[NFP] Start to midgame help, Emperor and up

[EditorRex]

Back in Vanilla days, I was generally winning on Emperor about half the time, but due to life I'd become a much more casual player in recent years. Even as I added each of the upgrades through NFP, I was generally fooling around on Prince level. I started playing much more seriously and frequently again a few months ago (also got a newer PC on which it only crashes on about 1% of end turns and reloads quickly if it does) and have gotten to the point where I nearly always win on King.

Now, I'm trying to make the transition to Emperor. I've had one Diplomacy win on Emperor with RFP, but generally find myself lagging behind on science by the Renaissance and having pretty lousy games. It's obvious to me that I need to rethink the start-to-middle game strategy that worked for me on earlier versions or easier levels and adopt a new approach. I've read some of the guides posted here with answers to similar questions, but experimenting a little, I'm clearly missing something.

I generally enjoy playing on Continents, Standard Speed, Large map, with Barbarian Clans and Corporations, but everything else is default. I nearly always play as Rome, so I ignore monuments and roads.
My past strategy has been Scout-Scout-Sling-Sling-Sling-Builder-Settler-Holy Site-Settler, taking Magnus in my capital and avoiding the population loss usually after the first settler. My second city was usually Caravan-Science District-Library. I stressed building near rivers and prioritized watermill, baths and dams. Much else was map-dependent, and I was winning all types of victories, but Culture and Domination most often.

Based on other tips I've read, I've experimented a bit on Emperor with a sling-sling-settler-settler start, with plans to prioritize the Government District and settlement with free builders. I've started exploring less, to avoid finding people too early and causing friction. (Although, I generally didn't find that to be a problem on most maps previously.) But I haven't been thrilled with the results, so I'm either doing this wrong or skipping some important steps.

-- If I go Sling-Sling-Settler-Settler, how much should I explore to get huts and a chance to meet CS first?
-- I've had problems with horse barbs on the first couple of these starts, but maybe that's just bad map luck. Any specific recommendations for coping with them on this type of start?
-- I generally research AH, Pot, Mine, and then map-dependent, but often archery. Does that order seem good?
-- On the Civ tree, I used to go FT, Craft, Mystic and then map-dependent but pushing for Philosophy. It's been recommended to prioritize EE over Craft, so I've started doing that. What about the first set of government cards? Do Discipline and Urban Planning still make sense if I'm not going for a religion? I sometimes switch in Colonization if the timing is right while I'm building settlers. But any other early-game recommendations?
-- It seems like there's little point in going for a religion unless there are special circumstances, like a suzerain faith bonus or religious great wonder adjacency. (Again, playing specifically as Rome.)
-- Assuming a normal age for Classical and Medieval, I usually go for extra score from Tech boosts and then play to get as many of those as possible before the next era starts. I've had a few (King) games where I decided to embrace a dark age at the start of Medieval (historical realism for Rome, you know?) and successfully popped the Heroic Age when the Renaissance started. Wondering if others think that's worthwhile on higher levels, Emperor and up. I would imagine it may depend on the map as to how much the loyalty penalty will hurt you.

Would welcome guidance to these and any other issues that come to mind.

 

[GalleySlave]

Emperor is my default difficulty level. I usually open scout-slinger-settler-slinger-settler, though sometimes I might go for something else before the 2nd settler, depending on circumstances: if I'm having barb issues I might build a warrior, if I have a spot for a good holy site or campus I might throw that down, etc. My 2nd city usually starts by building a slinger, and then it depends on circumstances. I usually go for 4 cities by the end of the Ancient, then do a big settler push with Colonization in the Classical.

For science research, Animal Husbandry is usually my first choice, but if there's a resource that takes a mine/quarry in the capital's 1st or 2nd ring I'll do Mining first, if I have a wonder start I might even go Astrology first or second. I usually won't research Archery until I have 3 slingers built, so I can upgrade them to Archers for the Machinery boost, rather than having to hard-build archers. Once I'm past the non-boostable techs I usually research whatever I've boosted, or expect to boost soon.

For civics research, I generally just follow the boosts, if I can get them. The boost for Early Empire is fairly easy to get, the others on the path to Political Phil. are more luck/map-dependent. All other things being equal I'd prefer to get Foreign Trade before Craftmanship.

I usually put Pingala in the capital as my first Governor. I prefer to put the Gov't Plaza in my #2 or 3 city, whichever has more chops, and send Magnus there. I guess if you're always playing Rome you're getting enough extra culture that you can get by without Pingala as the 1st Gov, but for most civs any source of early culture is exceedingly precious.

As for early policy cards: Discipline is pretty clearly superior to Survey (I suppose the Cree might prefer Survey). Because a lot of pantheons are trash, and many others are heavily map-dependent, I like to get my pantheon as soon as possible so I'm not stuck with a more or less useless one for the map I'm on. So I'll run God-King (which doesn't do anything to help you get a religion per se, just a pantheon) until I have a pantheon and then switch to Urban Planning, unless I've gotten lucky and found a relic or had some first meets with a religious CS or two.

I usually found a religion, unless I'm playing a straight-up domination game. You don't need a religion for most victory types, but Monumentality Golden Ages are so powerful that it's hard to pass up the opportunity to make use of them, which requires at least moderate faith income. And if you're going for culture victory, Rock Bands and Naturalists can only be bought with faith (the rationale for this is beyond me, but whatever); while neither of these are absolutely essential, they do speed things along.

I do whatever I have to do to get at least one Golden Age in the Classical or Medieval; preferably both, of course. Buy a galley I don't really need, suze a CS I don't care about....manipulating Era Score is admittedly very gamey, but the rewards of the M'mtality Golden Age are too good for me to able to resist. Going Dark Classical--> Heroic Medieval can be strong if you can manage it, but because I like to explore early I usually can't stay below the Normal threshhold going into the Classical.

Are you using any mods? In unmodded form, the game has a bug that causes the AIs to go mad for science, but there are some mods that fix it (I use 'Real Strategy'). The AI is still bad at the game, but at least it's bad in a less monomaniacal fashion.

 

[incroc]

How many cities do you end up with?

Do you chop all the forest/jungle in your cities to speed up development?

 

[GalleySlave]

How many cities do you end up with?

Do you chop all the forest/jungle in your cities to speed up development?

I usually end up with 10-14 cities (in a peaceful game on a standard-sized map).

I do some chopping in the early and early mid game - the Ancestral Hall, settlers, key wonders - but by midgame I tend to run out of micromanagement bandwith and just throw lumber mills on whatever I haven't chopped by then. I will sometimes do a bit of midgame touring with Magnus to chop in districts in later-founded cities, but I'm not as rigorous about it as some.

 

[incroc]

I usually end up with 10-14 cities (in a peaceful game on a standard-sized map).

I do some chopping in the early and early mid game - the Ancestral Hall, settlers, key wonders - but by midgame I tend to run out of micromanagement bandwith and just throw lumber mills on whatever I haven't chopped by then. I will sometimes do a bit of midgame touring with Magnus to chop in districts in later-founded cities, but I'm not as rigorous about it as some.

>10 cities is enough to win and chopping is most important early.

Maybe you settle a bit too late? I tend to chop out settlers or faith buy as much as possible after I get Ancestral Hall until I run out of space. It depends on the RNG, but having 10 cities settled somewhere between turn 80 and turn 120 is doable most of the games.

Are you missing out on a lot of eurekas? With >10 cities that have campus + library + university e.g. the science ought to be more than good enough to keep up with the emperor AI.

 

[GalleySlave]

>10 cities is enough to win and chopping is most important early.

Maybe you settle a bit too late? I tend to chop out settlers or faith buy as much as possible after I get Ancestral Hall until I run out of space. It depends on the RNG, but having 10 cities settled somewhere between turn 80 and turn 120 is doable most of the games.

Are you missing out on a lot of eurekas? With >10 cities that have campus + library + university e.g. the science ought to be more than good enough to keep up with the emperor AI.

Apologies for any confusion, @incroc; in my early morning fog I thought you were the OP asking follow-up questions, didn't realize you were asking the OP a question yourself.

 

[incroc]

Apologies for any confusion, @incroc; in my early morning fog I thought you were the OP asking follow-up questions, didn't realize you were asking the OP a question yourself.

That's pretty funny, especially since I assumed you were the OP as well when you replied (didn't read the nicks)

 

[EditorRex]

Because a lot of pantheons are trash, and many others are heavily map-dependent, I like to get my pantheon as soon as possible so I'm not stuck with a more or less useless one for the map I'm on. So I'll run God-King (which doesn't do anything to help you get a religion per se, just a pantheon) until I have a pantheon and then switch to Urban Planning, unless I've gotten lucky and found a relic or had some first meets with a religious CS or two.

Just clarifying my comments earlier to which you were responding on this. The connection is that getting a Pantheon gives you the boost to get Mysticism, which let's you run Inspiration once you get Philosophy, and thus get your Great Prophet if you haven't done so yet. I also like to take Divine Spark as my Pantheon, so potentially that can help generate the Great Prophet as well. Also, if you end up having to buy the Great Prophet with Faith, running God-King generates early Faith. And that it generates gold is not bad either. I've actually thought about delaying Theology on some games where I got a Pantheon but missed out on religion, so I could keep running God-King for a while if nothing else was very useful at the time.

 

[EditorRex]

Are you using any mods? In unmodded form, the game has a bug that causes the AIs to go mad for science, but there are some mods that fix it (I use 'Real Strategy'). The AI is still bad at the game, but at least it's bad in a less monomaniacal fashion.

Is this an actual bug or just an inconvenience? If it's a bug, why hasn't it been patched? But no, I don't play mods.

 

[EditorRex]

How many cities do you end up with?

Do you chop all the forest/jungle in your cities to speed up development?

# of cities for me depends very much on the map and what type of victory I'm going for. Generally, I try to max out the number of cities in my starting area. I'd like to have at least 10, but I've had a number of otherwise good games in which I'm isolated and can't get more than maybe 6 cities up before Cartography. If I start capturing opponents' cities early, then I may have a lot more cities.

I see the chopping strategy discussed a lot, and no, I don't do this. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how everyone does this. Are you buying builders and then converting them to hammers, basically? It seems like this is too costly early game, but I haven't done the math.

 

[incroc]

# of cities for me depends very much on the map and what type of victory I'm going for. Generally, I try to max out the number of cities in my starting area. I'd like to have at least 10, but I've had a number of otherwise good games in which I'm isolated and can't get more than maybe 6 cities up before Cartography. If I start capturing opponents' cities early, then I may have a lot more cities.

I see the chopping strategy discussed a lot, and no, I don't do this. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how everyone does this. Are you buying builders and then converting them to hammers, basically? It seems like this is too costly early game, but I haven't done the math.

Chopping accelerates the game. If you build ancestral hall you get a free builder in your new city, which is worth 3/4/5/6 chops (depending on feudalism, pyramids). Those chops gives you a district and other infrastructure up asap in your new city, helping it to thrive.

I also chop earlier to get settlers out, everything should be fast early. Typically the value of a chop outweighs the benefit of keeping the yield of the resource. That's usually true, even more so with Magnus.

My first 1-2 builders tend to improve tiles, the next 10 tends to prioritize chopping to speed everything up. Although they still make sure I have enough improved tiles to work.

The reason that the math is such in favor of chopping is the heavy discounting. Stuff now is worth much more than stuff in 5 or 10 turns. Frontload as much as possible to reinvest those resources in culture, science, faith, gold or units and you get even more later.

Another example of this is that it's often better to take a loan and buy a builder today than save gold for 5-10 turns to buy a builder then.

 

[GalleySlave]

Is this an actual bug or just an inconvenience? If it's a bug, why hasn't it been patched? But no, I don't play mods.

An actual bug, evidently the result of an extra '0' in the code. See this thread for details. As to why it hasn't been patched...you'd have to ask Firaxis.

 

[EditorRex]

Chopping accelerates the game. If you build ancestral hall you get a free builder in your new city, which is worth 3/4/5/6 chops (depending on feudalism, pyramids). Those chops gives you a district and other infrastructure up asap in your new city, helping it to thrive.

I also chop earlier to get settlers out, everything should be fast early. Typically the value of a chop outweighs the benefit of keeping the yield of the resource. That's usually true, even more so with Magnus.

My first 1-2 builders tend to improve tiles, the next 10 tends to prioritize chopping to speed everything up. Although they still make sure I have enough improved tiles to work.

The reason that the math is such in favor of chopping is the heavy discounting. Stuff now is worth much more than stuff in 5 or 10 turns. Frontload as much as possible to reinvest those resources in culture, science, faith, gold or units and you get even more later.

Another example of this is that it's often better to take a loan and buy a builder today than save gold for 5-10 turns to buy a builder then.

I guess I'm confused about what you mean by "early." I get the value of chopping as a strategy by the time you are running ancestral hall and especially with Feudalism. But when exactly do you start prioritizing your builder charges to do this? I've typically been slow to produce/purchase builders beyond the first one. I might build a second or get one from a goody hut, maybe from a rival or the barbs. But typically, I don't create many until I start getting them from Ancestral Hall. How are builders figuring into your build order, or are you purchasing them early?

If I try to adopt this strategy from the beginning of the game, are we saying use your first builder or two to get the initial chops needed for eurekas (3 improvements, farmed resource, mined resource, quarry, pasture, 2x sea resource) and then focus on chopping except as new eurekas come up (iron mine, 6 farms for Feudalism, 3 mines for apprenticeship, niter mine, coal mine, oil well, aluminum mine, uranium mine. I might be forgetting something)?

 

[incroc]

I guess I'm confused about what you mean by "early." I get the value of chopping as a strategy by the time you are running ancestral hall and especially with Feudalism. But when exactly do you start prioritizing your builder charges to do this? I've typically been slow to produce/purchase builders beyond the first one. I might build a second or get one from a goody hut, maybe from a rival or the barbs. But typically, I don't create many until I start getting them from Ancestral Hall. How are builders figuring into your build order, or are you purchasing them early?

If I try to adopt this strategy from the beginning of the game, are we saying use your first builder or two to get the initial chops needed for eurekas (3 improvements, farmed resource, mined resource, quarry, pasture, 2x sea resource) and then focus on chopping except as new eurekas come up (iron mine, 6 farms for Feudalism, 3 mines for apprenticeship, niter mine, coal mine, oil well, aluminum mine, uranium mine. I might be forgetting something)?

If I play peaceful, I tend to have a builder ready to chop out ancestral hall the turn I finish political philosophy. So somewhere like turn 60 on average maybe. That's usually my 3rd or even 4th builder, I make a lot of them.
I can count next time I play and post the number here.

That's how I play at least, make sure there's enough builders to comfortably get all eureka/inspiration, chop/harvest everything and ensure every population works an improved tile.

In games where I play like you described in the beginning, building unit - unit - settler - settler, my 2nd and 3rd city definitely makes a builder each before starting on e.g. districts (but I do place them). But it depends a bit on early aggression, if you attack or get attacked units >> builders.

If the game is peaceful I buy builder whenever I have the gold, unless I have a lot of gold to buy settler. I buy a building as an exception only. I buy mainly units if there's war. I don't mind taking out a 50 or 100 gold loan if I really could use a builder this turn.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I play Rome sometimes. Nice civilization. Fast early government. On the deity level, I have early game success with a simple strategy. It should work on king.

Science, I go to archery. Civic, I go to Early Empire. These are the main strategy and when I specify later what I research next, it is the main strategy, but if mining or masonry or anything else makes sense then I insert it when it makes sense to do so.

I usually produce a second warrior but a sling could get you a early boost to archery. Either works. My third military unit is usually a slinger. I use the warriors to scout for my next city locations. By the time my slinger is done usually a barb camp is spawned so the slinger is centralized, instead of scouting to one side. I can then bring the closest warrior and the slinger. I coax the spear out of the camp after getting the warrior next to the camp. When the spear exits, warrior takes camp. Usually works.

For an average start with decent food and production. As soon as I grow to pop 2, depending on the circumstances, I interrupt production of my beginning military units and start a settler. The sooner the better but I make sure I have two warriors at least. I might delay the settler if there is imminent war with a Civ, but it is undesirable.

With my starting warriors, I have scouted close and have been disciplined not to go too far away searching for huts. King level might be more forgiving but I have lost games to other Civs or been hampered by barb uprisings because my units were too scattered.

I favor scouting water sources and mountains for cities locations and science districts. You have to make do, so sometimes it is reef and jungle.

By the time you have city 2, you usually have archers or are close. Decision has to be made about district 1. Whether it be campus, holy site, or encampment. They all have their advantages but let’s assume peaceful conditions and non religious goals. I research pottery to writing.

When my gold reaches 120 on standard speed, I buy a scout. By then my military needs to worry about security and helping settle new cities.

City 2 starts a garrison archer, right away and I upgrade my slinger asap. City 1 will produce another settler as soon as it seems safe otherwise I will produce warriors if I have an early rival. Warriors are free and if you don’t upgrade them you can find uses for them, like fog busting, for a long time. I will produce archers or any units if the conditions warrant it though.

Once Early Empire is researched, I change policy to colonization +50% settler production. I take Pingala who will help me keep up my advancement. When city 2 finishes its garrison archer, it starts a settler. City 3 follows suit. First it build its garrison and then it changes to settler production. Each new city follows suit.

After Early Empire, I go to Craftsmanship and State workforce. Once Craftsmanship is finished I change policy to Agoge +50% to melee anticav and ranged production. This will speed up my production of garrisons. Rome is now producing military garrisons and settlers as quickly as possible.

There are different ways to get builders. You can buy them if you have been able to work tiles with gold. You can interrupt or slow settler production and put in the IIkum +30% to builders and produce a round of builders across the empire or in select cities. You can task a specific city. Works well with Llang +1 builder charge if you make a strategy to include him.

Once I get to State Workforce Pingala usually takes researcher. With Rome, the free monuments will be speeding up the government so Pingala will speed up technology advancement.

Once you have unlocked the campus, you maybe elect to build your first one in your capital but it is preferable for it to be in the same city as Pingala because he gives +15% to science and culture yields. Works on everything I think, tile yields, campus and buildings, trade routes, etc.

I keep in mind the bath district when settling. Ideally, every city should have one. They provide an amenity to the city which helps Rome a lot because luxury amenities only cover 4 cities. I try to settle for new luxuries but also for duplicates too.

That is the basic strategy which has to be adapted to the game. Rome is great at expanding. You just need to figure out the right time to build your campuses and your commercial/harbors for money. You might halt expansion and produce a round of builders to improve Empire production and then build districts across the empire. You might expand through the ancient and classical age and take monumentality in the medieval to get era score from empire wide district construction. With that strategy you might only build a few districts in the first two eras to help keep your advancement up or perhaps you build the government plaza and ancestral hall asap to get the free builders.

How many encampments do you need? One that will eventually have a military academy? Or will you build many? If you just want to hold your land and race to space, you might not need any.

What is the best strategy for districts. I am still learning that but this expansion strategy seems to work well on deity but it needs more testing.

Remember, you need to build the largest Empire the world has ever seen. Cast your net wide.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I would try this for a district strategy.

In the ancient and classical, only build what districts and builders that are necessary. Try to expand and garrison your empire. In the medieval era get feudalism and produce advanced builders and focus on science and commerce hubs/lharbors. In the renaissance the advantage of your free monuments has probably tapered off so focus on entertainment and theater squares. In the industrial era, focus ion the industrial zone and dams.

Though it is always a good idea to get a bath district built. If you see you will need many dams or canals in cities that are not well developed, you might try to get an encampment with an armory by the industrial era for the military engineering. They might not help major cities much because they already build quickly but new cities benefit from the portable production.

If you are going for religious victory, maybe focus less on science and commercial activity and more on faith.

This strategy might work through the industrial but it might need tweaking.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I have been playing around a little more with Rome's opening strategy. I like getting the policies Colonization and Agoge, like I wrote out above, but I think I like the idea of going to bronze working and iron working after archer, even before getting a campus. I can lean on Pingala for researching science, and meanwhile, since I usually build two warriors, if I am lucky enough to get iron settled and developed, upgrading those two warriors into Legionnaires will make it so that I can pretty much expand through barbarians easily and at least hold my own against other civilizations, if not conquer them, on my frontier. Getting archers and Legionnaires means that once I do start my district and builder development at large, I can probably keep the empire secure for a while. Meanwhile, if future security looks like it will be a potential issue, I can research crossbowman and man-at-arms. That should hold it until gunpowder.

I find that I am producing most settlers in the ancient era from the capital. I think that I might experiment with developing the capital with my first districts and any builder/trader or military reinforcements once I get into the classical era while my other cities continue to work on expansion and security.

I can usually get 3-5 cities by then end of the ancient era. So, developing the capital in the classical era seems like a decent strategy. One of the city placement strategies that is important is to favor that it has production, unless there is good reason otherwise. Even a 1 food 3 production wooded hill will speed up how fast it can produce an archer, and then, a settler once it grows to 2 citizens. Ideally the second citizen would also have something important to work like production or gold, or even science and culture, etc. After your capital, other cities start much slower because they don't have the palace building like your capital does.

 

[DeckerdJames]

Horse barbs can be very difficult. Researching animal husbandry reveals horses. Barb camps like to spawn near important things. I think they might use the ideal city mechanic and then pick an adjacent tile next to a high value tile. They often seem to spawn near where I thought a city would be good. If my units are idle, I tend to station them where I will expand soon so as to prevent barb camps in that area. Barb camps have to spawn in the fog of war. I think that barb camps must usually be within two tiles of horses to spawn horse barbs. I say usually because one time, only once, have I seen them from a barb camp that was 3 tiles away. I don’t know what was different about that one. Spare units are hard to come by early but if horse barbs would be absolutely devastating, then guarding the horses is an option.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I think of the pantheon choice as a small bonus to a preferred play style. If you are not playing as Rome, when you place a non capital city, it has very little culture. If you have lots of pastures or plantations, there are two choices that gives +1 culture to them. Improving those tiles will greatly accelerate border expansion in cities without monuments. If you couple that with the free builder from the ancestral hall, it could be as good as giving the city a free monument if it has two such tiles. In Rome’s case it would be like giving then two free monuments. Very fast border growth in new cities.

Camps can be given +1 food and +1 production. Sometimes you will be around a bunch of camps and it just gives one or more of your cities a kick, you might be on the edge of tundra and sometimes tundra is packed with deer and foxes. Sometimes it has mountains and forest which means high appeal. Ideal for a preserve. Those can turn such tundra cities into high value cities which will be enhanced even more with the sanctuary once you reach conservation.

The preserve is an excellent district and often an early choice based on the geography. One of the food poor region types that you might start in is the wooded and plains hilly kind. Many times I have seen enough woods to drop a preserve in the middle and be surrounded by 6 breathtaking, wooded tiles. That is 12 culture, 12 food, 12 faith once the grove is built. Granted the grove is 600+ production so it is very expensive and you probably have to develop an early strategy for it. In the ideal case, it worth 6 free monuments in terms of culture alone, not to mention the faith and great food and extra housing from the district. Very powerful.

The pantheon choice that gives 25% discount on the first district could be very powerful for a wide expanding Roman Empire. For every four, first districts built in cities, it is like getting one for free.

Which is the hardest to get? In my experience, it isn’t the free settler. It is the 25% reduction to production cost of ancient era military units. Computer loves that one the most.

If your civilization can already produce good culture, then perhaps the choice that gives a free settler, which is already very nice, but you also get 15 percent to border growth. Border growth is based on culture, so unless I misunderstand, it is a 15 percent discount to the culture cost of city border expansion. Why do the call it religious settlements? It doesn’t involve faith.