Early Expanding

[RevMunky]

Im pretty much still a noob and one of my weaknesses is timing the expanding of the empire... Specially with standard games on continent I get pretty easily overwhelmed by AI who build alot and really close to me.

So I was wondering if anyone has some tips for me. For example: How many cities before a certain time will be a good average to have in any game ?

Anything helps. Thanks

[Cort Haus]

Which level are you playing at, Rev? Up to Prince it should be easy to match the AI for expansion, and not too hard on your economy.

[RevMunky]

Noble, and the moment im stuck with 4 civs on 1 continent im never fast enough... Prolly wait to long with expanding but i never know when to

Usually i have a second city before 2500bc.. but after that im just way to slow it seems... need to make enough of an army, improve the land and towns but also expand...

Cant seem to find the balance for expanding !

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Well.. that's simple!

Less army, more cities! Especially on noble!

Especially on continent or Terra maps where the AI will also be building so you don't have to worry about Barbs.

Try this... Build two warriors for every city but don't fortify them in the city. Use them to remove the fog and scout.

Then build your cities in between where your warriors are positioned (once you find coast, choke points, etc).

Your cities won't get unhappy from not having military support for quite some time, and if those cities are building more settlers/workers, they won't expand to that point anyway.

On Noble, the AI won't attack you, and you should be able to easily get out 4 cities before the Barbs start sending archers to your doorsteps.

Before that.. it's just animal 'barbs' and they can't attack inside your cultural boundaries, so the more cities you have, the larger the boundaries, the better.

[Cort Haus]

You can afford to skimp a bit on military at Noble. I suggest you ignore religion too for now and focus on worker techs to beef up your capital.

Unless you start with Mysticism and want a religion, first research worker techs that match the special resources in you capital's radius. Either build a worker first if you have the tech and tiles available to start immediate tile improvements (mining, agri), or build a warrior first and grow to size two before building the worker.

If you develop the resource tiles with the worker, work the high food tiles in the city screen (or use the governer with 'food' priority) and quickly grow to size three or four, you can produce settlers, escorts and more workers much more quickly than at low pop.

If your second and third cities can be placed for food and production respectively, the production site should build a barracks and start making units for all the other cities, and the food city can help with settlers and workers. The land might not permit this of course, but if you can do this the capital is free to choose whether to help with food builds (settlers, workers), hammer builds (barracks, units), economic builds (library) or even a wonder.

[RevMunky]

The skipping religion part i wont be doing for sure.

I just love religion in this game and i always pick the spiritual leader trait (i like the flexibility of changing civics at will) so i usually go for Hinduism asap. Later on i try to get Judaism too for organized religion and Pyramids (need masonry for Monotheism)

About not having to worry about Barbs to much: Its what i thought at the beginning too, but on Continent maps you could also start with just 1 civ on your continent (had that the last game with Ghandi... for some reason America always seems to be a lonely civ and this time i was on his continent) Problem with this was though that i didnt focus on militairy fast enough and the Barbarian archers were already with 3 men at 1500bc (marathon speed)

So to get a certain goal in mind.. By the time of 0 AD and your land around you allows it... How many cities would you guys have on average ?

[Blake]

Get a 2nd city very early on... I often go with settler before worker.
The 2nd city doubles your growth so it's the most valuable city.

Placement is also important, you want to place your cities where they work great tiles - every city really NEEDS to have at least one high food tile, grains, pigs, cows, seafood etc or a bunch of floodplains... they also need hills or timely applications of the whip for production. You also want to place your cities reasonably close together and to claim less useful resources - claiming resources which aren't good to work should be lowest priority, also never build early cities in jungle. So basically you want to aim for quality cities which will boost growth, you can worry about founding in the less optimal spots later, or capturing the AI cities (like I usually prefer to let the AI develop jungle for me).

Also don't play Marathon, normal speed is the best speed for learning...

[SirIlya]

Originally posted by RevMunky
The skipping religion part i wont be doing for sure.

I just love religion in this game and i always pick the spiritual leader trait (i like the flexibility of changing civics at will) so i usually go for Hinduism asap. Later on i try to get Judaism too for organized religion and Pyramids (need masonry for Monotheism)

Just because you don't go for Polytheism does not mean you are not pursuing a strategy using religion. You might consider instead of going for Buddhism/Hinduism to try to get Judaism or Confucianism just a little bit later. Why? Well, by getting a religion first you are limiting the options for useful worker activity meaning that you are spending alot of those critical early turns working unimproved terrain. Getting a nice food resource or a gold mine up and running very early can make a HUGE difference in how fast your whole empire unfolds. Also you are further delaying getting Slavery and Chopping. If you build all your Settlers the old-fashioned way, your initial expansion *will be slow*.

Try two starts.. in one go for a religion and in the other grab the best "improvement" tech for your starting city site or beeline Bronze Working and chop out your workers and settlers and play to 2000 BC and you will see the difference.

If you insist on going for one of the two first religions, you will probably want to delay your first worker unless your other tech will enable to to immediately improve a useful resource. Much better to pop a couple warriors to clear fog/pop huts and get them a couple promotions fighting animals. Settler first might also be an option--especially if you start with a 3F1C square but no 2F1H ones.

I like to play with religion-heavy strategies alot so I know what you mean about just *wanting* them even if it does't seem to make sense (even had a game where I founded every religion but judaism on monarch--and I took that shrine asap!) But, you might want to try someone creative (so you get free culture expansion early on which is useful for the initial land-grab) and aim for slightly later religions.

As for your base question of "how fast". On Noble you can expand more without going bankrupt so you should plan on dropping 4 cities as fast as you can--then building up a bit and expanding some more as your economy lets you. If you are running 90-100% science and there are good city sites left, you should probably be grabbing them. Also try to creatively claim more territory than you can settle and backfill later on when you get one of the 'threshhold' techs that lets you expand your empire (the big thresholds are Code of Laws, Civil Service the late medieval money techs and finally State Property... you should have a big conquest/expansion timed to take advantage of each of these watersheds). Also note that you can usually afford to expand along coasts more than into the interior since coastal cities will have trade and fish to help pay their upkeep.

ps - good board.. decided I had lurked long enough and should start contributing

[RevMunky]

I reloaded that Ghandi game a few games back (where i was alone with good old lonely Washington) and was able to keep the barbs at bay. I thought i had spread my 3 cities good enough but the cultural borders were about 1 growth away of shutting America on the South part so instead he starting making cities above me too...

Didnt like that and just started whiping him off my continent... Easy win but my money was going down **** fast coz I conquested so fast (funny extremes i put myself in ) On the other hand i did have 2 Great Merchants at hand and went for Sea Travel asap to get to the other 6 civs... got 7200gp this way

I always use the tactics of founding Hinduism then hope my second city takes that religion automaticly... If not try to go for Organized Religion if possible (certain important worker techs go first after Hindu) so i get Judaism. Then change religion to let the 2nd city who became the Judaism holy city grow a bit easier.

But it seems a bit to slow so that idea bout skipping Bud/Hin and maybe go Judaism instead is a better idea. Always disliked Stonehenge, because it gets obsolete so fast by a tech thats pretty important. But its pretty easy to build and might just give me that land grab i use to have while playing Egyptians.

Thanks so far for all the tips. Really appreciate it

edit: Oh bout that Marathon thing. I always felt that Normal made wars so boring because 1) you cant explore so much and 2) units get obsolete so fast...
Although i must say that the last few games might have been to slow for me in progress. Guess ill go for Epic games for now see how those go

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Two things...

First.. being a spiritual leader has very little to do with founding religions.

Second.. what is the appeal to early religions, anyway? You shouldn't have a happiness problem early on noble. You don't want to adopt a state religion anyway because it might tick off your trade partners which are essential early on. So.. why are going for a religion early to begin with anyway?

You also don't have enough cities (as you've stated yourself) to really make the shrine (provided you got a GPr and used the GPr to build the shrine) pay big benefits early on.

Also, by focusing on religion techs, (as has been mentioned) you'll be neglecting other techs (worker techs) that would allow for more rapid expansion. So you could wind up with a situation where you found a number of religions (say 3 or 4 even), but it doesn't matter very much because the entire rest of the world is of a different religion... because whoever founded that religion spent more time expanding, had more trade routes and their religion spread more easily throughout the world.

[RevMunky]

I must agree now

Playing a game right now where i didnt go for Bud/Hin or even Jud, but instead waited for Con from Code of Laws (used Oracle for it this time). This way my Prophet would just arive before or just after founding the religion (Coz of Oracle + Stonehenge which also helped me get some early land) and i had some towns + an actually shrine to build

This situation im in now though is pretty perfect.. im not alone on the continent with 1 other civ, nor am i overrushed by 4 other civs. Only here with the Chinese and the Persians. Both Pleased with me and also took over my religion.

One mistake i made (but couldnt really know) was that i expanded towards some resources and later found out there was iron just out of my border on the other side on the continent. So i had to stabilize the economy a bit before i could get there. But then the Chinese and Persian guy decided they wanted ANOTHER source of iron (greedy bastards).

So decided to take a small detour in the tech tree and took Literature and Music. Founded a town near them and used my Artist from Music to Beef up the culture (gotta love those Great Artists ) So loosing like 6 gold pieces a turn now because i had to expand so fast, but havent build markets, courthouses everywhere yet nor does every city on the continent follow my religion just yet.

It basicly made sure i had access to the iron, 2 gems spots and some corn and a possible capture of a barbaric + indian + chinese town later on. (only 1500 culture away from expanding again)

So far this new epic game is going great

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by RevMunky
So loosing like 6 gold pieces a turn now because i had to expand so fast, but havent build markets,

Remember that markets don't add commerce, they add gold. And, of course, they can only add gold if that city is already producing gold. So unless you're running w/ taxation (research + culture < 100%), or that particular city has a source of gold (Shrine, Merchant Specialist, etc), then the market won't provide anything to your economy.. it only provide the health benefits.

In short, if you plan on running at high research levels, you probably want to be very specific about which cities you spend time building markets/gorcers/banks in.

Courthouses, I'd build everywhere that is either costing 2 gold, or that you believe will expand in the future to cost 2 (or more) gold. Everything is rounded against the players favor in Civ, so if you build Courthouse in a city that is using 1 gold, that city will still cost 1 gold.

[RevMunky]

Ah thanks on the market tip. Totally forgot about that gold/commerce thing, although to keep up with my money i actually have to run 80% research sometimes right now. On my way to get courthouses everywhere but my Civics are just way expensive cause i expanded so much

-And that brings me to my next question:
What exactly makes the maintenace cost of a city go up ? It isnt buildings anymore right ? So building libary/markets in all cities wont make it more expensive ?
Asking this cause for some reason my costs just keep rising while im building markets, courthouses and harbors everywhere. I even build the Great Lighthouse and still ...

But like i said before... for some reason i just suck at the expanding part and its so damn important in Civ games... specially a balanced expanding in Civ4 right now

The thing i also have problems with is keeping up with the techs, building and stuff. When you reach about Medievil Age those techs just keep coming and coming. (one of the reasons i tried Marathon a bit)

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by RevMunky
What exactly makes the maintenace cost of a city go up ? It isnt buildings anymore right ? So building libary/markets in all cities wont make it more expensive ?

Buildings don't cost anything now, the cities themselves do. The cost depends on the number of cities and the distace from the capital. I think population may factor into it too.

If you've build a courthouse but are still paying 4gpt, it would be costing you 8gpt without the courthouse.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by RevMunky
So to get a certain goal in mind.. By the time of 0 AD and your land around you allows it... How many cities would you guys have on average ?

I expect many players here are usually playing above noble, where you have to expand more slowly, but I gave a Noble, Standard Continents game a whirl, expanding towards other civs to block them rather than building in all the local spots first and got about 8-9 cities by 1AD, with backfill space available, but without heavy chopping or poprushing of settlers. There were a couple of barb city captures though.

I was running around 50% science at this point, but had a reasonable number of cottages to keep the tech rate healthy, despite the slider position.