Opening moves

[Bamboocha]

This is more or less a continuation on my previous thread, but more generalized while being more specialised at the same time. This pretty much applies to all civs and victory conditions, but only one phase.

What should be your opening moves in Civ V (without GnK)? When playing on Emperor, my enemies always attack me after founding my first city and they send swarms of warriors and archers with the odd spearman thrown in there at me. I always try to defend myself, sometimes with some success, but end up losing my second city to invaders. How do I build up a civ with enough cities and buildings while still erecting a capable fighting force?

 

[Civsassin]

The first thing to do is get a scout out to find your neighbors. The number of nearby civs and their proximities to my capital determines if I need to boster my defenses early. Once my scout is out and moving around, I will move my initial warrior back to a position near my capital, so I can get him back quickly if needed. I will also try to get another warrior and an archer out, which is enough to fend off an early attack. I am a big fan of the Tradition policy tree, and Oligarchy cannot be underestimated as an early defensive policy.

 

[Ventus]

I also am an Emperor level player. On my last OCC tech game with Inca I was constantly DoWed by Egypt. Ramsy was very close to me, though. First DoW was around turn 40.

Up to turn 50 AI attacks mostly with Archers and Warriors. It is very easy to defend against such attack, because at this level AI is kinda dumb. Usually 2-3 archers are good. Many times I just had 1 Archer and 1 Warrior and was able to push back early DoW.

So as Civasassin mentioned above, build Scout and check surrounding area. If you see there's an aggressive AI close to you, beeline to Construction (Composite Bowman are great defenders).

If you feel like DoW is comming and have no money nor Archers, sell your luxuries and your GPT for cash. Buy Walls and Archers. Build another Archer and you're fine.

 

[Bamboocha]

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I've started a new game as Russia and have just hit the medieval era with 4 cities of my own and 4 conquered cities, since I wiped France off the map with a swordsman rush (I got an ironmine with 6 iron in it, putting me on 12 due to Cathy's bonus!) so my opening moves were obvious.

I also had a lot of ivory spots, horse spots and found a few new iron spots in Napoléons former empire so now I have more Ivory, Iron and horses than I know what to do with. Now I want to trade with my two known neighbours (Suleiman and Ramkaengheng) but they're both guarded. What do I do with my abudence of resources now?

On top of that, I think I'm lagging behind a bit tech wise because I didn't get to build the Great Library since I was too busy slapping Napoléon around like a ragdoll. How do I solve this?

 

[FromBirth]

Depends what your goal is. In your position with Russia I'd probably be thinking of Domination. Are there unexplored areas on your own continent that may hold other trading partners or have you reached the limit until you get caravels?

If you've got all the military techs you need for now, beeline Education and get some universities. Ideally 4 in your core cities. Populate at least some of the specialist slots.

Get workers into the puppet cities to spam TPs for cash needed to buy a few more units. I'd suggest a few ranged or seige (trebs would be good, catapults are too fragile, especially in the medieval era.)

If you still haven't got any other trading partners go ahead and take a low offer from the 2 you know.

Personally I'd be thinking about denouncing one of those you know and see if you can agravated them enough to DoW you and continue the fighting. If they are entrenched with good units, still hold your course through to Education but then work on the bottom of the tech tree to make the final assault.

Good luck

 

[PostConsumerWat]

city placement is a fun strategy to work with. You can place your city on a hill, across a river. . . have positions for the units to exploit terrain movement/defensive costs.

 

[Pook]

Recently moved up from immortal to deity. I send my warrior out exploring from turn 1. I build a scout first, and send the scout exploring in the opposite direction.

Why do I leave my capital defenseless?
- There's nothing to defend (no farms, no mines) until I get a worker.
- Barbarians won't directly attack a city unless there's at least 3 of them nearby.
- I've never had an AI civ declare war on me before turn 20.

In the opening moves, I see exploration (who is out there? what does the map look like? where are the city-states? where are the natural wonders? where are good places to build cities?) as the most useful task for my units.

Once I have a worker, I'll buy or make an archer, but that's all I'll have defending the capital until I see a credible threat.