Tech race on prince - a new method?

[dannyusmc78]

Rox -...where you been buddy? My first steps with every game is to create capital, build worker, then settler....build second city, and from that city build either another worker, or another settler, usually settler....then after 3rd city is made, i make a worker from that, and have 2nd city start pumping out mil. units......sound reasonable?

 

[6K Man]

Academies are a straight mathematical calculation, as has been noted. I always try to have one in my main science city - usually my capital - because the 50% bonus is huge early on, and in Bureaucracy. I don't usually build additional ones until the late game when I have a number of cities pumping out 125+ beakers/turn.

And I know that in the late game, settling or building Academies with GS is somewhat a waste, because there are comparatively few turns remaining in which to collect the bonus beakers (& shield for settling). I just have trouble with lightbulbing GS when I only get 1/3 of a tech for the effort. In the late game, I try to produce Great Engineers and Merchants wherever possible.

 

[Roxlimn]

Sorry, dude. Work's been killing me. Haven't played for a full week now! I have to play today.

Settling strategy in Civ4 is a little counterintuitive. Food and food-rich resources are great for growing your capital and for making Workers and Settlers. Prioritize Food tech and improving Food tiles first.

Thus, worker first, as long as your Worker has something to improve. Otherwise, Warrior first. IF you have Fishing and a Seafood Resource, Workboat, then Worker.

After the first Worker, few recommend Settler next. For one thing, you'll rarely have a good enough scope of your land and situation to decide on which site to settle next. Gotta give that Warrior/Scout time to explore. You also gimp your early game defenses, and you stunt your city growth. Worse of all, your new city won't have any Workers to improve its tiles.

Worker-Warrior-Warrior or Worker-Scout-Warrior seems to be common. Definitely get the capital up to size 3, working 3 tiles for best effect. Improves your early teching, too.

After your first Settler, build a second Worker and send the first to your new city site. Your second city should immediately be working on something other than a Worker. It's costing you money! It needs to grow up fast so you can make it earn its keep. Ideally, you'll have a Warrior and a Worker accompany every Settler so you can get it up and running ASAP. As with the capital, Food improvements first. You might want a Monument or some other way to bust the cultural influence out to the second ring.

After your first Settler, grow a bit more, make some infrastructure, maybe a cheap wonder, then start your second round of REXing. Your Capital ought to be about size 4 or 5 by this point. 6 if you have an early Happy boost. REX harder this time. Your second city's Commerce and your slightly bigger Capital should allow you to grow to about 4-6 cities, so plan to make 2-4 Settlers, with the Worker and Warrior support.

There are variations on this. Settler-Settler for an ultra-early push can be doable if you have Gold in your capital, or you're Financial and have lots of Floodplains in your Capital, but generally, this is a good way to default.

 

[6K Man]

The problem with the "Library in every city, build Academies" approach is you're forced to spend a lot of time building Libraries, when you should be specializing your cities/building units.

An example: Say you have 5 cities. For the sake of argument, we'll assume that each one produces 10 beakers before modifiers (we'll also assume that happiness/health aren't issues). Let's also assume you have 5 Great Scientists to play with.

If you build a library and Academy in each city and run one scientist, each city is producing 22 beakers (10 beakers plus 3 for the scientist, +75%, rounded down). In total, that's 110 beakers per turn.

If you build a library and Academy in one city, run one scientist there, and settle 4 Great Scientists, that's 64 beakers in one city (10 beakers base plus 3 for the scientist, plus 24 for the settled GS, +75%, rounded down) and a total of 104 beakers per turn. So you're down 6 beakers/turn, but you've saved yourself 360 hammers by not building 4 other Libraries (You also have 4 more hammers/turn in your "Science city" which could come in handy when it comes time to build universities/observatories). The 360 hammers saved in the early game are huge.

In the middle game, when your cities are bigger and build faster, of course you'll want more Libraries. But I would say that the specialization advantage still holds, because later on, you'll want/need Observatories and Universities, and it's much more efficient to build them in a city full of settled GS and scientist specialists (and the GL, if you have it) than to build them all over the place.

Finally, if you run 1 scientist everywhere, you're wasting Great People points. Better to run 2, 3, or more (with GL/Caste System) in a science centre - you'll produce GS much faster.

 

[Kesshi]

The thing to do first phases of the game is to grow, grow, grow. People are power, and the more people you have, the better your economy will be. For people, you need Happy Faces and Health, and ways to accelerate your access to them, which will in turn grow your cities, which will then accelerate your tech and access to more Happy and Health Faces.

Roxlimn,

With a specialist economy, this is not [always] the case. I've found that even on Monarch I can lead the tech race with minimal tech trading with as little as two cities. In my very first SE game, I was generating over 2000 beakers per turn from two cities, my entire empire. Part of the reason this works is because of the higher difficulty and the larger cities that the AI grows, yielding greater trade route commerce. SE's still work on lower difficulties as well, they just don't provide nearly as much trade route commerce.

Though I won't argue that growing is a good thing, but when you get to the higher difficulty levels (Emperor and beyond) sometimes you cannot grow so early because the computer starts with 2 or 3 settlers and they will quickly box you in. Adapting to a smaller empire is necessary, and this is where the SE comes in. I don't run 100% SE's anymore, but for the first part of the game it sure looks like I'm running a 100% SE up until I get my few cities up and running. After I REX militarily, I'll throw up a lot of cottages to support the massive REX, then later on I'll destroy the villages/towns for more food, because I still try to keep every city running at least one specialist. Ideally I like to have every city pump out at least one great person, but realistically I know this isn't possible. Having every city pump out one great person, and settling [nearly] all of them in your capital, a production heavy city, under bureaucracy, can yield a TON of production. Spaceship parts in 2 turns without the space elevator are fun.

 

[Daedal]

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I think some of it is far too advanced. VoU's advice was probably the most practical at this point. Read Orion's threads and also Sisiutil's ALC games. Try to understand why people advocate certain strategies and then apply them in your own games.

 

[Roxlimn]

Kesshi:

That's eminently doable, but I'm afraid that the amount of game knowledge to do that is rather deep. You can't expect a struggling Prince player to just stick to two cities and keep up in tech.

 

[Xhaine]

Well if you are running theocracy, therefore a state religion is present, monastaries boost research, and with University of Sankore you get a great boost to reseach especially if you make temples or Cathedrals Besides Priest specialists add gold, which in aleiviating costs alows you to reun a higher science %

 

[popejubal]

Wow, the voice of unreason....youve helped before......you say concentarte on developing good cities....way vague. As I said, I try to have a library and at least one scientist in every city, one production city pumping out military. Whats so different with your method?

The difference is that he is doing exactly what you are doing sooner than you are doing it because he is not spending resources on things that don't directly advance his game position.

Pyramids and other Wonders are good things to build with your "extra" hammers. In the early game, though, you have no extra hammers because everything that you have needs to be devoted to a strong military to keep barbarians and neighbors off your back, strong science to advance to the point where you can have a real economy (i.e. Code of Laws, Currency and either a Religion or Calendar with lots of calendar resources, etc) and lots of techs that will let your workers improve the land that you posess.

The last is the most significant reason why the Pyramids are a bad idea for most people. You need the early worker techs and you need the two economy techs listed above. The sooner you get those, the sooner you can start dominating your neighbors. If you spend time getting a religion or Masonry, you won't be spending those beakers on Pottery, Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, etc.

In short, Voice of Unreason does exactly the same things in his game that you do well in yours. He just avoids doing the extra things that distract your civ from clawing its way to its rightful place as the master of all it surveys.