Struggling on King; early build order?

[salty mud]

I've played a few games lately where I'm being left in the dust in terms of cities placed and yields like science and culture. I'm still pretty new to the game so learning the ins and outs, but I think with recent updates the game has gotten somewhat harder. I won a science game as Peter a few patches ago but since then, I can't get a good game going!

My most recent game, as Arabia, saw me with 3 cities at turn 100 whilst my opponents had 7-8, or more. I abandoned the game because I could already see the snowball in effect. Thing is, I'm not sure at all how to balance building settlers, workers, units and districts. If I build settlers, barbarians invade. If I build units, my enemies plant cities whilst I'm busy. If I don't build workers, my land goes unused. How can one make sense of all this?

 

[Archon_Wing]

When uncertain, you should build army. If they settle near you, then kill them. (You usually want archery at a decent pace). In general, you're probably building too many unnecessary things like granaries. It's also possible you're settling poor production spots, which is not good.

Ideally, post a save of a fresh game, and have people play along with you. Post an update every 10 turns or so.

 

[Buktu]

3 cities by turn 100 seems way to few. You can get more cities easily when you combine all the boosts to settlers (policy card is 50%, ancestral hall another 50% for the city its in, combine this with chops, magnus and the no population losses for settlers promtion). If you have a faith based civ/good faith economy you can try to get a golden age and buy settlers with monumentality. And ofc you can just go ham with military and conquer all the cities you want.
I usually start a game with a scout, a builder and a settler. If there are just a few improveable tiles early settler before builder. The rest of the early game depends on the map. In general I go for 1 to 3 more cities before getting the government plaza to secure some land and get going. I also get 2 to 3 warriors and 3 to 4 slingers/archers once I unlock agoge for defense. Monuments are always a nice pick up early since early culture is quite valuable because you will unlock all those polices faster.

There was a thread recently for an emperor shadow game. Maybe you can have a look at thoughts about early game decisions. Ofc you can try to do a similiar thread to have one dedicated especially to your questions.

 

[MrTans]

Your priority for the first 100 turns or so is expansion, be it through peaceful or other means. I wouldn’t worry about science and culture yields too much at this point because you will catch up as the game progresses providing you have founded enough cities.

You’ll want to build a settler almost as soon as you hit population 2 in most cases. Something like scout, slinger, settler is what I usually start with. There’s obviously variations on this depending on your start but the slinger gives you a little bit of extra protection and hopefully the boost for archery and archers which are the best early game defensive unit for quite some time. Make sure your warrior is close to the city centre to help with any early barb camps, don’t scout too far with the starting warrior otherwise you risk being overwhelmed.

Always be thinking about how you can hit eurekas and inspirations as well as they will take off a considerable number of turns to your research and civic costs. Someone mentioned it earlier up but avoid building things which aren’t a necessity, granaries for example can usually wait quite a while before being built, and in some cases builders as well. Don’t produce builders unless they will significantly improve your land or gain you eurekas.

For more specific tips it’s probably best you show us what you’re doing and people can give you more pointers as to where you’re going wrong and can improve.

 

[Chekko]

Go for a Scout start, then Warrior and Slinger. Aim for expansion first and have the cities produce a granary onto a builder in the queue. Or start with a monument if they are close to other cities. You don't have to use every charge on the city that spawned the builder since they have such low population, you can go to your capital and increase their production and food to speed up the settler production.

Aim to have base starts for stuff. Aim to get the Archery bonus by killing a barbarian with your Slinger, then upgrade him, put him in your frontline city with a few military units there or produce an extra warrior after your settler. Use your gold, it's useful to use it on builders early.