four flood plains, which is plenty, plus Sheep for food, Marble and another hill for hammers. You gain the hammer for being on a plains hill, plus Marble is in the fat cross for the Oracle.

I would have researched AH first to get your strongest tile -- the Sheep -- under cultivation, then Mining, then either BW or Masonry. In general I think getting your strongest tiles online as fast as possible is important -- and that can mean mines rather than chopping (though flood plains are the best non-resource non-oasis unimproved tiles). I don't generally like going for an early religion, and certainly wouldn't have pursued Judaism. If you'd settled on the hill, you could have gone Poly-Priest and built the Oracle (with Marble) to CoL, claiming Confucianism as a bonus to go with the very useful tech.

Second city would then have used the remaining flood plains and claimed Horse.

peace,
lilnev

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I think the problem with the early game is the timing of everything:

1) You built worker first without knowing what that worker would do. Luckily you popped animal husbandry, but it probably would have been better to build another scout first. Normally worker first is best, but you want to know what that worker will do.

2) Monotheism is a lot of techs to get an early religion. I would rather have gone for Polytheism first and then focussed entirely on worker techs. BW would be first.

3) As others said you have neglected your military. I would have hooked up those horses - probably with my second city, but possibly on prince it would be OK to wait until your capital expanded to bring them into your culture. Iron working could wait - getting the wheel for chariots is a much higher priority.

My tech path would probably have been:

- Polytheism
- Animal husbandry (immediately use sheep)
- Mining
- Bronze (look for copper and get slavery)
- Wheel (need to get horses ASAP)
- Masonry (hook up marble)
- Writing
- Priesthood (oracle looks good and we can start later as we have marble)
- Agriculture (could afford to delay this due to floodplains and sheep, but really need it for second city)
- Alphabet

 

[dr_s]

The main thing I would have done differently is not build a worker first. I like to grow my capital at the start, especially when you have flood plains in the BFC, and double especially when you need to research some worker techs before your worker can be productive. I probably would have built scout, warrior, worker, warrior, settler.

While I mostly settle in place, with this start I might have moved NW to the plains hill, which gives +1H and would preserve a flood plain. It also puts marble in the BFC. I also might have considered moving NE, with the intention of settling on the plains N of the sheep. If I'd done that, I might have actually ended up 1 NE of the sheep, which seems like a good spot.

For tech path, AH is a reasonable first tech. What the next should be depends on where you settle, and what your goals are. You can't go too far wrong by heading for BW, but given where you settled, you only have one hill in your BFC, so mining isn't all that useful. If you had moved for the marble, masonry is an obvious second tech. I would have also been tempted to go wheel, pottery after AH.

Also, I probably would have gone south, toward the equator, with my second city.

 

[ccccc]

Moving my capital NW really would have been a lifesaver for me.

Building a worker with nothing for the worker to do ... yes, that was not ideal. And pottery needed to be earlier. Really, the least useful thing I did seems to be the religion. Unless I meet someone very early, I tend to fail to spread the religion, and then I end up either going to "no religion" or hoping I can get someone else's. That said, I probably shouldn't be playing as a Spiritual leader, and certainly not going for early religions --- unless CoL like you mentioned, since I love Caste System/Representation.

And very good point about Monotheism being a lot of techs just for a religion -- especially since I had to get Poly anyway.

Why would your second city be South, "toward the equator"? I figured that once my capital was set on "production-poor," I needed to jump at a productive city site as soon as I found one.

Spoiler how it played out :

As it turned out, I ended up being on an island all my own -- something that was not to be fixed until some Astronomy action. I decided to beeline to Astronomy by saving up a couple great scientists to lightbulb it.

My second city ended up being a productive powerhouse with very little to build, since it wasn't on the coast and I mainly needed boats. My capital ended up having serious health issues for a long, long time.

Early pottery would have been *amazing* here. I needed science very badly. The early religion was essentially useless, because by the time I met anyone they were already organized into solid buddhist and hindu blocks on separate continents. Also the early iron working and bronze working were useless besides the chopping, thanks to <no copper> and <by the time I saw anyone they had longbows>.

It turned out surprisingly okay (although I don't see a non-cultural victory in my future) -- when I lightbulbed Astronomy, I happily traded it around in exchange for a total of 17 techs, which brought me up to speed in technology (for now). But if I had an early economy to speak of (early pottery), I would have been *ahead* of at least one of the continents in technology. And the religion was useless -- I switched to no religion as soon as I met the giant buddhist block that made up my neighboring continent.