Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume III

[Verrucosus]

The analysis of the game's complex economic system will be a key component of the guide. The subsection of the "Window" chapter that we have been discussing provides a solid basis by drawing the reader's attention to the basic resources and their role in the economy. The section is a great introduction to the economics of Civ4 and as such I don't think it needs any major additions. The bulk of economic theory can wait until the "peaceful expansion" or even the "consolidation" chapters, although I suppose you will have to say something about cottages in the context of Pottery as an early research option. (As mentioned earlier, that's a difficulty with an outline based on the anatomy of a typical game: it's great from the readers' perspective, but quite a challenge for the writer to put together.)

Originally posted by Velociryx
kbarrett, the plot thickens. We're using the same version, and I can move my workboats in ANY coastal tile, but not a deep sea tile (even if it's inside my borders).

Does that mean that, in Warlords, sea specials on ocean tiles two clicks away from the coast cannot be improved even after a coastal city's border expansion?

Verrucosus

[kbarrett]

On the version I am playing, I can go into ANY cultural area I have permission to enter.

[couerdelion]

I’ve re-read the latest version and here are a few thoughts/comments

Glossary

You use the term CS Slingshot but I think the more general term “Slingshot” is at least as important as a way of describing a sudden leap forward.

Under huts there is also the possibility to get healing.

Notes and Provisos

Section 2), line 6 “geared IN that direction”. Or maybe “…to…”

Broadly defined types of Games

Under “WAS”, first line, I would simply delete “…the thread…”

Part one – The Window

Para (2) – “….impossible to overestimate….”

Cardinal Resource

Under food, replace “sheaf of wheat with “slice of bread”

I’ve also wondered if the secondary level might look more logical if you replace “Beakers” with “Techs”. In this respect, gold then does not mean the amount of gold produced per turn but the “Treasury” and all the secondary layer factors are essentially the things that are “created” by the cardinal ones. Just a thought

In the section where you are talking about Gold and Beakers, you use the phrase “on a Settler Level game, you may not”. Colloquially this might work but it is grammatically incorrect and means that “you are not allowed to….”

At the start there are a few cases where settling a city site will depend on civ traits. The two that I can think of are the IMP and FIN traits where the bonuses can give some nice little benefits to a well-placed capital. Might be a little too detailed though.

When talking of an explorer unit, perhaps it is important to say that this is not actually an “Explorer”.

When giving the advice on which unit to move first at the start, I would include an allowance for the grey area when you are not sure about settling the given tile. Here, the explorer should go first to give the extra information to help make that decision. Perhaps also you could say something about learning to read the “edges” of the dark tiles. As you rightly say, information here is at a premium and you can often tell a little about some tiles from the borders to tiles you can see – eg coast can be spotted as can forests, hills and floodplains.

On the “after the founding” you put some mention of founding on higher production/commerce tiles. This seems to be going back a little. Also, you recommend against founding on food but might perhaps give sugar as an exception to this rule.

Section on first build option

This I like. Here are just my general views on how I would prioritise

1.Work Boat (if conditions met)
2. Scout (if I can and need another)
3. Worker (if useful things to do – taking into account first tech)
4. Warrior/Barracks (as fillers to grow)
5. Stonehenge (part of larger play – usually a sling)
6. Settler
7. Monument

I started to wonder about the first two and think this perhaps very specific to the event. But it’s rare that you’ll be able or want to build both so it’s unlikely that they compete.

In view of these orders, I think your comments on Settler, Monument and Stonehenge are too expansive. I think you may gain more by cutting out a lot of the detailed discussion of these elements which seem to me to be as much about countering arguments against the comments raised. For example, I think the second half of the point from Monument can be chopped because this seems to be justifying what does not need to be justified. If some fool thinks that the Monument first build is crucial to their cultural victory then let them build it.

With Settler, I think you overdefend the opening move. Unless I misunderstand the conditions in which the settler would be the best build, I would trim a lot of this down (eg first bullet point is not a reason why settler would be better). I tend to think of this as less of a play than a “gambit”. One other downside that you fail to mention is that your exploration or terrain knowledge will be quite poor when your settler arrives ands also that you will have used up a large part of “The Window”

Likewise with Henge, this is also a gambit and, in its defence, you spend quite a bit of time explaining what the wonder does. Your first bullet point says that there is not much of a downside and here I have to disagree on the grounds that you ought to have better options available. Once again, you use the window to build Stonehenge and then have to play catch-up.

Since I tend to place a second scout high up on my list of first build priorities I’ll also suggest a few “pros” for the build here. Unless I am lucky to pop an scout from an early hut, the benefits are
1) Lots of huts
2) Rapid exploration for new city sites/knowledge or rivals before window closes (and fog-busting later)
3) Insurance against Bears or cruel RNG.

While I agree that the scout build is map dependent, I think the “almost entirely” comment makes this sound like a poor build. I personally tend to play maps with continents (also Terra) so a fast scout will usually be the best opening move. I notice also that a lot of AGG civs start with Hunting so there is the additional benefit you gain from finding your first target.


Even so, my overall view is

[Verrucosus]

A few thoughts on "After the Founding":

1) Making Food a Priority

In the second paragraph of that section you discuss the effects of founding the city on a special resource. As couerdelion pointed out, maybe this is a matter that should be covered in the preceding section, because it affects your decision where to settle. Regardless of where you put that paragraph in the end, it seems to offer an opportunity for you to elaborate a bit more on your preference for food that you have stated very broadly in the "Notes and Provisos" section.

While I'm not sure whether I agree with you for the whole range of the game, food is certainly the most important resource in the very early game because it can be used both to let cities grow quickly and to build settlers and workers. City growth and settlers allow us to work additional tiles, workers make tiles more productive, so whatever can be done to boost the economy can be done with food. In the relatively safe world of 4000 BC, the other building options do not bring as immediate a benefit and the fact that continuing city growth is a major selling point for them only points once more to the overwhelming importance of food at this stage.

This argument for making food a priority is slightly different from the more fundamental one upon which your general preference for food rests, because it does not stress the lack of substitutes (at this point, there are no substitutes for hammers either), but the fact that food is simply more useful than the other basic resources during this specific phase of the game.


2) Settler First

Originally posted by couerdelion
With Settler, I think you overdefend the opening move. Unless I misunderstand the conditions in which the settler would be the best build, I would trim a lot of this down (eg first bullet point is not a reason why settler would be better). I tend to think of this as less of a play than a “gambit”. One other downside that you fail to mention is that your exploration or terrain knowledge will be quite poor when your settler arrives ands also that you will have used up a large part of “The Window”

This last bit should be mentioned and even stressed. It's also the very reason why "Settler First" option may need a more detailed discussion than the other ones. In a sense, it's preposterous to say "The first 30 turns are the most important ones in the entire game ... so let's spend 25 of them just pressing the end-turn-button while building a single item." That there are in fact some situations where this is exactly the correct approach is such a stunning realisation that some additional space to explain this is well spent.


3) The 2nd Question

After the founding, there's to be "a trio of vitally important questions". The first question is what to build first and it is thoroughly discussed. You end the section by announcing that you'll now turn to the third question. Inquiring minds want to know: Whatever happened to the 2nd question? I apologize for nitpicking, but I'll stay tuned to find out.

Verrucosus

[eluciv]

Very nice overview.

The one thing I'm rather suprised at is the lack of any emphesis on commerce, which may be part of my problem in getting to Monarch level.

While production can be subbed by food with slavery, there is no early shortcut to commerce other than cottages (gold/silver/gem mines I guess, but these aren't a given). Granted, I would assume that prioritizing commerce would take a serious leap forward after the "window" closes...

When planning on something like a CS Slingshot, early cottages with time to grow are almost mandatory IMO if you want to get COL researched before the CPU builds Oracle - given no "special" leaps forward (GP lightbulbinging a tech, relevant goody hut techs, etc). It all makes me wonder how food emphesis might impact commercial development - though I realize you've only scratched the surface so far. If pottery can be researched as a first or second tech, would you ever take it? Is food really that much more important so as to take commerce right out of the "window"?

Window period - if you have floodplains - are you irrigating them, cottaging them, or leaving them alone? Am I thinking too far beyond the window here?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by eluciv

While production can be subbed by food with slavery, there is no early shortcut to commerce other than cottages
...
When planning on something like a CS Slingshot, early cottages with time to grow are almost mandatory IMO if you want to get COL researched before the CPU builds Oracle

The Library and Scientists is the alternative. The original CS Slingshot discussions on this forum emphasised this as the way to get to CoL - using the Academy from the Scientists to power the rest, if needed, one the GS was built.

Unfortunately, as the story got told, there was a tendency to ignore the scientists, which lead to a lot of people thinking that the classic CS Slingshot was either some kind of myth, or just a very low level strat.

[eluciv]

Ahhh, thanks Cort Haus.
As you can see, I don't always employ that strat.

[Verrucosus]

Originally posted by eluciv
The one thing I'm rather suprised at is the lack of any emphesis on commerce ...

While production can be subbed by food with slavery, there is no early shortcut to commerce other than cottages (gold/silver/gem mines I guess, but these aren't a given). Granted, I would assume that prioritizing commerce would take a serious leap forward after the "window" closes...

I don't think commerce is unimportant during the "window" period. It's just that the bulk of the commerce tends to come from the palace, so there is little to do for it. A significant boost could come from mining precious metals, but this requires both a bit of luck and the willingness to slow city growth at a very early stage.

With that in mind, a player's emphasis on commerce will be reflected at this point not so much in the city placement, worker allocation and production choices that have been discussed so far, but more in his initial research steps, most importantly in his answer to the question of how soon to go for Pottery.

Verrucosus

[Velociryx]

Strat Guild, Build #3

This segment was hellishly long, but I finally have something that approaches coherence. Please give is a careful read through, and let me know if I have erred on any of the particulars. I say this because having read/deleted/started over/tossed it all/started again, etc about half a dozen times, it's possible that some stuff got mixed and mangled.

Nonetheless, I think I've finally struck something close to the proper balance where this section is concerned. Let me know if you agree or disagree tho...

and without further delay....

OoO

Prolog ~ Introductions All Around

Introduction
To be penned later….

OoO

Glossary of Terms
There are all manner of terms and abbreviations used when talking about Civ. I’m not even going to try to provide a comprehensive list of every term you may run across here. Instead, I’m going to give you the ones relevant to understanding strategy, including all the ones I use myself (and some of the terms I use here I coined myself, so you may or may not see them elsewhere). Primarily, the purpose of this list is to keep you from scratching your head in confusion when you read a term or an abbreviation I use to explain some game concept, strategy, or tactic.

OoO

As the guide develops, and new terms are needed in the writing, they’ll be added to this list…this marker to eventually be removed!

AI – Artificial Intelligence. The AI Civs are your opponents in SP (Single-Player Mode).

Builder, Hybrid, Momentum - These are terms coined in the days of Sid's "Alpha Centauri" game (which is still installed on my hard drive, btw). They describe the three basic "states of being" that players tend to fall into.

Builders exist at the "peaceful end" of the playing spectrum, and don't care much for warring. They are drawn to Civ because of their endless fascination with the process of growing and nurturing the "perfect" empire. Warfare is typically seen as a distraction from the business of building and running the Empire (or, in the best case, they'll see it as a necessary evil).

Momentum players are all about conquest (and obviously, they occupy the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from Builders). The Empire is secondary for them, and only exists to serve as the platform from which to launch the next campaign, and they're happiest when mired in the mud of some war or another.

Hybrid players exist somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, and in truth, probably define the greater bulk of players. Still, players who tend to prefer building over warring tend to identify themselves as "Builders" while players who prefer warring will tend to refer to themselves as "Momentum" players, even when the vast majority are more than willing to do a bit of both. The Hybrid player seeks to strike a balance, understanding that warfare is a necessary (and fun!) component of the game, but is only a means to a greater end. In my opinion, Civ 4 has done an excellent job at bringing the two extremes together.

Choke - A battle tactic, involving parking a unit in enemy terrain to deny him use of that tile. This puts your enemy in the less-than-enviable position of having to decide whether or not he values the tile sufficiently to try and roust you from it, or if he'd rather hole up and hide in his city. Most frequently used as a prelude to a general invasion, to keep your opponent weak (and less productive) while you're building the army that will spell his doom.

Chop - The worker action of cutting down a forest, removing it from the tile and giving you a hammer boost.

COM - Commerce

CP – Culture Point

CPT – Culture Per Turn

FoW – Fog of War

G-Man - Term used in this book for a Great Person

GA – Golden Age

GP – Great Person (also called a G-Man within the confines of this book)

GPP – Great Person Point

GPPT – Great Person Points Per Turn

GPT – Gold Per Turn

GW – Great Wonder

HP – Hit Point

HPT – Hammers Per Turn

Hut (also called a “Goody Hut”) small “village” graphics randomly scattered across the map that can give boons (gold, maps, experience, technology, or free units) or unleash one or more barbarians.

Lockdown (or simply "Lock") - The point in the game at which your victory is assured. The more quickly you can achieve this state the better, and typically, the game is won or lost in the Ancient Era. Your performance here will be more important than all the other ages combined.

Locust – Clear-cutting all forests you can reach, in order to reap the short-term hammer benefits

MM – Micro-Management

MP – Multi-Player

NW – National Wonder

OB – Open Borders

OCC – One City Challenge

Oscillating War – The notion of fighting a series of limited engagements with each of your neighbors in turn, rather than fighting a single, long and decisive engagement with a one neighbor.

Pop-N-Chop - Available at Bronze Working, this is the key to unlocking ancient era productivity, and it involves a powerful one-two punch that Slavery's population sacrifice and the worker action of forest chopping represent. These two alternate means of production completely change the character of the game.

Pop-Rush (also abbreviated simply ‘Pop) - Sacrificing city population and several turns of unhappiness, in exchange for a boost to hammers.

Seafood Specials – Catchall term for crabs, fish, and whales…basically, any oceanic special resource.

Seminal Techs - The Seminal Techs are the ones that unlock all the basic terrain improvement actions for you, and for this reason, their power cannot be understated. They are:

Agriculture
Mining
Hunting
The Wheel
Fishing
Pottery
Animal Husbandry

These techs represent the very foundation of the game, and are the keys to unlocking the productivity of your lands. With these few, simple tools, you will see the productive capacity of your Empire explode.

Slingshot – any series of moves or play that is designed to provide a sudden leap forward in capability. The most commonly mentioned of these is the “CS Slingshot” (Civil Service Slingshot), which is an Oracle trick involving timing the Oracle’s completion with the research of Code of Laws, such that you can take Civil Service as your free tech, but there are others as well, and these will be given thorough treatment in their own section.

The Window - Beginning at turn one, and running some unknown number of turns into the future, there is a "window" of time available to you, during which, you may develop in almost complete safety. This book treats "The Window" as the most important part of the whole game.

Turn Advantage - Doing stuff faster than your rivals are doing stuff. As a simple example, if you can build an Axeman in 5 turns, and it takes your opponent ten turns, then you are gaining five turns over your opponent with every Axe you build...that is to say, while your opponent is still struggling to get his Axeman out of the production queue, you've already finished yours and are on to something else (maybe a Library, or maybe another Axeman)...the point is that you have what amounts to "free turns" of production....or Turn Advantage over your rival. Turn Advantage is the mechanism that will invariably win you games, no matter what the prevailing conditions in the world, and like interest, its power has a compounding effect. Since you cannot earn "interest" in Civ, Turn Advantage takes its place as the most powerful force in the Civ-Universe. Of all the concepts in the game, creating Turn Advantage is the most important one for you to learn. You simply cannot win the game consistently without creating Turn Advantage (in fact, the lower levels of the game are made easier by creating it for you...that is the mechanism at work when you get production and research bonuses over the AI).

UB – Unique Building

UU – Unique Unit

OoO

Notes and Provisos
1) I am basing my observations off of a standard speed game, Monarch level of difficulty. Please understand that the numbers I throw out originate from here, and that if you are playing at some other speed and/or difficulty level, those numbers will change slightly (but the gist of what I'm saying will remain the same).

2) There are essentially two schools of thought where formulating strategy is concerned. One is to build your strategy around the maximization of your strengths, paying secondary attention to covering your weaknesses, and the other is to be primarily concerned with covering those weaknesses, letting your natural strengths more-or-less take care of themselves. In my opinion, the former approach is the superior approach, and so, these writings are geared in that direction. If your play-style favors the latter, , then some adjustment will need to be made to make these writings apply well to you. I will attempt to at least broadly outline how the latter could be made to work, but my primary focus will be on what I feel is the superior "maximize your strengths" methodology. Thus, there is a certain bias built into these writings, and you should be aware of it.

3) There is another bias built into my work. One that you may or may not agree with. In my opinion, food is the resource of primary importance in this game. Then commerce, and finally production. Note that I said "production" and specifically not "hammers." This is because there are many alternatives to boost a city’s hammer counts, and tile production (illustrated via the hammer graphic), is but the most common. I like building things fast (as you will see), but I'm not willing to sacrifice my ability to research and/or the money in my pocket to shave a couple turns off of something I'm building unless I have to. If there's another way (and there usually is), then I'll take it. So note the bias in your reading. If you favor hammers over commerce, then again, these writings will need some adjustment to make them fully applicable to you.

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Anatomy of a Civ Game
I’m going to approach the subject of this book in the same way I’d teach a class…that is to say, somewhat unorthodoxly. Yeah yeah, we’re going to take a structured approach, begin with a series of broad overviews and slowly drill down to the particulars that will serve you well during the course of a game, but we’re also going to have some fun doing it. This isn’t the kind of “class work” you remember from school, so hang onto your hat, and let’s get started!

The first thing that needs to happen is, we need to spell out, at least in broad terms, the natural flow and progression of a “typical” game of Civ. Important, because it serves to frame the rest of the discussion that comes later.

Will every game be exactly like I’ve defined it below? Of course not. Some phases, under some conditions might be skipped entirely, others might be incredibly long (or short) in their duration…who knows? But as a generalized guide, this basic roadmap will serve you well, and help to facilitate planning, because the long and the short of it is that most games of Civ tend to have a fairly predictable development pattern.

All of that comes later though…for the moment, it is enough to introduce the various phases of a typical game of Civ to get your brain turning on that particular subject, so here they are:

Phase I - The Window
This begins at 4000 BC, and runs some unknown number of turns into the future. It is the period of time in the very early game when the biggest concern you have is the local wildlife (lions, panthers, wolves, bears), and your primary goal is to get out there, gobble up huts, meet your neighbors, and learn the lay of the land. Of course, while you are doing all of this, you're also laying the foundation for the whole rest of your game. If you do well before the window closes, you'll likely to well for the entire game. If you stumble here, or act indecisively, you'll likely spend at least the next two ages just trying to catch up. This is by far the most important part of the game. If the Ancient Era is more important, in game terms, than all the other eras combined (and in my opinion, it certainly is), then this window is the most important part of the ancient age...easily more important than all the turns that make up the rest of the age, combined. This is the era when those crucial first few techs are discovered, when early religions are founded, and when whatever strategy you have decided to pursue begins taking shape.

Phase II - The Peaceful Land Grab
The window closes as soon as the first barbarians begin to appear. That's it. Party's over. You are now in at least some danger (and perhaps quite a lot of danger, if you selected "Raging Barbarians" or somesuch). If you haven't used the Window to get yourself set up and prepared, then this next phase will likely leave you feeling flustered and vulnerable. There's no set time limit on how long this phase can last, but it begins with the appearance of the first barbarians and ends (for you) when there's no place left for you to expand unless it's at someone else's expense (i.e., no more expansion without declaring war on someone). This is the phase during which Rushes occur...everybody is scrambling about for "their share" of the continental pie, and defenses are usually minimal. A rush at this stage in the game can absolutely devastate a neighboring Civ. Even if it doesn't kill him outright (which it usually does), the Civ will be totally marginalized in all future eras of play, and can be polished off at your (or anyone else's) leisure.

Phase III - Regional Consolidation
Once humanity has spread out like a cancer across the continent, it's only a matter of time before violence erupts (if it hasn't already...see Phase II and the note about Rushing). The particulars and reasons for the wars may vary, but they will come...they always do. If you have done well for yourself during the early phases of the game, then you'll be well-positioned to build on those gains now, and it is a winner-take-all proposition. This stage doesn't end until a clear regional power emerges from the pack of Civs sharing your "portion" of the continent (if you find yourself sharing a smallish landmass with one or more Civs, this phase might get skipped entirely). As the human player, your mission is to see that you wind up winning the top spot in your region. Fail here, and you either die outright, or are relegated to a fringe position that will be increasingly hard to recover from, and may well lead to a slow decline, and eventual death.

Phase IV – Pan-Regional Domination
Once the regional dominance issue has been settled, the top dogs from each region on the continent (or adjoining regions if playing on an islands map) will invariably have a go at each other. In some (rare) cases, those surviving Civs who have been relegated to lesser positions on the continent may regain their former strength, and even become top regional players themselves, but in practice, this is unlikely. Once a Civ is down, they generally stay down, especially with the increased likelihood of dog-piling that we see in Warlords. This phase begins for you the moment that you, or some other Civ in your region becomes clearly dominant, and ends only when there's a clear leader on the whole of the continent. Make sure that it's you!

Phase V - The Race
Often, the exploration of the rest of the planet is occurring while regional and pan-regional dominance dramas are playing out, and so, by the time we reach “The Race,” a great deal more is known about the world. If you're playing "continents" or some derivative of them, then you've no doubt by now found "the other" continent(s), and discerned who the dominant Civs are there (or, if you're playing Terra maps, then you've no doubt discovered the New World, and may have already taken steps to begin taming it). In any case, the biggest surviving Civs, wherever they might be...these are your rivals from now until the game's end. These are the guys to beat. Whatever victory condition you are pursuing, whatever goals you set for yourself, the largest surviving Civs will be your primary opposition, and they may well try to form coalitions against you. Even if you are the strongest, if enough smaller Civs decide to hit you all at once, you could be in for some trouble. Or, if your position is not as secure as that, then you may find yourself in a tooth-and-nail race to the finish line with one or more robust rivals, fully capable of matching you militarily and in research. By and large, it is your performance throughout the other phases of the game that will determine how easy, or how difficult this portion of the game is, and of all the game segments that have come before, the one that has the most bearing, pound-for-pound, on this part of the game is...the Window. Whatever success or tribulations you face in this part of the game can, in all likelihood, be traced back to what you did, or did not do before the Window closed. This will not always be true...sometimes, you can have a brush with disaster in some later era that will echo quite loudly, but more often than not, it'll all go back to the Window. That fragile, wonderful first "leg" of the game....

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Broadly Defined Types of Games
The overall flow of a “typical” game as outlined above was gleaned by studying the broad trends in a large number of games, and that same methodology can be used to identify common themes and features in an individual game as well. When we do that, we discover that (again, speaking in broad terms) there are a number of different types of games that you can choose to run. These exist at all points along the Builder – Momentum spectrum, and all of them can be used, in some form or fashion, no matter where you “are” on that spectrum. Some more than others, of course, but what it essentially means is that when you take into account the full range of possibilities (everything from your starting location to Civ traits and abilities, to various specific openings we’ll cover later, what it means is that you have a truly staggering number of options and variations open to you. Almost limitless replayability. And just as the overall flow of a game can be broken out into various steps by studying a large number of games, so too can those individual types of games be identified.

In my experience, any given game of Civ will invariably fall into one of the following categories:

Classic Rush Game
Achieve quick regional superiority in troops, and use them to smash one or more of your near neighbors.

Early Religious Gambit
Be the first on your block to found a Religion, and use it to drive your economy and your diplomacy for the rest of the game.

G-Man Game
Focuses on the early and constant use of Specialists (usually supported by selective wonder-grabbing) to generate an inordinate number of Great People

Later Religious Gambit
Usually this is not so much a strategy in and of itself, but is a nice side effect to some other strategic play (for example, the Civil Service Slingshot).

Resource Game
A general catchall category for games that do not appear to follow any particular plan. In truth, most of these games are likely following a strategy, just not one with as much focus as the ones listed below. Instead, these types of games tend to focus on terrain assets...building cities to capture this or that resource, expanding borders or participating in limited wars to deny a rival a particular resource, etc. Games that don't fall into this or any other category may well fall into....

Selective Wonder Grab
This is actually an umbrella of gambits, each tied to a particular wonder, and each with its own aims, and they deserve a brief mention here:

* Pyramids Gambit - Typically used in conjunction with a specialist style game because it allows for the running of "Representation" which gives your specialists a bonus to research beakers. It also has the effect of generating points toward a Great Engineer, which makes snagging future wonders a snap.

* Great Wall Gambit - Usually used as a "helper" Gambit for something else, it does carry some goodish advantages on its own (the end of barbarian troubles, to name but one). But its real importance is in the ability to generate those rare Great Engineer points, and again (like the Pyramids) help you snag additional wonders, later in the game.

* FarSeer - An Oracle trick, whereby you time the completion of the Oracle with the completion of research on Pottery and Bronze Working, which then allows you to take Metal Casting as your free tech, and unlock the power of Forges, very early in the game.

* CS (Civil Service) Slingshot - Another Oracle trick, whereby you time the completion of the Oracle with the completion of your research on Code of Laws, which allows you to select "Civil Service" as your free tech, and thus, make the switch to Bureaucracy. This, combined with an Academy built in your Capitol can dramatically speed your research.

WAS
"Wandering Aimlessly Strategy"
I can't take credit for the name, but I also cannot find the forum discussion thread where this term was born...still, it stuck in my mind, and I thought it a fantastic way to describe those games that just...amble. They have no particular grand plan in mind. They simply....unfold. In terms of strategy, I can't say I recommend it, but it is a fascinating way to play now and again...
Now, it is quite natural that some of these different types of games will grab your interest and imagination more than others. This is simply an indication of where your preferences lie…sort of an internal barometer, and quite useful in its way, as it will help guide you into the sort of gaming experience you’re really looking for.

Again, we’ll talk about each of these basic “types” of games in more detail in later sections. For the time being, think on them, and see if you can come to some reckoning of which type(s) of games seem of most interest to you.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Game Start
There is an ever-present danger of complacency in Civ…If I could only caution you against one thing in all the game…if I could offer up but one tiny sliver of advice, it would be to guard against this.

Do not become complacent. Count this as being true even before the game starts. Civ is won or lost on the basis of the aggregate effect of a thousand small moves. The moment you start getting complacent, you start “glossing over” important decisions because they don’t seem all that important at the moment you’re making them.

This (the notion that your turn-to-turn decisions are unimportant) is false. Take your time and make sure that you’re making the right decisions for the right reasons. If it means saving off and getting up to take a break, then do that, and come back to the situation with a clear head.

I bring up the issue of complacency now because it (and specifically, guarding against it) will be a common theme that runs throughout this work, and also because it is very easy to breeze past the opening menu screens without much thought.

The problem with that, of course, is that the game’s strategic choices begin (or can begin) before the game officially starts. That is to say, Civ Selection can have a tremendous and immediately apparent impact on your game. Do you start with a Warrior or a Scout as your exploratory unit? Do you start in a position on the tech tree that lends itself well to the acquisition of one of the earliest religions, or not so much? Are your troops a cut above the rest? Depending on what Civ you select, the answers to these questions, and a great many others, will vary. Perhaps you’re one of those people who want to maximize as much as you possibly can in pursuit of a “purer” game experience. It’s a fine way to play, but that two, is a matter of conscious choice. I’ll not say much more about the matter here and now…there’s an appendix at the back of this book which goes into detail about the various map types and other game settings you can fiddle with, but for the most part, these are straightforward and self-explanatory.

The main purpose for mentioning it here is two-fold. First, to make you mindful of the fact that important elements of strategic choice are yours for the making before you actually begin the game, and second, to begin demonstrating how the
Builder – Momentum spectrum and your place on it can influence your decisions, even before you make your first move.

Fire up the game and take a quick stroll through your various choices. Look at some of the faces…the great Khans of Mongolia, the stern, piercing stare of Stalin, the leaders of Egypt, Rome, the United States….each of these has a certain “flavor.” Each has a unique personality and, it should come as no great surprise that some Civs are inherently better at certain things than others. For example, Civs that have an ancient era UU (unique unit) might be considered to have a combat advantage in the early part of the game. Civs that start with Mysticism have a better chance at snagging one of the early religions, and so forth.

This isn’t rocket science of course…it’s fairly obvious to say that if the Egyptians are only one tech away from a strength FIVE chariot, then hey…it just might make them an early military threat, and you’d be right. No, it’s not rocket science, but this…these early choices…they are fundamental building blocks that you can base the whole rest of your game around (and it should be noted that after a time, these choices will become second nature, such that you’ll really not spend a lot of time thinking about them….you’ll just naturally gravitate to whatever Civ will give you the kind of game you’re “looking for”).

What if you don’t want to found an early religion (for whatever reason)? What if you’re most interested in getting down in the mud and knocking some of your rivals’ heads together? In that case, your Civ selection (and map settings, etc), could help or hinder you in whatever pursuit you’re about. We’ll be going into a great deal more discussion about the pros and cons of the various Civs later, and how to make best use of each of them. For the moment, it is enough to acknowledge that based on what sort of game you have in your mind to play (which is itself based, in large part around where you “are” on the Builder – Momentum spectrum), there are a number of pre-game choices that can and will have important impacts on your game.

An important thing to note here, however, is that terrain is certainly not left out of the equation! Of course, this will be highly variable, and there’s no way that I, or anyone else could write a guide that will give you detailed information on the “best play” you could make, given the unique mix of terrain tiles, starting techs and Civ abilities you’ll have available to you at the outset, so I’m not even going to try. It is enough to note that despite what your own desires might be, they are somewhat subject to the whims of the terrain. For example…let us say that when the game screen comes up, you quickly realize that you have a coastal start, with several “seafood specials” nearby, but you didn’t start with the Fishing tech. Now, maybe before you started the game, you had this nice, involved tech path worked out that didn’t include researching Fishing right away. Unfortunately, the game handed you a bunch of tiles that are crying out for it. You could go ahead with your plan of course, and avoid Fishing, but it would be a waste, given all the potential sitting just off your shores…you would essentially be working against yourself…never a good thing.

In this way, we identify the three pillars that will primarily serve in the crafting of your game strategy.

Your own Desires
Your chosen Civ
The Local Terrain

It is from the subtle interaction of these three elements that all else will spring. When the game truly begins and you’re sitting there with your desires burning at the forefront of your mind, your Civ-of-Choice at your command, and a dozen or so terrain tiles visible, understand that in addition to looking at the smallest slice of a strange and unexplored new world, you are also looking into the cradle of your strategy. It will be born right here…right now, on turn one, and I will do my best in the pages that follow to teach you how to craft it. To shape and mold it until it is exactly what you wanted.

Welcome to “The Window.”

OoO

Part One ~ The Window

Or, “As long as we’re all Barbarians….”

Basic Civonomics
It’s not too early, at this point, to begin a discussion of the factors that drive the economic engine in Civ, and make no mistake about it, your economy is of vital importance, no matter how you play, or where you “are” on the Builder – Momentum spectrum. There have been previous games, iterations and spin-offs of Civ where it was possible to largely ignore matters of economic development, but this is definitely not that game. Ignore your economy here, and you’ll suffer a meltdown that will see your units disbanding at an alarming rate, research drying up, and barbarians at the gates, destroying all that you have built.

No, in Civ Four, it is impossible to understate the importance of the Economy, so here, in the earliest part of our exploration of the game, we’ll cover the basics. Learn the basics well…we’ll be building significantly on these concepts in the chapters ahead.

The Cardinal Resources of the Civ-Economy
There are three primary factors that drive the engine of your economy in Civ Four, and all three, in one way or another, stem directly from the land itself. I refer to these as the “Cardinal Resources.”

Your land is your life in this game. Use it well and wisely, and it will catapult you to amazing heights. Mismanage it, and your Empire will come crashing down around you.

Now, land in the world of Civ is broken down into terrain tiles, and as you may have noticed, not all terrain tiles are created equally. Some of them (mountains, ice and desert) are completely useless to you. Others (tundra) are of only marginal value, while others still (flood plains, and tiles containing special resources) can be of enormous benefit.

To start, let us begin by saying that workable terrain tiles share a thing in common. That is, even unimproved, they allow for the harvesting of at least one of three types of resources, in various quantities. (Parenthetically, we’ll note that some terrain tiles also provide other valuable benefits, but these are not attributes they share in common with all other workable tiles, and so, we will cover them later on). The commonly shared outputs then, are these:

a) Food (represented by a slice of bread/loaf of bread), which provides the means for a city to survive, and thereby, allow population points to be assigned to work tiles to generate resources for you.

b) Production (represented by a hammer/anvil) which is generated by population points as assigned above, and allow a given city to build things (units or structures)

c) Commerce (represented by a gold coin/bag of money), also generated by assigning population points as above, and is used to fuel either expansion (gold) or research (beakers).

Note that there are alternate means to gain all three of these resources. Food may be gained by “settling” (permanently adding to a given city) a Great Merchant. Additional production may be had by chopping down trees, sacrificing population points, or assigning one or more Engineer (or general) specialists. Additional commerce may be generated via Trade Routes, so as you can see, the terrain tile itself does not have a monopoly on the generation of any of these resources, but it is true that the outputs from tiles are the most common way that these outputs are produced.

In looking at these Cardinal Resources then, a number of things become immediately obvious:

• There are few “alternate” sources of food. That is to say, aside from the token +1 food that a Great Merchant generates, there is really only one “source” for food, and that is the land itself. Also important to note here is that there is only one building (Granary) that in any way modifies your food inputs, and it is unique in the way that it delivers the bonus (forges, libraries, markets and the like take the resource they modify and add a % bonus to the baseline number, whereas a granary simply “stores” half of the stockpiled food when you grow from one size to the next).

• This stands in stark contrast to production, which can be generated a number of different ways (Specialists, Terrain Tiles, Pop-N-Chop), and there are a number of buildings, civic choices, and traits/attributes that can favorably modify hammer outputs (Forges, the Organized Religion Civic, the Industrious Trait when building Wonders, etc.)

• While there are some alternate sources of commerce (primarily in the form of trade routes), there are not nearly as many alternatives available as exist for production.

But this is not the end of the story…not by any means. Each of these Cardinal Resources have children. We’ll call these the secondary factors of production. These are:

Population – Stems directly from the availability of surplus food. Each “population point” requires 2 Food to sustain itself. Anything above and beyond this is “stored” in the city, and when that city’s “storage bin” is filled, growth will occur and the “storage bin” will be emptied (or reduced by half, if you have a granary in the city). A size one city needs 20 surplus food to grow to size two. This value increases by +2, each time the city grows (such that 22 surplus food would be needed to grow from size 2 to size 3).

Units & Structures – These stem directly from the availability of Production (hammers from tiles worked, or from any other source), and accomplish two goals. Units allow you to interact with the game world (explore, defend, attack), while Structures modify the city itself (and sometimes, provide Empire Wide bonuses, as is the case with the Great Wall and Pyramids).

Gold & Beakers – Arise from the strategic allocation of Commerce, and allow for technological innovation and expansion.

And still, this is not the end of the story. There’s yet another layer to consider. A tertiary layer of factors of production. These are essentially overlays that blanket the system as a whole and define the overall conditions under which you are operating (note, for example, that on a Settler Level game, you may not even think about your Health level, while on Deity, it suddenly becomes vastly more important).

Health & Happiness – Generated primarily from player difficulty level, terrain tiles containing special resources, and modified by certain structural improvements in a city.

Culture – Generated primarily by structures, but also via assigned specialists, slider adjustments (with tech), and the presence of one or more Religions in a given city.

In looking at the list, you are undoubtedly seeing connections already. Understanding the way these various economic factors work together to form a cohesive whole, and that’s good. As I mentioned earlier, we’ll be using these building blocks for more advanced studies later on. For the time being, it is enough to point them out so you know they exist, and begin to break down the game into its various economic factors.

Summary
The economy of Civ Four is comprised of a number of elements, that are all interrelated, and built one atop the other in layers (from most accessible to the player to least). These factors are:

Cardinal Resources
Food
Production
Commerce

Secondary Layer
Population
Units & Structures
Gold & Beakers

Tertiary Layer
Health & Happiness
Culture

Giving us a total of eight economic factors to contend with.


OoO


That Crucial First Turn
Earlier, I made the comment that “The Window” is easily the most important part of the whole game. If that is true, then the most important turn of “The Window” is this one. The very first turn of the game.

When the game opens and you find yourself looking at those few tiles you can see…your settler and your starting explorer (scout or warrior, depending on the Civ), the whole of the world is a blank slate.

Unknown and mysterious.

Not dangerous in those first few turns, but it will fairly quickly become so, and…here you are. Suddenly thrust into the game world with almost no information and scant resources. This is your beginning….what will you do with it?

Well, before you give into the temptation to push that button and settle your first city, I’d strongly advise sitting on your hands, or otherwise keeping them away from the keyboard and mouse. Just…sit there for a moment and study the map. Take in the terrain.

Study it.

How many hills can you see? Floodplains? Forest tiles?

How many special resources are currently visible to your eye?

Are you one tile from the coast?

Is there a plains hill nearby that you could settle on?

These are important questions and considerations, no matter what Civ you are playing.

Earlier, I made mention of the "Three Pillars" that collectively serve as the basis for your strategy. Again, those pillars are:

Your own desires
Prevailing Terrain
Your chosen Civ

Of these three, we'll focus on the prevailing terrain first, and in time, we'll incorporate the rest. The reason for this is pure pragmatism. On turn one, matters of survival must, by definition, take precedent over your desires, and while the native strengths of your chosen Civ can influence this to a degree (in terms of execution), those abilities certainly do not trump your need to survive in the near term, so it comes down to the land itself.

The nature and quality of the land you're on is enormously influential in terms of making those earliest decisions.

When the game begins, you can see perhaps a dozen terrain tiles, and you have two units you can make use of. A settler, and an explorer (note: your early game explorer isn’t the same as the “Explorer” unit that comes along much later in the game), who will either take the form of a Scout (two moves, better hut results, but ineffective once the barbarians begin appearing at the closing of "The Window"), or a Warrior (only one move, but more durable, and useful for a longer period of time). At this point in the game, information is at such a premium that the Scout is nearly always considered to be the superior unit to start with, but if you get a warrior on the opener (and unless you start with the tech "Hunting," you will), don't count yourself out of the game...you'll just be a bit slower on the opener.

The very first question that needs to be answered is: "Where do I put my first city?"

Oftentimes, players will simply build their first city on whatever tile the settler begins on, and this is not a bad play in the least! You starting location is "advantaged," in that it contains more than the normal amount of terrain specials and the like, making it, by default, a pretty solid place to found that first city, but for a variety of reasons, you may want to give the matter some thought before automatically accepting whatever the computer has generated for you.

If you opt to build your city at the settler's starting location, then found the city first (before you move your explorer)! I say this because when the city is founded, additional tiles are revealed, and this additional intelligence might alter your plans for where you want to move your explorer unit (for example, if settling the city reveals a "goody hut," then your explorer would serve you better by heading toward it than nearly anything else you had planned for that unit).

If you elect not to accept your starting position for your first city, then always move your exploratory unit before moving the settler. He may not reveal terribly many new tiles, but this early in the game, each tile represents crucial information, and if your explorer happened to uncover a nearby gold mine, then this would almost certainly color your thinking where possible city sites were concerned, so get in the habit early on. If you're happy with your starting spot, build first, then move the explorer. If not, move the explorer and then move your settler. If you’re undecided, move the explorer first to see if it helps clarify the situation, and in any case, pay close attention to the tiles you can’t quite see. Oftentimes, you’ll get hints about what sorts of terrain they might reveal, and this too, can shade your thinking.

There are probably as many reasons for not wanting to accept your starting position as there are players in the game, so I'm not even going to attempt to go over all the possible reasons you may want to refuse your game starting position, but I'll tell you a few of the reasons I consider moving my starting settler, and from those notes, you can draw your own conclusions:

The starting terrain does not contain at least one food special, I'm inclined to look for greener pastures. This is because of the supreme importance of early food sources.

• I’m one tile from the coast, I’m inclined to make a move coastally, even if it means moving onto a forested tile and costing me an entire turn.

• I can move in such a way so as to capture a greater total number of specials inside my Capital’s “Fat Cross,” I’ll definitely move.

• If there is a plains hill in sight, and sitting upon it would yield me at least one food special, I’ll move.

• There’s an opportunity to incorporate gold, silver, or gems into the Capital site (and maintain good food supplies!)

• If by moving, I “free up” a productive tile (for example, if my settler begins on a flood plain, and I can move to a nearby plains tile and still have a good city spot, I’ll generally do so, preferring to work the flood plain, rather than settle atop it—which turns it into a desert tile…you can see this by examining the tile if the city is later destroyed.

For any of the reasons mentioned above, I'll consider moving my starting settler, and typically, if the decision is made to move, I'll give myself no more than three turns to find a good alternate location and settle it. Any longer, and you begin to run the risk of falling behind.

Once you have answered this pressing first question, we can begin to turn our attention to the rest.

After the Founding
So let's take a closer look at the Capital, and see what we can learn about the overall mechanics of the game, and how to begin applying everything else that has been hinted at to this point.

The city tile itself (on normal terrain) produces a total of four resource points per turn, broken down thusly: 2 Food, 1 Hammer, and 1 Commerce. Note that in certain instances, the city tile can produce additional resources (example: Founding your city on a plains hill will give you +1 hammer, in addition to the tile's normal outputs, while founding on a resource (wines, for example) that are located on a river will give you +1 commerce per turn, and predictably, founding on a food resource will give you +1 food in the city tile. These types of settlement options represent about the only options you have in terms of boosting the productivity of the city tile. I would say that if you see an opportunity to gain an extra hammer or commerce in your city tile, then by all means, take it, but food resources are typically too valuable to use in this manner...that is to say, the gains to be had via an improved food resource tile far outweigh the +1 food for the city tile, so in these cases, I would heartily recommend against it.

The city tile itself is relatively unremarkable, even with bonus resources here and there. Its main strength lies in the fact that by itself, it generates 2 Food, which means that the city tile can feed your one population point, so whatever tile you choose to work is, from the perspective of city productivity on the whole, "pure profit." That is to say, since you already know that your one pop point is being fed from the city, you can work ANY tile in your workable radius, and make a play, and that's hugely important.

Before we get into why it's important though, let's take a look at the engine that really powers the Capital...the Palace.

The first city you build comes with a free building, and it's a doozy. The Palace increases the happy cap of the city it resides in by +1 (not so important at the lower levels of play, but increasingly important as you move up the difficulty scale). It generates 2 culture per turn (essentially giving your Civ the "Creative Trait" so long as you stick with just this one city), and gives you a whopping 8 commerce per turn. It's this last bit that makes the Palace so incredibly good, and it all but guarantees that your Capital will be your most important city through much of the game--even if you found your second city near a couple gold mines, that city would need time to grow so it could work the mines before it began to eclipse your Capital, and for all those tens and scores of turns leading up to that point, your Capital would be the driving force behind your success. All that to say "choose the site of your Capital well." After all, it will be the instrument through which the entire groundwork of your game is laid.

So...one way or another, you built it. You either accepted your starting location, or you explored a bit, and now, you've got a city. You have a beginning.

How can you parlay this beginning...this single city-state, into the beginnings of an Empire?

It begins with a trio of vitally important decisions.

The first of these is what to build first from your newly made city, and make no mistake, this is a huge decision! Just as your first city is, and will be the most important part of your fledgling Empire for quite some time, so too is this first build of surpassing importance.

What you decide to do with your build queue here and now, just after the founding of your Capital, will resonate loudly through a good portion of the rest of the game.

No matter what techs you start with, you'll always have the following choices available to you, as opening plays:

Worker
Warrior
Settler
Barracks

If you start with Fishing, and your Capital is on the coast, you'll also have access to a Workboat.

If you start with Hunting, you'll also have access to a Scout.

And finally, if you start with Mysticism, you’ll also have access to a Monument (Obelisk in the pre-Warlords game), and the wonder, “Stonehenge.”

In all then, depending on your starting techs, you have eight choices. Let's take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of each build option to see which one is best for you.

Worker
A very common opening play, and with good reason. The lowly Worker is among the most powerful units in the game for its ability to take mundane terrain tiles and make them ferociously productive. This...the worker ability to unlock the productivity of your land, is truly the lifeblood of the game. Workers, then, are the very essence of Empire, and the worker first play is a strong one, provided that you have jobs for said worker to perform, once he is completed. To a large degree, your prevailing terrain will inform you if this is a good play for you or no. If you have numerous crop specials, and you start with Agriculture, then obviously, there's plenty to keep your worker busy. If you have lots of hills and you start with mining, again, your worker will not be idle, but there's more to it than that. The first tech you choose to research will also have bearing. The section on game-start tech selection is coming up next, so we won't get into this in much detail here and now, except to say that if you have lots of crop specials and you don't start with Agriculture, then that tech might be relatively more important to you sooner, rather than later, because it will make those all-important food tiles more productive, more quickly. So, if you start with worker actions unlocked, and/or your first tech will unlock some more, especially if those worker actions revolve around increasing your food production, then worker first is an exceedingly strong opener.

The downside to the Worker First opening play is that, until your worker completes, your city will be stalled at size one. If you have commerce rich sites in your workable radius, this will mean slightly slower tech progression, so if you are racing to be first to a key early tech (say, to found one of the earliest religions), then a worker first start could slow you down, and cause you to get beaten to your goal.

Warrior
Another common opening play, and one with a number of advantages. The Warrior is the weakest combat unit you'll ever have, it's true, but they're not without their uses. Building a Warrior on the opener allows your city to grow, even as you beef up your defenses and/or your exploratory capabilities (you could either use this newly built unit as an additional 1-move explorer, or you could keep him in the city as a token garrison to keep the local citizenry in line). Further, if you pick your battles carefully, you stand a good chance of getting your early warriors promoted to Medic units. Then, when you get better combat units, these cheap medics can be pulled away from garrison duty and placed with your attack force, and of course, the earlier you get started on such things, the more promotion opportunities you'll have. This is an especially good opening play if you need every bit of early commerce you can squeeze out of your Capital, in order to be the first to discover a key tech (again, early religion comes to mind), and/or if your starting techs and tech path are such that a Worker would have very little to do in the short run.

The downside to the Warrior first play is that is ties the overall productivity of your Capital to the unimproved terrain tiles you'll be working for longer than if you'd gone Worker first. If your starting location is particularly rich, however, this need not be such a bad thing....

Settler
A provocative opening play that raised lots of eyebrows when first proposed, settler first is, hands down the riskiest opening play you can make, but also promises rich rewards. Let’s talk about the downside first. Like a Worker-First opening play, this play delays the growth of your city until the settler completes, and it does so for a slightly longer time than that opener. This is significant because going Settler first will basically tie up your game for the greater bulk of “The Window,” if not all of it (which means you are trading one additional city for everything else you could have done in this relatively peaceful and safe part of the game). It also carries the not-inconsiderable risk that you could easily get ambushed before you can build the new city, and lose your (considerable) investment entirely, to say nothing of the fact that you’ll most likely be building your second city before you know the locations of some of the crucial early game strategic resources (copper, horses, etc). So you might be thinking…why on earth would I ever want to do this?

It’s a good question with a good answer. Exponential growth and Production flexibility.

Thanks to the value of the city tile itself, an early second city will reap the benefits of being able to work one tile in its workable radius that is “pure profit” (that is to say, since the food generated by the city tile is enough to feed the worker, ANY resources collected from the worked tile will be a bonus). Add this to the fact that you now have two cities on the same (linear) growth curve, and you grow twice as fast as you otherwise would have (in the same time it takes one city to grow from size 1 to size 2, you now have two cities doing that, giving you 4 pop points where you would have only had 2). That alone is often reason enough to consider it, but there’s more. Two build queues means greater flexibility in what to build in the early game, and that can be huge all by itself, but that’s still not all. Other reasons to consider it might be:

• If you’re interested in reaching your “no maintenance cap” (due to number of cities) in as few turns as possible, then a fast settler can do that for you (Monarch level of play is a unique case here because the “no maint cap” IS two cities, making a Settler first opening stronger on Monarch than any other level of difficulty).
• If you’re in marginal terrain but want to settle anyway (for speed) and make your second city a gem.
• If you’re playing Raging Barbarians, it could be the only chance you’ll have to found a city in the early game, because the barbarians will come calling soon….
• If there are Flood Plains and/or Precious Metals in the vicinity to feed a second city site
• Your opening research techs are not time dependent (no particular reward for getting there first), and you don’t have any immediate worker actions to take, making a worker first start a relatively weaker play

And others, besides. Then, there are things and conditions that make it easier and less risky to make this kind of opening play (if you’re playing an Imperialistic or Creative Civ, for example, and/or if your first city was founded on a Plains Hill for the extra hammer), and of course, you can mitigate the risks to your vulnerable settler by either a) curtailing the exploration activities of your starting unit or b) founding the city one tile out from your capital’s borders, such that the settler moves once, to a tile just outside the capital’s borders, and then uses his second move to settle immediately (giving you a second city four tiles from your first, in most cases). All that to say that the Settler First opening gives you a staggering range of choices very early on, and depending on where you settle that second city, it can set you up for the whole rest of the game!

Barracks
Perhaps a shade weaker in many instances, than the other options, a Barracks first play can be a good choice, in the right situations. Consider:

You don’t know enough yet about the surrounding terrain to want to risk a settler first. You don’t have any good worker actions you need to get started on, and you want to grow your city a bit first. Given the lack of barbarians during this phase of the game (and by extension, the complete lack of risk to your Capital), why not? Why not build a Barracks first, such that when you do build a garrison and other troops later on, they’ll all come equipped with a free promotion? And of course, there are certain instances when this argument becomes more compelling (specifically, if you’re playing an Aggressive Civ anyway, since the Barracks is essentially half price and will give you units with two promotions, instead of just one). Of course, the conditions outlined above are fairly specific, and if your particular situation deviates even marginally from that which is described above, then there’s probably a better opening out there for you, but it’s always something to consider, even if it tends to be among the least used opening plays. It still has its uses!

Work Boat
Another opener with a fairly specific application. In this instance, you need to start with the fishing tech, and be coastal and have a “Seafood Special” (crab or fish) in your Capital’s workable radius. If all of these conditions are true, then the Work Boat is probably your best friend, because it represents the best of all worlds. Your Capital gets to grow from turn one, and when the Work Boat is done, you get an improved tile with both good food and good commerce, and can then set about doing something else with a significantly improved city. It’s hard to find a downside with this opener…again, IF the three conditions are met. If not, then this opener is either impossible (you do not start coastally, and thus, cannot build a Work Boat), or non optimal (you are coastal, but have no “Seafood Specials” to work).

True, the little boat makes a half decent explorer, but his main strength is tile improvement while allowing growth. As explorers go, you’re better off with a unit that can go grab goody huts!

Scout
The value of a Scout First start is almost entirely dependent on what type of map you’re playing on. If you’re playing an islands game, then Scout First is a nigh on useless start, since the Scout you already have will, in all probability, be able to explore the whole of your island by himself.

On the other hand, if you’re playing a Pangea map on a huge world, Scout First can double your exploration speed (from two tiles per turn to four) and quadruple your exploration speed, relative to those poor simps who are plodding along with warriors! This can mean more goody huts for you, earlier contacts with your neighbors (knowing who and where they are can be crucial to your future planning), and better map information makes it possible for you to make well-informed decisions about future city sites, all of which are hugely important to your game!

The only downside that a Scout First on the opener has is that Scouts tend to have relatively short useful lives on any speed but Marathon. As soon as “The Window” closes and the barbarians begin appearing, your Scout’s days are probably numbered unless you bring him home. Still, this short useful lifespan can be offset entirely with one good hut discovery, so if you start with Hunting, and again, depending on the type of map you’re on, this can be a hugely potent beginning.

Monument (formerly Obelisk)
Only available if you begin the game with Mysticism, this represents only one of two (non-Wonder) buildings you can potentially construct from turn one. Unfortunately, this building really doesn’t do a lot for you, so as a general rule, I can’t see this as being a terribly strong opening play for anybody (in the post-Warlords Environment, a possible exception could be made for the Egyptians, and the Charismatic Civs, but we’ll cover these special cases in the section on specific Civs). As a building, the Monument itself provides +1 culture per turn, but with your Palace already generating twice this amount, combined with the fact that you’ll get your first border expansion before the Monument completes, there are relatively few cases in which this would be the preferred first build. A situational or civ-specific start, for sure.

[Velociryx]

Stonehenge
The only Wonder that’s available to be (potentially) built on the first turn of the game, this is actually an intriguing choice, depending on your aims and goals.

Like most of the other first turn options (everything but Settler-First and Worker-First), going with Stonehenge-First allows your city to grow while you build it, and it’s a cheap enough Wonder that, even if your Civ lacks the “Industrious” trait, you can, in many cases, finish the thing before “The Window” begins to close, so there’s relatively little danger to it, and completing it “centers” the world map, which is a useful bit of information. Not crucial, to be sure, but useful nonetheless.

It does have a few far-reaching strategic implications to consider, and we’ll touch on these briefly here, and then go into more detail about them later on. Briefly then, the major considerations are these:

• There’s not much of a downside to trying, because even if you fail, you’ll get a handsome sum of gold in your coffers that will enable you to run 100% research for relatively longer than you otherwise would have had the capacity for.
• Successfully completing it gives your Capital a pretty enormous cultural boost (faster and more frequent expansions, though this could also be a strong case for building it from your second city, since your Palace already provides good cultural output for the Capital).
• It also gives you a free Monument in every city you build, which essentially is a free +1 Culture per turn in all your cities (or a half-strength “Creative” trait until you research the tech, “Calendar,” which is generally more than enough time to develop a solid core of cities (this is neat, because if you’re not already Creative, it basically gives you three Traits during the early portions of the game).
• It will begin building up “Prophet Points” in your Capital. Could be a bad thing, if you want to put an early academy down, and at the very least, it will mean founding a second city, getting a Library built there and assigning two scientists in order to generate said Academy (you could try it in your Capital, but with the Prophet points beginning to accumulate from the turn after Stonehenge’s completion, it is overwhelmingly likely that your first G-Man will be from your Capital, and further, that he will be a Prophet…again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to consider if you want an Academy sooner, rather than later).
• It can vastly speed up the process of executing a “CS Slingshot” (provided you don’t research Masonry, and use your Prophet to get “Code of Laws.)”
• It can vastly speed up the process of getting your Great Temple built if you found or conquer a religion (use the first Prophet in this manner, and you will have a strong start to a stellar financial future).

Having said all that, it should be noted that going with Stonehenge first does commit you to pretty much giving up “The Window.” For the entire duration of this crucial part of the game, you’re going to be doing this one thing. It’s a potentially great thing, but you need to make sure that your game and your plan can cope with the “catching up” you’ll have to do after the Henge is done, because when you do start expanding, the world will be a significantly more dangerous place. Take care that you factor this into your planning.

Of all the possible “First builds,” this one is the one to consider most carefully. Depending on how you want to structure your game, it can be quite a strong beginning, but it is not entirely without risks. If your terrain is not exceptional (flood plains and forested hills), the extended period of time you’ll be running without a garrison and without any improved tiles can make this a somewhat dicey proposition on the opener, but this can be greatly mitigated by Industrious Civs, who get Wonders at essentially half price anyway….

OoO

And that’s it.

Those are your eight choices for that pivotal opening play. In looking at them as a group, it almost gives me chills to think that from these eight basic choices, made possible by founding your first city, and acting in concert with the second and third in the trio of major, game-defining decisions, will very quickly lead to an infinite realm of possibilities. That’s exciting stuff, so what are we waiting for, let’s go talk about the second and third of those decisions!

End of old material

[Velociryx]

Start New Material

Tile Assignment
The second of three crucial decisions you must make early on is figuring out which of your city’s starting tiles you want to assign your worker to.

Now, at first blush, it doesn’t appear that there would be much to talk about here, but appearances can be deceiving….there’s actually quite a lot to consider. There are no absolutes here, and I’m not going to pretend that there are. What I’ll do instead is give you a list of guiding principles that you can use to inform your decision-making, and find your own way.

To start with, I’ll say that in general your goal should be the maximization of food. This is simply because more population equals more tiles worked and greater “carrying capacity” for your Civ (as your cities grow, you get more free units and such), so unless you have a specific reason not to, in the earliest part of the game, you should look toward maximizing your food.

So when (specifically) might you want to do things a bit differently? Consider::

• If you’re opting to build a settler or worker first, you’re looking at whatever tile can give you the highest outputs of (hammers + food) because that’s the tile that will see you complete those builds the fastest. Maybe this winds up being your most food intensive tile, and maybe not, but do have a look at your options in these cases.

• If you’re building a second exploration unit (especially if this second unit is a scout), you may be interested in sacrificing some short term growth in exchange for getting that unit in play several turns faster, and if so, you may find yourself opting to work a more hammer intensive tile (or even a hammer-exclusive tile, like a forested hill) in order to see this important first build to completion faster. Also note that a hammer-heavy tile might be your first choice if you’re playing on a tiny map with lots of near neighbors, since the prospect of an early game ambush is probable (especially in MP).

• If you plan to research a tech that carries a “prize” for its first discoverer (say you start with Mysticism and want to be the first to “Meditation” so you can claim an early religion), then you may want to forego working a food intensive tile and focus on whatever tile will bring in the most commerce per turn, so you can help ensure you are the first to that key tech.

• A Workboat first start…it depends. Working a hammer intensive tile will indeed see you complete the Workboat faster, but part of the advantage of going with this opening play is your ability to grow while you make this first build, so you need to weigh the gains to be had by getting the boat done faster vs. how much food you’re giving up to get the boat faster. Depending on the terrain, it may be in your best interest to go food heavy, hammer heavy, or some mix of the two.

All the other builds you can make at the start are builds that allow growth to occur in your Capital, and as such, unless there’s a compelling need to get that first build out more quickly, it is usually in your best interest to work whatever tile will maximize that growth. In these cases, the thing you’re building is a bonus. The real prize is in seeing your city move from size one to size two in a good timeframe.

Early Research
So now we come to it. The third of the three major decisions you have to make on turn one, and it is every bit as important as the two we’ve already talked about.

What tech are you going to research first?

Now, in order to have this discussion, we have to lay a bit of groundwork first.

The techs you choose to research, and the order you choose to research them in are going to be guided by the aforementioned three pillars (Your Civ of Choice, Your own Desires, and the Dictates of the Land you’ve settled upon). Your Civ of choice starts with two techs, the local terrain may have a say (see the “Seafood Special” example on previous pages), and of course, your own desires weigh in heavily here. Sometimes, these three pillars are (or at least seem to be) at odds with each other, and if that’s the case, then the first thing you have to do is come to some understanding about what your needs and goals are, and then find a way to make the three pillars “play nice” with each other, because the truth of the matter is this: If the three pillars that serve as the basis of your strategy aren’t working together, then your strategy won’t be as strong as it could be. That bears repeating in a slightly different form.

The strength and success of your strategy is, by and large, determined by how well the native strengths of your Chosen Civ mesh with your personal goals and desires, and how well both of these work with the needs and dictates of the prevailing terrain

What does that mean, exactly?

The best way for me to illustrate it is to give you a couple of frightfully fictional examples.

Let us say, for the sake of demonstration, that you began a game with the techs “Agriculture” and “The Wheel.” You start coastal, surrounded by a vast, lifeless desert, but for some reason, you decide to settle this godforsaken spot anyway, and as luck would have it, there are three “Seafood Specials” nearby. Sadly, you can’t work these tiles, because you don’t have the “Fishing” tech. In fact, the only thing you CAN work is a single, desert hill.

You really want to found a religion this game, so you make your first tech Mysticism, with a plan to try for “Meditation” next, and see if you can be the first to that tech, so you’ll discover Buddhism. To protect yourself, you decide to start off by building a Barracks, so your glorious armies will have good starting experience.

Does anybody have any doubts in their mind about the likelihood of success in this case? What’s wrong with this picture?

Almost too many things to count, actually, but chief among them are these:

• You settled in exceedingly poor terrain. Moving would have been the far superior play.
• You let your personal desires get in the way of this game’s realities, and opted to try for an early religion when you didn’t start with Mysticism. By itself, that’s not the kiss of death, but in general, you should only attempt such a play when you’ve got a high commerce site, such that you can get techs faster than normal, because you start off at a keen disadvantage compared to those Civs who already start with Mysticism.
• You’re working a tile that generates a single hammer, meaning you’re not growing at all. You’ll have your barracks in 25 turns, and nothing else to show for that time. Very bad.
• You ignored the dictates of the terrain, and began researching Mysticism when clearly (since you plan to stay here), Fishing is the first tech you should have researched. Remember that food is of paramount importance in the early game, and you willfully ignored it.

Very likely, this will not be a successful game. You’ve blown it on turn one. Can you recover? Certainly. Anything’s possible, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that you will get the early religion you were shooting for, and the number of turns it will take you to dig yourself out of the mess you got yourself into on the first turn of the game will make the whole affair a monumental struggle.

Granted, the above was an extreme example, and intentionally so, but I think it underscores the point rather well. The decisions you make on turn one can and do have vast, far-reaching consequences. Make them lightly at your peril.

Now let’s look at the other end of the spectrum. One where the three pillars work together.

In this example, you start with the same techs (Agriculture and The Wheel), and although you begin in the nasty desert, you wisely conclude that this is not terrain you’d like to have as the centerpiece of your Empire, so you spend a few turns moving. Find a place nearby that’s got a couple of Flood Plains, some wheat, and some cows! Now we’re rolling!

You’re interested in a religion, but mindful of the fact that religion can come to you in many different ways, including conquest, so you’re not going to try to beeline for a religion, but will keep your options open.

One thing you notice right away is that you’ve got Agriculture, which would give a worker something to do right off the bat, and further, you’ve got the pre-requisites to begin researching Animal Husbandry from turn one, which is good for you for two reasons. First, because it will show you where the horses are, and second, because you’ve got cows in your city’s workable radius, and then of course, those Flood Plains are just begging for Pottery…. See how they work together? Animal Husbandry, in this instance, delivers two tangible benefits to you…shows you where the horses are (which may influence the location of your next city), and gives you a new worker action (pasture, to make that cow tile more valuable). That is what you want to strive for.

But let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Why couldn’t you do Pottery first, and then Animal Husbandry?

The short answer is, you could. If that’s the way you want to structure your game, why not? Either plan would keep your worker busy for the immediate future, so it really becomes a question of what’s more important to you? Knowing where the horses are (which could prove vital in planning for that second city), or getting started on those Cottages? Depending on your answer, you might change your mind, and that’s fine! So long as your plan is cohesive, and sees the three pillars working together, rather than being at odds with each other, you are golden!

Synergy. The mathematical proof that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is what you should strive to create in your games. Where research is concerned, that means you want to research techs when they will answer multiple needs for you in the same breath (like the example with Husbandry, giving you a crucial piece of Intel in answering the question: “Where are the horses?,” and allowing you to make the tiles around your Capital vastly better than they were).

The truth of the matter is that sooner or later, if you play the whole of the game out, you’re most likely going to research all of the techs anyway, so one might be tempted to argue that it doesn’t much matter what order you research them in anyway, but it’s not quite as simple as all that, mostly because of efficiency.

For example, if you’re building a Worker first, and you have wheat in your city’s workable tile radius and you’re not coastal, it simply makes more sense to research Agriculture before Fishing, does it not? So while it is true that in the greater scheme of things, you’ll have all the techs in-hand anyway, I would argue that it certainly matters down at the tactical level, and this idea is reinforced by the idea that some techs provide an added bonus to the person who discovers it first (the founding of a religion, a free great person, a bonus free tech, etc).

At any rate, armed with a couple of examples, perhaps the best thing we can do at this point is examine the ancient era techs themselves to see what their strengths and weaknesses are, and from there, begin to figure out ways we can use them, and the abilities they unlock to further whatever goals you have in your mind.

And here they are.

The techs of the Ancient Era
Level One Techs
(none of these techs have any pre-requisites)

Fishing (cost: 59)
The Wheel (cost: 89)
Agriculture (cost: 89)
Hunting (cost: 59)
Mysticism (cost: 74)
Mining (cost: 74)

Level Two Techs
Sailing (cost: 149)
Pottery (cost: 119)
Animal Husbandry (cost: 149)
Archery (cost: 89)
Meditation (cost: 119)
Polytheism (cost: 149)
Masonry (cost: 119)
Bronze Working (cost: 179)

Level Three Techs
Horseback Riding (cost: 373)
Priesthood (cost: 89)
Monotheism (cost: 179)
Writing (cost: 179)

Gateway Techs
We won’t spend a significant amount of time studying these techs in this section, but it’s important to bring them up here and now, because these can be seen as your earliest strategic (tech) goals. When you boil it down, there are really only six ways to “leave” the Ancient era, and they are:

Alphabet (448) (by way of Writing)
Mathematics (373) (by way of Writing)
Iron Working (299) (by way of Bronze Working)
Monarchy (448) (by way of Priesthood AND Monotheism)
Metal Casting (672) (by way of Bronze Working AND Pottery)
Code of Laws (522) (by way of Writing & Priesthood or Currency)

When and how you leave the Ancient Era is entirely up to you, and it’s important to remember that leaving the era is not a goal in and of itself, so it’s not something you should feel especially pressed to do (that is to say, there’s no prize awaiting you for being the first Civ to migrate from one era to the next), but the eras themselves are good signposts indicating a generalized progression and level of development, so they can’t be completely ignored either. My advice would be to stay in a given era until you’ve taken all that you need from it, and then move on.

In any case, however long you choose to stay in the Ancient era, you’re going to reach a point where you’ll be leaving it, and when you do, you’ll move on to the next segment of the tech tree by way of one of these six doors, so you would do well to have one of these techs in the back of your mind as your preferred method of moving from one era to the next (and understand that as you learn more about the particular game you’re playing, this answer may change).

So let’s take a closer look at the six possible exits and see if they reveal anything about themselves, or the fabric of the game.

The first thing you should probably take note of is the fact that although there are six exits to the age, they seem to revolve around a fairly small family of techs. Specifically, we see three techs mentioned multiple times. Writing come up three times as a pre-requisite for exiting stage right, which is a strong clue that this is going to be an important tech for you. In a similar vein, we can observe that Bronze Working puts in a pair of appearances, as does Priesthood, with Pottery and Monotheism each putting in one appearance on the pre-requisite to leave the age list. More generally, we can break this down further, and say that both Priesthood and Monotheism exist on the same “branch” of the tree (the religious branch), and that Writing can be reached either via this branch, or via the economic branch that Pottery represents, while Bronze is off on a more warlike segment of the tree.

As you can see then, the various “exits” and their pre-requisites are quite interwoven, creating a number of opportunities for you to play the early tech tree out in a variety of ways.

Now, with this in your mind, also understand that you’re going to have a bit of a head start with respect to certain “branches” of the tech tree, based on your two free starting techs. It may be the case that your free techs give you a leg up when it comes to researching some of these commonly recurring techs mentioned above, and if so, this could well shade your thinking in terms of what direction you’d like to approach the tree from.

Of course, we cannot ignore the needs and the dictates of the land, nor your own goals and desires for your chosen Civ, either, which brings us nicely back around to the often mentioned “Three Pillars.” Like the tech tree itself, our discussions here will tend to loop back upon themselves, with each new piece of the puzzle being reinforced by something we’ve discussed previously, and in turn, laying the foundations for future topics of discussion and exploration.

But back to the question at hand. The issue before us is what to research first. Not such an easy question to answer, because it depends on so many variables, not the least of which is what tech you have in mind as your “exit” from this age. This speaks directly to your own desires, and how you see yourself running this new game of Civ before you, although, as you will see, those desires will be tempered and directed by the other two pillars, and the hope, of course, will be that we’ll be able to find a way to make all three work together flawlessly.

[Velociryx]

Early Research Gambits
If you’re preparing for a long journey to somewhere you’ve never been, you seldom begin such an undertaking with, “well, first I’m going to leave my house and turn left. Then….”
You don’t do this because before you know what your first move out your door will be, you must have at least some understanding of where you’re going. Until you select a destination, how do you know if turning left or right from your front door will be the best way to get you where you want to go?

So the destination itself must come first, and then the particulars of how to get there, and in this way, the last thing you arrive at will be the answer to the question, “what do I do first?”

As it is with planning a trip, so too is it with selecting your first tech. We have to get our destination sorted out, figure out what road blocks may be in the way and where we might stop briefly en route to wherever it is we’re going, and combine that to come to some understanding of what paths and roads we’ll need to follow in order to arrive at our desired destination. We’ll need a map to guide us, and fortunately we have one, in the form of the tech tree itself. We’ll need to understand that there may be necessary side trips (for gas, munchies, a spare tire or a tune up…or in our case, for defense, economic development, and the like) or unexpected road blocks along the way (in the form of barbarians and/or other Civs), and that these may influence our route, or even change it entirely. No plan is utterly set in stone, it’s true, but a plan is required to leave the house and get started, so now that we have a house (in the form of our first city), and now that we know what sort of land we have to work with, we’re in good enough shape to strategize.

Remember earlier, when we made mention of those broadly defined types of games you could play? Well, they’re about to put in another appearance. In the Ancient Era, there are really only a handful of possible destinations we can arrive at, and they are (in no particular order):

• Grabbing a wonder that’s important to you
• Facilitating early attack and/or defense
• Founding an early religion
• Founding a later religion
• Playing to the strengths of the land
• Focus on peaceful expansion
• Building your economy/research capability
• Letting the game unfold (“WAS”)

As you might imagine, the technological requirements for each of these are quite different (or largely nonexistent, if you’re content to just let the game unfold), and so, depending on what you aim to do, your research goals and priorities will be quite different. Note too how these basic “destinations” mirror the basic “types” of games mentioned at the start of this book (to refresh your memory, the basic types of games were listed as: Classic Rush, Religion Gambit (early or later), G-Man Game, Resource-oriented, Wonder Grab, and “WAS”).

We’ll take a look at each of these in turn and see what paths they might lead us down.

Selective Wonder Grab
The first of these is probably the most obvious to plan. If you want a particular wonder, then you need to make the tech that said wonder is associated with a priority. Of course, there’s more to it than all that, because you need to answer a few other questions too, not the least of which are these:

1) How long is this going to take? (specifically, how long will I be tied up in pursuit of this wonder)? If the answer strikes you as interminably long then it probably is, and if you find yourself balking at the timeframe then it tells you in very clear language that you’ll be wanting to found at least one additional city before you get started on your wonder grab (this, so that you are not completely paralyzed while you make the run at whatever wonder it is you desire). About the only wonder this doesn’t apply to is Stonehenge, although it’s also quite possible to snag the Oracle in a timely fashion, enabling you to run with only one city. For most everything else, you’re going to want to build some level of expansion into your core plans.
2) If you’re going to be a while at this goal (such that “The Window” will close while you’re working toward it), do you need to think about defense when the Barbarians begin to appear? Will warriors be sufficient? If not, you might need to make a side-stop to Archery to get some better defenders, either before or immediately after you get the tech to start working on the big Wonder project.
3) What is needed to support/speed up this process? A lot of this has to do with prevailing terrain. If you have lots of forests, perhaps you’ll decide that a dash to Bronze Working is in your best interest, as you can chop your way to faster completion of the wonder (or, this same tech can be useful if you have a food rich site, and can use Slavery to speed the wonder to its completion), in which case, you’ll also want to maximize food production, so add Agriculture to your wish list.
4) Perhaps you don’t have many forests, and your food isn’t all that great (or perhaps your food is so good that you decide you don’t need Agriculture), but you have plenty of hills to mine, and this could speed things along. If so, make a mental note to grab mining sooner, rather than later.
5) Maybe the wonder in question requires stone or marble. If it does, and you have some nearby, then this will surely need to be factored into your planning (as will the “Masonry” tech), so jot another one down.
6) If anything from items 2-4 holds true, then you’re going to need a worker in the field to pull it off, so factor that into your planning too….

….and so on. So even when your plans appear on the surface to be fairly straightforward
(“I want to build the Great Wall”), on closer inspection, they’re usually not. There’s more to mapping out your strategy than picking your desired destination and heading out the door, and you must plan the matter carefully.

Once you’ve mulled it over and decided exactly what it’s going to take, you need to figure out what order you want/need to do everything in so that you keep everything progressing as you want it.

Have you ever played a game where you seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time “idling?” That is to say, you’re forced to build stuff you really don’t need, because there’s nothing else you can build until such and so happens?

That’s a classic side effect of inadequate planning. With proper attention paid to laying out your research path, this need never happen to you.

Your goal is to research an even mix of techs, some directly related to your goal, and some with side, or sub-goals in mind, so that all parts of your growing realm always find themselves with more to do than they can possibly get done. You want to make sure your workers have plenty of actions to perform, and your build queues are constantly humming with stuff you need, not just stuff because there’s nothing else to build.

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to teach the process of crafting a research strategy. I can’t sit you down and press an unseen button on your mind to make everything click into place for you. What I can do, however, is walk you through the process several times, such that you begin to see patterns. Walk you through the steps I go through in my own mind when I’m working out what to do, and when to do it, and then using that as a guide, my hope is that you’ll be able to find your own path (and, as always, this comes with the proviso that I don’t want you to consider this to be the “final word” on the subject. It’s not the only way to get the job done, and it might not even be the “best” way….but it’s a way that works for me, and I’m happy to share it with you, in hopes that you find it of value!)

Example #1
Let us say you’re playing a Civ that starts with Agriculture and the Wheel (Egypt, France, Ottomans), and you decide that what you really want to do is build the Pyramids. You like specialists, and you’d love to be the first on your block to switch to Representation and just go to town with the scientists, priests, and so forth.

Your start is about average…decent food (including one food special and a (single) flood plain, some trees (we’ll say five), and a couple hills, and even some stone nearby, such that a second city would bring it into the fold. Unfortunately, the stone in question is sitting in the desert, but it IS near three flood plains and an oasis…at least food won’t be a problem there.

So you sit down with that and contemplate. The Pyramids are a pretty big project, and it’ll take forever for an early city to crank them out. Clearly then, you’ll be wanting to do all you can to cut the time down, and that means taking a serious look at the stone site. Desert stone is really quite awful…not generally worth working as a tile, which would be, in my mind, a strong argument for building your city atop it, provided you could get the food resources mentioned above in your workable radius, and since this is pure fiction, let us assume that you can.

Good…so already, we know that we’re going to need a settler and a worker (gotta build a road to road connect the Capital and the new city), and of course, at least one garrison for each. Let’s say though, that we’re not terribly interested in acquiring Archery, so in that case, we’re going to answer the “how will I defend myself” question by planning for a total of six warriors (two per city, and two roving, to cover important terrain enhancements). Note though, that we will have a second city, so we need not build all of these before we get started on the wonder, as the second city can provide for defense, but let us say that we won’t feel comfortable with the plan unless we have a minimum of three warriors (one per city and one roving)—we’ll let the new city build the rest as it can.

Okay, so what unit assets do we need?

3 Warriors (we’re not counting the one we start with, because he’ll be off exploring)
A Worker
A Settler

Given our starting techs (Agriculture and the Wheel), we have stuff for a worker to do, so let’s go worker first. We’ll get it out of the way, start improving that food special, and get it working sooner, rather than later. Then, while we’re growing, we’ll crank out some basic defense, and lastly, we’ll do a settler, then settle in to the big project.

So question one is answered, and then some.

Question two is answered by default. Whatever tile gives us the most food + hammers is the one we’ll be working, because we want the worker out there as quickly as we can get him.

So…question three. What will we research first?

Well, by process of elimination, we already have Agriculture and the Wheel. We’re clearly not interested in Hunting, Fishing or Mysticism, cos they don’t do anything to advance our goals, so that leaves Mining, Pottery, and Animal Husbandry. Pottery and Animal Husbandry are out because like the rest, it does nothing to put us on the path toward the Pyramids, so Mining it is. We’ll research mining first, and then Masonry (which will enable us to make use of the stone when we found our second city, and unlock the Pyramids. We can get started just as soon as we finish building the requisite infrastructure units.

That was (intentionally) an easy example, so let’s mix it up a little and see how we could change things around.

Example #1A
Suppose after looking at that basic plan, we decide…no, that takes too long. We need to get started sooner.

Okay, we can speed things up significantly if we’re willing to accept more risk, so let’s get risky. Let’s open with a settler first so we can get that stone city founded in as few turns as possible, and use it to feed the rest of the process. We don’t want to run totally defenseless, so let’s plan on building one warrior from our Capital (which will be the city to build the Pyramids), so now, all we need to do is build the settler and one warrior. Everything else is going to get built by the second city. Tech progression remains the same. A little dicey, sure, but certainly within the realm of possibility.

Same basic strategy, same research path—which is unaffected by our build order decisions in this case-- radically different approach.

Example #1B
Let’s change it further. Suppose that we started with Mysticism and Fishing (Spain) instead (landlocked, no coast or fishing specials to work with).

How would this change the equation? Or…would it change it at all?

Well, without anything for our worker to do, it certainly would make me think more closely about a settler first opener (if I wanted to get started quickly), or, if I wanted to go a bit slower, then I could still do a Worker first, and make Agriculture or Mining my first tech (if I decided to run with what food I could get from “native” (unimproved) sources—and I easily could, with a food special and a flood plain at the capital, I have two tiles giving me 3f each, which is decent enough for starters—I could jump right into Mining and Masonry and be working on the Pyramids in no time flat. On the other hand, if my food special was, say, Corn, I could double the output of the tile by taking Agriculture first and farming it….that could be huge if I plan to finish the project off with the despotic whip, which makes me lean toward Agriculture again….decisions, decisions….

Again though, this one was relatively easy because pretty much everything we needed was on one “branch” of the tech tree (research Mining, which leads to Masonry, and as long as we have enough food to squeak by, we’re golden).

It gets a bit harder though, when the wonder you’re after lies down a different branch.

Let’s do another.

Example #2
Same starting parameters as before (you begin with Agriculture and The Wheel, have one food special and one flood plain), but you’ve decided that what you really want is the Parthenon (maybe you’re Philosophic, and want to get crazy with the G-Man points).

So let’s answer the three vital questions and make some plans based on this new situation.

Parthenon lies down the religious branch of the tree. Specifically, we’re going to need Mysticism and Polytheism. If you’re apathetic about snagging Hinduism then you don’t necessarily need to maximize commerce and rush for it (though you likely could…the AI prefers to go for Buddhism, so even without Mysticism, you would have a reasonably good shot at snagging the religion).

The second city is still probably needed, because Parthenon is a pretty big project too, made even bigger by virtue of the fact that you don’t have access to any Marble, and we don’t want to play risky, so we’re tossing out the notion of Settler first.

Without Marble to help offset the cost though, we’re going to need some means of speeding this process along. The only other choice is Pop-N-Chop, but we won’t need it right away (it won’t come into play until we’re nearing the end of the build cycle for the wonder)…so with this in mind (Slavery and eventual popping/chopping the wonder to completion), this tells me we’re going to need a Worker (got to have someone to cut down the trees), a second city (the process will take too long to have our only city tied down…that would completely paralyze us, and I don’t want to start the ball rolling until we have at least three warriors—again, not counting our starting warrior, who will stay in the field and uncover the map for us).

So…the answer to question one is:
Let’s take advantage of our starting tech and terrain, and go worker first (he can immediately begin improving the food special and flood plain to facilitate faster growth in the capital, which in turn will speed the settler we plan to build).

Once the Worker completes, we’ll want to grow to (at least) size two, so we can take advantage of our (farmed) food special and (farmed) flood plain, so we’ll build a warrior (actually, I think I feel more comfortable growing to size two, and then working a hammer heavy tile with our second pop point until we crank out our third warrior, then maximize food outputs and make the settler).

All that pretty well answers question two as well, so on to question three.

Essentially, we’ve identified two needs. We need the tech for the wonder itself, and we need Bronze Working to make use of Pop-N-Chop, which is how we mean to speed our wonder along, but this opens up an interesting option.

We can’t start on the wonder until we get Polytheism. We don’t want to start the wonder till we get a worker, three warriors, and a settler built, so we have some time to play with. Let’s make our first tech Mining. That way, after our worker gets done farming (two tiles), he can turn his attention to mining one of the hills (this will speed getting those warriors out), and then he can start road-building to the second city site. So our tech order would be Mining, Mysticism, Polytheism (start working on the Wonder after we get the settler out), Bronze Working (begin chopping what trees we can, and keep checking in, finishing the Wonder off with a pop-rush to make sure we get it). Of course, we could have simply gone straight for Polytheism, and had our worker focus on road-building, then picked up Mining a little later…depends on you, your preferences, desires, and goals.

We could do all of the Wonders, but I think you get the basic idea, so on to the next item!

Facilitating an Early Attack or Defense
This smacks of the ‘Classic Rush’ game, or defending against the same, and in the Ancient Era, there are only really two attackers to talk about…the Chariot and the Axeman (if you’re focused on defense, we can also bring the Archer into the fold, but that’s a bit of a special case, so we’ll cover him last).

Not surprisingly, both of these superb Ancient Era attackers require a strategic resource to employ, and you can’t see where those resources are when the game opens. In order to see them, you’ll need Animal Husbandry (in the case of Horses, required for the redoubtable Chariot), or Bronze Working (in the case of Copper, required for the mighty Axeman), and of course, no matter which of these you find yourself gravitating toward, unless your starting terrain is shot through with rivers, you’ll need The Wheel (and roads) in order to make use of them. This sets up a very different set of needs and priorities than the Wonder Grab stuff, above.

So let’s take a look at the two key techs to early game attack/defense and see what makes them tick.

Husbandry is the slightly cheaper of the two (149b vs. Bronze Working’s 179b), but packs a good bit less punch. A side by side comparison reveals:

Animal Husbandry
Cost: 149b
Pre-Requisites: Agriculture OR Hunting
New Unit (Chariot) 4-2 (+100% vs. Axemen) (requires Husbandry + Wheel + a source of Horses)
New Worker action (Pasture) (gain resources/health benefits from Pigs, Sheep, etc)
Reveals the location of Horses (Strategic Resource)

Bronze Working
Cost: 179b
Pre-Requisites: Mining
New Unit (Axeman) 5-1 (+50% vs. Melee Units) (requires Bronze Working + a source of Copper)
New Worker action (Chop) (clear forest for 20h—30h with Mathematics)
Reveals the location of Copper (Strategic Resource)
New Civic Option (Slavery) (no upkeep, allows sacrificing population for hammers)

So for 30 additional beakers of research, Bronze Working gives you a stronger combat unit and a new civic option, making it pound for pound the stronger of the two techs, but that does not mean that you should never consider Animal Husbandry first. For example, what if you start with either Agriculture or Hunting, but don’t start with Mining? You’re only one tech away from Husbandry, but you’d have to research two to get to Bronze.

Or, what if you have animals in your city’s workable radius that would benefit from Husbandry (sheep, pigs, etc)? In this case, the Husbandry tech gives you an advantage that Bronze can’t (because Bronze’s worker action increases hammer counts in a one-shot kind of way…that is to say, once you cut the trees, they’re gone), while Husbandry’s bonus tends to increase both food and hammer counts (and sometimes commerce), and does so in permanent fashion (so long as the terraforming remains intact, you continue reaping the benefits of the improved tile). In either of these cases (and a few Civ-specific cases besides), Husbandry is actually the stronger choice, despite being a slightly weaker tech on the whole.

The problem, however, is that in order for you to act on your desires for an early attack, two conditions must prove true, and at game start, you have no way of knowing whether they are true.

First, you need one of the two strategic resources mentioned above. Without them, you’re really in no shape to launch an Ancient Era attack.

Second, of course, is that you have a neighbor near enough to be a viable target for attack. If you don’t, you’ll be able to wrestle with the occasional Barbarian, but you won’t really be able to flex your growing Civ-Muscles.

That said, for this plan to work, you need exploratory units of some kind, with faster exploratory units being preferable to slower ones.

So already we’re starting to get a feel for the tech progressions in play here.

We’re gonna need either Husbandry or Bronze Working, for sure (and if it turns out that we have neither of the strategic resources these techs reveal, then we probably need to give some serious consideration to Archery), and we may find it of value to research Hunting (assuming we don’t start with it), in order to get a good, fast-moving exploratory unit in the field.

Because of the short “shelf life” of Scouts, two things are true here. If you don’t start with Hunting and you want a Scout, then you need to research the Hunting tech first, and when you get to the point where you can build a Scout, you want to be working a hammer heavy tile to get him out the door as quickly as possible. This is definitely one of those times where it’s okay to forego short term growth in favor of production…time is of the essence where the useful life of your Scout is concerned, and the clock is ticking!

Which of the two strategic resource techs (Husbandry or Bronze) you choose to pursue first mostly comes down to personal preference, but in my opinion, you are nearly always better served by pursuing the one you have pre-requisite techs for over the one you have to start from scratch on. Having said that, you may face a situation where you have the pre-requisites for both (if you start with both Hunting and Mining, for example, or if you decide you want a Scout first, so you research Hunting for that purpose, and start with Mining). If you have both (or neither), then let the land be your guide. If there are animals in your city radius that could benefit from Husbandry, go that route first, otherwise, head for Bronze first.

So essentially, we have two choices for the early warmonger:

Fast Scout or no? (if yes, and you already have Hunting, then you know what your opening play will be, and you know what kind of tile assignment you’re looking at. If yes but you don’t start with hunting, then you also know what your first tech to research will be). If no, then on to the next choice!

Agriculture (or Hunting) to Husbandry

Or

Mining to Bronze

(If you come up empty on both counts, give consideration to Archery).

Note that if you’re playing a Civ that does not begin with Hunting, Agriculture OR Mining, and you’re looking to play rough and tumble, then following this plan will see you gravitate toward Husbandry first, more often than not (research Hunting for the early Scout, then, because you have one of Husbandry’s pre-requisites, it—usually--makes the most sense to research it next).

As you can see, these possible tech paths give you plenty of advanced units to build (Archers in the worst case, which are still better garrisons than Warriors), and provide abundant worker actions to keep your worker occupied, although if your Scouting efforts reveal a lack of viable targets, then you’re going to want to turn your attention immediately to techs that will allow you to build city improvements (Pottery, for sure, and then on to Writing via the economic branch, or maybe Mysticism for Monuments if you’re not Creative, etc). No point in building dozens of attackers if you have no one to tangle with, so if this proves to be the case, don’t get lost researching techs that won’t give you improvements to build in fairly short order (i.e., it would probably be a mistake to pursue the Religious branch of the tech tree next, because if you’ve already been down the warmonger path to Bronze, and you already have Husbandry, you can get more city improvements, more quickly by building on that course—Pottery and/or Writing, depending on which techs you have already researched (i.e., if you used Agriculture to get to Husbandry, then Pottery may be preferable, both because it is cheaper and because the Granary is an insanely powerful city improvement).

All of the opening plays we discussed in previous sections work well (or can work well, depending on what techs you start with and the lay of the land), and you can generally get on quite well by maximizing growth or working mixed tiles (grassland forest, for example), though when pursuing this type of game, there may well be cases where you’re interested in a hammer-heavy approach, even at the expense of growth in the short term. Generally, you’ll be less interested in maximizing commerce on the opener, because you’ll have plenty to build at normal research rates, and there’s no particular prize for being the first to discover the warmongering techs (although this is less true in MP…often the first player to discover the locations of these resources can arrange it so that a near neighbor never even has a chance…not really necessary in SP, however).

[Velociryx]

Early Religious Gambit
This is an entirely different animal than either of the other two we’ve covered, as it focuses squarely on one branch of the tech tree, and in this case, you’re looking for the prize that goes to the first discoverer of a given tech.

To that end, growth and hammers will generally take a backseat to commerce, because in this type of contest, the only thing that matters is who gets to the target tech first, and that’s almost always going to be the guy with the most research (maximize commerce + slider to 100% research).

If you’re looking at an early religion, then you’re almost certainly looking at either Buddhism or Hinduism, although if you miss these, you can try (slightly later) for Judaism. In any of these cases though, if you don’t have Mysticism, you need it, and unless you’re gunning for Judaism, it needs to be your first tech (if you’re specifically aiming for Judaism, you could take Mining first, with a plan to pick up Masonry before heading down the religious branch).

In my experience, the AI tends to favor Buddhism over Hinduism, so there’s usually less competition if you head in the direction of Polytheism, over Meditation, but this comes with tradeoffs of its own. On the plus side, if someone beats you to Hinduism, then you’re already well-positioned to try again with Judaism. On the minus side, Monotheism is the most expensive of the three early religious techs (and it’s pre-requisite is the second most expensive of the three), so you’ll be delayed in getting to Writing (which is a pretty pivotal tech!). The other drawback here is that you’re going to want to keep pouring on the speed until you hit your target and get a religion, so the longer that takes, the more you’re hurting yourself by forestalling growth.

There are a few variations to consider.

1) You start with both Mysticism and Mining (India, Korea). If this is you, then the world is your oyster. Hands down the strongest position to be in, with regards to grabbing early religions. You have enormous flexibility with these starting techs and this chosen play. You can maximize commerce and make straight for either Meditation or Polytheism, and get either one of them (though my recommendation would still lean toward Polytheism). If this is the chosen path, then you will probably find yourself leaning toward a Warrior/Scout opening build. I say this because in most cases, whatever you build you want it done in a timely fashion, such that when you get your early religion, you can immediately re-plan your production around that. Settler/Worker is a poor opener in this instance, because in order to complete in a timely fashion, these builds require a focus on maximizing hammers and food, which is at odds with your commerce heavy focus…and these guys are expensive units. On the other hand, if you’re lucky enough to have precious metals or gems in your city radius, you’ll probably gravitate toward a Worker first. Sure, he’ll build slowly, but you’ll make at least some progress on him, and once you’ve snagged your prize, you can maximize food and hammer counts to get him out and working. If Judaism is more your speed, then the timeframe is a bit more relaxed, especially in light of your starting techs. You could probably even afford a side stop to Agriculture with a Worker-First start, and then head for Monotheism by whatever route you choose. A really attractive option here would be, after the worker, start on Stonehenge—plan to keep your starting Warrior at home! It’ll tie you up for the rest of “The Window,” for sure, but the upshot is that you’ll get a nice head start on generating Prophet points.

2) You start with Mysticism, and don’t have Mining. Tech path is pretty straightforward here. Maximize commerce and gun for either Meditation or Polytheism, remembering that you’ll typically have less competition if you shoot for the latter. Unless your other starting tech and your terrain are playing nice together, you don’t want a worker first, and a settler first will usually slow you down too much, so go with something you can actually get out of your build queue in a reasonable timeframe.

3) You start with Mining but not Mysticism. In this case, you can pretty well forget Buddhism, unless you’re playing an easy level, although Hinduism is still possible (if you make straight for it and maximize commerce). Better still though, would be to try for Judaism in this case, if you’re serious about getting an early religion. You’ll be researching techs toward this goal for a good length of time, so you could probably afford to put most anything in your build queue on the opener, although a Settler first here would probably be the weakest of all the plays.

4) You start with neither Mining or Mysticism. These Civs are the worst-suited to snagging one of the three earliest religions. You can certainly try for it, and you may even succeed, but you’d probably be better served by researching along a path that will set you up nicely to grab one of the slightly later religions. Because you have none of the raw materials, you can count on having to spend the longest amount of time in pursuit of the early religions. If you have precious metals or gems in your starting city radius, you can undo much of your disadvantage by focusing on growth until size two, Worker first, and Mining, but this is a somewhat rare case, and not something to build a strategy around.

Strategic Implications of Founding a Religion
So why would you want to do this whole religion-thing anyway? What good will it do you?

A fair question, so let’s take a peek “under the hood” at religions in general and see what kinds of benefits they give you.

1) +1 Happy for every city that bears your declared state religion
2) The ability to build religious buildings in every city that has a religion (yours or someone else’s) in it (including Temples, of course, which provide additional happiness)
3) Cities sporting your state religion gain +1 culture per turn
4) The ability to build a “Great Temple” building by spending a Prophet (G-Man) on the effort. Doing so will give you a boon of +1 gold per turn, per city that has your religion in it (whether or not you control that city). This gold is fully subject to all modifiers from such things as Markets, Banks, etc.
5) Intel. You’ll be able to “see” inside of every city that has your state religion.
6) Improved diplomatic relations with brothers and sisters of the faith (and a convenient excuse to go to war with members of other faiths).

These are not trivial effects. The “Intel” feature alone would make me salivate at the prospect of founding a religion. Yes, they take work to use to their fullest extent. It requires a different playing mindset, but that in no way detracts from the power of religion, and of course, the earlier you get a religion, the more time it has to spread far and wide….

Tactical Implications of Founding a Religion
You really only have four choices where religions go. Found one early. Found one by the mid-game (the last of the seven religions is almost always Islam, and it’s always “taken” by the mid-game). Follow the herd (don’t found one, but adopt somebody else’s religion to reap at least some of the benefits, or ignore it completely. Since we’re talking specifically about making a religious play, it’s safe to assume that you’re not interested in simply ignoring Religion, and further, the goal is to try and get a religion, so we’ll save discussions of following the herd for a later time.

Now, if you’re shooting for the earlier religions (Buddhism or Hinduism) one thing that’s going to happen is that the religion is going to be “centered” on your Capital (that is to say, your Capital will be considered your “Holy City”). Specifically, this means that your Capital is going to be a money magnet when you build your Great Temple. It also means, however, that you’re Capital is pretty much destined to be a generalized city, rather than a specialized one (you’re going to need both science boosters and commerce boosters in this city to gain maximum benefits from it). This isn’t a terrible thing, but it is something to consider when planning your long-term strategy, and is notably different from what you find when you found a slightly later religion (often, you can have a second city up and running before you found Judaism, and if you do, the religion will “center” in your most recent city…this is why some folks prefer to run the CS Slingshot with two cities, specifically to move the founded religion out of the Capital).

Things to keep in mind when plotting out your game.

A brief note about chasing the later religions
If you’re pursuing a religious strategy, but you’re not interested in the early set, then you can use “The Window” to get yourself firmly established and research the groundwork techs you’ll need to snag one of the later religions. This typically means a more traditional start (i.e., you don’t have to worry so much about maximizing commerce and such, because your target is such a distance off). The most common/popular means of snagging one of the later religions is via a Slingshot (CS or Philo), but you can do it by way of other means as well (straight research with a focus on cottages, for example). In any case, the techs that the later religions are associated with fall well beyond the boundaries we’re currently looking at, so we’ll address this approach in a later section. For now, suffice it to say that if you’re interested in one of the later religions, map out the techs you need to get there, and adopt a more traditional (resource-centric) approach in the early goings.

Playing to the Strengths of the Land
This is a different sort of game altogether, and in many ways, the most pragmatic approach to playing.

Essentially, it is a strategy of “letting go.” Of divorcing yourself from your desires, and playing specifically to the dictates of the land.

As such, it is quite a potent playing style, and it’s generally easier to develop a harmonious plan, since you’re only focusing on two of the “Three Pillars” (on the whole, it is easier to get two things to work closely together than it is to get three to work closely together).

There are absolutely no hard and fast rules that apply here. Each game and each tech path is going to be different as each is going to be based around what your local terrain has to offer. If you find yourself with crop-based specials, you’re going to make Agriculture a priority. If you have Stone or Marble, you’re going to make Masonry a priority, and so forth. Let the land tell you what you need, and simply listen to it. If the land isn’t telling you anything in particular, then make probing forays into the tech tree to learn more (i.e., you’ll need Husbandry and Bronze to learn what else the land might be telling you, so these techs will figure into your plans sooner or later).

There’s no accounting for what might become available to you (or when) as you follow this approach, so in many ways, you might see this as a decided lack of a strategy, but in truth, this is not the case. Your chosen strategy is simply to play to the native strengths you find yourself with, adapting your desires to the land around you, rather than attempting to adapt the land to your desires.

This is typically the methodology I use when playing my own games. I find it extremely clean and efficient. Uncluttered by emotion or artificial expectations that the land may or may not be able to support.

I can’t give you a list of techs to focus on here though. All I can say is listen to what the land is telling you, and act on what you hear. You’ll be amazed at the results.

Focus on Peaceful Expansion
These next two have quite a few things in common, but they do have different goals and aims. In particular, the focus here is on reaching your “No Maintenance” cap early, then pausing to develop your cities before expanding anew.

In a Monarch level game, your “No Maintenance” cap (the maximum number of cities you can have before you start getting penalized with additional costs due to the number of cities you control) is two. You can build one additional city before you start getting maintenance costs due to the number of cities you have. A settler first opening play will see you reach your initial goal in the fewest number of turns, and as such, it’s a frequently applied opener in this particular case.

Once you are “at cap,” your next goal is to develop a robust enough economy to support further peaceful expansion, and keep that going for as long as you possibly can.

To that end, the peaceful expander is going to be highly interested in Pottery, and probably long before most anyone else will begin to focus on it.

The peaceful expander knows too, that any land with a good source of food can be made into relatively productive land, and fortunately, you can see all the food sources early on (so you don’t have to worry that you don’t know where the copper or horses are…you know where the food is, and that’s the important thing….when you find out where the strategic resources are, you can, in short order, expand to encompass them too).

Since food sources are so important to the peaceful expander, it should come as no surprise that Agriculture and Fishing are the two most important early techs for this type of player (to be followed not long after by pottery). In comparing this to the other types of games we’ve reviewed so far, it is yet again a different sort of animal than we’ve seen previously. Because of the intense focus on the Seminal Techs, if a Settler First opener is not desired, then a Worker first start is almost invariably considered next, with anything else being seen as slowing the process of development down.

Husbandry will be high on this type of player’s list if there are animals to be put to pasture in his starting city radius, and Bronze will be fairly important as well (one of the nice uses of the burgeoning population this player will have—thanks to the early focus on the Seminal techs—is the ability to slave-rush infrastructure in), but this player is pragmatic enough to realize too, that if he winds up lacking both horses and copper, then a side stop to pick up Archery will be prudent. Unlike the early aggressor, who makes for Husbandry and Bronze with conquest in mind, the peaceful expander is more interested in denial strategies and defense. After all, if the peaceful expander is the only Civ on the continent with horses and/or copper, then no one else is a credible threat, and the expansion can continue further.

This type of game has a good bit in common with playing to the strengths of the land, but with more of a commerce focus (cottages will definitely be important here, to pay for the continued expansion, while the land-focused player will simply develop—and expand—according to the dictates of the terrain he finds himself in).

If this type of player doesn’t start with Fishing or Agriculture, you can count on him getting them in short order (though Fishing will, of course, only be gained when and as it is needed), to be followed closely by Pottery, and anything else that facilitates continued expansion (as mentioned, Husbandry, Bronze…Archery if copper and horses are conspicuously absent). Such a player is more likely to leave the Ancient Era by means of something requiring Writing (since his focus in more heavily centered on the economic path), although other exits are certainly possible.

[Velociryx]

Build your Economy/Research Capability
And now…the last. This is perhaps the most often attempted method of playing.

It can (and does) take numerous forms, but the end result is the same. The goal is to build up a massive lead in capability in one area of your economy, even at the expense of other areas. These types of plays can dramatically slingshot you ahead of the competition, but they can also blow up in your face quite dramatically.

There are essentially three “flavors” or sub-types of this type of game, and we’ll go into each of the three in detail. Again though, a word of warning. Use these types of plays at your own risk! They can be finicky and hard to pull off, requiring a certain amount of finesse and timing, but once you get the nuances of these plays down, you will be richly rewarded.

Cottage Spam
The most direct, least risky method of bulking up your economic carrying capacity is by making Pottery a priority. Cottages are the most powerful type of terrain improving you can do, and you should be doing a ton of it. The sooner you get started, the better (given that it takes time for those little cottages to grow), so if this is of interest to you, then Pottery is going to take a front seat position in your mind.

Keep in mind that not all cottages are created equally, and specifically, you’re going to want to focus on river tiles (flood plains are best, followed by grassland river tiles, then non-river grasslands, river plains, with non-river plains and river tundra more-or-less tied for dead last). Of course, you’ve also got to plan for at least the occasional farm (which also requires a river adjacency—this is true even post-Civil-Service…you need a tile adjacent to a source of fresh water to at least get you started)! As a means for powering economic development, early cottage spam is the hands-down simplest way to get yourself started, and is surprisingly strong, so it’s definitely worth keeping in mind. It is, however, the least imaginative of the options you’ll find here.

G-Man Focused
This sub-type takes several cues from the “Peaceful Expander” notes, above, in that the primary need to make a G-Man strategy work lies in an abundant food supply (so Agriculture/Fishing would be your earliest goals). After that, you need only identify what types of G-Men you’d like to create and then make for those techs --Writing for Scientists, Currency for Merchants, Drama for Artists, Metal Casting for Engineers, and you’ll need a religion and Temples for Priests). Also of interest to you would be the Civic “Caste System,” as it allows for the promotion of unlimited Artists, Merchants and Scientists (Caste System is available at the tech, “Code of Laws” which makes this an attractive point of exit for you if you’re interested in pursuing this strategy. That should raise your eyebrows with interest, as it works beautifully with other types of plays, not the least of which is the CS Slingshot (Oracle-based).

Note too that the G-Man focused game works well with a number of other selective wonder grabs, playing beautifully with any plan that involves the Pyramids or Parthenon. Two or more of these gambits can be combined under a G-Man focused game to really raise the bar, and dramatically enhance the total power of this kind of approach (and even moreso if you are pursuing it with a Civ that’s Philosophical to begin with!).

Slingshot
These are extremely focused plays that are risky to pull off, but when successful, can completely redefine the game. There are a variety of different plays out there, but we’re only going to focus on the three you tend to hear most about, and in the order you tend to hear about them.

The Civil Service (CS) Slingshot
Can be run with either one or two cities, depending on where you want your religion to land.

The focus here is on dramatically increasing your research capacity in order to dominate the game through the middle ages.

I’ll give you the basic, bare-bones tech progression, and you can modify it as you see fit to take into account the particular Civ you’re playing and/or your own preferences.

1) You need both Writing and the Oracle, so the most efficient way of getting both of these is to gain Writing by way of the religious branch of the tree. In terms of the fewest beakers spent, your tech path would be:

Mysticism, Meditation, Priesthood, Writing

2) Once Writing is in-hand, you’re going to build a Library and then immediately assign two Scientist specialists to begin generating G-Man points toward a Great Scientist.

3) While you’re generating G-Man points, you’re going to start building the Oracle and start researching Code of Laws. The idea is to finish researching Code of Laws before the Oracle finishes, but more on that later.

4) As soon as you get your G-Man, use him to create an Academy in your Capital (+50% to your research).

5) Complete research on Code of Laws and begin researching other goodies as needed (“The Window” has long since closed, so you’ll probably be seeing Barbarians, and facing them with Warriors, so Archery is at least worthy of consideration to give you some immediate point defense). For being first here, you found Confucianism. Go you!

6) Oracle completes and you take Civil Service as your free tech, and switch immediately to Bureaucracy (+50% commerce, +50% production in your Capital). At this point, you probably have more research capability than the rest of the world combined, and are well positioned to dominate the game.

And that’s the basic play.

Now, as you might have noticed, there are some weaknesses/risks involved with making the play exactly as described here, not the least of which is the fact that you’re tied to a single city for an extreme amount of time, and you’re relying on Warriors only for your defense.

To mitigate some of the risks involved in the basic approach, a number of variants have been developed, and we’ll touch on some of the more popular variations.

Variant 1a – Two city approach
The idea here is to build a settler fairly early on, and get a second city up and running. This second city can build the Oracle for you (and will be the “center” of Confucianism, when you finish researching Code of Laws), while your Capital can focus on defense, and perhaps a worker or two (which are optional under the approach outlined above, though you certainly have time for one…the trouble is that unless you start with a tech that provides worker actions, none of the techs you’re researching actually give you worker actions). The main benefit is that the two cities can split the workload, and you don’t find yourself completely paralyzed for the duration of the gambit.

Variant 1b – Prophet Assisted Approach
Works best with two cities. The idea is to build Stonehenge relatively quickly (build it in your second city) and get a head start on G-Man (Prophet) points. So long as you don’t get or research Masonry, you can use your first G-Man (a Prophet) to get Code of Laws for free (founding Confucianism, which “centers” on the same city you built Stonehenge in). Use your Capital to generate a Scientist for the Academy and generate a third G-Man (another Prophet) to build the Great Temple (Oracle completes and gives you Civil Service). This approach is especially powerful when you’re playing Rameses’ Egypt, on account of their Unique Building, but can easily be adapted to any Civ.

Variant 1c – Pop-N-Chop Assisted Approach
Works best with two cities and for Civs that start with Mining. The idea here is that since you’re only one tech away from Bronze Working, you can snag this tech before you start down the Religious branch of the tree. Your second city could then be founded near a source of Copper (giving you solid defense…a chronic weakness of this play), or, in the absence of near copper, at the very least you can speed the completion of the Library (and later the Oracle) with chops (which should more-or-less offset the time you lost in getting Bronze to begin with, making it a “push” (time-neutral) with the benefit that you may be able to have solid defense, or even carry on an offensive operation while performing this play (and, with enough forests in the area, you can even wind up with a faster completion than if you hadn’t gotten Bronze at the outset). Also, remember that you can always pop rush the Oracle to completion as you draw nearer to the finish line.

And of course, these may be combined in any number of other configurations, or new techs added to the suite to give you additional capabilities.

FarSeer
Same idea (use the Oracle to get a free tech), only in this case, you’re looking to be the first on the block to gain access to Forges. The idea being that Forges Magnify production, you’ve already got Bronze, and if you have copper in your neck of the wood, you can use Axemen churned out of your Forge-Enhanced cities to run over anybody close to you. You may want to take a two-city approach here as well, so you can react to changing situations as the game unfolds while you’re building the Oracle, and in this case, your research path of choice will be:

Agriculture (or Fishing, but in practice, Agriculture most of the time)
Mining
(puts the worker in play, and gears you for a Worker first start)
The Wheel
Pottery
(can road-connect cities and resources, and gives the city(ies) an improvement to chew on)
Mysticism
Meditation
Priesthood
(start work on the Oracle)
Bronze Working (to be researched while the Oracle is building)

Finish researching Bronze, pop the Oracle to completion, claim your prize.

The specific tech order can be adjusted to taste, and modified to take into account shifting priorities brought on by your starting techs and/or the prevailing terrain, but the above is the gist of it.

Philosophy Slingshot
Again, same basic play (use the Oracle to snag a free tech), and again, you may want to do this with two cities so you’re not paralyzed while the play is brewing. Structurally, this play is identical to the CS Slingshot, except that you’re going to take Philosophy as your free tech, and switch immediately to the Pacifism Civic.

This play works best when you’re using a Philosophical Civ (since it doubles your already doubled G-Man rate), and you get to use the Civic at a time when you have small military footprint (meaning minimal cost to you). Can dramatically enhance your ability to produce G-Men (and if you can squeeze in completion of the Parthenon as well….)


Zeroing In
So now that we’ve taken a look at the big picture and absorbed the various options that are open to us, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty and figure out exactly which tech we’re going to research first.

We’ll look at each possible choice in turn, and see where and how it fits into the framework we just discussed. After that, it’s up to you.

Here’s the complete list of every tech that could possibly be “first.”

Fishing (cost: 59)
The Wheel (cost: 89)
Agriculture (cost: 89)
Hunting (cost: 59)
Mysticism (cost: 74)
Mining (cost: 74)
Sailing (cost: 149)
Pottery (cost: 119)
Animal Husbandry (cost: 149)
Archery (cost: 89)
Meditation (cost: 119)
Polytheism (cost: 149)
Masonry (cost: 119)
Bronze Working (cost: 179)

Of course, specifically which techs you are able to research from turn one is a function of your Chosen Civ (back to those three pillars again) and what techs they start with, but the above is an all inclusive list, and we’ll take a look at each tech option in turn, explore what it can do for you and under what circumstances it represents a strong opening play.