Starting build order.....

[peacemaker]

Hi All,

I have played about ten games each on first two levels and had won last dozen or so. Now on Regent level I am loosing like crazy. By the time I build five cities, the AI has about a dozen cities and about 5 extra techs. I am forced to pay exorbitant price to buy those techs.

What should be the build order. I like to play on huge map and all the civilizations.

Thanks

 

[DaDoo]

very hard to say... Since there are tons of variation that will work very well.

Generally speaking, I always have my beginning 5-6 cities build 2 settlers each. Depending on how close the AI's are and how good are the tiles, I can usually almost keep up to the rate AI is making cities.

So my build-order:
first 5 cities:
warrior
(in the build-queue)
2) spearman
3) settler
4) worker
5) temple
6) settler
7) worker
8) barrack
9) spearman
10) wealth
(wealth last so I know I've reached the end of my queue and I need to put in a new queue)

Of course in the beginning when you don't have bronze working, replace the spearmen with warriors.

Note: That's how I usually play and I only play on regent. I've found that to be relatively successful at grabbing land. The strat or build order is no where near perfect so feel free to tweak it to your heart's content and perhaps you'll find one that's even more efficient.

 

[BCLG100]

i normally play on monach emporer and just found out from grey fox that a build queue such as warrior warrior settler leaving one warrior in the city and the other as an escort until you get 5 warriors in that city is good

 

[Arathorn]

Don't neglect granaries!!! They really help with the early landgrab stage. I often go warrior, warrior, granary, settler, warrior, settler. But it all depends on whether I have a nice bonus food nearby or not. And on my shield count. Granaries are very, VERY nice.

Arathorn

 

[Sanaz]

It will depend on the civ you play, the land type, playing style, circumstances as they are presented. If I'm Persia, I'll build a ton of warriors which will both start exploring, and upgrade to Immortals ASAP. If I'm and Expansionist civ, I'll build a bunch of scouts and set all research to zero. I will rarely build defensive units early - I'd rather build Horsemen to protect and observe any threats before they are in my boundaries. There's too many variables, so just play for fun, accept some losses, and learn a bit. Contrary to many here, I played dozens of games on Chieftain, then dozens more on Warlord, and now I'm playing my dozens on the next level. I try out all of the variable sbefore moving up a level, but that's just my personality. And, I never played Civ1 or Civ2, so I had a long way to go to even figure out how to play Civ3 at all...

 

[Tassadar]

My favorite opening is; as german

1.- 3 warrior ( while i search pottery at 90%)

2.- 1 settler

3.- granery in capital

4.- your second city will produce spearman only for a while

5.- your capital produce settler only ( irrigate cow and wheat, mine bonus grassland ).

With this opening i grab the land i want without anyproblem, the early granery in your capital is tremendously powerfull to pump out settler after settler and then some worker, while in the mean time your second city provide soldier.

 

[JollyRoger]

At Regent and below, I generally like to beeline to Literature and get libraries built asap. By the time I get to Literature, I want several cities to have pre-built toward those libraries. I favor building explorers/aztec warriors or warriors from the initial city until you can get a settler at pop 3. Use for exploration, hut popping & defense. If you have high-food land, use it and irrigate it. Road in luxuries asap, so you don't have to intially build temples or use the luxury slider. Build warriors for military police and exploration. I try to have 4 to 5 cities that are large enough to quickly build infrastructure as it comes on line. The cities with less than desirable terrain are popping settlers and workers when appropriate. My early games suffered from always timing a settler when a town hit population 3. A fast growing city is of more use if you let it grow some and popping settlers and workers from it for happiness management. While I am not as sold on granaries as some people, it can do wonders in the right circumstance. A high food city with a granary gives you a great number of options from being a settler and/or worker farm to being an early center of unit production. No one build order or research path is the magic bullet - you are best off having a variety of tactics ready to employ based on game circumstances. The initial terrain often dictates everything for me from what to build first to the ultimate path to victory I take.

 

[chiefpaco]

As I've posted recently in the archers thread, I just tried this, as Japan, on Emporer:

1st city:
Warrior (explore), Warrior(explore), Settler, Barracks, Archer x 5.

2nd city:
Warrior, Temple, spearmen, another settler (not sure of the order here)

Then I took those archers (and kept making them) and conquered my neighbour.

I used to do an expansion order:
Warrior, Warrior, Settler, Warrior (Military police), Settler, and then squeeze as many settlers in as possible. Or build a granary if the conditions were good. However, I had trouble expanding quick enough to grab a good land size on the high levels. Conquering instead of settling means 2 things:
- AI makes the settlers and cities for you
- Your cities do not shrink from settler production. This allows them to be very productive with a higher population.

Both of these points make your starting cities very strong.

I didn't lose any cities by culture flip this early. I don't think it would be easy to lose them though. Your decimated opponent will not be very culture strong and you can squeeze in a culture building or 2 very quickly once your home cities are bigger.

Maybe I got lucky the 1st time. I will have to try it again.

One note:
- If I am Expansionist, then I produce 2 more scouts at the start. This is very much required. You must explore, meet civs, find as many goody huts as possible (they are your lifeline as Expansionist civs and are all good), and make a good map. If you do not do this, you are not taking advantage of your trait, IMHO.

Another note:
I think the militaristic opening would work better on higher levels where the AI expands very quickly. On lower levels, the AI does not expand so fast, so perhaps it would not work as well, or at all. Still, you could use the method to just wipe them out.

 

[Higher Game]

Make a granary first if you have pottery. If not, research it first. The growth is worth it. Next, I like to research bronze working and construct barracks (I always play militaristic civs). I have my capitol and maybe my second city make setters, while the other cities make veteran spearmen to defend them.

Don't pay for techs when you can beat them out of the AI! The AI tech whoring has an actual advantage to you: they will often give away techs to a very weak, small civ. You attack this little civ and force him to give up the techs you need.

 

[Panth]

Probably a couple of newbie questions here:

How do you set a queue to build more than one thing?

Building a granary so early in the game always seems to set me back so far that it's not worth it; I could've had a settler with an escort by the time it's done. What's the benefit?

 

[Higher Game]

The granary halves the food necessary to grow. It really does make a difference. However, just making the settler might be ok on a very small island or a tiny world map. The granary is more of a long term investment.

 

[VenomLord]

yep, but it certainly pays off... i played a game on the same map, in 1 i got a granary straight off... in the other i didn't.... there was a BIG difference in the size of my empire between the 2 games in favor of the granarys (it was a regent, Huge, pangea btw)

 

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Panth
How do you set a queue to build more than one thing?

Zoom to the city. Holding the shift key while setting production allows you to build a queue.

 

[Matt_G]

double post.

 

[Panzer Armee]

I like to make about seven quick cities and then have all cities build workers and then setterlers. i do that every three or four turns, so my get the same amount of cities if not more then the AI.

 

[KDan]

First, info about higher levels. The AI gets free units and unit support as the level gets harder. This is how it is with the DyP mod, but I don't think they altered that (or if they did it's minor):

Chieftain, Warlord, Regent - no free units, no free support
Monarch - 2 free defensive units, 1 free offensive, 4 free unit supports, 1 extra free support per city
Emperor - 4 free def units, 2 free off, one extra free worker, 8 free unit support, 2 more free unit support per city
Deity - 8 free def units, 4 free off units, 1 free settler, 2 free workers, 16 free unit supports, 4 extra per city

As you can easily see, attacking early in high difficulty modes is suicide. There is NO WAY you can catch up immediately with the AI's free units, you're going to need TIME. Only exception is if you get a very very good UU very early on, then you can attempt to swamp one or two neighbours by producing a lot of those units and attacking as soon as you have enough to take even one city (and keep on producing more of course). In those cases, building settlers is secondary until you've cleared up the space, which is harder than it sounds.

Otherwise, don't bother with escorts right at the beginning, unless there are barbarians nearby (try to maneuver the AIs into engaging the barbs if you can. They have a lot more troops than you).

Lick the AIs' collective boots and give them whatever they want so that they don't attack you. They demand your dearly researched tech for free? Quell that pride, and realise that if you don't give it you'll probably lose a couple of cities, not to mention that it will delay you in your build-up by a few dozen turns while you gear your entire empire towards surviving that early defensive war. Giving them the tech is cheaper, you'll get them back later.

On deity, you're still going to need an early war to catch up, but it's useless to attack them with 5 archers. Once you have half a dozen cities or so, start them all into mass production of some fast offensive unit, pick the weakest neighbour, size him down to half his size, then sue for peace and collect free tech. Have maybe one city building settlers to fill up the gaps, and don't bother building your cities too spaced out. Compact is good, you can disband useless clutter cities later, right now they give you good production and easy defence.
Move on to the next weakest neighbour and repeat. Keep that up until you feel you're close to tech parity and you've occupied more land than most AI's (One third to half of a continent should do as a minimum, with a 'continent' being one entire linked area of land. Eg there are 2 to 3 continents on standard sized maps, normally). If you feel you can bully some more stuff out of the AIs, do it. Don't let those armies sit idle, you should always be capturing territory and tech if you can.

There will come a point when your neighbours are too weak to be given tech even by the other AIs, or maybe they don't have contact with other more advanced AIs. At this point, clear them out of any area which you think would be good to settle in, possibly wipe out some of them. Then disband most of your army and switch to democracy or republic or a similar govt.

This ends your initial, expansion phase. Now comes the improvement phase, where you build up that massive empire, get rid of clutter cities progressively, and start researching (and trading) tech aggressively. Don't bother buying tech unless you really need it. Trade tech for tech or tech for lots of gold. Beeline for techs more advanced than what the computer has, then trade those to them for all the techs you skipped and potentially lots of money too. Eventually you'll take the tech lead. Keep on licking the AI's boots if you feel that a war with them could set your build-up back noticeably.

Oh, and if some idiotic civ does declare war on you anyway, make sure you get allies, lots of them. I still remember a huge map game where the russians, on another continent, tried to bully some tech out of me, and I immediately allied with everyone on my continent who could actually be a risk to me (I paid them to ally with me). Result? The other people on my continent dragged in the Russians' neighbours on our side, and about 30 turns later the russians were wiped out by the rampaging french, and I didn't even have to divert any production to build military units.

Anyway, hope all this helps... Good luck.

Daniel

 

[Mephisto]

peace, there are many threads on this already. go check them out.

 

[Zur]

I usually go all out expansion from the word "Go!". This usually works on most map settings even archipelago as long as your starting island is not too small. The number of cities is critical to most civ games.

My strat is to build scouts (or warriors if not available) for exploration and time the 1st settler when pop hits 3 (it's OK if the settler completes the same turn as it turns 3). This requires a bit of simple maths and estimation of your growth & production. Thereafter, I time all my cities for settler at the first growth opportunity. Surprisingly, I have found from experience that I'm even able to keep up with emperor AI expansion using this strat.

In between the settlers, squeeze in whatever you can with your "spare" production. Go more scouts if u need exploration, followed by granary (churns out settlers like crazy after that), barracks or temple depending on your strategy, offensive units for the early war or spears if there is a nearby civ or barbs (not usually needed just yet).

So depending on the starting position, it usually ends up like this for the capital: scout, scout, (scout), settler, ?, settler, ?, settler...

Hope this is useful.

 

[kb2tvl]

land choice is cruicial. If you place a city in a high food area, you can break out the whip and increase production OR you can get a higher population faster. Placing cities on desert should be very low priority even if there are luxes near by.

Essentially, if your having trouble building settlers, look for mostly grassland areas to place your new cities and fill in the poor quality areas latter.

 

[ukrneal]

Kb2tvl, I think what you mean is that the squares surrounding the city itself should be fertile. Because the tile on which you set your city will have 2 food (and 1 shield, I think, though the civ specific bonuses may change this) reagrdless of poor terrain or any bonus. Therefore, it actually makes sense, in many cases, to move off a bonus tile to found a city. And it also makes sense to found on hills, desert, tundra in some cases, especially if the surrounding squares are good.

Also, on higher levels, luxeries are more important and I would recommend, as something of a priority, setting cities nearby if you have difficulty keeping your people happy. Remember at higher levels, your city will go into civil unrest if you don't have luxeries or military police to keep them happy.