Question about early game

[Phoenix Master]

What is a good strategy for dealing with barbarians and other civs during the early game (first 70 turns)?

 

[Victoria]

A lot depends on your difficulty, map choice and size as well as your civ and map layout. a
So your playstyle, as in do you want to be agressive or passive… or even passive agressive.
Can you provide any of this?

 

[Phoenix Master]

I want to play on Prince with a continents standard sized map. I want to play as Kongo and be passive aggressive. My hope is to obtain five to six cities by a mixture of conquering and settling in the first 70 turns.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I played about 25 games in the last couple of weeks.
Didn't finish them all but usually play up to turn 100 or 200.
Steamrolled about 16 games in a row on Standard Deity with No Game Modes.
Finally met my doom in this last game playing as FrEleanor.
I was busy killing a spawning barb camp when Australia Attacked on turn 12.
Massive Warriors.
If I had two of my troops closer I would of survived.
Yes most games you can get away with building things like builder, monument, settler but In my experience if you are playing on Pangaea you are best to build military first.
Your finish time will be longer but you won't get rolled.
YouTube Videos rarely highlight this problem.
Although, I have seen PotatoMcWhiskey highlight this problem more than any other youtuber.
He just rerolls/restarts and plays another one.
I still believe you can win every standard game with a Military First Build Order even though it slows you down.
I have recently seen a few AIs runaway with a tech lead and building parts very quickly.
What is the fastest the AI can win a SV?

 

[Vargas1]

On prince you could probably get to 5-6 cities peacefully in 70 turns if you have decent early production/growth and can bang out early settlers. If you are aiming for peaceful you should build just enough military to handle barbs, deter other civs, and get eurekas - so probably 1-2 slingers (later upgraded to archers) and a second warrior. If you don't get caught that should be enough to work together to clear barb camps and provide defense. Otherwise just build a scout for huts/CS meets/exploration, monuments/builders when needed, and focus on churning out settlers (maybe a gov plaza and ancestral hall to help with that also).

If you want to mix in aggression, that may depend on resources - if you have horses nearby, rushing to horseback riding with a few archers mixed in is often sufficient to grab several cities early. If you have iron nearby, an alternate path (or mixing the two) would be to go straight to iron working and upgrade a couple of early warriors into ngao mbeba (and/or build some outright, since the iron requirement is not too high). They will be slower movement-wise than horseman but can shrug off archers and take out cities pretty readily.

The two biggest general tips (in my opinion) for dealing with early barbs/aggression are (1) get archers asap and (2) keep units together. Once you have archers you should not have barb issues until they get to swordsmen, unless you get caught out in the open alone - which leads to the second point of keeping a ranged unit together with a warrior. But if you play somewhat cautiously, a warrior plus archer should be able to clear out any barb camps you need without much issue.

 

[Victoria]

a warrior plus archer should be able to clear out any barb camps you need without much issue.

I find a sling alone is enough if there is rough 2 tiles from the camp, or a sling and a scout.
I tend to measure a good game to be 7 by T70, especially if mixing aggression and growth. You should not really be doing much else until feudalism anyway.