Can't seem to get ahead

[billones]

One other thing is that Vel plays on longer speeds -- Epic or Marathon -- rather than the default. That's going to affect certain details of the strategies he demonstrates, if not the broad strokes.

(Also, you can chop down trees that are outside of your cultural borders. They don't give you as many hammers as the closer ones do, but they still give hammers.)

[CraigRichardson]

The mileposts for the slingshot seem to be about the same at normal speed as the speed Vel plays on - but as has been mentioned, the difference in e.g. moving units means that you have some different choices to make.

I've succeeded a couple times with slingshots on Monarch, and my rule of thumb is that, to keep up with Vel for as long as possible, your first three population need to produce (a) at least three commerce, (b) the ability to use (or switch between) tiles that produce two surplus food and tiles that produce three surplus hammers, (c) a minimum of eight chops, preferably at the edge of your borders (in the two-city variant, it's split four and four).

[Crossfire]

Part of the problem trying to follow Vel's CS slingshot is that he got a great start with both a gold mine and a food special in his fat cross and worked both really early. Then he got BW to pop out of a hut. The chance of you getting those all to happen in a game are pretty slim.

What you do need to happen is to preferably get (a food special, a gold/silver/gem mine and a regular mine) or (a cottage, a food special or another cottage on a floodplains, and a mine) going with your first 3 pop. This gives you a good base for building additional population, infrastructure and a having good research rate. After that you just need to insure that you chop your settler and maybe the oracle to control the timing.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Blackadar1
How do you pop rush when you only have cities that are 2 or 3 people big?

You don't - you chop instead.

Originally posted by Blackadar1
I'm in the same boat. I've written down, step for step, Vel's slingshot thread. I can't get it to work and I've tried about 15 games.

That's not what you do. Strategies are grand plans, not cooking recipes. You must adapt them to your game instead of playing them out blow by blow.

Originally posted by Blackadar1
I cannot duplicate the population growth, the city output, etc. I'm always 600-1000 years behind by the time I execute the "slingshot", which at that point just catches me up - it doesn't put me ahead.

Maybe it is a good idea to try it on a lower level (Prince or Noble).