Questions about First City

[Teelman]

Hello all,

I just purchased the game recently and have started playing on noble to learn the game. I read plenty of articles in the war center on city specialization and dot mapping, planning out your cities food etc. I think I have a decent grasp but I would like some other opinions and I have some questions as well, mainly about my starting city but some general questions as well. So if you all would have some time to answer them it would be greatly appreciated

1. When the computer generates your starting position, is that always a "decent" place to start or is it completely random?

2. If you have a bad starting position, how many turns are acceptable to move/scout before getting your starting city position?

3. How soon should you worry about specializing your starting city? Should it be a priority from the beginning or is expanding the empire and getting your other cities up and running more important in terms of specialization?

4. I have trouble focusing on certain technology paths, There is always a temptation to research the basics one and move on instead of focusing on a more important one several down the line. Which ones would you characterize as more important in the beginning?


Also I would like some feedback on the game i just started in terms of what would you do with my starting situation (1st ss). The second ss is 12 turns later, what do you think of the choice for the position for my starting city? Do you see a better place? And what about expansion? What places do you see good for new cities?

 

[war ensemble]

I'll try to answer what I can...

1. From past experience, I believe the starting position is usually an at least decent place to settle. The map generator usually makes it so you get at least a couple resources there or rivers, etc. Same goes for the other civs though. Sometimes this doesn't work out though.

2. I'll defer this question to the more experienced players. I almost always settle in place or on the second turn.

3. First, just get your resources tiles improved and then once you have a good layout of the land I would start worrying about specialization.

4. Most important (in order): necessary worker techs, then mining---> Bronze Working, if no copper either Animal Husbandry or Iron Working. If isolated start you can skip iron working/animal husbandry until necessary (ie. jungle start or you have cows.) In isolated starts, I would beeline writing and try and get the Oracle to bulb Code of Laws to help with the economy.

Hope that helps. Much of the answers is map-dependent. As far as your screenshots, I would've settled 3 to the west in order to pick up the corn and fresh water bonus. Then you also got gold but I didn't take that into consideration because you couldn't see it from when you started. I'd build my second city along the coast near the gold and another near the cows. I would avoid the jungle for now unless there are good resources up there. It's somewhat hard to tell what resources are where without the icons on...

 

[Sian]

unless you specificly see something you want to move for, 9 out of 10 times its wise to settle where the computer places you ... it makes certain that the starting area have at least a certain omph

as the most important beginning techs ...

worker techs which improve your resouces as fast as possable (no need for Argiculture if theres no crops anywhere close), foods improvements are better than production improvements early on. next is usually Bronzeworking/Animal Husbandery for defence (Chariots for offensive defence mind you) and writing for Liberys so you can get beakers out of scienists while rexing to a big fat crash

 

[DigitalBoy]

I can't comment too much on how many turns scouting out your starting area is acceptable. I always settle in place, or in some cases a tile or two away depending on what I can see with my starting scout. If I end up getting a capital that would have been much, much, much better placed a tile or two away, I restart the game. Nothing in this game aggravates me as much as having my starting capital in a bad location because of what I couldn't see three tiles away from my settler. But I digress.

The map generator (at least on my settings) always makes it so that your starting settler starts in a "good" place to settle. The tile where your settler starts always has fresh water access and usually two or more resource tiles in its fat cross, at least one of them being a food resource. There also won't be any desert or tundra tiles in the fat cross either.

However, this isn't to say that settling in place is always the best option. A lot of times I've settled in place only to find a food resource just a tile away from the fat cross (with the tiles I'd lose moving closer to it being much less productive). Another thing to consider is if moving the capital in one direction would make room for an additional city that may have been too cramped otherwise. It makes me mad just thinking about it; I wish the area around your settler would just start revealed.

As for your example, you may have been better off moving your settler to its current location. The corn you moved away from can still be utilized by settling another city on the plains hill to the south. Cities founded on plains hill generate an extra hammer (the city tile produces two hammers instead of one), and the surplus food can be used to work that gold hill. Although you may want to see if there's any seafood you're missing out on by settling there and not a tile lower.

 

[henrebotha]

Hello all,

I just purchased the game recently and have started playing on noble to learn the game. I read plenty of articles in the war center on city specialization and dot mapping, planning out your cities food etc. I think I have a decent grasp but I would like some other opinions and I have some questions as well, mainly about my starting city but some general questions as well. So if you all would have some time to answer them it would be greatly appreciated

1. When the computer generates your starting position, is that always a "decent" place to start or is it completely random?

2. If you have a bad starting position, how many turns are acceptable to move/scout before getting your starting city position?

3. How soon should you worry about specializing your starting city? Should it be a priority from the beginning or is expanding the empire and getting your other cities up and running more important in terms of specialization?

4. I have trouble focusing on certain technology paths, There is always a temptation to research the basics one and move on instead of focusing on a more important one several down the line. Which ones would you characterize as more important in the beginning?


Also I would like some feedback on the game i just started in terms of what would you do with my starting situation (1st ss). The second ss is 12 turns later, what do you think of the choice for the position for my starting city? Do you see a better place? And what about expansion? What places do you see good for new cities?

Good man! Noble is a great place to start - it may be tough at first but the reward when you win your first game is so much greater.

1. The map generation algorithms are written so as to give you a start with at least one food resource, and usually a strategic resource too. It also tends to give you fresh water. You'll see several strategies talked about on this here forum involve rushing at the enemy as soon as humanly possible and conquering his capital; the reason for this is that capital cities are almost always some of the best city sites available on the map.

2. I almost always settle in place on turn 0. However, if you really feel you need to move, one or maybe two turns is probably acceptable. I would only move if I were playing a Hunting civ (in other words, start with a Scout) and could see a major, immediate benefit that is reachable in two moves or less.

3. Since the first things your Worker should build are resource improvements, and since the first things your capital will be building are Workers, Settlers, and some basic military, specialisation really makes no difference in the first two millennia or so. However, it can't hurt to think about the city's role right from the get-go.

4. Your tech path initially should include all the techs you need for your Workers to improve the resources available to you (obviously not including Calendar resources here), as well as Bronze Working to enable slavery (whipping) and chopping and to reveal Copper. Shortly thereafter, you will want Pottery for Cottages and Granaries, and maybe Mysticism for Monuments. At the moment, I almost invariably start my game with techs for all the resources in my BFC, followed by Bronze Working. However, make sure to think about timing - you don't want your Worker to finish building before he has anything to do. If you're in such a unique situation (God knows how that could happen), either delay the build by building (for instance) a Warrior, or change your tech path. (Or change the tile(s) your city is working so that you research faster and/or build slower.)

When you take screenshots, turn on the resource bubbles (Ctrl+R). I can't see what resources you have. If you have two Corn like my eyes would lead me to believe, I say good one for moving your Settler; I would tech Agri -> BW. Scout some more, I can't see any decent city sites yet because so much of the map is still unrevealed. Remember to always scout in a spiral with your first unit - you don't want to go running off around the world, you want to find decent nearby city sites.

 

[Outlandish]

i'll throw in my 2 cents too, and probably a novella at the end about the current starting position:

1) the starting settler position has never in my experience been a bad spot to build, it's just a question of whether a short move will make it better. there's always at least one food, and generally at least 3 resources total though some might be hidden still. If all the non-resource tiles around your settler are forested except one or two grasslands/plains, there will (at least in my experience) always be a hidden resource there.

2) I settle the first turn probably 95% or more of the time, and have only gone past the 2nd turn once when scouting revealed a premium site for the capital I could reach on the 3rd turn.

3) My starting city is generally doing nothing but a couple defensive units until my happy cap, then all settlers and workers until I can't afford to expand anymore; then I think about specializing it. Unless you start with a crazy amount of happiness resources it's hard to get any real population to specialize with anyway, though I don't remember the happy cap at noble.

4) I think it's pretty much accepted that you research techs for your starting food first, then most people go to bronze working. after that it starts to differ a bit, you need to get some kind of defensive tech so if you have no copper or horses you need archery or take a chance on reaching iron working and hope iron is readily available before the barbs come knocking.

after you or your neighbors have alphabet, i generally find it better to focus on a specific tech no one has to trade around and backfill all the techs i skipped; metal casting is frequently a good target for this.

As for your specific start in that game, the spot you ended up in is fine; the only thing I don't like about it is that it's settled on a grassland hill and I like to work those. If I'd had that start my first thought would be that I couldn't see any food in my BFC, and as there always is some it had to be there somewhere. Unless you had deer in the forest to the SSE, it would be in the fog to the north.

Not knowing what I'd be starting with in the BFC, I'd be tempted to settle where the warrior started; coastal, with corn, along a river, and hills to work. I'd have moved the warrior SE to see what was to the south and seeing no resources would make me change my mind; I'd then have moved the settler WNW, knowing that at the very least I'd then have corn, be on a river, and have a minimum of 4 grassland hills to work. Even if I find nothing else that'd be a good production site right from the start and I'd still have 2 of the 4 northern fog spots for a chance at a 2nd food source which would make it a very good site indeed. If I didn't get the food in my new location, it would mean I already have a good 2nd city location since there would have to be food to the east and we can see the river there; food+river is lovely. After what I'd have seen upon moving the settler, I'd have settled in that spot (WNW) on the 2nd turn.

As for where to expand now, the floodplains+gold and coastal to the south looks nice, as does cow+wheat+coast. you should be able to get a decent city along the river to the east; you might have to let it share the corn from your capitol's NNE BFC spot to help it grow quickly if it doesn't have a food source of it's own. since you didn't use the corn near the starting warrior, you now get to use it with the gold and eventually sugar for a nice little city; i'd be settling there with my first settler created (WWSW) Then it looks like a large chunk of jungle to your north; jungles will be rich but you'll need iron working and a lot of workers to build there or better yet a whole bunch of troops and a hapless neighbor willing to chop the jungle for you! I'd be filling in the south as well as I can, then building some troops and looking for a victim.

 

[dirtyparrot]

You will occasionally be given a poor starting location (same for the AI), but more often than not the starting location is pretty decent. In the future, it's better to post your screenshots with the resources highlighted (Ctrl-R).

 

[Teelman]

Ok lesson learned about the icons, Thanks. Here is two new screenshots of what I have discovered so far. I am doing ok with trying to figure out whether or not a site is good by counting the resources. I am really just having trouble with where to start the process of settling the cities. Thanks for the tips so far. Everyone has been very helpful!

 

[futurehermit]

If you could settle 3 cities in the N to block Saladin that would be ideal. Fish/Marble, Corn/Gems, Wheat.

Sal may beat to you to 1 or more of them though.