Rapid expansion, Colosseums and Structural Transition

[skallben]

This strategy is particularily effective with the romans due to build efficiency and the strong units to defend the empire until medieval era. China would do well too because of the paper-houses. France would be good too to consolidate your borders and access resources quickly. This is mostly a builder-mongerer strategy. Not so good for wonders, decent to potentially change into warfare strategy, you most likely will not rush any neighbors. This route gets you closer to the medieval war technology and I belive in this strategy that is better than opting for Horsemen. I explain further down why Horseback Riding might not be a good priority.

I have come to rely less on worker spam early on, roads have to wait for the sake of expansionism. Liberty is key for producing cheap settlers. Citizenship for faster workers is a good choice aswell when you start spamming workers. Meritocracy can save the day if you over-expand.

I believe most victory conditions are possible. Super-REX might be bad for culture. Wonders from at least Medieval Age forward should not be a problem to get if you focus research for them and make sure you have the production necessary, preferrably in a marble-town for the bonus. But I believe it's somewhere around 7 cities that culture penalty start to shoot off big time for every new city. Big maps really should have less than 30% if they don't allready.





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*Begin with settling at resource locations, I prefer specialised cities, first two is a production city and a commerce city. Possibly a great person city aswell. Coastal cities are important for future power projection and good commerce/food from sea resources, especially good is if you can find a spot with coastal resource and river. Capitol will start to try and do both until the other cities have grown. In the long run it will morph into a commerce/great person city as in the future it will not have railroad bonus anyways.

*Do diplomacy with care to avoid wars, befriend a maritime city-state (when do we not), preferrably one with a resource you cannot get elsewhere. This gives return as you can work more gold/production tiles. In cities with good food I prefer to tradepost the river tiles even.

*Animal Husbandry is allways a good pick to possibly pop horses and get some production potential. Except for the technologies that allow working resources, Construction is key for Colosseums. Possibly Horseback Riding but Circuses are more expansive and cannot be constructed everywhere so it's better postponed. Construction is a better choice for this purpose, even more so as it leads to Engineering for Lumber Mills. Also HBR leads to Chivalry and you probably don't go that route just yet. Iron working might be wise for potential defense, archery is almost a must IMO. Writing can be delayed as you probably focus on settlers, workers, colosseums, minimal defense at least, possibly monuments.

*Also key is to know when you need to start building colosseums to avoid unhappiness. I believe experience makes one adept at this sooner or later. Along the lines you produce workers and start connecting cities via road, and improving the cities.





There is great potential for a hapiness-produced golden age, also once your empires infrastructure is set up your income will be good. Due to population, science will be good.

Possibly there is a weakness for agression when your infrastructure is still weak but I prefer the gamble, in worst case scenario you should be able to hold the lines and win from tactics and the production benefits of having many cities. Do not underestimate the quick-to-build warriors as you just upgrade them later. War with a weak enemy might give you some free workers even. You can also resort to pillage if you lack potential to take and hold cities.

Also there might be a slight hit in economy until infrastructure is constructed. Not getting civil service early is not that big of a problem as you will balance on the edge to unhappiness anyways. If not you might want to prioritize it faster, if you don't you get golden age points instead. It will be good to get in time though as it allows you to work less food in the cities, allowing more production and gold.

For optimal tile-yield I quite often trade-post river sides, but not all of them then when Civil Service hits I swap them for farms if necessary, moving trade posts further out. This is somewhat problematic because you can only work so many tiles and you allways want possibly max yield, it's a fine line. Once you get to Fertilizers you might do the structural transition once again.

Same thing goes with mines as in the end, farming hills when possible is a better choice, lumber mills can be a better source of production even early on as they improve later with steam power. Else you could trade post if you feel you can sacrifice the production loss. I'm adapting the improvements to each citys individual need, especially the smaller ones.

I keep wondering if its intended that we should juggle the improvements as technology progress if we want maximum yields...Of course you could just skip the OCD-microing and think long-term but that is not optimal!

 

[Conspirator]

Am I missing something here or did you miss out the actual the actual strategy bit here? Are you saying just build loads of cities? Do you focus on settling on only resource-full locations or is it a 5 tiles from your nearest city? What is our initial build? Why is this a good strategy as opposed to war? How many luxury resources do we need for a 12 city empire, shall we say, what sort of cash can we generate, etc.

 

[skallben]

Am I missing something here or did you miss out the actual the actual strategy bit here? Are you saying just build loads of cities? Do you focus on settling on only resource-full locations or is it a 5 tiles from your nearest city? What is our initial build? Why is this a good strategy as opposed to war? How many luxury resources do we need for a 12 city empire, shall we say, what sort of cash can we generate, etc.

It's how my latest two games have started and it worked out well. I think it is an alternative approach to early game compared to Alexander Cavalry-mongering or Egypt wonder-mongering.

I did not intend this to be a detailed formula to make everything "right". I do not play with things set in stone. I believe that if there is one very good thing about CiV, it is the flexibility you have to set a course for your empire. If you have no immediate neighbors and loads of land, build two scouts if you like. If a rival civ builds cities in the middle of your empire, mass an army, run him out, continue expanding after

You are right I did not specify the layout of cities, I believe it's in many ways a matter of taste and I belive most people have some common sense about this. You take good resources, food sources and make sure you get some production tiles aswell. Cities can overlap, probably ends up with some being smaller and simply goldfarms later on. Cities should work from the day it's founded, not in 100 turns.
This is nothing but one loose framework on how to approach the game.

Overload with numbers would be of little function as every game has different conditions.

One reason I wrote it was that I have read people saying REXing is not a valid strategy, obviously I disagree. I play on Emperor and maybe this approach will meet problems above this level, but it works on Emperor very well.

Settle and trade for resources until you cannot, pretty much a no-brainer. Next step is to mass build colosseums. Happiness will not be an issue unless your people breed like rabbits. The rest around is just details.

 

[King Jason]

Short of rushing the A.I. or other strats, I find Expanding as fast as possible to your established limit of cities (5-10 for myself) is the best way to start a game. The faster you get your next cities online, the faster they start becoming productive. The incubation period for new cities is extreme in this game and I rarely like building new ones after establishing my empire in the early game. Not unless my GPT has reached about 200-300 and it's a mere matter of turns to buy anything in my new cities.

The only real drawback is that Policies take longer in the early game. However, culture victory is certainly not off the table as the culture output of a larger empire will easily eclipse that of a smaller empire in the late game.

 

[skallben]

The only real drawback is that Policies take longer in the early game. However, culture victory is certainly not off the table as the culture output of a larger empire will easily eclipse that of a smaller empire in the late game.

I agree, I usually build a few temples in cities that need to expand tiles that are very expansive to buy, it helps. Cultural city-states is another way to get those early policies running in.