NEWB1: Initial Expansion

[tibbles]

Hmm, tried 2 different placements, 74 turns both ways. That 4th city is my bane. I'm waiting on it while my original 3 are overkilling the warrior requirement. :S

I bet I could shave 5 turns just by swapping a worker and settler somewhere in my build order, but I always think I need the workers.

An opener question:

Spoiler :

Did/When did you go for Fishing? I tried for a workboat early, then AH to give worker something to do, then Mining, BW for chopping. But it was making my 2nd city fairly late. I'm thinking maybe have gone for chopping sooner with all those trees?

 

[PeteJ]

Does it count if one of your cities was obtained via conquest?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Does it count if one of your cities was obtained via conquest?

Founded requires training a settler - see previous response.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Are folks observing any dramatic difference between AH first and Mining -> BW?

 

[peapd]

Played this several times, curious about the differences, and wishing I'd taken better notes.

My best efforts went Mining -> BW first, then back to AH. (It seems all about the chop.)

However, the variance between the different openings:

Warrior -> Grow to 2 -> Worker
Worker -> Grow to 2/3 -> More Worker/Settlers

...With different combinations of the tech path...

Etc, doesn't seem to matter _much_. Everything was in the 60's for me, earliest at 64.

I think the trick is settling your last city by the corn (already farmed) so it gets to 4 pop faster.


I'm curious what the people in the 50's were doing, probably open their saves next.

 

[Crusher1]

I'm curious what the people in the 50's were doing, probably open their saves next.

My Tech Path was AH, Min, BW. My build order was worker, warrior/s to 3 pop while improving the Corn, Cow, then either a mine or food plain. As soon as you hit 3 pop you make 2 more workers which should take 4 turns each, plus you expedite them by chopping.

Your first warrior steals a worker from Stalin to the west.

After you finished your last worker (3 total) you immediately begin chopping out 3 settlers with your 3 workers then found your cities in such a manner that you can swap/share food as needed and finish the requirements.

You can almost always guarantee 58-59 and with some luck you can get lower, I.E. random events creating pastures or farms, etc and get below 56.

 

[Monsterzuma]

What I've found out.
- you can steal workers from both Gilgamesh (east) and Stalin (west) by building an additional warrior early on. I recommend growing to size 2 while building the warrior (takes the same number of turns as growing) and then 1-pop whipping your next worker out. You can make peace with both AIs only 6ish turns after declaring (gotta love noble) so defenses are not a problem as long as there is nothing of theirs in sight.
- you can steal multiple workers from stalin by making peace with him and attacking him again. This can be done within the relevant time-frame. You can save turns on the escort back home by fogbusting with another warrior and letting the worker move through the safe revealed territory.
- first thing to focus on is getting your cities out at as early a date as possible. Next is to make sure the city that is most behind in growth gets the best food tiles to work so it can keep up with the rest. This means that the best city to settle last is the one at the spot south-west where it can work both the capital's corn tile and two floodplains.
- the rest is a matter of spamming improvement tiles. Cottages are the least time-costly to build, so those are recommended.
- the 10 warriors tend to be the least problematic goal, just make everything that is growing build a warrior.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Your first worker steals a worker from Stalin to the west.

I wish MY workers could do that! Overall the post makes sense though .

 

[Soirana]

Are folks observing any dramatic difference between AH first and Mining -> BW?

i've made retry i saw some diferenece by
mining first and when popping AH from hut. Upper [visible] hut might give AH, iirc, it would be like straight way of warrior+2turns...

 

[gagnarath]

This looked like fun so thought I'd give it a go. Noble player at the moment, I tend to win my games, but after this I'm thinking it's more through blind luck than any understanding of the game.

Try 1 -> Turn 93, wasted time building Stonehenge in Cap, got Fishing from goody hut popped by capital expanding, settled it 1N, wasted free fishing by forgetting to build a work boat after getting all excited about it. Why so bad!? Only noticed at the end when I was checking all was in order >.>

Try 2 -> Turn 95, didn't buld a wonder, got Fishing and BW from huts, decided to do the same thing I did before but better! Somehow ended up doing worse despite not building a wonder.

Try 3 -> HUTS OF EVIL. 2 Huts, both hostile, lost 2 warriors, lost another warrior to bears. Somehow pulled this all back to finish on turn 91.

Try 4 -> Useless map from NW hut, Fishing from SW hut popped by Cap settled 1N again, I don't know why I keep doing this I'm not going to get better if I don't change anything >.> I chose a different order to settle in and manage to finish on turn 84, an improvement indeed >.>

Spoiler :

My first 3 tries I settled SW city (Elephantine on SS), E city (Memphis), then SE city (Heliopolis) but was always sat around waiting fe SE city to increase pop while everything else was fine. I'd actually have finished this on turn 79 if I hadn't been so insistent on hooking my resources up, I forgot the Cottage in Elephantine so had to rush a worker back there to finish it up which cost me a number of turns >.> I think if I do it again I can shave a fair number of turns off if I ignore what seems right in my head but doesn't suit this "mini-game", building cities for the future, hooking up resources >.> It was nice to kind of force myself to expand quickly though, it's something I'm usually really bad at, hence turn 84 when other's are hitting 50's-60's I guess ;< I usally only build a city or two after my capital and then amass an army to go looking for other people's cities, lol.

Hope this isn't too much of a necro bump.

 

[Crusher1]

Hope this isn't too much of a necro bump.

This forum is for everyone from every walk of life. Screw them if they don't like it =D. You'll find some active users have some pretty elitist attitudes, but what can you do!? I just spit it back in their face and drive on, drive on baby!

Welcome to the forums and good luck! I hope you learn some good stuff my friend! If you need any help/got questions PM - I'm here to help those who genuinely need/want it! Plus I like to pick fights with the elitist! Muahahahahaha!

 

[jmas]

How fortuitous that someone else posted who just recently played the game! I just did it myself tonight.

Unfortunately somewhere along the line I forgot about getting the cities to size four. So I went back a couple hundred years with a save and managed to meet all the conditions by 950 BC--turn 77.

I saw that others overlapped food resources. I don't know why that didn't occur to me-- it may have been partly because of my overlooking the requirement of getting all the cities to size four, and partly because I was trying to simulate a somewhat normal expansion (though there were differences from my normal play; for example, I didn't scout much to the west until the end, just kept pushing east pretty much). In keeping with the "normal expansion," I built improvements that I would have actually used (the exception being that I did build a plains cottage on the last turn, an improvement I normally wouldn't build until much later, because I noticed I had left Heliopolis one tile improvement short).

By the way I counted a fishing boat as an improvement, which seems reasonable to me as it probably required more investment than a land tile. Seriously, I had seven workers!

I got lucky with hut pops: mysticism in 3840, mining in 3400, BW in 3160 . One of those I was teching at the time, I think it was BW. I researched AH, fishing, pottery, writing, math, and was working on currency at the end. I don't recall seeing very many people teching fishing, so that may not have been optimal for this kind of race.

Well, I like the thrill of an undiscovered map more than replaying a game, so I don't know if I'll do it again. I feel good about finishing on turn 77 given that I didn't think to overlap the big food resources. Of course it wasn't quite the speedy finish that others achieved with more overlap.

Screenie:

Spoiler :

Edit: my build order in the capital was worker>work boat>warrior>worker, then I think settler>warrior>settler>settler>couple of warriors>more workers.

Thank you for putting this series together VoU!

 

[cabert]

This looked like fun so thought I'd give it a go. Noble player at the moment, I tend to win my games, but after this I'm thinking it's more through blind luck than any understanding of the game.

Try 1 -> Turn 93, wasted time building Stonehenge in Cap, got Fishing from goody hut popped by capital expanding, settled it 1N, wasted free fishing by forgetting to build a work boat after getting all excited about it. Why so bad!? Only noticed at the end when I was checking all was in order >.>

Try 2 -> Turn 95, didn't buld a wonder, got Fishing and BW from huts, decided to do the same thing I did before but better! Somehow ended up doing worse despite not building a wonder.

Try 3 -> HUTS OF EVIL. 2 Huts, both hostile, lost 2 warriors, lost another warrior to bears. Somehow pulled this all back to finish on turn 91.

Try 4 -> Useless map from NW hut, Fishing from SW hut popped by Cap settled 1N again, I don't know why I keep doing this I'm not going to get better if I don't change anything >.> I chose a different order to settle in and manage to finish on turn 84, an improvement indeed >.>

Spoiler :

My first 3 tries I settled SW city (Elephantine on SS), E city (Memphis), then SE city (Heliopolis) but was always sat around waiting fe SE city to increase pop while everything else was fine. I'd actually have finished this on turn 79 if I hadn't been so insistent on hooking my resources up, I forgot the Cottage in Elephantine so had to rush a worker back there to finish it up which cost me a number of turns >.> I think if I do it again I can shave a fair number of turns off if I ignore what seems right in my head but doesn't suit this "mini-game", building cities for the future, hooking up resources >.> It was nice to kind of force myself to expand quickly though, it's something I'm usually really bad at, hence turn 84 when other's are hitting 50's-60's I guess ;< I usally only build a city or two after my capital and then amass an army to go looking for other people's cities, lol.

Hope this isn't too much of a necro bump.

can't say I'm the best to help in such things, since I'm mostly a slow starter, however, you don't seem to use the most efficient kickstart around : chopping
Try it this way : build worker>warrior>worker>settler>settler>settler>library in the capital, warriors only in your other cities.
tech to BW ASAP, then pottery (include fishing somewhere)

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

This looked like fun so thought I'd give it a go. Noble player at the moment, I tend to win my games, but after this I'm thinking it's more through blind luck than any understanding of the game.

From looking at the screen capture you provided, you might want to experiment with exploiting your trees....

 

[essmene]

At what player type is are these posts aiming for ?

Monarch, Deity+ or people trying to master noble ?


I am trying to master noble and i would see lots of stuff that should be mentioned in detail:


First City

I think 90% of starting players would press 'b' and settle in red - i did myself before reading [1]. I did settle at blue for 2x flood plains - on a hill for +1 , fish, sheep. Settling green wasn't that obvious to me.

Tech Paths
Interesting Technologies:

• Animal Husbandry (AH, Pens)
• Bronze Working (BW, slavery, Forrest removal),
• fishing (work boats)
• The Wheel (Roads)

By now it seems that BW first beats all other tactics.

City Building Path
Is it always 'worker first' ? (independent of speed / difficulty)
At noble a warrior rush for a non-aggressive civ works. (defeating the task of settling 4x cities)


Worker Tasks
In the first cities you do not think about lumber mills and similar stuff but chop what you can get hold of ? How about keeping 'x' So the forests got a chance to regrow?

Differences to a 'real' game
Where would you make a difference to a normal game ?

Ressources:
[1]The Complete Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement (v.2)

 

[cripp7]

At what player type is are these posts aiming for ?

Monarch, Deity+ or people trying to master noble ?

Good quest nOOby! Actually both, a lot of monarch+ players do these for fun while
noble/prince players trying to get a better grasp at that level and this SG was played on Monarch.

I am trying to master noble and i would see lots of stuff that should be mentioned in detail:


First City
(pic removed for reply)
I think 90% of starting players would press 'b' and settle in red - i did myself before reading [1]. I did settle at blue for 2x flood plains - on a hill for +1 , fish, sheep. Settling green wasn't that obvious to me.

Settling 1N will get you fish/cow/sheep 5hils/2floodplains which is a really good start and really good hybrid Bureaucracy capitol. Post a save and I'll shadow game for a bit.

Tech Paths
Interesting Technologies:

• Animal Husbandry (AH, Pens)
• Bronze Working (BW, slavery, Forrest removal),
• fishing (work boats)
• The Wheel (Roads)

By now it seems that BW first beats all other tactics.

Your tech path should go fishing>AH>mining>BW> by that time you should be able to start on your first settler at what's called your cap. Let the city grow until you reach your max, which on noble is usually 5, then start pumping out settlers

City Building Path
Is it always 'worker first' ? (independent of speed / difficulty)
At noble a warrior rush for a non-aggressive civ works. (defeating the task of settling 4x cities)

Most cases yes, always start worker>warriors. But since you'll be on the coast I would start warrior while growing and waiting for fishing to come in, then switch to a workboat while working the 3 hill to speed it up. Build you fish and work it until you get to population 2, warrior should be done by then, then start your worker so once AH comes in your worker will have something to do, you don't want workers taking siestas!

Worker Tasks
In the first cities you do not think about lumber mills and similar stuff but chop what you can get hold of ? How about keeping 'x' So the forests got a chance to regrow?

Don't chop everything in site, unless your building a wonder like the Pyramids, usually going plainshill then hills as you can directly build a mine on them. Don't forget that forests give in your cities and have a chance for other tiles to grow forests.

Differences to a 'real' game

Where would you make a difference to a normal game ?

Ressources:
[1]The Complete Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement (v.2)

Umm very few, you don't have to wait for others to play, but you don't have the others input on your moves. I was a straight noble player for about 8 months, only winning a few by sloppy play, even though I was reading all the guides. Until I started playing SG games here, then my offline games jumped to prince/monarch in a short time. Goto the
Civ 4 Sucession Game Registration Thread! or try to find one already going and ask to jump in. Reading/following these games will help, downloading the saves and playing along following their movements will help too.

Best of is to have FUN, if it becomes not fun take a break then come back to it. I've done that too. Good luck!

 

[Soirana]

At what player type is are these posts aiming for ?

Monarch, Deity+ or people trying to master noble ?

I'd guess to anyone willing to play. In theory high level player games should show few things for real noble players

I think 90% of starting players would press 'b' and settle in

You are mixing normal game [when you want to conquer, dominate, manipulate diplo] and rapid start like this.
In situation like this settling on plainhill gives two hammers to city center, which gives first worker two turns faster [including wasted turn on moving settler]. That means your first worker chops out second worker faster and so on...
That is more or less called snowball...

. I did settle at blue for 2x flood plains - on a hill for +1 , fish, sheep. Settling green wasn't that obvious to me.

I do not recall scouting info on turn one, but if needed pick i'd probably go for spot between green and and blue. Cows should compensate for lack of extra hammer in a long run. Of course one could claim that extahammer would gives faster workboat, which leads to faster second settler... Snowball again.

Settling on sheep is waste of good tile, but since we were not planning to play anywhere close to AD... In other words for this challenge long term is less than short time...

Interesting Technologies:

Per normal game i would go AH into BW. IIRc, even in this time BW first was not giving that much of margin.
I've read comments that improve+chop and plain chop equalizes at about turn 40, while improvements let you save some forest. Might be true

Fishing time depends on where you place city and your plans.

Is it always 'worker first' ? (independent of speed / difficulty)
At noble a warrior rush for a non-aggressive civ works. (defeating the task of settling 4x cities)

Worker first unless you:
-build workboat first
-warrior/quecha rush
-have nothing to do for him [heavily forested start with few animal food resources while having something like mysticism and fishing].

How about keeping 'x' So the forests got a chance to regrow?

Unless you play marathon regrowth is not worth effort.

Where would you make a difference to a normal game ?

From the settling point. Especially picking another locations for other cities and doing lot of more roading.
I actually like my effort as it least has more or less natural city placement comparing to some other high packed clusters.

 

[gagnarath]

From looking at the screen capture you provided, you might want to experiment with exploiting your trees....

Had another couple of goes today keeping the same city sites and seeing how many turns I could shave off with more aggressive chopping, first go I got down to 81, but I was still waiting too long on settlers and building too many Workers first. Had another go limiting myself to only 4 workers.

Spoiler :

While it's certainly not world beating I am pretty happy taking it down to 70 turns, with Memphis growing to 4 pop and the last improvement coming at the same time.

 

[cabert]

seems you got most of the trick, however if I'm not miscounting, you've got 2 size 5 cities. Means suboptimal placement for this "special run".
The best runs have more overlapping = shared food for growth+less travel turns.

 

[Bafa]

First thanks a lot VoU for these lessons and everyone for posting advices. As a will go through "NEWB2: Population" tonight, i hope there will be "5x5x5" comming out soon.

I am brand new to the game, after two chieftan victories and Sulla's great guide, i moved to noble and found this thread. Noble seems easy as well, but it is a complete piece of cake after practise with early expansion through chopping in this lesson.

First try in upper 80's, second 74, third 62. During these tries i realized that my warrior has two promotions when reaching Stalin all the time. So i thought what is the percentage of warrior with city raider II agianst one in Moscow. I tried and probably a novice luck helped me to win 21.3% odds for the first try. So Moscow was mine with one worker at 3040 B.C. So it produced third Settler and prepared the site for new city to the NE with rice and two flood plains. So i hope you do not mind i have 5 cities as 4 have to be founded Goal reached after 56 turns and i am sure that players like Crusher1 would go even to 50-52 with not only worker steal but the whole city steal.

Spoiler :