Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

[DeafDolphin]

I just posted the latest version. Besides a few clarifications and corrections, I also added sections on early exploration, barbarians, and city placement, including dot mapping. I also revised the City Specialization section to make Science and Wealth cities sub-categories of Commerce cities.

You rock, guys! Sisiutil, thanks for your hard work on this. You've defintely made a difference in my game.

 

[jkp1187]

Another suggestion: late-game great engineers might be best added to mid-level production cities to speed spaceship production.

Looks good. Thanks for your efforts here!

 

[Sisiutil]

Another suggestion: late-game great engineers might be best added to mid-level production cities to speed spaceship production.

Looks good. Thanks for your efforts here!

Thanks for the suggestion. I think you'd need to be producing a lot of GEs for that, however. I usually burn a late-game GE for the Space Elevator, and if I get another one (usually from Fusion), I use him with another GP for a Golden Age to speed SS production in ALL cities, not just one.

 

[Jazzster]

Great! -- As a former editor in the publishing business, I also appreciate the work you put down on layout and language -- areas often overlooked on the 'net, as everybody knows, but very important for making sure people actually read and understand your text. Thanks again, great work.

 

[Sisiutil]

Great! -- As a former editor in the publishing business, I also appreciate the work you put down on layout and language -- areas often overlooked on the 'net, as everybody knows, but very important for making sure people actually read and understand your text. Thanks again, great work.

Thanks, I really appreciate your noticing and mentioning that. I'm an English major, former English teacher, and even dabbled in newspaper layout and graphic design whilst working for my university's student newspaper. So such things matter to me a great deal, especially given, as you mention, their unfortunate dearth on the Internet.

 

[catcall73]

do the vassalage and theocracy bonuses ad together,giving 4 experience,or do you only get 2 regardless?

 

[Longrunner]

Hi,
Thanks for the great work; it's excellent, however...
Isn't dot-mapping a little much for a beginner's guide? I consider myself a beginner, and just don't consider it a reasonable beginner game-design that I must print-screen, swap-out, enter paint, and analyze the map, drawing fat-crosses to figure out where to put cities. It's silly and too geeky to expect a beginner to do this!

In a beginner's guide, the advice on where to place cities should be related to what is seen on the game screen and fairly general, ("avoid stuff you can't build on.." etc).

 

[kevin_chn]

The Simplified-Chinese version of this Guide Available!

Thanks for Sisiutil's help especially for saving me from the hell of formatting.

The file is attached.

 

[MrCynical]

do the vassalage and theocracy bonuses ad together,giving 4 experience,or do you only get 2 regardless?

They add to give 4 extra exxperience.

@Sisiutil: One minor nitpick:

In section 4.2 you've listed fresh water as giving a +1 health bonus. It should be +2.

 

[Sisiutil]

Hi,
Thanks for the great work; it's excellent, however...
Isn't dot-mapping a little much for a beginner's guide? I consider myself a beginner, and just don't consider it a reasonable beginner game-design that I must print-screen, swap-out, enter paint, and analyze the map, drawing fat-crosses to figure out where to put cities. It's silly and too geeky to expect a beginner to do this!

In a beginner's guide, the advice on where to place cities should be related to what is seen on the game screen and fairly general, ("avoid stuff you can't build on.." etc).

A very good point. I didn't start seriously dot-mapping until Prince. But given its frequent use and discussion here on the board, I thought an introduction was in order.

I will take this into consideration in the next revision, and include "beginner" and "intermediate" sub-sections in the city placement section, with dot-mapping going into the latter. I'll also put in MrCynical's correction.

And thank you, Kevin_chn, for posting that translation! What an honour... If anyone else wants to translate the guide, PM me and I'll send you the Word file.

 

[Murky]

There might be a slight misjudgement in the section Scouts vs. Warriors.

"Warriors are more likely than Scouts to survive encounters with barbarian animals."

This isn't necessarily true.

The warrior is strength 2, has 1 move and gets no bonuses vs. animals.

The scout is strength 1, has 2 moves and gets 100% bonus vs. barbarian animals. The scout has a slight advantage over the warrior against animals because they can move more quickly to a spot that gives them a terrain advantage. The scout can quickly get promoted to Woodsman II to get through forest and jungle faster. The last advantage is better results from huts. This might not seem like a lot but it can be huge when the are a lot of huts around.

 

[DaviddesJ]

The scout has a slight advantage over the warrior against animals because they can move more quickly to a spot that gives them a terrain advantage.

But the Warrior gets more advantage from favorable defensive terrain.

Lion vs Scout in Forest: 2 vs 1*(1+1.0+0.5) = 2:2.5
Lion vs Warrior in Forest: 2 vs 2*(1+0.5) = 2:3

 

[Murky]

But the Warrior gets more advantage from favorable defensive terrain.

Lion vs Scout in Forest: 2 vs 1*(1+1.0+0.5) = 2:2.5
Lion vs Warrior in Forest: 2 vs 2*(1+0.5) = 2:3

True, but the Scout has a better chance of getting to the defensive terrain before getting attacked.

A bunch times I've had my warrior come into open terrain right next to a Lion or Bear and not be able to move into defensive terrain. The scout would have the option to move away or back to a defensive position.

Ideally, you want the scout to gain the maximum defensive advantage possible. It isn't too difficult to setup a situation where the animal is attacking a fortified scout on a forest/jungle hilltop across a river.

The Scout does have a rather limited use of fighting animals and popping huts. Makes researching hunting seem inefficient. If you start with hunting, a 2nd Scout can help if there are a lot of huts to pop, like on a Pangaea map.

 

[Sisiutil]

I just attached the latest version to the first post in the thread.

This version just contains some minor adjustments and corrections, several of them suggested within this thread. Thanks, everyone!

 

[woody60707]

I just read your guide now, you really helped me get my game off the ground, thank you for all the time you put in.

 

[awb]

Appreciate the guide, really helpful (for a Mac user who just got the game

 

[carl corey]

I'm browsing your Beginners' Guide and I found this on page 7:

"deserts and peaks are -2."

Uh, you can't really work neither deserts, nor peaks. So there's no reason to count them as -2. Rather, your city will have "20 - number of deserts & peaks workable tiles", that's all.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Sisiutil]

I'm browsing your Beginners' Guide and I found this on page 7:

"deserts and peaks are -2."

Uh, you can't really work neither deserts, nor peaks. So there's no reason to count them as -2. Rather, your city will have "20 - number of deserts & peaks workable tiles", that's all.

Keep up the good work!

Yes, someone pointed that out to me elsewhere in the forum, but I forgot about it in the revision. I'll fix it next time. Good catch.

 

[Scaphism]

I want to thank Sisiutil as well. This is my first post at CFC and your ALC Series is a major reason why I registered here.

One minor correction to the Guide:
On the top of page 2, the first bullet under General, you mention the 60% rule and how it will be explained in more detail in Section 2.3.
(In this version at least) Section 2.3 is about Barbarians and Section 2.5 explains the 60% rule.

 

[adrian_finn]

Great work! As a total newbie I would like some advice about the merits of 'Sid's Tips' - the blue circles showing where Settler or Worker should be heading next? Are these tips basically worthless and best to be ignored? For instance, it seemed in my first games that the dot mapping method leads to very different squares for the next city spot. I was trying to find some discussion about them in these forums but no luck. Thanks!