Tradition's 4 cities opening

[Makaz]

Has anyone tried a 3-city similar strategy ?

The aim would be to save a settler's fee in order to get courthouse in the first conquered capital, making it the 4th aqueduc

In this approach, the player is less dependent on start conditions and lux grabbing which can sometimes be complicate with barbs or which can require to settle less good land - also allow for earlier NC and less draining on happiness in the long term ?

 

[Jelster]

Indded, a strategy I have used a few times.

I tend to build 3 cities and then wait to see if I get any coal or oil, if not I build City 4 to capture the resource, and then rush buy a shrine & grannery to get the city up and running quickly.

However, I have utilised a captured capital a couple of times, in fact my current game I captured Denmark and used the capital as City #4. It already had a monument and library, plus a couple of Wonders. I got a free Ampitheatre and aquaduct, allowing me to start building Hermitage in my capital on the next turn.

I think it would be dependant on circumstances, but a possible strategy none the less...

 

[Buccaneer]

Has anyone tried a 3-city similar strategy ?

The aim would be to save a settler's fee in order to get courthouse in the first conquered capital, making it the 4th aqueduc

In this approach, the player is less dependent on start conditions and lux grabbing which can sometimes be complicate with barbs or which can require to settle less good land - also allow for earlier NC and less draining on happiness in the long term ?

Absolutely. 4 cities is not hard and fast rule, anywhere between 3-5 would work. But to your point, if there is a nearby capital (<10 hexes), that will become one of the my cities. The cost of early units balances out the savings from a settler plus the benefits of such a location (not to the mention that opens up an enemy's territory next to your's).

 

[Psygnosis]

Just tried this opener and it worked out pretty well!

Adjusted a few things along the way - most notably built scout-shrine-worker in capital as I met Jerusalem first and really wanted to get the Desert Folklore pantheon up and running. By then I had already decided that Austria was located way to close to me for comfort and they seemed to have a bunch of cities located in the desert.

Surprisingly (they had been entirely very friendly before) they DOWed early, turn ~48, came at me with a ton of Warriors, couple of Archers and one Composite Bow. I had quite a few turns left until Construction then but managed to fend of their assault on my capital without any casualties on my side. Immediately went for a counter attack after upgrading to CBs and took Graz with the help of a 1HP scout.

Where would you go from here if you were in this scenario:

Spoiler :

I'm feeling pretty comfortable with Ghandi to my south. He has even less of a military than I have and he's in war with Suileman. I'm just not sure on where to go tech-wise here as this type of rapid 4-city start is foreign to me.

This is Deity, by the way. Hopefully this will be my first Deity win.
Suggestions?

 

[Tabarnak]

Make sure to not delay NC(i.e. build it before the turn 90 if possible) and if you are in good shape you can advance your military troops further through Austria lands and get quite a large empire and then focus on science and diplomacy. Then feel free to push more military specs or simply work around for a peaceful victory(or both!).

 

[Psygnosis]

Yeah, couldn't keep from playing and that's pretty much what happened. Built the NC by turn 90 and advanced into Austria. Teched towards Iron Working as suggested in the first post and happily found out that I had over 20 iron within my borders. Took a couple of more of Austrias cities and settled for a temporary peace treaty while teching towards Samurais.
Long story short, the Hiawatha backstabbed me during my second war with Austria. I sold one of my puppets to Byzantine (to the SW) for ~80GPT and used a part of that to bribe Suileman (Hiawathas neighbour) into joining the war while I pushed on into Austrian land. My puppeting of the cap (containing both Petra and Notre Dam!) got delayed until turn ~150, where is where I'm at right now.

Science wise, however, things have gone bad. Checking my literacy score I'm at 40% and Hiawatha is at 52%. Not sure how I'm going to recoup that... only idea I have is to try to grow my cities even faster and faith buy as many GS as possible (producing about 70 faith/turn at the moment). Noone has advanced into industrial yet though, which is a relief.

Thanks for the suggestions. We'll see how peaceful this will end.

 

[Buccaneer]

Yeah, couldn't keep from playing and that's pretty much what happened. Built the NC by turn 90 and advanced into Austria. Teched towards Iron Working as suggested in the first post and happily found out that I had over 20 iron within my borders. Took a couple of more of Austrias cities and settled for a temporary peace treaty while teching towards Samurais.
Long story short, the Hiawatha backstabbed me during my second war with Austria. I sold one of my puppets to Byzantine (to the SW) for ~80GPT and used a part of that to bribe Suileman (Hiawathas neighbour) into joining the war while I pushed on into Austrian land. My puppeting of the cap (containing both Petra and Notre Dam!) got delayed until turn ~150, where is where I'm at right now.

Science wise, however, things have gone bad. Checking my literacy score I'm at 40% and Hiawatha is at 52%. Not sure how I'm going to recoup that... only idea I have is to try to grow my cities even faster and faith buy as many GS as possible (producing about 70 faith/turn at the moment). Noone has advanced into industrial yet though, which is a relief.

Thanks for the suggestions. We'll see how peaceful this will end.

At turn 150, I do hope that not only do you have Education, but Universities built and have 2 scientists in each city. A good benchmark would be about 200 bpt. You can catch up pretty good at that rate.

 

[Psygnosis]

At turn 150, I do hope that not only do you have Education, but Universities built and have 2 scientists in each city. A good benchmark would be about 200 bpt. You can catch up pretty good at that rate.

I did indeed.
I'm at 350 bpt on turn 175. Public Schools made a pretty big difference. Lagging behind though. Hiawatha (who's in a war with everyone on the continent) managed to get into the modern era by turn 159. Not sure if that's early or late for Deity.
I might go for the diplomatic VC as my gold income is good enough and most of the other civs like me.

--

By the way, thanks for this thread and this strategy. It's definitely a fun and effective opener.

 

[Buccaneer]

I did indeed.
I'm at 350 bpt on turn 175. Public Schools made a pretty big difference. Lagging behind though. Hiawatha (who's in a war with everyone on the continent) managed to get into the modern era by turn 159. Not sure if that's early or late for Deity.
I might go for the diplomatic VC as my gold income is good enough and most of the other civs like me.

--

By the way, thanks for this thread and this strategy. It's definitely a fun and effective opener.

Very nice work, esp. on Deity. You're right, Public Schools would soon follow after turn 150. I don't think you have much to worry about even though Modern in 159 surprises me (I'm only an Immortal player). Hope Iroquois can be distracted enough to not win but if they go for an early space, you would know what to do.

 

[dthompson32]

I'm surprised this thread isn't stickied now, given its popularity.

Could I get some advice on the types of city sites that people look for? I have a game I'm playing right now that is challenging me. I have a great start location for my capital, but it is hard to find places for my other three cities. To the east of me is a decent spot for one city, but the ideal spot is on grassland next to a river, so while I can get to two sellable resources, I'm not getting many hammers and archers are taking forever to build.

To the west is another good location but without a river. Food is a problem, so the city grows very slowly. Then a fourth location I can either put something in a desert to the south with some nice resources, but no food. Or to the north with rivers and jungle, but no resources at all.

I'm really stumped by city placement. I seem to be getting to CB at turn 60, but my other cities haven't even produced their first archer yet.

(I tried moving one settler about 10 hexes south to fabulous location that has a natural wonder within range, but Siam just steamrolled the city with a dozen units while I was fighting off Mongolia)

 

[Breezin]

This guide is excellent. So far for me, it's the only one that I've been able to employ in my games successfully. I easily picked up 2 difficulty levels using the strategies in the guide.

Thank you muchly!!

 

[BlackWizard]

Has anyone tried a 3-city similar strategy ?

The aim would be to save a settler's fee in order to get courthouse in the first conquered capital, making it the 4th aqueduc

In this approach, the player is less dependent on start conditions and lux grabbing which can sometimes be complicate with barbs or which can require to settle less good land - also allow for earlier NC and less draining on happiness in the long term ?

I annexed my 4th city. However it didnt get free monument from legalism but I had to build it. Any Idea why it didnt get free monument?

Edit. I tested little mor . Build 4th settler and build 4th city with it. It get free monument instantly.

So my quess is annexed cities doesnt really count as cities when considering free buildings from legalism

 

[Browd]

Depends on when you take Legalism. If you conquer the 4th city before you take Legalism, you will get the monument (or whatever) when you do take Legalism (whether you puppet or annex the city). If you conquer the city after taking Legalism, it doesn't count as your 4th city (as you found out).

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

oddly enough i found this out with aqueducts. i took a puppet while only having 3 cities around t70. i was actually going to settle one before the finisher but it got taken by a scout i didnt see behind a hill. anyway, the puppet got a free aqueduct, preventing me from keeping it at a low pop. i just annexed it later when it was at 7 pop. it's nice to know puppets can counts as one of the 4-free-building cities.

 

[Jelster]

I've had a game where I had 4 cities plus two puppets, but when I finished Tradition, the Aquaduct ended up in one of the puppets, not my 4th city....

Never had a similar issue with monuments though.

 

[Browd]

All depends on the sequence you acquire and found cities and when you take Legalism and the Tradition finisher. If you have four or more cities (whether founded, puppeted or annexed) at the time you take either policy, the policy will apply to the first four cities, regardless of founded, puppet or annexed status. Any city acquired after taking the policy will not get the policy; the policy will apply to your next founded city.

In your case, you had 3 (or fewer) cities when you took Legalism. After founding 3 cities (each getting a monument), you acquired one or both of your puppet cities (no monuments, since acquired after Legalism). You then founded your fourth city, which got the last monument. Finally, you took the Tradition finisher, which put an aqueduct in your first puppet, rather than your fourth founded city.

 

[stickyfingers]

I have a couple questions on this that I don't see answered. When micro-managing in the beginning, do you prioritize food or production? I can't really tell what tabernak is doing in the video (bc of the video quality and he's clicking around fast). He seems to be limiting growth, but I'm not sure what the intent is. Grow until you are close to unhappy, then stop? My problem is in my satellite cities, it takes a long time to build anything like a library unless I move to production focus. But if I do that, the city doesn't grow.

 

[Tich]

I have a couple questions on this that I don't see answered. When micro-managing in the beginning, do you prioritize food or production? I can't really tell what tabernak is doing in the video (bc of the video quality and he's clicking around fast). He seems to be limiting growth, but I'm not sure what the intent is. Grow until you are close to unhappy, then stop? My problem is in my satellite cities, it takes a long time to build anything like a library unless I move to production focus. But if I do that, the city doesn't grow.

Initially you want to set all of your cities on production focus and manually lock high food tiles that (preferably) have production. Once you're working all of your 3+ food tiles and have a Granary + Water Mill built you usually want to start locking in some high production tiles. If they happen to have a bit of food on them, awesome, but I mean you'd almost never want to to work a 2 food Grasslands over a Hill + Mine or something for example. The reason to use production focus is because it gives you "free" production when your cities grow. Why? The way the game is programmed is that production on buildings is completed after population changes have taken effect. Assuming that your cities have some high production tiles (say a hill with a mine) then that 3 production will automatically be added to whatever you're building when your cities grow. You can then manually lock a high food tile to continuing growing. It's a small edge, sure, but every bit counts on Immortal+.

Now, it's important to remember that growth during periods of unhappiness is severely stunted. You should strongly consider stagnating your cities in favor of production when you inevitably become unhappy as you're quickly jamming 4 cities up. Growing 1/60th of the way closer to the next pop just isn't worth a turn of extra production. You obviously don't need to worry about this if you're neutral or happy but I mean if you're unhappy and your next citizen is 25 turns away then there's really no value in having extra food for growth.

Also, keep in mind that you cannot starve your cities out while building Settlers. If you do end up building them (and you often will) then you should jam citizens on every production tile available.

 

[Tabarnak]

Yuo should grow your extra cities to 3-4 maybe excepted the last one where you probably need to halt at 2 citizen and chop forests. Try to be in green happiness almost all the time for your first 70 turns.

The video is lacking of this capacity to maintain this happiness level. I still left that video on youtube because i wanted to demonstrate that even with some mistakes it's still possible to achieve a 4 cities start.

Maybe i should post a new and better one but since almost every regular players can do it repeatively and already put some videos on youtube i don't see the point to make it.

 

[Tich]

Hey Tab, quick question. I've been using a similar build post-patch except that I find myself churning archers out of my capitol moreso than having my satellite cities build them. I find that I would rather go shrine-library way more often than not and just have my main churn out 6 or so archers. I'll usually have my first expo build one but beyond that I find that it's just way easier to put your main to use.

The reason for this is because I find that the AI spends their gold much more quickly and frequently post-patch. Rather than always having 240 or more they usually spend it every time they get just over 100. Even on Pangea I often struggle to find good trading partners early on. Eventually people have gold to spare but I mean it's way too slow to rely on. This is especially true if barbs or terrain difficulties hinder my early scouting. Sometimes you can only meet like 3 civs before getting blocked/attacked/forced to defend your workers/settlers and I mean I often find myself looking at 3 civs who barely have 250g amongst them. Are you trading for gpt moreso than lump sums maybe?

I'm wondering what your thoughts on the build are post-patch. Are you also strapped for cash? Is building archers out of your tertiary cities slowing your NC down too much? Are you actually able to rush buy multiple settlers, CB money and a lib in your 4th? How are you getting your lib in your 4th otherwise?

I dunno, I really like the whole scout -> worker -> shrine -> archer -> settler -> settler (often anyways) into like 5 archer build myself. I focus on shrines and libs in my expos and rush buy workers since they're cheap. I find it way too hard to reliably get 240 for all of my luxuries now that the comps spend their gold like madmen.

For what it's worth I can reliably crush immortal (no danger of losing at any point) but Deity is still like... maybe 25% assuming that we ignore starts that are virtually unwinnable.