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After some limited testing, there seems to be a slight statistical trend that building your 1st settler when you reach city size 3 or 4 seems to be the best options, paticularly when dealing with high growth areas. This of course is based on situations where workers/city improvements are removed from the equation, but considering the time invested in building workers it should slow things down somewhat anyway. This is also assuming that you send your 1st city without an "escort" in high growth areas, or bring your 1st warrior away from scouting. With low growth situations you'll have plenty of time to build a few warriors to protect your settler/1st city. Your founding city is also assumed to of produced a warrior to defend itself while waiting for growth.
I stopped at the production of the 3rd settler because I felt at this point A)the trend is established, B)by the time you have your 4th settler, you have more flexibility in your production strategies. Slow growth starting situations appear to be a fairly strong liability in the initial land grab, and my next experiment might be with the founding of a high growth 2nd city for my settler production. Here is the basic info Ive gotten from some rough testing, and its information perhaps worth delving deeper into, and seeing what can be done to improve starting situations with poor growth potential.
High Growth start, with settler production started when the town reaches the size of 3, 1st settler at 2720BC, 2nd settler at 2040BC, and 3rd settler at 1400BC. In the same situation, waiting for city size to reach 4 an interesting thing happens, settlers 1 at 2560BC, and 2 at 2000BC come slightly later than at city size 3, but we get settler 4 at 1440BC, a whole turn faster than at city size 3. Just for the record, waiting for city size 5 cost time, with settlers at 2400, 1840, and 1280.
Low growth starts seem to be much slower to expand from, waiting for town size 3 settlers pop out at 2280, 1480, and 800BC. With waiting for city size 4, we get similar results to high growth, with the 1st 2 settlers at 2000, and 1400, and settler 3 at 900BC. I didn't bother to check city size 5 in this situation, seeing as the time to grow to size 5 in this case seemed to rule it out by default. I still need to go back and check data on 1st settler during city size 2 (after finishing 1st warrior for defense of city).
I guess, the real interesting information here is the dynamic change of the settler farm concept now that cities can no longer grow during the production of the settler. How does this information apply to a practical game, Im not quite sure yet, as I mentioned Im not a great player. The biggest problem in the "high growth" case, is that your building a settler before you have a warrior to guard it, which may be a problem depending on difficulty of the AI, or if your playing human opponents who wont think twice about sniping off the unguarded city while exploring.
I stopped at the production of the 3rd settler because I felt at this point A)the trend is established, B)by the time you have your 4th settler, you have more flexibility in your production strategies. Slow growth starting situations appear to be a fairly strong liability in the initial land grab, and my next experiment might be with the founding of a high growth 2nd city for my settler production. Here is the basic info Ive gotten from some rough testing, and its information perhaps worth delving deeper into, and seeing what can be done to improve starting situations with poor growth potential.
High Growth start, with settler production started when the town reaches the size of 3, 1st settler at 2720BC, 2nd settler at 2040BC, and 3rd settler at 1400BC. In the same situation, waiting for city size to reach 4 an interesting thing happens, settlers 1 at 2560BC, and 2 at 2000BC come slightly later than at city size 3, but we get settler 4 at 1440BC, a whole turn faster than at city size 3. Just for the record, waiting for city size 5 cost time, with settlers at 2400, 1840, and 1280.
Low growth starts seem to be much slower to expand from, waiting for town size 3 settlers pop out at 2280, 1480, and 800BC. With waiting for city size 4, we get similar results to high growth, with the 1st 2 settlers at 2000, and 1400, and settler 3 at 900BC. I didn't bother to check city size 5 in this situation, seeing as the time to grow to size 5 in this case seemed to rule it out by default. I still need to go back and check data on 1st settler during city size 2 (after finishing 1st warrior for defense of city).
I guess, the real interesting information here is the dynamic change of the settler farm concept now that cities can no longer grow during the production of the settler. How does this information apply to a practical game, Im not quite sure yet, as I mentioned Im not a great player. The biggest problem in the "high growth" case, is that your building a settler before you have a warrior to guard it, which may be a problem depending on difficulty of the AI, or if your playing human opponents who wont think twice about sniping off the unguarded city while exploring.
My point is what is most economical in the initial land grab for resources. Personally I feel 3 to 4 cities are important ASAP for that basic reason. Thou I admit Im not an very good player, so maybe Im just missing something blaitantly obvious.
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