Early vs. Late first city placement

[Alexander's Horse]

I suppose its a tribute to this game that addicts like me are still experimenting with it.

My latest research involved early city placement vs. late city placement. This was initially forced on me by a bad start in an MP game. I'm usually a settle ASAP player. But I found after I had explored for a while I had an army of 4 NONE units from huts and found a site for my capital with 3 specials. My second city got a site with 4 specials. After not settling until some time after 3500AD I'm leading game at about 1 BC with 16 cities Nearest competitor has 9 cities.

I've done it also in some SP games with good results - only thing is, barbs were set to villlages. I'm going to try it with them set to raging hoardes.

So what do you think is better? Early or late?

[ColdWizard]

imvvho, its generally better to drop down cities early, though it depends on the start location. if it's a crappy starting spot or there's a hut nearby, i'll wander first.

[Deity Dude]

I've had good (and bad) results doing it both ways. I usually try and get them down as soon as possible. This has led to many a game though where I missed the prime location by 1 or 2 tiles or could have had those coveted non-units.

[-Jrabbit]

Uh, shouldn't the choices be "early" and "late" instead of "yes" and "no" ??
This poll makes no linguistic sense as written.

Another fine excuse to vote "banana" I guess...

(Edited for spelling in fear of AH wrath)

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I usually plop down my first city ASAP, unless I can see a special within my view radius or the terrain is very bad. I'll make probably no more than 3 moves before settling.

I confess to restarting if the terrain is really miserable... I'm not good enough to overcome that, even in SP

STYOM

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit

This poll makes no linguistic sense as written.

I'm glad someone noticed.

[ColdWizard]

i noticed but i don't expect horsie to make sense, especially since he calls shopping carts "trolleys"

[Ming]

It all depends for me. If the orginal land doesn't have any trade specials, I'll wander for a while. Starting on wine or gold in 3700 will make it VERY easy to catch up on science. However, if it looks like the land isn't going to get much better, I'll just get the cities down asap and crank settlers forever.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Well, I'm not nearly the Civver some are here, but for me the answer is always "early" (except in OCC). In general, I find I have four cities down before I start my first wonder (Colossus), and one of those four cities will have a trade special or rivers and thus become the SSC.

[Lars-E]

The manual and strategy books tend to say that early placement is important. I agree, but I think that sometimes one can deviate from this strategy successfully.

Once I playedTwenty-third fortnight OCC comparison game and didnt start a city before 3000 BC. I was able to keep pace with Ribannah and Smash up till Darwin.

[-=Vagrant=-]

Only if the first place is ideal, will I found the first city. It's pretty much always worth the wandering to find a better place. Not too much wandering...

[rah]

In SP, I'll wander a bit to cash some huts. Catching the AI isn't hard.

In MP, it's a harder decision. If you wander and don't find much better land, you're in trouble. If I see a trade special on the opening move, my capital will be built as soon as my settler is there. (unless delaying it one turn will allow me to open a hut up safely. For a two turn delay, I won't wait)
So, in MP, I'll look to see what the pattern is and if I have to move 5 turns before revealing something else, I may just plop down and ics it. With a river, I may be a bit more patient.


RAH

[Smash]

wandering in mp is always a calculated risk.Well,maybe not always calculated,but a risk for sure.Keep an eye on demographics and top 5 cities at this point.The reward is a better site,non units,gold and tech.The risk is walking around and finding notta..then settle right where you started ..done that a few times

[War4ever]

The key when exploring is to watch the top five cities ! Some players love building right away....... this of course doesnt' mean jack if they dont' have specials.... getting to size 2 in 3 or 4 turns means jack if you don't have production as well..

if you get the NON unit early, one should beeline to find a city spot....let the units do the exploring for you. Your first city can use all four specials, but to be honest i see two cities there to max out your specials....when the cities grow later, you can always make one city use all the specials....

besides i prefer my first five cites to be close together to pump caravans....cities that don't overlap must be connected by roads early or your advantage of closer cities is moot.

i build on gold, iron , and wine after my first couple of cities are down.......the rest of the specials i tend to build close to , but not on top of

it also depends on how many cities i choose to play with....obviously the lesser city total requires "better" cities...whereas mass production of cities requires city placement which benefits road building and caravan pumping....

[geofelt]

I vote for some exploration first. The first objective is to get to monarchy ASAP. Some sort of trade bonus really helps to do this early. My second objective is to start four cities(on a normal map) before monarchy. I try to found the first two on grassland to get them to size two and produce a settler early. I will always tip a hut and delay the first city. A unit takes more than the one turn to build, and the NON suport is a bonus. My first city almost always becomes a science city and a wonder city. My favorite start is on the coast with whales.