The First 50 Turns -add yours and comment

[TW_Honorius]

I have been reading the forums and it seems some people have trouble in different areas of the game: gold, happiness, culture, production, etc and I thought to post some campaigns and see after 50 turns if I made some good decisions when it comes to tiles, social policies, city location, etc.

Please comment and add your own starting points if you like, I want to see how other players start out and see how much of the starting position can affect your gameplay or do people make wrong decisions.

Campaign 1: Genghis Khan

Now when I build cities, I like to build them next to a river or a lake and if I can add a coastline, even better. My starting position is good as I have cotton and marble. I am next to a river and a coast with hills nearby for production. I really do not like having the desert, but it will have to do.

So after 15 turns, this is my empire, decent gold and food, so we should not run out of any anytime soon or be short any, but production is a little slow, thank goodness marble is next and 2 hills next to my border.

So after 31 turns, I have 4 citizens, I had to build a farm in the desert since I did not want an idle worker waiting for calendar, but food has become a problem since a goody hut gave me a free citizen, so granary is a must.

So when my population hits 5, I will build a settler and start my second city, to the east I have 2 cattle, a lake, sugar, cotton, and some hills. Another balanced spot to put my second city and not have it be too far away.

Now after 51 turns, my empire:

Now my techs went in this order:

Pottery then Calendar, so I can put a planation for cotton. Also need to build the granary.
Mining then Masonry, so I can farm next to the river and then build a quarry for the marble.
Animal Husbandry and now I am researching trapping to start build trading posts plus pasturize my cattle, lol.

My social polices were, including getting culture from a goody hut which advanced my choices were:

Unlock Tradition, for the food
Unlock Liberty, to unlock faster settler creation.

For gold, I took out 3 encampments, got culture, citizen, and gold from goody huts, and met Russia and Japan. I am building Stonehenge at the moment to add culture.

My plans for the tiles are as follows:

Farms along all river tiles
Trading posts one off from river unless Hill
If hill, then mine the hill
Alternate farms and trading posts as needed to maintain growth.

One mistake I think I made was, my second city built on cattle, should have gon i tile SW on a 1h 1f instead of a 3f tile

Thats it for my first post, let me know how I did and add your own. If this is a success then I might add more later on. Also, let me know if the pics are too big.

 

[DaveMcW]

You need more settlers.

Skip the granary, skip the pop growth, skip stonehenge, just spam out settlers till your happiness hits zero.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The initial location is poor. Moving your Warrior to the north will confirm that you're shafted to the west as well.

Move Settler 1 E, 1 SE across the river to pick up the Cows and the Hill at start. With a Food-rich start like that, you should grow to 2 and Settler spam. Spend the first 50G buying the second Cow tile. Next cities should be 3E (2 Hills, resources 2 tiles out) and 2 W, 2 NW from capital (collects a Hill and the Marble, and can cheaply acquire Sheep with Culture/cash).

Scout and Worker should go find Maritimes and steal a Worker. On Chieftain, you'll probably have to rob a nearby civ.

 

[ClarenceSeedorf]

Please don't do ICS.

 

[HermannLombard]

just spam out settlers till your happiness hits zero.

That may be very, very quickly with the patch!

 

[Slowpoke]

Nah, beginning spam willl never be patched out since it speeds up the boring part of the game. But the patch will slow down full blown ICSers.

 

[Tabarnak]

Initial production should be a scout. Animal Husbandry and Masonry first would have been better. A calendar tile provide one extra gold instead of 1 hammer and 1 gold for marble. As you need mining for this, you can chop forests to spam some warriors and build a farm or 2 as well.

Stay at pop 4 (3 if no free pop) and take liberty and spam settlers protected with warriors, and use them to explore farther. Settle cities with synergy. Make mines workable for your capital and your extra cities without the need to buy hills for extra production because they cost higher than anything else. For example, settling 1 east and 2 south-east make an hill workable for your capital(add production due to lack of forests chopped) and you can add 2 hammers with worked pastures for your 2nd city. Later you can buy tiles to get the calendar ressource on north.

The marble tile helps you to provide 3 cities including your capital without being unhappy. Spot for mining luxuries for extra cities. Why? To go straight for writting and build it in your capital and hire scientists. Post-patch you can delay this. For other cities it's right after building some monuments while you grow at pop 4. Buy/steal some workers as well.

If you reveal horses north of you, consider an horse rush. But explore fast enough to make a favorable decision.

Yes your pics are too big.

 

[MykC]

Depending on how you want to play the game and what difficulty will determine what you can do. I really like settling on tiles and selling luxuries to AI civ to fund my early expansion and avoid slow down in my capital.

The first. Settle on the marble. The capital will be a wonder whore.
-First two policies in tradition.
-Tech order: Masonry->Calendar->Writing
-Build order: Warrior, Warrior, Warrior or Warrior, Scout, Scout --- Pyramids

Because you settled on the marble as soon as you research masonry you can sell the marble to an AI. Hopefully you've run into a couple of AI Civs by now and you will be able to rush buy a worker.

Work the land until you research calendar and then buy the tile for cotton and work that piece of land and when you do develop the tile sell that luxury. Rush buy your first settler.

Your should have a lot of the map explored by now and the location to east is good but probably not your best option. However, if settling to the east I would settle on the tile best side the two cows such that I am two tiles from the two luxury resources.

By the time I settle my worker should be sitting on one of those new luxury resources waiting to work it.


The alternative is to settle on the cotton and research calendar first. Rush settlers and keep settling on luxury resources rather than developing the tiles with workers initially. You can choose to build settlers and rush buy workers if you want to do it that way by going liberty.


Finally settle where you start is always a good default. The build order is the same, Warrior, Scout, Scout.

Warriors do some initial proximity exploration but come back to the capital and (as a team) hunt barbarian camps and respond to city state requests. (This is why I like liberty because it gives me the freedom to know where the camps are and when they spawn so I can have peace of mind and move my warriors 10-15 turns away.

 

[P-Zombie]

This is a pretty horrible starting spot.

I think it's a mistake though to build a granary so early. Two extra food for a city with crappy tiles and no specialist slots is definitely not worth spending those precious early hammers on. And if I was going to go for Stonehenge, I would not build a monument until later. That could have been a warrior instead. And you really do want to expand as soon as you can. The sooner you found a new city, the sooner it grows and produces. That can't be stressed enough. No matter what victory condition you might want to pursue, you are going to want more than one city. Your top priority in the early turns should always be getting your settlers out to grab the good stuff.

And grabbing nearby luxuries (that you don't already have) gives you the happiness to keep expanding. So I would have settled 4E of your capital, to get that sugar right away (and also a hill, plus fish and two cows in the next ring...not too shabby).

Tech-wise, Mining/Masonry would have been my choice of start, since you know the marble will be the first culture-pop tile. Head to Calendar after if you really want the 'henge; otherwise I'd probably go for Animal Husbandry (show horses for units and the hammers) and then Trapping. I hate chopping forests in hammer-poor areas, so I would probably say to heck with the early growth and put TPs on those two forests (rather than chopping and farming). You aren't growing much while pumping out setters anyway, and the extra gold is handy for unit and tile purchases.

One more point: scouting! Someone else said it in this thread already - build a scout, first thing. Or if you're really hell-bent on conquering people, warrior first. Either way, get another unit running around right away. You'll meet city states sooner, have a better shot at grabbing ancient ruins, find your neighbors' starting spots, and see the distribution of resources on your continent. Not a thing you want to ignore.

 

[Bleser]

Unlock Tradition, for the food
Unlock Liberty, to unlock faster settler creation.

Interesting. So far I've stuck with Honor in the beginning to help battle the raging barbarians I always choose, and once I went with Tradition to get faster wonder production.

Farms along all river tiles
Trading posts one off from river unless Hill
If hill, then mine the hill
Alternate farms and trading posts as needed to maintain growth.

Exactly as I do. Still not sure if it's best but it seems to be a good formula thus far.

 

[TW_Honorius]

Ok, images resized. I guess the consensus is my starting spot was not as good as I thought. Ok, fair enough, I see all your valid points. As far as ICS, not a big fan or a big warmonger, but I will build my cities, 4 total, faster before I go hunting for the enemy. I got excited as this was my fist game next to marble and I should have spent more time exploring before I settled the fist city.

I also made the mistake of not amping up the difficulty, so after the patch is out, I will post another scenario to see if I chose a better spot the second time around. As far as CS, on my continent, I had 2 mil 1 cul plus so I did not hit the jackpot, but Russia had 6 gold mines, so gold is not a problem with me, I have like 20k in gold right now with all my puppet cities like 10 of them. Even though I started bad, the game is mine, but on chieftain, I better win. Thanks for all the replies guys. Hopefully this helps out more than myself. As far as my past, I played CIV3 for a lil while and I forgot it all, so I guess im a CIV noob.

 

[Polobo]

As is turns out moving the settler 2E and founding on the 2nd turn would have been good. You'd have 2 calendar luxury resources and two cows. The major loss is a couple of hills. That said you would have excellent food capabilities and plenty of grassland for trading posts.

You'd definitely need a military city but gold and population (and thus science) would be non-issues. Post patch setting up a water-hill gets you a hammer and once you improve the cows and mine the hills you have a modest amount of production to focus on buildings starting with the mid-game.

Research: Animal Husbandry > Pottery > Calendar > Trapping > (Wheel <> Mining)
Build: Warrior > Worker > Worker > Settler > Water-Mill > Settler > Monument

I would circle scout the first warrior while leaving the second warrior fairly close to home to protect the two workers. I would consider buying a scout or two when possible and send them out to make contact with other civs. I don't plan for or try to worker-steal from city-states but if you do then the first and/or second worker can be had that way and you can get the settler out sooner (though probably fit in a scout instead of the workers).

I'd probably skip Liberty here and focus on the Tradition policies to make the capital as strong as possible in support for a few other cities and then your military machine. Once you fill that out the choice becomes between Honor/Patronage/Commerce depending on how the game is playing out. Even if you miss out on a choice city-spot early on you can always have the option of taking and possibly resettling it later. Have fewer cities early on isn't that huge a loss since you probably get a policy as a consolation prize.

 

[No_such_reality]

Why settle next to water or rivers? Water tiles are horrible unless they have a resource. Two food and gold unless you build a wonder.

River tiles are nice for food and gold, but you want those as workable tiles. There isn't a benefit of having the city on the river. Unlike Civ4 where two cities on a river where linked with a trade route, Civ5 only recognizes roads or harbors.

 

[Polobo]

Waterwheel + Garden are decent benefits of settling on rivers; especially with a tradition capital where extra food and population makes running specialists easier.

The main reason for settling on the coast is either resources or ship building.

OT:
I think, though, that water is less important in the game then it should be.

One decent improvement would be to allow water-wheel/garden or other water-based building to be enabled if the river tile is within 1-tile of the city; even ship-building would benefit from this. Basically treat the first ring of tiles just like city tiles for purposes of determining whether water-required actions can take place.