Newbie Learning - Asking for Tips

[Micky Onimusha]

This forum unfortunately lacks a "Newbie Tips" thread, and so I've decided to just suck it up and admit, "Hello, I'm a newbie, help!" I posted previously in regards to the Infernals, but this thread is more of a "General help" request.

Basically, after finally completing my first successful game on Warlord, I've been trying to make the move to Prince. For the most part I've been playing a bit hit and miss, using different Civs, different maps and different strategies, but for the most part, I find them slipping out in the middle of the game. Either I'm falling behind in techs and so forth or my strategy has gone astray in the long term. Generally, I've decided to simply ask for general ideas on how to play the game effectively.

In making this thread, I looked through the sticky first to read some of what had been posted. May as well learn before asking

The two I read thoroughly:

Analysis: The Opening Game Unraveled (Unser's Slightly out of date opening game analysis)
Getting Started, or, How to Cook for 10,000 Unexpected Houseguests (How to Survive raging barbarians in general)

After reading them, a couple of quick questions arose from me.

In "Analysis: The Opening Game Unraveled", there's a large obsession with cottages. Within the sticky thread it is called "slightly out of date", so I wished to check, should cottages be my top priority throughout the first 100 or so turns? And how much of a priority?

There was also a lot of mentions of cottages upon resources. Is this a wise course of action? Placing cottages instead of building the appropriate improvement to gain the resource benefits?

In "Getting Started, or, How to Cook for 10,000 Unexpected Houseguests", it emphasizes the importance of ignoring Workers in favour of Warriors, since you'll be unable to defend improvements. Does this hold true when playing with normal Barbs?

With those two out of the way, general question time.

Starting

Firstly, I'm having difficulty getting off to good starts. With this, I would like to ask some people's early starting strategies. Presently, my strategy has been like so:

1) Set up a city in turn one, built in a way that I'll get the best tiles possible of those visible within it's cross.
2) Set the Scout and Warrior off exploring.
3) Build a Warrior first.
3) As far as research priority goes, I've usually been aiming for Agriculture-Ancient Chants-Mysticism-Education, with the next set of research going to technologies related to my nearby resources.
4) Once the first Warrior pops, fortify it in the city and build another.
5) Once I have two Warriors, depending on the surrounding situation and technology progression, I either make a Scout, Settler or Elder Council (assuming I've reached Mysticism).
6) If I didn't go straight for a Settler, once whatever pops, my next priority is a Settler.
7) If I haven't got the Elder Council yet, I got for that and once it's done, make a Sage specilist. I usually run pacifism as well in an attempt to get a Great Sage ASAP, that science boosting building is delicious.
7) Send it off with one of the Warriors to my next city destination.
8-9-10) Lots of stuff in between, I've usually been keeping a system of two warriors per city and try to get Obelisks early in my 2nd city for quick expansion. I usually have a second worker as well. Normally I try to cottage by rivers, connect my cities together and link up resources.
11) With two warriors on stand-by, set off for my 3rd city.

From here, the route is varied. Normally I shoot straight for my preferred religion and then afterwards focus on Hunting-Archery.

Now, I'm sure this general early build set-up is flawed. A major thing I've noticed is problems with Barbs. My lone warrior guarding my settler doesn't always work, sometimes a wild animal will pick it off (damn those bears ) and occasionally, the barbs will have an evil lizardman. If I lose my early settler as well as its guarding warrior, I'm highly crippled in my opinion. As it stands, I'm figuring I should make an extra Warrior for escorting purposes.

Now, my main questions. Priorities:

Should I really try to get my city up in turn one? Would it be wiser to scout with my settler the first couple of turns for a better starting position if I don’t have on I consider ideal?

How much of a priority should Mysticism and God King be? ASAP? After Education and a Worker?

How much of a priority should Hunting and Archery be? I personally leave them for a while, because of the fact I need to make an extra building to pop the units related to them. However, I’ve been starting to notice that I need more powerful units, and I’m starting to think maybe this should be a larger priority.

Military questions? How many Warriors per city? Extra Warriors? Should I go exploring around my borders with my Warriors to pick up some cheap upgrades from the wolves and lions?

Elder Council and Sage? Am I making this too much or a priority. Should I be making it a priority at all? I like it personally, I lose one population worth of productivity but I find the +50% from the science building really helpful and like to get it ASAP, but if it's an inefficient idea, it can easily be dropped.

Cottages? I asked it earlier but I’ll mention it again. Should I go nuts cottage spamming ASAP?

Cities

Now, this is where I have real problems. Nine times out of ten, once I get my third city up, that’s it. I have no more optimal city plots left to fill, so my future cities are either in “meh” positions or need to be taken from a neighbour (and I’m not too good at early warmongering). How should I prioritise my city spreading? Should I be doing it slow and precise, or should I rush for the best positions early, regardless of the nasty maintenance costs?

Now, assuming I don’t pick up the spots if want, should I go for an early warmonger? I dislike doing this unless I have an aggressive civ. To me, it seems like all I’m doing is helping all the other civs. If I succeed in taking their city, it costs me a lot of warriors. If I don’t, well, that’s a lot of wasted hammers. Personally, I prefer to let it wait slightly, at least until I have access to Axemen and preferably when I have a Hero. Still, I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on how important early warmongering is.

Wonders

Should I bother? I’ve noticed the AI always seems to snatch up the “Free Life Mana” wonder very quickly, so I was wondering if Wonders should be a priority at all? I personally don’t go for them, I usually don’t have the time, but again, I want to hear other people’s opinions.

Dealing with Barbarians?

What if Skeletons start streaming in my direction, or Orthus decides he feels like visiting *note: pillaging* my towns. How do I handle this? Obviously, I usually start spamming as many warriors as possible, but other things I should be doing? Should I hide all my warriors in my city or should I slot them on top of my resources? Should I try and attack or just let them run their course? (I have better combat odds defending but I lose more turns waiting for them to attack and risk losing my worker improvements, as well as turns I could‘ve spent making improvements).

Now, although I do have some problems with middle-game, I feel questions related to that would be civ-specific, so I’ll leave them out of it. Personally, I feel I have more problems starting than handling the middle.

Whether it helps or not, I generally like to play Small or Standard maps with the default amount of civs + 2. The map I choose is usually Oasis, Great Plains, Highlands or Pangaea. My play style is more of a builder. Normally, I aim to make a solid economy before shooting for an army, so my army mostly consists of 3-4 units defending my cities and maybe one or two others. I like going for Fire Mages prior to invasions, I find Fire Balls and Meteors priceless when it comes to invasion.

I apologise for the essay-ish length of this, but I appreciate feedback. As well as critiquing how I start things, I’d like to see some “step-by-step” ideas of how you guys start. Ultimately, I hope to move from being stuck on Prince mode and off higher, preferably to one day being able to respectably play in Multiplayer.

[I’ll also be on holiday until Sunday, so if it seems like I’m ignoring the posts, I’m not. When I get back, I will be reading the replies with interest and appreciation. Hopefully, when I get back I can fire up a game and finally win a game on Prince ]

 

[Bill Bisco]

A few thoughts of mine. First off I would change your starting strategy Slightly.

1. Found your city
2. Send your Scout out to explore, Leave your Warrior at home.
3. make a Warrior

Now, depending on the game is what you research. If I don't have Agriculture from my civ, then yes I would usually research it unless for some reason my city wouldn't benefit from it much.

If you are the Hippus or Kuriorates, after Agriculture, I would generally go for Horseback Riding. If not, then I would immediately go for some other way of getting a 2nd tier unit (that is, a unit better than warrior). That could be by going Ancient Chants- mysticism - Runes, Leaves, or Octopi

Yes, mysticism is very good and imporant. It is very very rare when you would want something besides God King. Very Rare. This game is all about Agriculture, God King, and Priests. Really, no matter who you are, you will want this. It's that good!

Don't worry about Cottages, they're not that great except in certain cases.

Also, unless your map is really big and your enemy is far away from you, it's generally best just to take a city from the AI. Go for a Tier 2 unit (such as hunters, the Drown, Pyre Zombies, ect.) make a bunch of them, and take over your enemy. The AI is still incredibly stupid. After some practice you should have no problem owning it.

1. most wonders are unimportant, don't worry about them unless they're really really good.

2. Yes, Academies are good, don't feel guilty about making those as long as the +50% bonus will be bigger than the +6 Science Great Sages give

3. Always have at least 2 defenders for a city no matter what. In barbarian heavy games, I tend to produce all the way up to a 3rd possible warrior but then switching to something else. If things get hectic, I'll have some backup.

4. If you don't consider you're starting location ideal, then feel free to search a little. But, not too much. I generally do not want to found a city later than the 2nd or 3rd turn. Sometimes it's better to just deal with it.

5. You make a worker when it'd be beneficial for you to have one. For example, sometimes it's ideal to time your worker so that it appears just as soon as you get Agriculture. Other times, you may be in a Flood Plains area full of 3 and you'd rather make other stuff, and once you've maxed out your population, then make a worker to make a farm so that you can move more of your citizens toward production.

6. Archery and Hunting are important that they are tier 2 units. You need to aim for a tier 2 unit especially at the beginning. Other tier 2 units are fine as well.

7. Early warring is usually the way to go. The AI is dumb as I said before and if you have superior units or have the right promotions and xp, you can usually relatively easily capture their cities. I usually try warring when I have a tier 2 unit (axemen in your case). Yes, aggressive civs are good at this, and in fact they have a great advantage in my mind.

8. If Orthus plays your City a visit, you should build an extra warrior if you have time left and hide your warriors in your city. Let him pillage; he'll likely attack the city soon.

 

[katika]

For the most part I've been playing a bit hit and miss, using different Civs, different maps and different strategies, but for the most part, I find them slipping out in the middle of the game. Either I'm falling behind in techs and so forth or my strategy has gone astray in the long term. Generally, I've decided to simply ask for general ideas on how to play the game effectively.

It would probably be best if you worked on one civ for a while and improved with them before going on, but do whatever you enjoy. That said, if you're falling behind in the middle of the game, you need to improve how you set up your empire... (Keep in mind that there are many different playing styles even for the early game. Some people expand more aggressively and risk losing settlers, while others leave nothing to chance. I lean towards aggressive expansion with an eye on domination victory.)

The Early Game: Cottages vs. Farms
With Agriculture as it stands, you can get by just fine on research with farms and sage specialists with only a few cottages (more if you have fewer resources with high commerce bonuses). But, that requires more micromanagement and the next patch will make Agriculture less useful. If you do use specialists, you need to expand fast. More cities allow more elder councils and therefore more sages for research. 5 beakers just isn't enough, but 5 per city with minimal effort is great!

Even if you don't go for cottage spamming, you'll still want Education fast for City States, which is just as good as God King when used appropriately. How do you use City States? Expand. Expand. Expand. Now do it faster. You should use Agriculture and farms to pump out settlers quickly, or to build more workers for more farms.

For reference, my recent build orders have been warrior, worker, warrior, settler, and then branching off depending on what I have and need. I still keep a high priority on settlers and at least 1 worker per every 2 cities (towards the end of my expansion that often becomes inadequate, so I like to steal a few). This is probably not the best order for someone still learning the game.

Financing your Empire
Basically, there are three reliable ways to keep your empire going. 1) Buildings (RoK temple, markets, courthouses, others for specialists), 2) Religion (RoK, shrines), and 3) Civics. If you're struggling with this, I would definitely go for RoK. Otherwise found another early religion for the shrine, don't overlook Festivals for markets (and carnivals for happiness), and use the appropriate government civic. While your empire is small, use God King combined with buildings, religion, and specialists. You may also want to build cottages around your capital and put some commerce into taxes. Eventually, your empire will be better off without God King (assuming you continue to expand). That's when you switch to City States, which does a good job of nearly eliminating city upkeep.

Barbarians and Defending your Empire
If you have Raging Barbs off, and you're playing on low difficulty, you should have no problem with a minimal defense. I do fine on Emperor/Immortal, normal barbs with 1-3 warriors per city. 1 will defend a city until it can build another. 2 will defend most cities that are close together once one of them gets a few promotions. 3 helps out your cities with several improvements or that border more wilderness. Obviously, if you're up against Barrows, Ruins, or the Dirge, you'll want more warriors, and you should use roads to help double up on defense.

Dealing with Skeletons/Lizardmen: They can't pillage, so stay on defensive terrain and defend. Orthus: You can take him out by attacking but you need experienced warriors (combat I, shock I, orc slaying I works great for low XP). If you don't have a few of those (and preferably a combat III, shock II to finish him off), stack your units in a city and let him attack first. I've never had issues stopping Orthus with warriors even though I keep a small military early on, so you should be fine with this.

For your initial warrior, I have mine spend a few turns scouting the local terrain and then returning to the capital, which always builds a warrior first. Unless I'm playing the Khazad or going for several animal captures, I don't build any scouts.

Eventually, you'll want to research Bronzeworking and make those warriors much better if you have copper. With copper, don't build axemen unless you have (serious) issues with unit maintenance. This is how I like to set up (most of) my empires, but based on free techs and your civ, you may want to go for Horseback Riding or Hunting instead. You will need T2 units relatively soon on higher difficulty levels or else you will be hurting when (not if) the AI attacks. On easier settings, this might not be as crucial, but early wars (after T2 units and there's no more good city sites nearby) can be really helpful if you're careful which cities you keep or raze.

Looking Ahead
If you've been doing something similar to this, you should have several cities and a fair military. You may have taken a few cities from a neighbor, but that's not crucial. Regardless, your next step if you want to pursue conquest/domination is to cover any remaining "basic" techs that you need (don't research Calendars if you have no corresponding resources), and then beeline a T3 unit and a fairly strong hero. You should be able to improve your empire significantly before the AI catches up (they may have more techs, but not as advanced) and even then your veteran units and hero(es) should still push on. From there, get a few more important economic techs and then go for T4 units and (if you can) another hero.

This also works well for an Altar victory if you get (a few of) Religious Discipline, Law III, Sacrifice the Weak, and then use several priests in several cities for faster GPs. Religious, Time, and ToM victories are generally much easier if you have a larger empire, so that works great too.

Tech Priorities
Agriculture then Mysticism is a solid basic strategy, but not the only strategy. After Agriculture for food and growth, you need to consider commerce (sages vs. cottages), happiness (religion, carnivals), production (how are your forests vs. open hills?), and military. What you need to research for that depends on what your surroundings. I would just add that don't research too many improvement techs if your workers have too much to do, but neither should you let them sit idly.

It's hard to say when you need military units, but I tend to grab them after I found an early religion. For RoK, Bronze Working is a quick jump, FoL gives you Hunters on the way (and you really shouldn't need archers unless you want them), and OO let's you drown your warriors (warning: The Drown do not provide military happiness).

Wonders
Don't stress over losing wonders. Here's a list of my favorite wonders: all of the religious wonders (not the shrines), Form of Titan (for Amurites or warmongering), Tower of Divination (free tech), Shrine of Sirona (if you have Spirit mana, you might as well), the Crown, and the Altar. Some others look great but I just haven't tried them out enough, so experiment if you can spare a city.

 

[Grey Fox]

For build orders, here is a tip I STRONGLY recommend;
If you got agriculture, or will get agriculture before you finish building a worker, start with a worker.

You WONT get a worker faster in any other way, and the farms will compensate for not growing in the beginning. I know it can be hard to believe, but its true.

Switch to Agricultural during the time the worker is BUILDING the first farm, NOT after, and NOT before, this will save you one turn. If you are spiritual, time it so you don't spoil any other switches with the 10 turns.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Thanks for the tips. From the sounds of it, Tier 2 units are of great importance, so I'll give them a bit more focus (although it relieves me to know that early warmongering isn't a large necessity). When I get back, I'll give a go at putting together these strategies. In particular, the one Grey Fox mentioned in regards to Worker-Agriculture intrigues me. Thanks for the in-depth replies.

 

[vale]

Don't overlook the value of City States which in my opinion is significantly better than God King in the early game. The hammer bonus is negligible when you are working a bunch of farms, and the gold bonus is not even close to comparable to the upkeep reduction that you will achieve with City States. If you use the power of Agriculture to rapidly expand (priority on irrigated land, especially riverside), the upkeep will quickly become very difficult to manage. A switch to City States will turn a ruined economy into a stable economy.

The tech that in turn changes that stable economy into a booming one is Code of Laws. Once you have enough farms in place, switch to Aristocracy and watch your tech rate zoom. Monarchy and Horses enables the Royal Guardsmen, who can cast a spell that gives +4 culture and 1 happy a turn allowing you to have mobile border poppers and are nice mobile defensive units to boot (3/6 IIRC).

Until the shadow change to Agriculture, I don't see why you would choose cottages over farms ever. Aristocracy, Agriculture, and Sanitation makes farms into a +3F,-1H,+2C tile improvement. Cottages cannot compete with that, even DaveMcW would agree. The nice thing about Sanitation as a relatively early tech is that Catapults are on the way to it and I find it very difficult to war without them in this game.

Unless there is no farmable land in my fat cross, I always start worker first while researching Agriculture.

One other minor tip: All the disciple units that can do mini-culture bombs are a fantastic part of a war stack to immediately end revolt periods of newly captured cities. In addition they can be quite powerful for helping you grab tiles peacefully if you read this.

 

[xanaqui42]

This forum unfortunately lacks a "Newbie Tips" thread, and so I've decided to just suck it up and admit, "Hello, I'm a newbie, help!" I posted previously in regards to the Infernals, but this thread is more of a "General help" request.

Welcome! There's a short newbie section in the wiki, but that's down right now (and frankly, for much of the items you're asking about, isn't very detailed). I guess I should note that I usually win at Emperor in single-player. I haven't played multiplayer.

Basically, after finally completing my first successful game on Warlord, I've been trying to make the move to Prince. For the most part I've been playing a bit hit and miss, using different Civs, different maps and different strategies, but for the most part, I find them slipping out in the middle of the game. Either I'm falling behind in techs and so forth or my strategy has gone astray in the long term. Generally, I've decided to simply ask for general ideas on how to play the game effectively.

In making this thread, I looked through the sticky first to read some of what had been posted. May as well learn before asking

The two I read thoroughly:

Analysis: The Opening Game Unraveled (Unser's Slightly out of date opening game analysis)
Getting Started, or, How to Cook for 10,000 Unexpected Houseguests (How to Survive raging barbarians in general)

After reading them, a couple of quick questions arose from me.

In "Analysis: The Opening Game Unraveled", there's a large obsession with cottages. Within the sticky thread it is called "slightly out of date", so I wished to check, should cottages be my top priority throughout the first 100 or so turns? And how much of a priority?

Since that was written, Agriculture went from a minor weak civic to one of the most powerful civics. It has made Farms far more viable; for that matter, around mid-game, one can argue that Cottages no longer have any purpose. I still think that they're very useful in the early game, even if I plan to get rid of them later.

In addition, the tech tree has changed a bit- Cottages used to not require Agriculture as a pre-requisite.

There was also a lot of mentions of cottages upon resources. Is this a wise course of action? Placing cottages instead of building the appropriate improvement to gain the resource benefits?

Until you can benefit from the resource directly, placing a Farm or Cottage on it is wise. Personally, I rarely do, simply because I later forget to replace it.

In "Getting Started, or, How to Cook for 10,000 Unexpected Houseguests", it emphasizes the importance of ignoring Workers in favour of Warriors, since you'll be unable to defend improvements. Does this hold true when playing with normal Barbs?

Much less so.

With those two out of the way, general question time.

Starting

Firstly, I'm having difficulty getting off to good starts. With this, I would like to ask some people's early starting strategies. Presently, my strategy has been like so:

1) Set up a city in turn one, built in a way that I'll get the best tiles possible of those visible within it's cross.
2) Set the Scout and Warrior off exploring.
3) Build a Warrior first.
3) As far as research priority goes, I've usually been aiming for Agriculture-Ancient Chants-Mysticism-Education, with the next set of research going to technologies related to my nearby resources.
4) Once the first Warrior pops, fortify it in the city and build another.
5) Once I have two Warriors, depending on the surrounding situation and technology progression, I either make a Scout, Settler or Elder Council (assuming I've reached Mysticism).
6) If I didn't go straight for a Settler, once whatever pops, my next priority is a Settler.
7) If I haven't got the Elder Council yet, I got for that and once it's done, make a Sage specilist. I usually run pacifism as well in an attempt to get a Great Sage ASAP, that science boosting building is delicious.
7) Send it off with one of the Warriors to my next city destination.
8-9-10) Lots of stuff in between, I've usually been keeping a system of two warriors per city and try to get Obelisks early in my 2nd city for quick expansion. I usually have a second worker as well. Normally I try to cottage by rivers, connect my cities together and link up resources.
11) With two warriors on stand-by, set off for my 3rd city.

From here, the route is varied. Normally I shoot straight for my preferred religion and then afterwards focus on Hunting-Archery.

Now, I'm sure this general early build set-up is flawed. A major thing I've noticed is problems with Barbs. My lone warrior guarding my settler doesn't always work, sometimes a wild animal will pick it off (damn those bears ) and occasionally, the barbs will have an evil lizardman. If I lose my early settler as well as its guarding warrior, I'm highly crippled in my opinion. As it stands, I'm figuring I should make an extra Warrior for escorting purposes.

My present, most typical one:
1) Set up my city on turn 1 if it isn't a bad spot. If it is bad (largely when surrounded mostly by water), take my initial Settler on a hike until I find a good spot.
2) Send the Scout (if there is one) exploring. Have the Warrior attack any Barrows or Ruins immediately visable (unless a Skeleton or Lizardman appears prior to the Warrior getting there). Otherwise, fortify the Warrior in the inital city.
3) Build a Scout. The earlier you start serious exploring, the better. Tribal Villages tend to go quickly, and Barbarians and Aniamals start to ramp up as well.
4) I go for Mysticism, then Education. After that, I either go for a Tier II unit (usually Hunting), or a pre-requisite for some of the more important resources. I then pick up a religion (or sometimes multiple religions). I then work towards some tier III unit (usually picking up a tier II on the way) while working on keeping my finances viable. Macemen are the most common Tier III unit I'll go after, but there are plenty of other options.
5) I next build Warriors until I get Mysticism. Once I have Agriculture, I start to have interest in a Worker; I usually get an Elder Council first. When I have a small number of cities, I'm very careful about the happy cap; going over for any extended period of time is a waste.
6) I usually build 2 warriors per Settler, and send them out in that 2:1 ratio.
7) Worker Strategy: Grasslands with a Water Source: Farm. Otherwise: Cottage. In any case, have a few Cottages. Roads for resources and linking up cities. Note that with Agriculture (civic) and a couple Farms, it's pretty easy to maintain a Sage.
8) My next 3 cities (I typically have around 4 total cities prior to running into expansion problems) typically build Warriors until they have at least 2 (in case some died on the way), and Elder Council. Unless there's direct cultural pressure against one, I ignore Obelisk, and wait for my religion to expand cultural boundaries. Note that if one of my secondary cities is food-plentiful, I'll often start building Settlers out of it instead of my primary city (and often use my primary city as a source of Warriors.
9) I typically pause expansion once I'm down to a 60-70% tech rate. At that point, I want to look at starting a war (which can easily over-fund your civilization), or concentrating more on my economy.

Now, my main questions. Priorities:

Should I really try to get my city up in turn one? Would it be wiser to scout with my settler the first couple of turns for a better starting position if I don’t have on I consider ideal?

Usually, yes. Starting locations are typically very resource-rich (they are deliberately seeded to be good). However, if it doesn't fit with your strategy, or it's a lousy spot, move the settler. A few turns moving are nothing in comparison to a lousy start.

How much of a priority should Mysticism and God King be? ASAP? After Education and a Worker?

At minimum, I'd either go for Mysticism or Education. I like both, and find that they complement each other pretty well.

How much of a priority should Hunting and Archery be? I personally leave them for a while, because of the fact I need to make an extra building to pop the units related to them. However, I’ve been starting to notice that I need more powerful units, and I’m starting to think maybe this should be a larger priority.

I don't think that Archery has much use, unless you're planning to go down the Archery tree later (for, say, the Amurites' Firebows or the Ljosalfar Archery units). Hunting depends on your situation - if you're under pressure, consider getting it earlier. If you can barely find your opponents, and your scouts are thriving, you may decide to never get it.

Military questions? How many Warriors per city? Extra Warriors? Should I go exploring around my borders with my Warriors to pick up some cheap upgrades from the wolves and lions?

2; more if you're on Raging Barbarians, at war, etc. I often leave only 1 in my initial city, but that's a calculated risk. Sending Warriors out to get promotions is a great idea- follow that up with taking out a civilization with those promoted warriors (I rarely do this, but it's quite possible).

Elder Council and Sage? Am I making this too much or a priority. Should I be making it a priority at all? I like it personally, I lose one population worth of productivity but I find the +50% from the science building really helpful and like to get it ASAP, but if it's an inefficient idea, it can easily be dropped.

I like it, particularly with Agriculture and a couple Farms. I typically drop the Sage once I'm happy with the number of Great Sages I've created.

Cottages? I asked it earlier but I’ll mention it again. Should I go nuts cottage spamming ASAP?

I like Cottages, but Farms with Agriculture are very powerful. By Mid-game, they'll likely be stronger than Cottages, particularly on Grasslands.

Cities

Now, this is where I have real problems. Nine times out of ten, once I get my third city up, that’s it. I have no more optimal city plots left to fill, so my future cities are either in “meh” positions or need to be taken from a neighbour (and I’m not too good at early warmongering). How should I prioritise my city spreading? Should I be doing it slow and precise, or should I rush for the best positions early, regardless of the nasty maintenance costs?

I like lots of cities, so I'll usually take "meh" positions when the really good ones are taken up. Note that converting to City States can help a lot with Maintenance, should you try for early high expansion. I usually aim for 70% science, which gives me a good idea of what my priorities should be(below = economy; above = spread).

Now, assuming I don’t pick up the spots if want, should I go for an early warmonger? I dislike doing this unless I have an aggressive civ. To me, it seems like all I’m doing is helping all the other civs. If I succeed in taking their city, it costs me a lot of warriors. If I don’t, well, that’s a lot of wasted hammers. Personally, I prefer to let it wait slightly, at least until I have access to Axemen and preferably when I have a Hero. Still, I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on how important early warmongering is.

I rarely warmonger early on, but it apparently can be a very effective strategy. The main trick is to use Barbarians and/or Animals to level up several Warriors so that your opponents will offer little real opposition to them. Also note that Warriors (particularly with Copper and a Forge for Bronze Weapons) are extremely production efficient (and pretty maintenance inefficient).

Wonders

Should I bother? I’ve noticed the AI always seems to snatch up the “Free Life Mana” wonder very quickly, so I was wondering if Wonders should be a priority at all? I personally don’t go for them, I usually don’t have the time, but again, I want to hear other people’s opinions.

It depends on the Wonder. Pact of the Nilhorn is one of the few early wonders that I'll occasionally go out of my way to obtain. Most of the others are nice; if I have the Technology and the production available without cutting into my other goals much, I build them. Otherwise, I don't.

Dealing with Barbarians?

What if Skeletons start streaming in my direction, or Orthus decides he feels like visiting *note: pillaging* my towns. How do I handle this? Obviously, I usually start spamming as many warriors as possible, but other things I should be doing? Should I hide all my warriors in my city or should I slot them on top of my resources? Should I try and attack or just let them run their course? (I have better combat odds defending but I lose more turns waiting for them to attack and risk losing my worker improvements, as well as turns I could‘ve spent making improvements).

Skeletons: 2 Warriors in a City or Fortified in a Forest/Jungle will take them out pretty nicely.

Orthus: Small stack of Warriors. In this case, I'll happily remove all my defending units from cities to rush towards him - it takes 3-5 Warriors, typically, but the payoff (Orthus's Axe + lots of XP) is awesome. A warrior with that alone can often take out a civilization with support.

Now, although I do have some problems with middle-game, I feel questions related to that would be civ-specific, so I’ll leave them out of it. Personally, I feel I have more problems starting than handling the middle.

Whether it helps or not, I generally like to play Small or Standard maps with the default amount of civs + 2. The map I choose is usually Oasis, Great Plains, Highlands or Pangaea. My play style is more of a builder. Normally, I aim to make a solid economy before shooting for an army, so my army mostly consists of 3-4 units defending my cities and maybe one or two others. I like going for Fire Mages prior to invasions, I find Fire Balls and Meteors priceless when it comes to invasion.

Note that if you want to wipe the AI from the map, use any map that needs a navy. The AI can't use a navy well at all, and it's even harder to do in FfH II than Vanilla.

I like Fireball, too, but I'll note that it usually isn't essential. I often can get combat odds high enough (or use enough expendable units) that the city defense doesn't matter much. Also, Catapults and Pact of Nilhorn are also useful for taking down City Defenses, as are Firebows (for the Amurites).

Finally, note that a large army can also be a deterrent to being attacked, should that be an issue.

I apologise for the essay-ish length of this, but I appreciate feedback. As well as critiquing how I start things, I’d like to see some “step-by-step” ideas of how you guys start. Ultimately, I hope to move from being stuck on Prince mode and off higher, preferably to one day being able to respectably play in Multiplayer.

[I’ll also be on holiday until Sunday, so if it seems like I’m ignoring the posts, I’m not. When I get back, I will be reading the replies with interest and appreciation. Hopefully, when I get back I can fire up a game and finally win a game on Prince ]

 

[xanaqui42]

Until the shadow change to Agriculture, I don't see why you would choose cottages over farms ever. Aristocracy, Agriculture, and Sanitation makes farms into a +3F,-1H,+2C tile improvement. Cottages cannot compete with that, even DaveMcW would agree. The nice thing about Sanitation as a relatively early tech is that Catapults are on the way to it and I find it very difficult to war without them in this game.

I'd tend to agree with all of this except for your first sentence. Until you have
Aristocracy (Civic), Agriculture (Civic), and Sanitation (Technology), or if, for some reason, you choose not to go for the Aristocracy or Agriculture civics, (or, in particular, if the plot isn't irrigated) Cottages look better (or at least less bad). Note, however, that even with neither of the civics, Farms still look pretty good with Sanitation, Scholarship (Civic) and Caste System (Civic) (+1 Food/Tile, +2 Science and +2 Culture per specialist); these also lessen the value of Aristocracy if you can keep the additional people happy. Personally, I almost always go for Agriculture; Aristocracy is far less common.

 

[vale]

Later in the game when Scholarship is available, running a bunch of scientists is indeed attractive and it is a good idea to drop Aristocracy then, but Code of Laws is a tech that can be achieved very early to give you something to do with your huge excesses of food. An early specialist economy is hard to get going since there just aren't enough buildings that enable specialists. Even pre-sanitation, an Aristocracy and Agriculture powered plains farm is producing 3 food and 2 commerce (3 if financial or riverside, 4 if both), which is pretty nice. I like a switch to Aristocracy as soon as reasonable even before Sanitation.

Early city placements have to be prioritized for fresh water because of the power of farms. Workers that can't build farms in one city should be considering moving to another city to build farms there, working on connecting up the trade network, building roads to potential city cites or victims. Cottages I believe are low on the list of priorities there.

Another plus about Sanitation for more food that I forgot to mention is that farms spreading irrigation is on the way with Catapults (Construction) and clearing jungles is enabled with Sanitation itself.

 

[daladinn]

let me make this suggestion....

1 - pick a civ that you like the flavor of and learn alot of the nuances.

2 - ask about civ specific tactics and strats.

the reason i say this , there is not a single solid strat for any stage of the game that applies to all of the civs or even to many of the starts that are offered to you.

also , many civs have multiple different trait lines that they can choose to excell at. example
khazad are seen as the highly militant group and thier mellee line is solid. however the best strats that i use never touch the mellee line and stick to recon and financial.

gl and talk to ya again soon , i hope

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I appreciate the replies, and I think I have an idea set in my mind on how I'm going to approach my next game. It seems that it's agreed upon that I should start to pick a civilisation to specialise in, so I think I'll stick with the Calabim. Flauros gives me a "builder-ish" leader option whilst Alexis gives me more of an offensive option, and I quite like Vampirism. They also seem nicely suited to farms, which seem to be highly supported here

Hopefully I'll come back with up-beat news.

Edit: Shame, they don't get the Elder Council >.<

 

[Grey Fox]

Yeah you have to get a Library for your first sage(s), with calabim.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Well, got off to a start (Flauros-Calabim), although what I felt was a somewhat unsatisfactory start. My early scout got mauled by a Bear and the one that followed was mauled by a hill giant. Fortunately, I had explored most of my surrounding area and I had Cardith Lorda as my nearest neighbour. I made an early burst to steal the good spots between me and him, which I did successfully. As far as techs are concerned, I picked up a couple of freebies (Agri and Craft) and went Mining > Chants > Education > Mystism > Bronze Working > Mason > Constr and on my way to Sanitation now. After that I'll shoot for Aristocracy.

The main back point was when Orthus came and stole one of my cities, taking out my 4 Bloodpet garrison (he got a promotion on my 3rd Bloodpet which pretty much guarantied me losing Nubia). I'm not sure how to approach this now. Should I put up a military force of Moroi-Bloodpets to take back my city or should I let it sit?

I have an early source of copper outside my borders (going off to colonise it now with my next settler), so, with some Moroi and Bloodpets I have a shot (I think). Over all, I'm going to go for an attack on him, so by the time answers come it'll be a bit too late, but it can be some hindsight learning for me at least.

Edit: Well, got my city back but Orthus did a runner. Quite frustrating, after losing 4 Bloodpets and several production turns I at least wanted his Axe and XP for consolation

Edit2: urgh. "Orthus Axe has changed hands". I think one of Cardith Lorda's guys nabbed it as well. (Further Edit) Went to war with the Axe taker and stole it off him.

Edit3: One problem I'm noticing with all these farms is that I have real happiness and health problems. I start with Law Mana so when Vampirism comes along I'll hopefully be able to get a few Law Mages in place to help sort Happiness, but Health is a real problem (further increased by Breeding Pits and Public Baths). I've founded OO and got up a Tower of Complacency at my fastest expanding city (which will become my future Feasting city) but RoK is widespread in my game, so I'll be doing my best to spread it. I can already see it affecting my diplomatic relations. (Further Edit) Damn. All my Open Borders agreements got shutdown. I've also had my first war declaration, although he's far away enough for me to feel comfortable enough to handle it. But everyone except for me follows RoK.

 

[largedarryl]

For your calabim game, I would start beelining to aristocracy (i think that's for vampires). Once you have vampires, you should be running the agricultural civic and have alot of farms. You actually shouldn't be very worried about health and happiness in your cities, mainly becuase you'll eat the complainers eventually. Basically an army of vampires is almost unbeatable (even more deadly if you have a ton of cheap bloodpets to come along).

With vampires there isn't a single civ that can stand up against you. All you really need are about 6 vampires. Feast them to as many xp as you can (getting them to about level 11 is good, ~100xp). Then each of these vampires should have death I, and promote 1 or 2 with death II. Every one should have Combat V. Make 1 or 2 with CRIII. Add one vampire in ther with body II is helpful (regeneration). Depending on who you're fighting (elf, dwarf, etc.) select the appropriate promotion as well. Basically you have a stack of units that have 2 movement (haste spell) and can easily have 180&#37; of attack bonuses with as much as 300%. Even the use of 50% empowered skeletons make good (free) fodder to weaken a cities units. Using the contagion spell can weaken units defending a city as well. The use of bloodpets in the stack cannot be looked down upon either, basically giving your vampires as many attacks as you can per turn is a help to bring down cities with large amounts of defenders.

 

[daladinn]

typically with calabim you have 2 initial choices, well, kinds 3.

1 - flauros - with flauros rush for aristocracy.then head for vampires.

2 - alexis - a bit more complicated. you need to decide which religion your going to shoot for since it has a very major impact on what your doing and how.
2a - OO , here your putting all your bread into 1 basket. but its a damn good basket. rush for OO making as many blood pets as you can on the way. then as soon as you get OO build drown and severous. decide on your super city where the only requirement is insane amounts of food. then head for either vampires or losha (i prefer losha ... followed by brujah). the sub part of this is deciding which great peopel your pushing for, your going to want to join all of them to your super city (i have found merchants to be best). then ... well ...
2b , ashen veil - this is where you learn what true power really can be. everyone says the OO for calabim , they are mistaken. rush for KOTE , and pop a great prophet or 2 for philosophy and way of the wicked. then learn veil. pop another prophet for priesthood and learn the tech for losha. then double back and create hyborem. with the lowered food requirement and the bonus research its strong. ritualist become insane when given vamparism. staying purely divine you will have losha , 3 high priests , 3 inquistors , and iirc 3 eidolons. force hyborem into wars with you and lay waste to everything. then as the counter grows make your beast.

they key early game is MASSIVE amounts of blood pets. whatever lives will get eaten later.

the key mid game is diseased corpses

they key end game is highpriests.

IIRC , and this could have changed ... when a bloodpet (and only a bloodpet) is eaten it removes the casted promotion.

 

[Grey Fox]

IIRC , and this could have changed ... when a bloodpet (and only a bloodpet) is eaten it removes the casted promotion.

I'm not sure that is in. But eating a bloodpet allows you to continue attacking, and you can attack as many times as you eat bloodpets. Which can be crucial to taking a city with good infrastructure.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

Well, so far I've started massing together Vampires. I've also picked up Losha and Hemah and have Saveros.

Early war caused some problems. I lost my "Feast" city temporarily, regained it fairly quickly thankfully. Lost several workers to Hunters and a lot of improvements were dropped by pillaging, but once I got some Royal Guards together and popped Saveros, I got things under control.

So far I'm starting to have some second thoughts about the Calabim. Being so Vampire reliant is kind of annoying me, I kind of like mixing it up as far as my units are concerned. Right now I've just pumped out a few Vampires, Saveros and Losha, a few Mobility I Bloodpets for food, Catapults and a few Stygian Guards to protect them. Just focusing so strongly on Vampires alone just seems a little...depressing. I dunno, I'll see how it goes. Maybe once I see their power I'll fall in love with them or something.

** Prepares to make Cardith Lorda pay for his earlier betrayal, grr **

 

[jwin]

Keep in mind the gift vampirism ability. You can get some pretty potent priests or spellcasters with it. You can also give it to your religious heros.

 

[daladinn]

as to the above about the casted promo ... i tested, your correct it does nto work that way

simple thoughts you may have forgotten

- you can gift vampirism to ANY unit level 6 or higher

- you can gift vamparism to any MOROI (sp) 4 or higher

- losha gains teh IMMORTAL promotion after killing a living unit in battle

- if you ahve losha you are probably 1-2 techs away from the dreaded BRUJAH

- since you have hemah you should by now have him in the water with a stack of water walking stygian gaurds and be casting tsunami on any costal city.

- if hemah has law 3 , you can have a 2nd super city

- if hemah has ..... anything at 3 ... change your tactics accordingly , he is a damn god.

- you have made him a vampire right?

- if you build the soulforge you can pop vampires to instantly finish any wonder you want

- with 2 techs for high priests you can summon kraken or make flesh golems ... think of all the fun

- exploitation of the soul forge , losha , and flesh golems is entirely up to your imagination.

 

[largedarryl]

The big thing about the calibam is the gift vamparism ability. After any living unit gets to level 6, you should be able to get that unit to level 10 the next turn. Basically in my game, I only had about 15 units doing all my fighting.

In my current game, I figured I would use 1 Brujah to fight a few a few cities (trying to get the ai to waste production and time). I didn't think my level 11 Brujah was that strong, but he single handedly conquered 2 cities (each with 2-3 longbowmen and 1 crossbowmen).

As was mentioned daliadinn, you should spend the entire early game building bloodpets, if I would have done that I could have conquered my neighbours in less than half the time.

I found in my Calabim game that you are pretty weak in the beginning. If you can hold on long enough to get Losha, or vampires, you are going to become almost unstoppable. Even using SoFW, I couldn't produce enough people to feed my inquisitors, archmages, conjurrers and high priests. Since they will be at level 6 when they upgrade, they will be given vampirism and then upgrade to as high a level as possible.

As I think about it, you could easily conquer an entire civ with just Losha and a bunch of blood pets.