Early city placement strategy when playing a Non-Religious Militaristic Civ.

[Artifex]

I hope I can explain my question good enough, I'm having a hard time trying to phrase it but here goes..

One thing I noticed about religious civs is that I love the cheap temples because they allow early cities to quickly have maximum radius for maximum resource availability and the maximum radius allows you to plan cities more effeciently and neatly. I also prefer to have each of my cities to have the minimum overlap if at all possible. I don;t like building them right up on top oif each other..my preferance is towards super cities not hordes of small cities.

I have been wondering something that has been bugging me for awhile as I have played China my last many games. I

When you play say a militaristic civ that doesn't have the religious trait, is it a mistake to build temples first? How quickly do you build temples in your first 100 turns or so?

Do you instead try to get the best 8 spaces immedietly surrounding a city when founded. Thus not taking into account the maximum radius since. For instance say there are 2 cattle resource squares that are awesome. But by placing a city right next to them you end up trading off 3 grassland squares and a wheat resource. for a 3 mountain squares or 3 ocean squares for instance (once your city expands to its full 2 square radius). But you will get immediate access to the cattle squares this way. It's a tradeoff.

If I am playing a religious civ its a no brainer I place away from the cattle resources knowing that Ill build a cheap temple and they will fall into my city radius after it expands in a few short turns. Thus once it's radius expands the city will be much more valuable and effecient. If I placed right at the cattle I woudl have immediat access, but once city expands it will be far less valuable. Itr comes down to how quickly I can build a temple and if early temple building is ok for a warmongering/non religious style civ. (I know Japan has it easy it has best of both worlds, but what about germany, rome orchina for instance?) Still churn out temples first chance in all cities?)

But as playing a militaristic civ that might be trying to mix it up with my neighbors early and often I wondered is building temples early a mistake?

What sort of early city building startegies do most use for a militaristic style civ? Still try to build temples as quickly as possible in yuor cities? Or is that a mistake?

I hope my question wasn't too incoherant.

[playshogi]

A militaristic civ should be building barracks, military units and settlers. Sometimes, the Aztecs with their Jaguar can knock out another civ before it expands to two cities. Plan for the early golden age and don't mine grassland with shield, but rather plain grassland. Who needs temples?

[Harovan]

Germany does best by building libraries. Although they make no citizens content, they produce more culture than a temple. As for the rest of the militarists, namely China, Rome and Zululand, well, I usually build barracks first. As soon as the first wave of attackers left the empire, I start to build a temple, and as soon as there are 20 shields left, I poprush the rest. This usually gets me rid of a useless specialist and compensates the unhappiness from rushing.

[Artifex]

OK, looks like temples are outta the question. What about City distance? When playing a militaristic civ. Is it a mistake to place cities at thier maximum distance?

Whats the distance each city should be apart? Is infinate city sleaze a must when warmongering (3 squares apart)?

Or can ya place them 4 or 5 squares apart? Without destroying your strategy. 3 squares is so ugly...like I say as a builder style I always max city distance, but dunno if that s no no when goign the warmonger route.

what makes up good battlegroups? 5-6 archers and a spearman per front?

Also, what are the most fun maps to play this style on? I usually played on standard continents as a builder in the past (babylon).

[Theseus]

Artifex, GREAT questions, but one at a time please.

Re city spacing: I'm sorta set in my ways, I want temples no matter what (which is probably bad). This is especially true for my 'core' cities. So, one would argue that those cities should be spaced for level 2 expansion, at more or less 5 tiles apart.

Screw that, I don;t have the time. Bonus resources should be taken advantage of ASAP. If I end up with major cities and 'suburbs' that's fine.

After the first 4-8 cities, the spacing becomes much more dependent on resources, chokepoints, cut-offs, etc.

Spacing hasn;t been driven much by cultural traits, although that's an intriguing concept.

OK, your side questions:

Early Archer Rush: 5 Archers is light, I'd suggest 6-8. 1 Spear is enough for me, although there are proponents of 2. BTW, depending on timing, 1-2 Swords makes the attack devastating.

Map type: Deeeep issue. There's a wide spectrum, from early contact and onslaught to purposeful delay (to let the enemy build troops). If I had to pick the most fun settings for early warmonger, and let me say this is by NO means the only good way, I'd recommend:
Standard size
Continents
80% water (far left)
7 civs
Warm and standard
Raging barbs
3 billion
Emperor

And I'd go on the attack ASAP, to make everyone edgy.

[albiedamned]

I'm also a builder type, but I'm always trying to force myself out of my builder shell. My inclination is usually to avoid early war. I like to get temples up as quickly as possible to consolidate my borders. And then of course you need libraries. And then you need harbors. And then you need marketplaces. If I let the builder in me take over, I won't go to war at all in the ancient era.

However in recent games I've learned that this early war thing does work, and that you truly can catch up on infrastructure later. So I now usually forego all the early city improvements, except possibly barracks, and go straight for warriors, archers, and spearmen (and horsemen if possible). After you kick someone's butt and take their techs, you can consolidate and start building those temples.

Of course it all depends on circumstances. If you find yourself isolated, definitely go for the infrastructure.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I'd say the city placement depends on who your neighbors are. If you can outmuscle them at the diplomacy table, place your cities to optimize your near future terrain use. Forget perfect placement, some overlap doesn't hurt. By the time both cities can use all their terrain tiles, you would have lost hundreds of turns of use, anyway. If you are next to Azteca and Zululand, short term maximization might be better.

That said, any special resources should be used ASAP. Grab frontier land, you can fill in behind it soon enough.

As for the temples, they can wait until after the barracks. Build bad guys to intimidate neighbors - both at the diplomacy table and on the map. A few cheap units can steer AI settlers away from the land you covet.

For early war, a small swarm of veteran units can get you far. 6+ archers and a pair of spearmen is devastating early on. Add swordsmen when they are available, or horsemen. You should be making all veterans, the AI will still have settler diarrhea - you can gobble up land and amass workers in even a 20 turn war.

Germany's libraries, as Sir Ralph points out, are a good substitute for temples. They come a bit later, but build culture faster.

[DrFell]

I pack cities together tightly, to get the maximum production as fast as possible. Early on you want lots of cities, as in the early game the fastest payoff 'building' is a settler founding a new city the same turn. With a militaristic civ you can start pop-rushing barracks in cities further away from your constantly expanding borders if you have the luxuries available and then start churning out the units (I don't like archer rushes myself and generally wait for iron working or horses... at which point I will start producing warriors or chariots to upgrade). Forget temples in the early game, unless you want to steal a resource off of the AI without starting a war.

Personally, in the cattle example, I'd build a city to make use of them immediately. You can always disband cities later on for higher production cities in better locations if you need to. The city won't grow much above size three anyway.

[jshelr]

I've become a Dr Fell disciple of late. Over the weekend, playing China, I found myself at the far end of a huge jungle. Using his packed cities strategy on Emperor, I was still able to create a viable civ. The game went on forever because I had no strategic resources, even rubber was nowhere in the jungle.

Build cities two spaces apart and no temples if you are china. Even closer is ok sometimes. Approaching steam power, you can crank out hoards of workers from selected ciites and abandon them in order to allow space for powerhouse industrial cities to grow.

The only problem I've had with this strategy is that, given good terrain, you grow "out of control" on the too fast side, surging by the number of citites that allows the FP. When to stop expanding in order to build military units and fight using this strategy is a learning process and I've ended up huge, but behind on tech.