[Vanilla] What governours early, and why?

[McKeu]

Heyas,

I am curious about what governours you pick early on. Is there another gold standard than Pingala being the first?
If so, why?

I normally tend to have him sit in my capital for the whole game. Second in line being Moksha, in the city closest to the "frontlines" during peace times. And Liang in any harbor city, except the capital. All others simply depending on current needs.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Pingala, Magnus and Amani are usually the go to early governors.

Pingala is obvious, culture is the most important early resource and Pingala speeds up your path to Political Philosophy by a lot. This means a faster Ancestral Hall, which then snowballs into faster expansion. In the vast majority of my games that don't use the Better Balanced Game Mod, Pingala will take the first 2 promotions at least, and often the third for Grants.

Magnus is another vital governor. Chopping and resource harvesting is a huge part of the early game. Generally speaking you will want to chop in your Ancestral Hall and then use that city to continuously chop out settlers. Magnus provides a 50% boost to this. After this, you often want Magnus to tour around your cities so you can chop in basic infrastructure and chop some food resources to get to pop 7 and pop 10 quickly. He's also critical for chopping out the Pyramids and Kilwa.

Amani is important for the Classical Golden Ages, since you can sometimes need a couple of city state suzerainities to guarantee this. This is really important for Free Inquiry civs (such as any coastal civ) or Monumentality civs. The difference between getting a classical monumentality golden age and not getting one is enormous if you have a civ with a strong faith game.

Why do you prioritize Liang in Harbour cities? Reyna is the one that boosts harbors, Liang does provide fisheries, but her primary benefit is the extra builder charge, so she should be centrally located.

 

[Victoria]

If you have a good faith build early then Amani is often a good choice because you get an additional 4-8 era points off her getting you the golden classical and monumentality so you can buy settlers with faith in number. The key to this strategy is to get lots of cities, the main aim of the early game.

I played many Pingala vs Magnus starts, comparing the two. Ultimately it was a no brainer, playing optimally Magnus+ provision gives the better benefit. It’s a lot to take in and Pin may be useful if culture starved early but I’ll try and explain briefly.
The aim is to get to PP by around T50, getting there too early does not give huge advantages and by escalating the amount of civics too much your districts become very expensive to build. You are better trying to get monument bought and built and go for Magnus many times.

Magnus has a couple of advantages with the main disadvantage being he is not Pin or Amani. The key thing is you do need to push your culture to try and get 2 governors fairly quickly so you can get to Provision.

At this stage you capital does not lose population with each settler and population working 2/2 tiles or better is the aim. Having that extra pop is surprisingly good. There is not much point if your city has only 2 pop in saving 1 pop because a third is fairly quick to grow, but in a 5 pop city losing a pop takes a while to recover from. Ideally this extra pop speeds you to more settlers.

Also with provision Magnus can be in any city, slot the 50% settler card and chop a tree and basically be near completion of the settler. A tree chop that generates 40 production is typically of value to chop mathematically and that value is higher the faster your game is going to be, and by chopping you speed up your game so do not compare a chop vs a no chopping game completion time. More importantly that 40 production chop becomes 90 production with Magnus and the card, that’s is a hell of an efficiency jump. Then of course chopping in ancestral hall helps all future settlers + free builders.

so with Magnus you not only chop in real quick but do not lose population, especially in your capital early... by the time you get to third/fourth Governor promotions your capital pop is high enough that you can appreciate Pingala replacing him and he can chop in pop anywhere.... the alternative being, “ do I need a classical golden age” and if so “am I risking not getting it by not having Amani?”. Only Pingala’s second promotion is of much use early but also inflates costs while Magnus inflates chops while not inflating costs.... but Provision is really undervalued until you start running comparison games or are good with maths.

 

[jehtro777]

I think it depends probably what you are trying to do but also sometimes how your era score is doing.

Double monument in your first two cities early with Pingala up to the connoisseur promotion can help you push for your tier two government if you want Oligarchy for the combat bonus or the Wildcard slot for extra Prophet points. If you don't make a classical era golden era this can help you get found a religion. I also like Pingala early if I plan on being lax about building campuses for the researcher promotion.

I took a double promotion on Magnus a game ago early and was able to chop a silly amount of Settlers (4 or 5) out of one city that helped me take more land much quicker than anyone else could. I really had to sit back and just marvel at how truly powerful it was because I do use Pingala a lot early. I think if you are worried that there will be a land shortage consider him.

Liang can be a good choice going into a monumentality golden era for the builder charges as well.

Do you think you are going to get an early game surprise war declared on you? Consider taking Victor who will boost your city defense. He's saved me in a game or two no joke, but you have to be lucky enough to have a promotion on hand almost.

 

[Victoria]

Just to show some difference, played Inca last night, you get so much population you do not need provision and an early large city suits Pingala so there ya go, there was no need to chop in early settlers as I found horses

 

[Socrates99]

If I'm "peacefully expanding" itll be Magnus with provision almost every time. Not losing a pop is huge because it gets you better production speed even if you're not chopping. Getting your empire founded as fast as possible is key. Monuments in a few cities will out pace culture from Amani or Ping.

If I'm zerg rushing with some early warmonger and am only settling a handful of cities itll be Amani for a suze and then Ping with connaseur. That gets me an ally and oligarchy quickly. Then I can rush swords or horses and take cities instead of expanding on my own.