denyd said:
What I'm still trying to figure out is:
How important exploration beyond the local area is?
You need to explore your local area because you always need to have a plan for where you'll put your next settler. You also should have a plan B and plan C.
But beyond your local area, there's some value to exploring beyond:
- Contact with other civs (vital to stay involved in tech trading)
- Goodie huts (can sometimes give you a free tech -- more often with scouts)
- Making enemy cities visible, so you know exactly who is building what. Instead of "Pyramids were built in a far off land" you'll know "Pyramids were built in Athens" and you need to watch for Greece.
How important is it to make sure your cities form a connected empire.
This isn't too important... until you're at war. Then it becomes really easy for your enemy to isolate a stray city and go to work on it, while the remainder of your empire tries to cross 'no man's land' to get there. You can get away with this sometimes, but don't get carried away.
Other than that, it's important to make sure there's some kind of trade route between your cities. Sailing enables trade routes across coastal tiles -- that helps a lot.
Otherwise, you may need an open borders treaty with that civilization that divides your territory. Stay on good terms with them at all costs.
What the important technologies are.
Whew. You could probably write an entire article per era on what the important technologies are. I've found some strategies that work, but honestly, ALL strategies work -- and all strategies don't work, to a great extent.
I will mention these key technologies though:
Alphabet: You don't have to get this right away, but I like to get it before any of the AI civs do, so I can steer the tech trade in my favor before anyone else gets to it. If you get alphabet and one other expensive tech, you can often trade for all the techs you missed before.
Writing: There are at least three different paths to writing, and writing leads to the alphabet. The way I see it, this suggests that there are at least three viable starting strategies.
Bronzeworking: You don't have to get this right away, but you do have to get them sooner rather than later. If you take too long, you won't be able to find out where a source of copper is.
And the AI will capitalize on your weakness, if the barbarians don't do it first. Spearmen are key to take down mounted units, and axemen are both a great offense and great defense.
The sooner you discover bronzeworking, the sooner you might be able to find out that copperis scarce. In which case, ironworking becomes an even higher priority. Don't get caught without metals -- it will be your own damn fault.
Archery: Sometimes you can put this off or ignore it until you get to alphabet. Archery is easier to ignore if you have bronze hooked up early. But you can't ignore it forever.
Every other ancient technology is useful. The key is not getting caught up in getting every single one, because at alphabet you can trade for the ones you missed. There are multiple ways to get to writing-->alphabet, so you need to figure out the one that makes the most sense for you in this particular game. This will depend on your traits, your starting location, your starting techs, and your overall approach. I seldom grab more than 2 or 3 worker techs, and the ones I do grab are different every time depending on what resources are nearby and how early I've built a worker.
Man, you really can speak volumes about tech choices.