Advanced Start Strategies

[egavactip]

What are some of the ways you can maximize the Advanced Start options to get off to a running start? I've been playing around with advanced start for the first time recently, and I like it, but I am curious to learn from those with experience.

[snoopy369]

That depends on SP vs MP play. From what i've seen (nothing recently admittedly), the AI does not handle advanced start very well; hopefully that has (or will) changed. If you want a 'balanced' game (ie, don't want to get a huge advantage), don't buy techs, only cities/settlers/units; from what I'd seen earlier, the AI does not buy techs. If that's changed then ignore this.

In 'fair' SP (where the AI actually buys techs), buy a lot of 'base' cities (don't significantly spend on buildings, those are easy to produce), buy one culture expansion, increase pop only in cities where you don't have much food, buy a couple of workers instead of buying plot improvements except possibly a food improvement or two, and then buy techs. Your main goal would be to expand quickly land-wise (as it always is in SP...) so do that via cities. Then buy enough units to ensure you won't be killed on turn 10 by the AI, if you're close to one.

In MP, buy techs up to the next significant military tech, if reasonably possible; then buy a city or two, and then a bunch of units. IIRC there is a 10 turn peace to start the game, but after that it's fair game - and if you have more advanced units than anyone else, you will win (or at least not be slaughtered).

[egavactip]

I am talking about single player.

[Seedle]

From my experience, the AI doesn't buy techs in an advance start (AS). You can abuse this fact by using your points to buy meditation and polytheism and start the game with 2 religions.

When I use advance start, my strategy is to buy Animal Husbandry and Bronze working, and a couple settlers. This allows me to immediately settle important military resources.(yes, I just split an infinitive. Bite Me.) It should be noted that expansive and imperialistic civs pay less than other civs for workers and settlers respectively, and it costs the same to make a settler as a city, unless you are imperialistic, in which case the settler saves you points.

I play on noble with standard AI and don't have any problems with the AI rushing me, higher difficulty and Aggressive AI may make buying units more important. But on my settings, I buy 2 warriors to explore and do fine.

So, in short, I buy 2 warriors, 2-3 settlers, 2-3 workers, and some techs to give the workers something to do. I may throw in a tile improvement or 2, and a pop point or border expansion, but those are rarer, and depend on what I had to spend for the other stuff.

[Garth Vader]

You must start with more points than I usually did. I always grabbed Buddhism, then an extra city and 2 scouts and 2 workers, and a tech for the workers to do something. Sometimes I couldn't quite to all of that though, depending on what techs I started with.

[ben04]

If you want to get the maximum out of a standard game then build all the cities in your area, then a food improvement and a cottage per city. If a border pop is needed give it one instead of repositioning the cities.

Spend the rest on settlers and what remains on scouts.

There are 10 turns of absolute peace. Not even animals spawn. This is more than enough to settle all of your settlers. Use the scouts to pop huts.

This way you will likely get a slight tech lead because of the huts and within only a few turns you have an empire bigger than what most AIs will get in the entire game.

Scouts are better than buying techs as they are cheaper.

The food improvement is cheaper than buying population and within only a few turns it achieves the same effect. The cottage will be worked from the moment the second pop is born. This allows you to finance the extra cities you found. When your cities becomes size 2 let them build workers. Before that work on a defender.

You need about 2 times as many workers as cities so your initial cities will very likely build at least 2 of them before the first building and couple more after that.

This strategy works especially well with Darius. It doesn't work on crowded maps.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by ben04 ...
There are 10 turns of absolute peace. Not even animals spawn. This is more than enough to settle all of your settlers. Use the scouts to pop huts...

Interesting tip, thanks.

[johnmcd]

AI does buy tech on advanced start these days, certainly at the higher levels.

Universal peace does not extend to barbs that pop from huts. I got wiped out on about turn three once

[snoopy369]

Are you using Bhruic's patch, or the default 3.13?

[ben04]

Originally posted by johnmcd
AI does buy tech on advanced start these days, certainly at the higher levels.

Universal peace does not extend to barbs that pop from huts. I got wiped out on about turn three once

That's why you should pop huts with scouts.

[MoonWolf]

Never thought of buying scouts to use them to grab techs....

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Are you using Bhruic's patch, or the default 3.13?

Both versions do, the easy proof is that the AI often founds a religion on turn 1