'Solving' Civ & other Q's about how to get better

[Smote]

The best land is a bunch of deer on forested hills, with rivers. Build camps everywhere and cut all the trees down, for both instant and longterm production. Get 2 workers, granary, water mill out ASAP from all the chopping. Each deer will be a nice 2F/3H hex after camp+granary.

Also, its essential for the capital to be placed on a riverside hill, preferably gems, gold, silver, or iron. The extra hammer is huge.

A potentially better start is 4 cows and a bunch of horses as Russia, all on rivers of course.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Also, its essential for the capital to be placed on a riverside hill, preferably gems, gold, silver, or iron. The extra hammer is huge.

That comes back to bite you in the late game if you're playing Space or Culture. You gave away a Hill you could starve the capital to work, and you gave away a Windmill and its GE slot. That smarts when you're building Apollo or Utopia, and you usually burn a turn to settle the Hill.

I'd hesitate universally recommending seeking out a Hill in and of itself. There's a good argument for it on quick speed. On standard and slower, it depends.

A potentially better start is 4 cows and a bunch of horses as Russia, all on rivers of course.

In my experience, those are the best starts for all civs. The Horses can be resold; the Deer cannot. I'd rather have the cash than the chops.

 

[gamemaster3000]

For the first few turns, would you rather work:

3 food 1 hammer
2 food 2 hammer
2 food 1 hammer 2 gold

And a few posts above I referred to 'not micromanaging workers'. I do them all manually, but I don't obsess about their movement over rivers, moving one square and pre-building an improvement, stuff like that.

 

[MadDjinn]

I avoid hill starts like the plague. Especially now that they get up to 4 hammers and well... Windmills. Though, Windmills and workshops switched bonuses, so they may not be as useful anymore. (bonus to all prod. vs bonus to building prod)

That said, a nice gold/gem/silver starting hill with decent surround might be worth moving. Gem preferred though, since gold/silver benefit from the mint.

But still.. settle on a plains tile gets you the same thing. (extra hammer) So if you have the choice of grassland vs. plains - go plains.

for the OP:

The real problem here is that you have to optimize per game map (size/time scale/diff level all matter) and per civ. There are general heuristics that work wonders, but each map is different and what works best to win is not always the same.

... that said, an NC start with Liberty->Citizenship->Meritocracy SPs as the start generally gets you into a decent position for most civs/maps. Whether you hard REX/attack/go tall after that is map/civ dependant mostly.

a general heuristic build order would be:

Scout (5 turns) -> Monument (9 turns while growing) (if you got a culture ruin or enough cash for a Culture CS) ->Library/NC

Scout (5 turns) -> Worker (while growing and teching Writing) -> Library/NC

Warrior/Warrior/Warrior -> go ruin a CSs day or an easy AI.

 

[Nurgle84]

In the last dozen games, I always tried to settle on luxury resources, hills or three hammer tiles. The tile yield of an improved luxury is not that good most of the time and so I can avoid having to assign a citizen.
Furthermore in the last patch, the yield of a city was reduced to 2 food 1 hammer, so it is very easy to find tiles, that improve that.

For the windmill: Windmill gives +2 hammers for 2 Gold (and a 15% bonus to buildings, which is in my opinion this late in the games, pretty useless) Settling a hill gives +1 hammer without any cost. I prefer the later.

 

[Martin Alvito]

For the windmill: Windmill gives +2 hammers for 2 Gold (and a 15% bonus to buildings, which is in my opinion this late in the games, pretty useless) Settling a hill gives +1 hammer without any cost. I prefer the later.

It also has an Engineer slot, which yields +1 over an unemployed citizen plus GPP. It's particularly valuable in a Space game where you hard build Factories while Apollo finishes. Finally, you gave up a +4 tile in the late game, rather than settle a tile with 0-1.

Don't get me wrong, there are times to plunk down on that Hill and like it. But those times generally involve acquiring a luxury that you want to resell in a hurry, or a VC where you don't care about trying to minimize the time needed to complete a late game build required for victory.

 

[Nurgle84]

It also has an Engineer slot, which yields +1 over an unemployed citizen plus GPP. It's particularly valuable in a Space game where you hard build Factories while Apollo finishes. Finally, you gave up a +4 tile in the late game, rather than settle a tile with 0-1.

The early hammers allow a city to get the infrastructure up and running faster. Its just as with culture, that early points are more valuable than late game points. Again, my oppinion, based on King experience. With higher difficulties it could be all different.

 

[Michl2602]

One other, totally personal thing. I don't find research agreements/bulbing Great Scientists/Oxford University/Great Library that fun. I need to decide if I want to play a way I don't prefer so that I can get other's advice, or if I want to play my own version of the game, in which case I need to do my own research on what's optimal.

The other questions in the posting are not easy to answer, as they are very general and I'm quite sure, you'll find sufficient answers for yourself by experience when playing, so I'll stick to this.
I think nobody does those things because they are especially fun. They do it to win a Deity-game, where those technics seem to be necessary to compensate for the incredible AI-boni (2 scouts, 4 warriors and 1 settler at start is by far not all; they also have happyness-conditions like they would play at Chieftain for all levels).
If you fall back in science (because you can't that easily expand with your happyness-conditions) they DoW and kill you. If you're not quick enough to realize the type of win you want to achieve, they'll nuke you out of the world.
Those technics (RAs, buying AIs into wars, tech blocking) are just to prevent this from happening.
I'm also not playing that way but already adopted some of those ideas in my own games and found to be better off with them (eg. NC-first, eg. trying to get better culture buildings than a monument by Legalism aso.), but when I'm ready to play on Deity and couldn't develop an own method to win by that time, I'll know what to adopt.

 

[Smote]

@ Martin

I think we can all agree that 100 hammers early game is far more powerful than 100 hammers lategame. This is because the early game hammers can be used to produce settlers or workers or workshops which then produce you more hammers, which might add up to a difference akin to 300 hammers or more lategame.

This is why settling on a hill is critical. Having 6 hammers early game instead of 5 is great.

I will never move off a hill, onto flatland if I start on a hill (not even for marble). I will spend a turn moving onto a riverside hill, so long as another hill is next to it. I will spend two turns moving onto a hill in an excellent location.

 

[MasterMishi]

Play MP and the ladder players at civplayers.com

 

[Martin Alvito]

I think we can all agree that 100 hammers early game is far more powerful than 100 hammers lategame.

Yes. The reason a Windmill is important is the (comparatively) early Engineer slot. But giving away four base and a turn to get one per turn early on is a lot to surrender. If you're plunking down on Gold/Silver/Gems for the turn 10 resale, and you're not shafting yourself on early by moving to that spot, then by all means do it. Ditto if you started on the hill and can't improve your resource situation by moving. Finally, if you're picking up Cows or Flood Plains Wheat by moving to the Hill, you should always do it, because then you're not giving away a turn.

Burning a turn gives away your most productive turn - the last one. How much that matters really depends on the win condition you're going for. If you're playing a small Domination map, early is a lot more attractive than if you intend to win by Culture or Space, because the game is going to end sooner and your last turn is therefore comparatively less productive.

 

[tdotk]

I echo the advice about playing different scenarios to become a better player. Play with different Civs, map conditions, and victory conditions. You learn a lot about relative strengths and what is important to exploit.

 

[Tabarnak]

Hills can be settled if : you are going for a fast domination victory, you are playing multiplayer, you are aiming for a diplo victory and be able to grow capital to size 23+ and keep a ge for the UN.