Best strategy to build and expand early

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Mad Bomber


The problem with Ralphing is that you have to Micromanage these hick cities in order to prevent interferance with your legitimate cities.

true there is some more microing involved, but I haven't found it to be too bad. And I'm one that absolutely hates micro stuff. hate it.

[Odin]

I hate packing my cities. I use OCP (Optimum City Placement).

[The Mad Monk]

I used to space them on a staggered 3x3 matrix, but that was a holdover from Civ2 and SMAC. now I generally do a 4x4 matrix, allowing some positioning to grab resources.

[Spiffor]

Ralphing is good if you play highly competitive PBEM games: It gives a boost and allows you to better use your little good territory if you start on a crappy starting pos.
The micromanagement problem isn't so bad if you play PBEM, because you have the time to deal with all this.

However, if you play quicker games, use Ralphing only if you have a very crappy starting pos, or if your neighbours are right next to you and eager to found cities in the holes of your empire.

[gunkulator]

I've found that any small gap between cities gives those annoying AI settlers a place to plop down. Sure, if cities are always 3 tiles apart, no problem, but if you ever space more than 3, you need culture.

[Odin]

I only Ralph on small maps or when I am stuck on a small continent.

On BIG maps I don't have to worry about sneaky AI settlers for A while so I grab good spots and Then spread from those growth centers. For example, If I see a gold and wheat near floodplane 8 tiles away I wil put a city there. I concentrate on culture, roadbuilding, mining and growth early on since Barbarians are easy to take care of. I usually have a spearman in each city and a few fast units to take care of invading tribes and to get rid of thier camps. By about 500 BCE I start building a wall of defensive cities with a 3 tile spacing at my estimated borders. I then also improve my defence By adding 2 more spearman/pikemen per city and a catapult; I also build a mobile defense force in by boarder town to help my swordsmen/medieval infantry to eliminate invading army. I am also building the Pyramids and Great Library as early as posible in my high-shield (+10 shields) cities, one usually being my capital or 2nd city.

Basically the best idea is to specialize your cities.

[Odin]

On big Maps I use Carthage:
-Lower corrution
-Fast improvements = Earlier REX
-Numidian Inf. defends against unexpected archer rush

[Panag]

Originally posted by gunkulator
For best early REXing, either a religious or scientific civ is what you really want. Cheap culture is the name of the game. Settler's can only claim 9 tiles of land. Cultural expansion boosts it to 21 and fills in the gaps to keep pesky AI settlers from filling in the gaps.

hi ,




sometime a they can claim more , for example when you are building a new city near a city that has more culture , .......

have a nice day