Strategy Notes From Vel - The Early Game....

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Thats in Civ2 Admiral, not Civ3. in civ3, there is a 20 food box between 1-2 and a 20 food box between 2-3

[Admiral PJ]

Sorry, I thought velacroix was right, I'm glad they changed it though.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
Sorry, I thought velacroix was right, I'm glad they changed it though.

Velacroix - isn't that an island in the Caribbean somewhere?

[albiedamned]

Vel - I don't understand why you recommend irrigating early with your first worker. I can understand if it is a plains square, but on grassland, irrigating won't improve your food until you get out of despotism (unless it's a food bonus resource square). I mine (and road) all the grassland early, and change some to irrigation later.

[Drago Sinio]

Vel, I was wondering about the irrigation thing too. I thought it did nothing for you until Monarchy. I also have noticed by clicking around on some of the grassland squares that some of them will generate two gold with a road, and some just one gold with a road under Despotism. Dont know why.

Either I have been playing too much and my brain is fried, or I need to sit down and read the manual. (Or perhaps both) LOL

Love the idea about sending the workers out to build roads. Does the AI use your roads though? I would be annoyed if the Ai used my own road to grab a luxury I was going for! LOL

Also I found in one game that the Lighthouse is quite valuable on some maps. I built it by default because it was the only one available to me at the time. But I discovered it allowed me to be the first civ on my continent to cross the ocean and meet the other 4 civs in the game. This allowed me to act as "technology broker" between the AI's on the two continents . I was getting gold, and luxuries, and technology hand over fist. It was like a techno Golden Age.

[Capt Dizle]

In my first game I was alone on a land mass and irrigated it all for naught as it took forever to get to Republic. I had to send galleys accros the sea (losing a bunch) to make contact. It was ugly. I was stuck in a tech vacuum.

I think mining grassland is the ticket here. There is a cute little trap we are all falling into, applying Civ2 playing concepts to Civ3. Well, can all of the old dogs learn new tricks? LMAO!

I also noticed that you can get to pop three and build that settler pretty quick. I am not sure that ICS has been greatly hampered by the change.

A couple of things I would like to point out to Vel and get his take on....building cities near rivers/lakes so that they can go straight to pop 12 without aquaducts...I am wondering about dense packing cities near fresh water. Can that be parlayed into turn advantage?

Another thing is how quickly you can churn out workers and use them to build up smaller cities. Can this be used to gain turn advantage? What is the cap on using workers to increase city size.

I also want Mr. Vel to investigate the lousy looking return I am seeing on specialists? Ugh..

Being on that island and desperate to escape taught me one thing. Once you get out of the ancient era you can get to magnitism in only four hops, but those can still be long hops when you are isolated and can't trade techs.

Vel, how are we going to deal with this early tech issue?

Lt. Col. jtrick, COC, ret.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Drago Sinio
Vel, I was wondering about the irrigation thing too. I thought it did nothing for you until Monarchy. I also have noticed by clicking around on some of the grassland squares that some of them will generate two gold with a road, and some just one gold with a road under Despotism. Dont know why.

The squares with 2 gold after building roads are probably along river banks. Every square along a river bank (regardless of terrain) gets an extra gold.

Love the idea about sending the workers out to build roads. Does the AI use your roads though? I would be annoyed if the Ai used my own road to grab a luxury I was going for! LOL

No one (human or AI) can use roads in someone else's territory unless they have a right of passage agreement. Anyone can use roads in neutral territory though.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Vel - I don't understand why you recommend irrigating early with your first worker. I can understand if it is a plains square, but on grassland, irrigating won't improve your food until you get out of despotism (unless it's a food bonus resource square). I mine (and road) all the grassland early, and change some to irrigation later.

If the square produces 2 food, then irrigating takes it to 3 which is reduced to 2 by despotism. However, if the square produces 3 (e.g. flood plains) or 4 food (e.g. grassland with cows) then the despotism loss has already been factored in, and irrigating produces an extra food.

[Velociryx]

'k....one more and I'm off to bed.

Yep...I shoulda been clearer 'bout the irrigation thing. I only irrigate tiles that will net me some benefit to do so....most of my worker time is spent road building, and mining if I'm not near some juicy forest tiles.

I also ran more tests on the lumberjacking thing re: wonders. I've gotten it to work twice, but more often than not....nada. I'm not sure why the inconsistency tho.... Will have to keep cracking at it.

Roads: I've never had a problem with the AI making use of my roads. Even if they violate my borders, I keep calling them up every turn and telling them to get out of dodge. The result is that the same warrior/settler combo of the AI keeps milling about, running back and forth along the same basic path (sometimes changing it up to try and sneak past my patrolling warrior), and it buys me time to get my own settler(s) in place.

Early Tech: Not sure about this one, JT....seems like the only good solution at the moment is to rush for the Great Library to tide you over till you get up and running good.

Caveat re: colonization - The end all/be all for the early game is one of those wheat stalks in grassland, esp. if you can irrigate it....sheesh. I had two of those about 8 tiles apart in one of my test games....totally blew the doors off of the AI's expansion. Had rome and greece bottled up so tight they couldn't make any ground, and each time they'd attempt to inch around my borders, their newbie cities would be gobbled up by my culture, so if there's on in your starting radius, or close enough so that you can found your NEXT city near it, you've got the early game made.

Freshwater (Jimmy)Trick: Very cool notion! I hadn't thought of that implicitly, though now that you mention it, I've noticed that I tend to cluster my cities (was about to type the word "bases" there...lol) near sources of fresh water, building along rivers or caddy-corner to lakes and such.

Found that, at least in my tests, coaxing your civ into a GA before you jump out of Despotism nets you some good, but the results aren't nearly what a GA in Monarchy/Rep/Dem would be. Don't know....I definitely see the turn advantage aspects of getting a hyper-early GA, but if you've only got 3-4 cities, it seems that those advantages would be greater by waiting till you've got a dozen or so established ones.

Also found out that the Romans are the WRONG people to pick a fight with in the Ancient era. They were more than a match for my War Chariots. In the test I just concluded, the Romans and I shared a smallish continent, and I had two wheat-stalk-thingies, so I pretty handily shut them down. Limited them to five cities on our continent, and I wound up with 11....(that's how big a difference they make!).

So....after massing troops at the border (6 Spearmen, 6 Archers, and 2 War Chariots), I declared war and attacked Rome.....BAD Idea! Not only did I not kill a single one of his four Legionaire defenders, but on the counter attack, he whacked what was left of my army.....so, I laid off of infrastructure, jumped into building nothing but chariots, ate the loss of three of my towns and retrenched for a big counter.

Finally sacked Rome (his only source of Iron), recaptured two of my three towns, and wouldn't you know it, but the friggin' game locked up!

Ah well....that's fate's way of telling me to go to bed I guess....::sigh::

Anyway....I think I've got the early game nailed down.

My one win thus far (since I'm not playing games to thier conclusion....only to the middle of the second age), came with a VERY early military victory, mixed with some cultural acquisitions of enemy towns.

Gonna get a good night's sleep, and then hit it again tomorrow.....back to normal sized worlds and 8 civs tho....game just takes too long otherwise, and for testing purposes, that's a good basis I think.

Ahhh, and I double checked....you guys are dead on about the size 1--->2 2---->3 thing being identical. And because of that, depending on the disposition of those starting tiles, I've altered my basic strategy to NOT building an additional worker right off, and driving right for the settler to jumpstart the civ. Shaved about 5 turns off of the overall speed, with no real reduction in capability (since, as has been pointed out, you're somewhat limited in what irrigation work you can do, and realistically, you only need 1-2 mined tiles too....I've found that one worker can pretty well keep pace.....of course, luxuries take a backseat with only one worker milling about in the very early goings, but then, that early in the game, their effect is negligible anyway.

'k.....off to bed with me before I break down and fire up the game again....

-=Vel=-

[SixArmedMan]

Well, he DID say (UNLESS IT WAS A SPECIAL FOOD RESOURCE). On normal grassland tiles though, mining IS the way to go until monarchy.

[Mahdimael]

I've been using a strategy that works for me so far in every game I've played (as USA).

1. Found city

2. Build scout (not warrior)

3. Build roads in direction of scout

4. When scout completes, make a settler

5. Next, make warrior or spearman

This has the advantage that you'll be exploring twice as fast, and will be able to discover more minor villages and enemy civs.

In general, this strategy will work unless you have lots of barbarians. The extra scout in the beginning is nice, especially because I invariably lose the first one to barbarians

[Zurai001]

In the many, many games I've played so far, I've found that irrigating grasslands is a *bad* idea, not a good one. Why? because you don't want a city to go above size 21. Specialists only get you 1 extra of whatever they produce, and even with pollution reducers I'm averaging 1 pollution every couple turns with cities over size 20. When they get up to 25, I average closer to one square a turn - sometimes even 2 a turn!

On the other hand, *mining* grasslands doesn't really slow down your food production that much, and it enables you to pump out military units - a key thing since the AI, even on chieftan, tends to build *very* large and well organized armies.

Oh, I've also developed an intense dislike for the Aztecs. They tend to produce swarms of their Jaguar Warriors, and are agressive in the extreme... I've been attacked out of the blue by them twice. What makes it worse is they can set up an 'infinite attacker' type thing with the JWs... attacking until they're at red, retreating, attacking with the next, retreating, through 30 or so JWs, then bringing in another swarm next turn. If you don't have 2-move defenders, there's nothing you can do about it!

[Sarxis]

I wonder if the lumberjacking inconsistencies has to do with borders. Perhaps production netted from cleared forests has to be done within your borders?

[GNGSpam]

In my experince so far, I prefer this method of expansion.

It seems to resemble the AI's pattern

simply

Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler, rinse repeat

Assuming average resources/food for all cities, when you drop down to one, the time it takes to get back to size 3 is enough time to make one warrior (then your size 2 and 9 turns away from size 3) and then a settler (should take 10 turns)

Meaning you hit size 3 and BAM another settler. Its quickest possible AND yields a sizable enough military to keep the AI from being overly aggressive.

However since your mostly warriors, you wont be able to enter offensive wars ethier.

Now I havent tried this beyond Regent, but it seems to work well especially early game.

Im not overly aggressive in combat, prefering the seemingly cheaper culture takeovers, but that may just be due to my unfamiliarity with the new nuiansances of the combat system.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Roads: I've never had a problem with the AI making use of my roads. Even if they violate my borders, I keep calling them up every turn and telling them to get out of dodge.

The AI does not get benefits from roads inside your borders, unless you have a Right of Passage agreement.

Caveat re: colonization - The end all/be all for the early game is one of those wheat stalks in grassland, esp. if you can irrigate it....sheesh.

Actually, Cows are better. +2 food, +1 shield vs. the Wheat bonus of +2 food.