struggling to found an empire

[trust]

I've been playing on noble difficulty, with large map size (usually continents or terra) and I cannot found more than 4-5 cities before being surrounded by civs.

For some reason, I can never get a starting religion (always beaten by enemy civs even when i research them straight away), and they expand much faster than i do. Most of the games end up with me trying to build up enough of an army to conquer the larger civs that surround me (i never get a religion to start with which compounds the problem). I end up having to gamble on having 10 or so chariots/horse archers, and usually lose.

My usual starting strategy is to build warriors and a worker with my capital, wait for the capital to build in size to 4-5 then start churning out settlers with archers to settle around me. Is there a better way to start?

What am i doing wrong? I've played Civ 1,2 and 3 and it was never this difficult to start out?

 

[Tawkys]

Try for hinduism (? well the polytheism one) over bhuddism. SInce lot's of civ's can get bhuddism right away. Perhaps let you settlers build the city and the warriors/archers for it, a gamble but it sounds like you're losing the culture war.. but I suck something awful so I could be wrong.

 

[Liquidated]

About religions....

there's 7 total, 3 of which are super early..

Buddhism
Hinduism
Judaism

all three require the 50 research point skill mysticism..

mysticism (50) -> meditation(80) => buddhism to first place winner. Not sure how ties are dealt with in multiplayer but I degress.

The next to get taken normally is hinduism. That is mysticism (50) -> polytheism (100) => hinduism to first place.

All the leaders with the spiritual trait + the incas start with mysticism, meaning there's no earthly possible way for a civ without mysicism as start to get the first two religions if there's two spiritual leaders in your game and you are not one of them.

Before you cry foul, keep in mind that the spiritual trait's "No anarchy" is balanced assuming That leader will have one of the early religions founded and collecting shrine 'tax". Also, said leader has a leg up for the rest of the game if they decide to try and corner the religion market - at great cost to the rest of the tech tree.

The 3rd of the early religions allow for the leaders without starting with mysticism a shot at founding an early religion...

Judaism is deeper into the tech tree and though it requires the techs needed for hinduism, in addition, it needs two more...

mystism (50)...-> polytheism (100)\
......................................................Monotheism (120)
mining (50 )....->.......Masonry (80)/

First to aquire Monotheism founds judaism.

Asoka (one of the two indians) starts with both mystism AND mining, pretty much giving him a clear shot at hinduism (AND/OR) judaism.

Keep in mind that placing money on buddism is pretty risky even if you settle in 4000 BC, as a single change in the research points you can ekk out of your starting squares will win or lose it.

key for beating the ghadi out on buddhism is to start with mysticism as a tech and land on a lucky square.

keep in mind research comes form commerce with 8 by default earned from your palace alone. Starting on a river nets you +1 and a few resources like dye and silk add +1. A n oasis is +2 as well but it's a terrain so no rivers can run through it.

One game I started as Asoka ended me up not only on a river square but in the 1 direction diagonally was a dye on the same river... for a total of 11 commerce.. 2 from the dye/river, 1 from the city's starting

I managed to tie up all 7 religions that game and was my first win on noble.. all with never fighting the other civ's ever ... well unless you call shipping off endless chains of missionaries of all manner of creeds an act of war. =)

In general the AI doesn;t seem to care about monopolizing religions such that if you really want a star by your later game religion of choice, any leader can if you pick the right research path.

Thanks to Sullah's excellent walkthrough to clue me in on this entire aspect of the game, the manual does a fantastic job of never mentioning it.

Cheers!
-Liq


ps. seriously don;t try starting the game at noble... run the dan quayle level at least once to get a feel for the civ building part even if the other civs act more like punching dummies than leaders.