National College Timing

Dtekkar

Warlord
Joined
Nov 30, 2010
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How many cities do you guys settle before building the national college? I've found that a 2 city NC loses settlement sites to neighbors and lags in development as you approach education. I find a 4-city start impedes a fast NC. A 3 city NC is somewhere in between - it tends to lag in infrastructure as you approach education, a little, and the NC is delayed, a little. Without getting too bogged down in Map-specifics, which is generally correct?
 
Three city NC on emperor.

I often don't find good turf so end up with three self builds.
 
If I get Great Library and slingshot Philosophy (and, I'd hope, have a good production and food capital with decent gold), I'd consider building NC immediately after GL. If my city sites will be there 10 turns later, it's not too much of a loss to get NC out of the way immediately. Just don't get complacent and forget to settle cities at all. You could go for Philosophy without GL and 1-city too, but that means being way too slow in the race.

Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with waiting for 4 cities to work on NC, and waiting until after Civil Service to research Philosophy->Theology->Education. That gives ample time to set up production and food, and comes with money and military stuff. So long as NC is complete before Education and Education is reached at a reasonable time, exactly when is not that big a difference. Science without gold and hammers to put it to use is often overrated.

Another possibility - build the 4th settler, then start NC, wait for NC to finish before founding city 4. Depending on city site, this might only mean a few turns delay in settling the city, as travel will take time.

In a tradition game, I like to be sure my 2nd city is able to build settlers, so my cap is freed to build more useful stuff. The less time my cap spends building settlers, the better it is for that cap to prepare good stuff.

There are some pretty good wonders to grab that compete with early NC.

Stuff like map conditions play a role too. Really depends on how many good production sites I can get, and if I can rush a library somewhere. 2 city NC is generally the worst, and 3 city NC isn't too bad if Philosophy is a higher priority for you/CS is a lower priority (say you have no fresh water in the capital or any of your cities - and that's a pretty horrible situation for a Tradition start, but you'd work with what you're given).

If playing Liberty then NC doesn't necessarily need to be in the cap, but it shouldn't be put off for too long in any start... unless doing some despotic conquest thing, in which case NC is superflous. Even for Liberty strategies, getting NC early shouldn't be dismissed... just because Liberty wants lots of cities doesn't mean they have no vertical expansion, and NC at the right time can be really useful for supporting long-term expansion. It's just less valuable than a tradition NC capital.
If I do play Liberty, I'd like to have a reasonable shot at GL, and use the free settler to offset the hammers sunk into it. Seeing Tradition players miss GL makes me a happy camper.
 
I very rarely build any cities before building the NC. Circumstances usually make it take too long to get libraries in new cities. The trick is to keep the AI from settling your good locations and then settling your cities and getting them up and functional in a decent amount of time
 
If you search the forums, you'll find a lot of good threads on this topic. As discussed, though, in general if you're aiming for a quick science start the consensus is anywhere from 2 to 4 depending on circumstances and gameplay, particularly on higher difficulties.

I would not recommend an OCC National College. It's unnecessary and simply a bad habit to get into, in my opinion. National College is important, but not at that cost.
 
usually its 2 or 3 cities, however i just played my first babylon game (insane science!) and built NC in my first city...the early academy makes a big difference
 
One-city NC works fine, but it needs to be a production and food beast, and needs to not get rushed. MP as it is currently constructed is stupid and unplayable, and will be as long as broken chariot archers are in the game (on top of all the usual 1UPT nonsense), so in SP it's just a matter of knowing AI behavior. It's rare to get a super early DOW from the AI in my experience.

If going that route, you're conceding potential city sites in order for a really strong capital, and looking at your other 3 core cities as primarily production and food feeders to the cap. If you can have 3 good cities and one-city NC then awesome, though those 3 will be far apart.

I generally don't like getting GL with Tradition anyway, unless I can get it really early. The hammers for GL are better spent on settlers and stuff, and setting up production outside the capital.

GL with Liberty is pretty nice, but that precludes getting NC early most of the time.

I'm not counting blatant OP civs like Poland or especially Babylon in this.
 
i agree on babylon being crazy, so far ive played poland, carthage, england, babylon, venice and aside from the absurd english archipelago game- babylon was the easiest, i was building x-com squads while the ai was tooling around in frigates.
 
This is honestly a really interesting dilemna that came up in the DLC.

In Vanilla, Philosophy only required Writing, so you could pretty much build a standard library, then maybe a warrior to pass the 3/4 extra turns until Philosophy, then build the NC and get that out of the way.

Now, you have to research Calendar too before Philosophy, which means you would have to delay your 2nd city even longer to build the NC.

On Vanilla, I would use France and build Library -> NC , then send a couple settlers out right away. That was already pushing it, but now having to research Calendar makes that just too much IMO.
 
Are we talking Deity here? If so, it seems to me that makes expos a higher priority than early NC. For any map, generally, the question is: Will building NC now mean loosing prime real estate? The other rule of thumb questions I ask myself for the last-expo-before-NC: Do I have gold to rush a library? Will the last-expo-before-NC be on a hill or near forests for chopping?
 
Totally contextual to the difficulty, the map layout, neighbors, settle spots, etc. I generally don't stress about getting an NC super early, even on Deity. What's more important is getting all of your settlements out (especially contested ones), getting workers out, and improving luxes so you can grow your cities without worrying about happiness (and trading luxes hopefully, to improve relations with close neighbors). The workers can also chop forests in your expands for quicker libraries to get the NC up quicker.

I'd much rather have all 4-5 of my cities down early with workers out and about and a semi-late NC than a super-early-one-city-NC and all of my settlements taken.
 
For me, in a textbook tradition game, I would get 4 cities out, and buy the last library. This usually gives me enough time to research lux techs and philosophy. BO in expos is granary, library. Gold comes from early lux trades for 240 gold.
 
In general, you want to get NC as early as possible. I shoot for one of two options in most of my game depending on how strong my capital is.

1. With a fast growing and high production capital, I will build GL to slingshot Philosophy and then build NC right away with only one city. This is a good approach if NC can be finished by about turn 50 or earlier on standard speed and there is no risk of losing key city locations to AI nearby. Obviously doesn't work on Deity level because the human player seldom finishes GL before the AI. Immortal and lower this is a viable strategy though.

2. The second option is to spread to 4 cities early (by about turn 50). I generally rush buy one settler and hard build two for this strategy. With Tradition, the first 4 cities will start with a monument, so I start building a Library right away. If I have enough gold, I will rush buy a library in the lowest production city of the 4. Once the 4 libraries are up, I build NC in the best location (lots of food and a mountain next to the city for an Observatory). NC should be finished by turn 80 or so depending on circumstances. This strategy is more flexible, because the capital isn't necessarily the best science city if you can scout and expand quickly.
 
Usually 4 cities before NC but you have to keep in mind it should be done till turn 100 on standard or 150 on epic. This way you can keep up with the AI. That is for Immortal at least...

I build NC in the capitol, knowing it will later boost my science specialists. As for food, 1st caravan that you get, should be sent to capitol to help you grow so when you later get university done you can put 2 citizens to work on science right away.
 
O, such DELIGHTFUL frustration !!; long had WE known where EL DORADO was (Elizabeth, King, continents+, 4 AI, raging barbs and 2'Barbie+' mods), WE had set up Nottingham for 3rd city, planning NCollage beside convenient mountain, when on T138, Bozo2 (Swiss) caught sight of a Golden gleam across the lake; and to Our Amazement, sent an unescorted settler to grab their proposed 3rd city.

Our forces, having avenged the loss of 4th Wessex Spear in the area, were able to pick off (capture mod v.7) the errant settler, and, under Our Gracious Mercy, Founded Our 4th city beside a lakeside mountain, 2 tiles away from El Dorado; Our newest moneymaker, whose tile was bought upon Founding .

As WE, and Our Ministers had planned to establish the NCollage at Nottingham, starting on T139, Our careful plans were set awry by Glorious Opportunity, causing Our Ministers to scurry about like weasels in a henhouse; to re-arrange Our building orders to accomidate Our changing times .
 
This might be an odd question but....Can the National College only be built once? So if you build it then no other AI can. Also does that apply to the Guilds too. Writer's Guild, Musician's Guild?

Thanks

Brew God
 
O, such DELIGHTFUL frustration !!; long had WE known where EL DORADO was (Elizabeth, King, continents+, 4 AI, raging barbs and 2'Barbie+' mods), WE had set up Nottingham for 3rd city, planning NCollage beside convenient mountain, when on T138, Bozo2 (Swiss) caught sight of a Golden gleam across the lake; and to Our Amazement, sent an unescorted settler to grab their proposed 3rd city.
[...]

8/8
would chip chip cheerio again

Is "number of cities before" the right question? Could we not measure, say, "How worker-staffed are all your cities before?" or "What turn?" or "How much pressure pply to neighbours first?"

They seem at odds because they're the two best things to be doing by far, and the one slows the other cumulatively, but, well, maybe there's a road more defined than "it depends".

Do you settle a coastal expand before committing NC? I've found that to be noticeably more fatal. edit: I mean not getting the coast
 
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