Vel's Strategy Thread

[Arrian]

I've had the WoodyII warrior. It was kinda cool, but it never did anything big for me.

-Arrian

[Jcg316]

If start with/near;
-3ty, total yield, tile (pretty much always)
-a resource yielding 5ty upgraded (same)
-have, or will have, the improvement tech within 15, 16 turns (same)

Initially have 4ty(net) from 2f,1h city and 3ty tile minus 2f for pop.

A- Starting with a worker;

1) Worker at 4ty for 15 turns 60/60 hammers
2) Settler for 4ty for 4 turns 16/100 hammers
3) Settler for 6ty for 14 turns 100/100 hammers
For 33 turns or (as much as 7 turns for tile improvements meaning 94/100 at 33, so 34 turns to finish)

B- Starting with a settler;

1) Settler at 4ty for 25 turns 100/100
2) Worker at 4ty for 15 turns 60/60
For 40 turns with a city started for 6 or 7 turns sooner than with a starting worker.

(A) leaves you with land improved at the capitol for a few growths and can send the worker to build up city2. Capitol should fly through the first growths at 5 or so turns around turn 38,39. Second should grow at 8 or 11 turns depending on the production you want for around turn 43, 46. Which you may be able to hasten with the worker.

(B) leaves you with a city in an area chosen, for a specific role or best land available sooner at 8 or 9 turns before (A). Which would be a growth at about turn 35 or 38. Capitol would grow just less than 8 with the worker getting off an improvement or less than 11 if a 2f, 1h tile.
Which would be around 46,47 or 49,50

(A) Lets you build up the resources sooner which will let your capitol boom when it comes out of the stagnant units, gaining significantly in total yield from 5ty resources per pop. Letting you at 2 or 3 pop build an additional settler at 9ty for only 7 turns at 2 pop with decent resources, or 10ty at 3 pop with only 2 resources and one regular 3ty tile. If you want that soon, good for culture vics [3 cities can spread around wonders for base (before multiplier) points] but bad if you need earlier troops, though with a 3f,3h cow or even a horse could have built a warrior, or quecha.

(B) Lets you get a city in a spot you choose up to par with the capitol, or if the capitol builds another stagnant unit (settler/worker) as the main industrial or great person powerhouse. Great way to make up for weak starting in a weak hammer spot. Build by stone/marble, right next to it though unless you have creative, to go after wonders while the capitol handles setting up the empire.

I think the first is a little nicer, exspecially since its more variable since your capitol can use its pop boom to do any role you need, as long as the tiles provide for it.

A financial civ, especially Inca, can pump out a few cities along rivers (floodplains are phenomenal for it) and put a cottage, don't even need more than one early just need to work a few tiles changed from two to three. Build one or two cities in hammer areas unless the land if nice and balanced, and add more, getting up around 7 to 9 total, along the coast. With workers and settlers doing the work warriors or cool little quecha can be pumped out in droves and goes mess up all the nearby economies, while making a little coin.

Changing just a few one coin tiles to three (two, and then gaining one from the trait) can support quite a bit of infrastructure while even if the science rate is 60-80 the amount of coin over just food and hammers will stay equatable to other civs.

Wait it out and the cities will start an economic chain reaction as they pay for themselves. Getting a merchant from something like the great lighthouse lets you baby a large weak infrastructure until the cities reach maturity. Without a financial civ its really dangerous, plus it is tough to put out a military to harass and detain your neighbors. Otherwise they may coime knocking on your door when you slow your military down to speed your science up.


Oh, and (C) starting with pop increase;
With two 3f tiles and another 3ty, about as ideal as you can get without corn on a floodplain, takes 8 turns for the first growth 6 more for the second.

After those 14 turns, 6ty (12-6 from pop) its 17 for a settler and 10 turns for a worker

For 41 turns, 1 more than starting with the settler with a warrior (or close) but the second city starts around turn 33, instead of 27 defeating the point of the early settler. Certainly not bad though, but not common to start with two 3 food tiles, often won't have one. Will finish the warrior and have another building but will be far slower to developing the other city and/or improving the capitol. Just not enough gain from additional pop, only 1 extra net yield.

In floodplains though or with an oasis it can work great for early defense, switching to tiles with hammers a few turns to finish the warrior before starting the settler/worker. Certainly can't count on the start locations though.

A work boat while gaing a couple pop can work great with a ocean resource, especially fish. Of course there are always the start locations with 4-6 crabs that seem to come up way too often on some maps. You'd have to try hard in order to get behind other civs in tech, cities, anything for at least the first few eons.

[gentle]

Aeson wrote:
You can often get out your first Settler or a Barracks faster with a Worker first, as well as more Warriors/Archers/Scouts. Either by chopping to catch up, or by improving tiles to have more Food and Production.
--
Hmm,interesting possibility though it demands to research Bronze Working first. How long does it take to produce a worker 1st turn ? 15 turns ? How long does forest chopping need? 4 turns ? How many hammers does a chopped down forest grant ?
Unsure 'bout the numbers and this comp here doesnt run civ oO, so I cant check out.

Aeson wrote:
Warriors first are less important for exploring, more important for choking neighbors
---
There is no ZOC anymore as far as i experienced, so choking and blocking neighbours is pretty hard, if it is not the lucky case of finding a propable map choking spot (as on Civ2 worldmap - africa->arabi or the thermopylae up to europe)

[Krill]

Woodsman II Warrior = Uber Scout, if anyone is interested. Double move on forest, and +45% strength, when defending on jungle or Forest (really, it is +95% when the tile defence is taken into account), and double move in forest or Jungle...a scout that only works in forest or jungle, but is not likely to die if full strength, even against barb archers or Bears...

---

I've played games where I have gone Scout>Settler, Scout>Worker, Warrior?Settler, and Warrior>Settler, and I can say that when you have tiles in you capitals radius that can be really productive, ie gold, silver, bonus food resources, I have always prefered worker first. Less to defend, I can get extra health/happy boni hooked up, and making my capital that little bit more powerful at the start. I understand where Vel is coming from, but...it depends...

[Aeson]

By "choke" I mean economically. Send 2-3 Warriors to fortify on Forests in your neighbor's territory. Harrass/capture their Workers. Keep them from hooking up Horses or Copper or having any terrain improvements.

[Krill]

Gentle, Choking and blocking neighbours still work when you are at war with them. They can't improve the land, because you rip it up, they have to send out gaurds to every tile improvement and the workers, so they have to build those gaurds, meaning they are not expanding, while you can be expanding, taking up land and getting your infrastructure up and running...

[gentle]

@ Jcg316
34 turns seems good but too slow for me.
BUT if I havent misread your calc you didnt include the possibility of chopping down forests for production (oh man, and i always thought I was ecology-friendly ^^)
Sure it requires to research BWorking but as I play with a civ starting with Mining its just one tech and could speed it up.
It needs 4 turns I believe to chop a forest and grants about 30+ hammers ? unsure bout the numbers 'cause of reasons stated above =P

@krill and aeson
k, sry ...misunderstood then ^^

[ktbutts]

Has anyone noticed that the AI seems far less likely to start an early war than in earlier versions?

The only problems I've had with keep my defenses light in the early game is some easily repulsed Barbarians.

[Krill]

I just played a game on Prince, Highlands map, Lizzie (FIN/PHI). Founded Confucianism and Buddhism, built the Oracle the turn after CoL to grap Civil Service (Hmm...Beaurocracy), and got nailed by barb archers and warriors. I had neglected Archery and IW, popped BW from a hut, and had a naff army. Couple of warriors, most. I ended up just fightinh the barbs, and trying to stop them ripping up my improvements around my second city, and stop them destroying my third city, which was the confucian holy city.

I then found out that I had no copper or iron any where near me. I would have had to throw down 2 cities just to keep the area clear of barb and not destroy my economy with sheer numbers of units.

---

this was one of my games where I was trying to not go the BW/IW/MC. Note for future. Need a barracks city, and archery in future games, don't go straight to the religions and worker techs. Build an army, even if it is just for city defense and barb clean up, because these barbs are not the weaklings they once where.

[gentle]

@ktbutts
not on deity ^^ (yeah, i would go and conquer the world too if i had that much starting units and my neighbour only has a settler *grrr*)
but afai can say, war is not a problem in the early game on a reasonable dif and i also noticed that (at least on noble) the barbarians do not pillage but directly head for the city to attack (opposed to deity again, where they seem to be on a "pillage everything-fight nothing"-mission)

[Jcg316]

Never even thought of that.

With the chop;
Worker 4ty at 15 turns 60/60
Settler 4ty at 10 turns 40/100
+two chops during and starting the third before settler finishes
Settler1 100/100
Settler2 4ty at 10 turns
+finished third chop and fourth

25 turns, 35 for 2nd settler.

Oh wow. Chops aren't great for the city but certainly till past ancient age and then a ways the city won't be so big to worry about it. Especially with just two chops for the first settler. Depending on terrain and starting tech might be able to build a farm over some of the forests.

With six forests could always chop up a quick empire of log cabins, could fire off a quick defender from an extra forest too.

Many starts certainly would have two expendable forests, and you can always chop an extra worker to wander off in the wilderness choping or to start up the second city.

[Dactyl]

I just tried Vel's strategy. I chose random leader on Prince level and ended up as Mongols. I started building a settler right away and, even though I built no military units until it was finished, I was never in any danger of losing my capital city or my first settler. I researched Mysticism first, then Polytheism which enabled me to found Hinduism.

After building that first settler, I built two warriors and a worker, followed by another settler. In my second city, I followed the same production schedule. It's 300 BC and I have six cities, and I will shortly take a barbarian city. Though there is still room to expand, the AI civs are starting to fill it in pretty quickly now, so it looks like I'll end up with seven cities to start with.

That is more cities than I've so far had at this point following the more cautious strategy that people have recommended to this point, and it appears that this is a sound starting strategy. The only downside is that I wasn't able to build Stonehenge first. I don't really think that matters much. I still lead in culture, as well as in points. Of course, how this strategy scales to higher difficulty levels remains to be seen.

[gentle]

Nice one Jcg, so after 25 turns we can have:
1 settler
1 worker
size 1 city with maybe an improvement

Sounds good to me ^^ thx for testing

Looking forward to tomorrow to improve my 1AD highscore^^
gogo ^^ "Chop the Settler"

[Jcg316]

Should be an extra turn on those numbers, and above, to actually produce the units. Those just reach their full hammer production.

The choping seems a little bit gimmicky, but cetainly effective.

Could always get pottery if you start with the wheel, after bronze working, to replace the forests with cottages.

[Shr3dZ]

I popped a 'free settler' in my first game from the second hut or so... since then Ive popped another 15 or so and have only got a free tech once, gold and maps otherwise. The only time I like popping a map hut is when its close to the shore so you can see if there are any other islands close by. Takes less time to roam around with a boat looking for new land!

As for the strategy of an early settler, I previously like waiting until size 3, but with all this size 1 talk maybe Ill try building one at size 2...

PS: looking forward to another massive Vel thread