Warlord to Regent (BC strategy)

[Griffintje]

Oh yeah, i eddited my long post you replied to a bit longer while you were making a reply, so read the rest as well

I did I was already wondering about the Family Size and Mfg. Production.

Thanks for all the help everybody!

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ok, i am now playing your save file for the first few turns:

The start:
I have a scout and i know it's a huge map with few and far away AI's so i imeadiately start a granary.
My worker starts to irrigate the wheat. After that, the worker moves to the BG SW of the capital without even building a road first. I am in a hurry now to get the food an production needed.
Second job is a road there because i will be passing this tile again soon. After this road, i move to the deer and cut the forest. 10 extra shields for the granary and a new 3 food tile. I mine the deer tile (normally i would irrigate it and share it with another city for max food, but i aint gonna do that micromanagement now)
I then road the deer tile because it connects to the former road and thus reduces my workers movement. Effectively this road costs only 1 turn. (Normally i do excel calculations to be sure i do things optimal, now i just do by feeling)
The worker now moves back 1 tile towards the capital and since the road is there, it can imeadiately start mining this tile.

3000BC, the granary is ready, the city has 5 fpt, but not yet the needed shields. It will have those soon though and then it is a fool grown 4 turn settler factory.

The worker now moves north to mine and road the BG tile NW of the capital. When that is done, the settler factory is complete.

2750BC, first settler is ready. And the city will make settlers every 4 turns from now on. I que up 6 settlers in the build queue already.

The first 2 cities build will make a warrior, then worker. this warrior is to be used for MP in the capital.

I am bored and quit the game. Here you have the save file with the first 3 cities.

 

[Obormot]

About early libraries: i build them when i am planning a cavalry conquest or a research victory. Sometimes building units, capturing land and hiring scientists works better, but sometimes libraries are better for fast research. If i am playing as the iroquois i won't build any libraries of course because i have an awsome early UU and i would be better off with just capturing more population. But lets say you are playing as the ottomans (scientific and awesome late UU), the map is quite big and the difficulty level is high enough so that you cannot overrun the AI before they get muskets and your closest neighbours have tough early UUs. Building early libraries in top commerce cities is the obvious choice for me here. I will usually build them on river banks in shield poor cities (and i tend to build only roads and irrigation on food bonuses in the early game to save worker turns, mines only around SFs and just enough to build settlers in time, combo factories suck), so by the time the libray is complete the city is already producing a decent amount of beakers.

The settlers everywhere vs. settlers only in settler factory depends largely on the settings as i said. On this pictures there is a lot of free land, so extra settlers from your first cities may indeed pay off.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

on a huge map, especially with minimal AI and an expansionist civ, I would make my first two or three builds scouts and pop huts like no tomorrow, and let the huts give me my first settlers/towns/warriors for MP.

 

[vmxa]

No techs or settlers at sid even for exansion civs. At emperor or lower that is a good idea, above that you have so many units running around it will not do all that much. Well if you had no one around, it could still be ok.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

If you ever have the choise between having production overflow on a settler and losing shields because the settlers is ready one or 2 turns before you have the needed population, take that loss rather than delaying the settler by 1 or 2 turns by building a warrior first.
A city one turn earlier is (much) more important than a regular warrior* !

*Exception is if you have more barbs than your current warriors can handle, causing that you cannot safely move settlers to their location.

Why so? One turn is just one turn.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Barbarians don't do an incredible lot of damage to your cities. They are painfull when they take a settler or worker, but when they attack cities, most of the time they just take some gold. Only with bad luck, they destroy your build or 1 population point.

So they can never take over or raze a city in Civ3? I didn't know this. Me who feared them.

 

[Obormot]

Delaying settlers in a 4-turner by 1 turn is like loosing 1/4 of city

That's why combo factories are so bad: you delay building settlers by a few turns and loose extra worker turns for mining just to get several pathetic regular warriors. If i am playing at demigod level or above i would always build settlers at lowest possible population in my SF. If i am playing emperor or below i might grow this city a little bigger if i have high-commerce tiles to work because of republic slingshot and more citizens born content. But even then i won't waste my time building mines for a combo factory, i would rather build roads to my new cities to regain at least some of lost turns or even start irrigating food bonuses next to my future cities.

 

[vmxa]

So they can never take over or raze a city in Civ3? I didn't know this. Me who feared them.

If you know you can't prevent the barbs from sacking the town, spent some of the gold or gift it. That way you get something out of it. Of course it is best to not let them do any damage.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

the worst is when they mess up the build of a wonder...

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Why so? One turn is just one turn.

Because not only that city is one turn later, but also everything that city makes, including new settlers and workers.
If it is one of your first cities, it pretty much delayes your complete game.

On top of that direct delay, the delay can be amplified because your opponents will grow stronger in the time advantage you gave them, causing your conquest to be slowed down extra. And this slowdown in conquest is a snowball effect. The AI has more time to build defences before you start attacking it, your attack will be slower, so the next AI you attack will have even more extra time etc....

One turn in your first city can cost you several turns on your victory date.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

the worst is when they mess up the build of a wonder...

Dont build any wonders before Hoover Dam (Or maybe Leonardos if you really, really want to build a wonder)

 

[Sashie VII]

Because not only that city is one turn later, but also everything that city makes, including new settlers and workers.
If it is one of your first cities, it pretty much delayes your complete game.

On top of that direct delay, the delay can be amplified because your opponents will grow stronger in the time advantage you gave them, causing your conquest to be slowed down extra. And this slowdown in conquest is a snowball effect. The AI has more time to build defences before you start attacking it, your attack will be slower, so the next AI you attack will have even more extra time etc....

One turn in your first city can cost you several turns on your victory date.

I can't agree more. As the difficulty level increases this becomes especially true

 

[Griffintje]

Would you go out and grab for strategic resources - for example Iron - by building a city on/around the resource, even if it is "far" away from your empire? And would you risk putting a city in between opponent cities to grab that resource?

 

[vmxa]

Almost never would I place a town far away. I don't put towns bewteen theirs for it either. I would if I was going to raze theirs.

If you place a town too close to them, they do not like it. Soon they will go to war, unless the are very weak and if that is the case, just take them.

Understand I view all land as mine, it is just a question of when I get around to claiming it.

 

[Griffintje]

I have played some (3) games up to 1000BC, the screenshots of around that time are included below. I used different maps because I tried to optimize my strategy in different map situations (seeing city placement as the main theme), and I played with 3 different civs.
I am curious to get to know your comments! I tried to follow the guidelines you guys gave me here.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Griffintje:
Could I have placed the Jungle town on the Spices? Or would that have erased the Luxury? (and would it have been a better placement?)​

Building on bonusses does not erase the bonus. It even provides the advantage of imeadiately connecting them. The disadvantage is that you do not get the full bonus benefits. (gold, shield or food, whatever the bonus provides) In low corrupt cities i try never to build on top of a bonus. That includes bonus shield grasslands. In very remote cities that are completely corrupt, only food bonusses must be spared. Remote cities i will often place on top of the luxuries.

You always get the full commerce bonus that a tile provides if you settle directly on it. Shields is a bit more complicated. You will get the bonus from a BG if your town goes size 7, but below you don't. Settling on an iron hill will give you the benefit of the resource, but you face the opportunity cost of not being able to build a mine. But this applies to all hills. Food is simple, as your city center will always produce two food no matter what.

So, to answer the original question, heck yes, you should have settled directly on the silks (not spices - I looked), as they provide a good amount of additional commerce which you would have reaped immediately without having to spend 57843 turns (appoximately) to improve a jungle tile. Not to mention that this would have put you on the river ...

 

[MAS]

This is getting a lot better!

Some things I noticed:

I see a number of towns that can make 1 spt and grow in 10, I would build a worker there, but you are making archers and warriors in those towns.

In shot 2 I see Kurah could be next to that mountain, and it woul be next to fresh water and the sea. And the town center would improve the otherwise not so good dessert tile.

In shot 1 If the city has a number of grassland tiles, no food bonuses, and not a lot of bonus grass, I'd just buld a settler, or worker, and not bother with a granary. Such is the case in Atlantis.

Why are buffelo and new york CXC ? I would not have done it that way.

Get in the habbit of building more workers, your city placement can only be improved with more play. Read Crackers guide to opening moves and try to apply it to all other city's too. calculate a city' power before you plop one down. keep in mind both its short turn and long turn power.

But the way you do your BC turns right now you should be able to win in regent diffeculty.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Yep, the amount of towns at 1000BC looks good now. The average city spacing looks pretty good (haven't looked at the specific places of them)

Workers a bit too few still.

In the cities where you are building military units, do all those cities have a barracks?
Besides the few early warriors to hunt barbs and serve MP who are build mostly because you lacked the citizens to make workers and settlers, it is good practice not to build a single regular unit unless there are emergencies. Always have a barracks before you start building units.
Because of this, you also need to think ahead. It has no use to first build a barracks, then a settler, then a library, and maybe then a unit. If you do that, the barracks has been sitting there iddle for too long. So at a certain point, you dedicate a city to unit production and from that point on, it should at least for a while produce only units. Of course, it might need something like a harbor or aquaduct later (the fact that you should never stop growth is still more important than the idea of not letting barracks sit iddle) And maybe you will need to build a worker when your city grows faster than all other cities and you can't keep it happy. (In that case, build a worker rather than assigning a specialist)

 

[BrianJ]

I'm curious about the close city placement. Doesn't this stunt the cities growth in later turns? (Assuming your game lasts til the modern age with huge cities)