Worker first, then Settler strategy

[meowsqueak]

I tried this strat again on an old game (a 4000bc save that, the first time around, I won via culture), and strangely, it seemed the AI kept up with my expansion rate somewhat. And not getting early religions early probably would've hurt my culture later on (I just played a few turns to check the strat out).

You make an important point here - to test a strategy against another one needs to use the same map, starting position, difficulty, etc, and ideally one will need to play a significant part of the game to judge the result. Naturally, a different map or different traits or different starting position will decorrelate the results with previous tests. This leads to the second important point - one has to be flexible in strategy. One needs to learn how to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the situation and play accordingly. This is why I believe that although the strategies presented here are interesting and worth studying further, it's more satisfying to make decisions based on the situation rather than according to some dogma.

This is, of course, natural and I doubt anyone disagrees with me on this point - but it is important to remember that hundreds of years of scientific effort has clearly shown a hypothesis must be proven using repeatable and controlled experiments. It would take a lot of time and effort to do this properly.

As for me? I'd rather just kill some axemen

 

[eric_]

I've perused the thread, and may have missed an answer to this question...sorry if this has been covered...and that it is only peripherally related...but I don't think it warrants its own thread...

I seem to spend a lot of early turns (like maybe through the first 30 - so through a Barracks and a settler build, for instance) with a warrior or scout exploring on autoexplore and otherwise wasting turns waiting for a city to build stuff. Am I too ambitious with what I try to build early (i.e. should I opt for things with shorter build times), or is this just something we all have to deal with early on?

I often have the feeling my time isn't being used as wisely as it could be.

 

[Oggums]

There isn't much to do other than explore. If your warrior/scouts are on auto, then you'll pretty much just be hitting "end turn" while you wait for something to finish.

When you get a worker, you'll get some super hot action going on. Unless you auto him too.

 

[eric_]

Yeah, that's what I figured. It's just something that's bugged me since Civ II and I wondered if people have come up with ways to maximize the usefulness of those first few turns.

 

[Puppeteer]

I kind of like this idea. I don't think I'd do it to 4 cities or send the settler out without so much as a scout, but I think I'll try a variation:

Worker, settler, (w/bronze working, and as remconius pointed out in another thread you start with +8c from the palace), but send the warrior or scout to make sure the path to found the city is safe before sending the settler. (Done ahead of time, of course, so the settler starts moving as soon as he's made.)

I'll have to experiment to see if I want do repeat to make city#3. As long as the only barbs are animals this should be okay. But I want little or no overlap of city radii.

I've moved from Noble to Monarch since that post. My above strategy has evolved to go for high food--farming for wheat or animal husbandry for pigs, grass cows or even fishing and a workboat for costal food bonuses--instead of BW if it's available as the techs are cheap and food builds settlers quite fast. I take the starting warrior/scout and scout a circle around my captial to spot the 2nd city site, have him wait in a place that unfogs all tiles that can threaten my settler's path so the settler can move safely at high speed to its spot when it's ready. I only do this as long as human barbs aren't around.

However, the animal barbs have been eating my lunch lately on Monarch, and I keep having to pause the settler build to make a replacement military escort, and meanwhile there is a barb healing usually right where I want to put my city. So I need to adjust my strategy for more early military. The human barbs are tougher, too; I think my early games had close neighbors and therefore fewer barbs, but lately I seem to have empty barb-breeding peninsulas nearby and single units are killed off. I'm not sure yet if I want to build military before or after the worker or when I want barracks. I'll be experimenting.

 

[Doctor Love]

I've found the chop/expand works pretty well on Monarch until I get barb or AI rushed. When your "well defended" cities have a couple archers and a warrior in them and the barbs roll up with Axemen or Genghis comes in with his freakin horse archers, there's not a lot you can do.