Early game order, tips, and priorities

[TheHobbit]

Hi, I'm doing better again and I can get decently far in the tech tyree but I don't feel I have enough time to get the latter units and actually use them enough.

I'm looking for building orders for the early game
Tips to help me research fast and make money
and building priorities, whats important to build early or at a certain time?

Thanks for the help people!

[Terser]

Settlers. Settlers. Settlers. Settlers. Once you think you've made enough settlers, make a few more.

Grab every piece of land available, even if it doesn't look promising--if you don't grab it rest assured the AI will, and today's desert is tomorrow's oil or saltpeter patch.

Research Masonry and have one city start building the Pyramids ASAP. They're one of the indispensable wonders, and even if by some chance you don't want them for the free granaries their still good to have for A. Culture and B. Keeping them out of the hands of your enemies.

Crank science way up. I usually crank it up so high I'm breaking even in gold; hurts in the short term, I suppose, but the city improvements and wonders you gain over the long term more than even it out.

Try and establish a coastal city early and build Collosus. More commerce never hurt anyone. Not essential, but good to have.

I try to avoid using wealth in the early game. Even though I upped the shields to gold ratio to four to one I still feel it yields far too little in antiquity. Spend those shields on more settlers if you have nothing else to do with them.

[kmj]

Comments:
I agree that the early landgrab is essential, though I suggest you get a temple done in your capital asap. I also keep my science as high as I can, relying on luxuries and improvements for happiness. I don't think the pyramids are as essential in Civ3 as they were in Civ2, due to restructured city growth.

More tips:

- get at least two warriors out there to explore asap: this helps with goodie huts (hopefully containing advances!) and early contact (essential!).

- make sure every piece of land is developed and has a road; roads are tremendously essential.

- Diplomacy!!! Early contact is very important; get in touch with every civ you can, and trade for every advance that you can.

- Position your cities strategically.. make sure it won't choke itself at size 2 if you aren't able to irrigate. Get All the strategic and luxury resources, obviously, but also try to position you cities to maximize production, food, and trade.

[Jurassic Joe]

I have to agree with Terser, build lots of settlers. As soon as you expand beyond the first couple of cities start making temples. You need to get your borders expanding as well. I don't have a set path yet, but I like to do warrior, settler, settler settler, temple, worker, then see what I need. The other big thing I do is to find the other civs as fast as possible. Once I find them, I can trade for techs, maps, and civ contacts. Trade everything possible except your most advanced tech. Save that for latter. I will even sell my world map for the right price. Usually what I do is trade one civ a tech or a contact, and then I hit all the others and give them the same deal. Once I know where everyone stands I can then trade a little more selectively. As soon as you can trade resources or luxuories, do those first and then do the techs. I have found that if I can get the per turn payment, that will force the AI civs to reallocate their Taxes/research rate. It will slow them down and I can get the tech lead that I need and Economically dominate the game.

When you get to a point where you are next to your neighbors, you can then start working on improvements that increase your culture. You know how the AI will run in and build a city in your territory because there is one free desert space, let him do it. Those cities always stagnate and when you have your neighboring cities that are close to him build up their culture a little, that city will be yours. I have captured dozens of AI cities this way. Sometimes I have even bagged a size 6 city because the AI wasn't working on cultural improvements. In the game I am playing now (the Apolyton tournament) I have taken 5 cities from the Persians with culture alone

Hope this helps and I hope more people post on this theme.

Later

[TheHobbit]

Thanks....

I'll work on it more! I suck at strategy games, but they are so much fun! I suck at every game. Maybe I can become a decent Civ3 player someday. What a fun game but darn I wish I could get to the modern era =-P!

[homegrown]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hasn't gotten to the Modern Age yet.

[Ming]

Moved to the strategy forum from the general forum...

[Mike_W]

The Pyramids are a debatable wonder. I loved it in civ2 but know, with sanitation that comes in so late it didn't seem all that valuable to me anymore since all cities will stagnate at 12 anyway. However, the faster you grow, the more workers and settlers you can produce which is very good. You can stack those and use them to fill up weaker cities or wait until sanitation and then boost your cities to 20+ in one turn!
I'll try that strategy during my next game.
Another important aspect of early expansion is to make sure you have enough coastal cities. Nothing worse than having a great empire with 30+ cities and only 2-3 good coastal cities. I kinda happened to me during my last game which caused my navy to be weak for a while. However you don't want too many coastal cities since water is not a great resource tile. It gets better in the end game with the addition of the offshore platform but until then...

[Rosacrux]

Read Velociryx's thread, there are some great starting strategies, as well as mid-game and others.

[mr.buddylee]

My Early Game Strategy

I'll give you my general early game strategy and how it usually works for me.

First thing, when the game starts, just accept your starting position and don't go wondering for a better one, unless you can actually see one within a square of you. Every turn you take looking for the best possible building spot, is another turn you're getting behind.

When you get your first city, I usually set the build que for 2 warriors. 1 warrior to explore the immediate vicinity, and the other to guard the city. At this point, everyone else will only have warriors, so your warrior will be tough enough to defend your city for quite some time. After the second warrior, I put about 3 settlers in que.

After each settler is built, I send them out, and then send out my lone worker to build roads between the capital and my new city. For each of the new cities I have, I set the build que to: Warrior, Settler, Worker, Worker, Spearman

With each of the Settlers, I do the same thing until I have the part of the map occupied that I want. Of course, I make changes on the fly, if one colony is growing extremely fast, I will just keep using it to pump out settlers and start working on the infrastructure of my capital and surrounding cities. Temple first, no barracks, and then the Pyramids in one city, and other infrastructure improvements as I see fit.

Now, usually, I have about 10-15 cities before running out of good land (on a normal size map). Also, during this time, I keep my scientific spending at 50%. I also usually have a nice chunk of change in the bank that I can use to buy techs if I fall too far behind.

By this time, one of the other people sharing the map has usually noticed that I have a pretty weak military and they declare war on me. This is where my extra $$ comes into play. I then pay my strongest neighbor to join me against my neighbor. Generally, they distract the other person and I might be able to pick up a couple more cities or plop down a couple settlers where cities used to be. I'll ask for peace in about 5 turns and the original aggressor generally complies, and they keep fighting with my other neighbor. Even if my neighbor friend gains a couple new cities, they're usually mine before too long due to culture w/ #2 below. (No war on my turf means I can keep building infrastructure and not military units until I'm ready)

Now, that might sound kinda stupid, but it has 2 advantages.
1) You've made a friend by paying them lots of money to protect you.
2) You're other neighbor is a whole lot weaker and you can then easily take over the rest of their land (after they've declared peace with your other neighbor. Thats important because you don't want to share their land do you?) when you get knights or any similar advantage over their war beaten forces

Now, assuming everything has gone ok, I've wiped out a neighbor and I have about 20-25 cities by the time I have discovered Democracy. Also, I should note that once I have enough $$ to butt in any other little wars that pop up, I increase my science spending quite a bit. Also, once I have the ability to build knights or something similar, I start building my military, getting ready for my military campaign.

[vmxa1]

I thought this topic said expand vs warmonger? I guess I will toss in my .02 for war. Expand is of course a must for all the reason stated in this thread, but once I get to the point where others are sending settlers in to my lands, it is war time. I always kill any intruders and go to war. I do not want to take over their city inside of my area, it will only suck squares from existing cities. Often they are at the edge of town and on bad (tundra) squares near the ocean and will have very little land squares. Once they make the town it is harder to attack. I want to go to war anyway so I can reduce their base and make it harder to grow. I will raze any worthless cities I encounter and occupy the rest. Fighting is more fun any how. Once you have expanded up to their borders, you must take their towns. It is best if you can get some allies to join in, but if not? In the end they will see that you are their biggest threat and be aggresive. Why let them get stronger in the mean time. I love seeing stacks of troops come to my door at a choke point where I can slaughter them. This leads to massive numbers of elite troops and often many leaders. I get a leader and make an army to get the EPIC so I get more leaders (one day wonders are great). Late in the game I only raze towns as they are so far away from the capitol that they yeild nothing, no matter how large. I do not want to keep track of them. It also makes it hard for them to rush troops to my lands, as the roads are no longer theirs or are destroyed. I often will wreck improvemnets during a siege to foster rioting and reduce their ability to respond.

[xane]

The only exception to "accepting your starting position" is if it is a Flood Plain, losing 1 population size every three turns cripples your growth

[mr.buddylee]

Yeah, xane is right. Watch out for the flood plains, especially with your capital.

One more thing I thought of, I've found that my level of advancement greatly depends on the size of the map I play.

On a Tiny map, I've never even got close to having enough Tech to build a spaceship, but on normal maps I do. My most current game, in a normal map with 8 AI (now 5 thanks to me ) it just turned 1900 and I've just started building my Spaceship. The other countries are close to me in terms of Science and culture, but they don't have the tech to start building a spaceship yet and I am still barely hanging on to the best culture.

I was frustrated too when my first couple of games I was barely able to build planes before the game was over, but having a larger map and more opponents really helped out.

[eMarkM]

FWIW, I play Monarch/8-12 civs/usually continents. Please state the level you're playing when posting strat suggestions as they can differ substaintially.

Starting city: warrior, warrior, settler. You got to get a warrior out to start exploring (expansionist w/ scout an exception). Gotta get those goodie huts, gotta make contact w/ others. The first warrior I build gets sent out and I leave the first city initially ungarrisoned. I haven't had a problem with that. The 2nd one stays put for defense. By that time the city is ready to go to pop 3 and is ready for settler.

After that I usually will pop out a 3rd warrior and send him in the opposite direction of the first. This is important at higher levels, because you often get tech from goody huts and it helps you keep an early pace w/ AI. Explore, explore, explore!

Build a temple fairly soon, but settlers s/b priority. 2nd city builds a warrior garrison and builds settler after that. Keep repeating this w/ additional cities; warrior, settler. As soon as city goes to pop 3, create settler. Build a core of 3-5 cities near capitol. If there's time before they get to pop 3 for settler, make another warrior in the meantime. You should soon having warriors fanning out in every direction.

When you do build a temple, it's a good idea to do a pop rush on it. This goes for the whole period of Despotism--pop rush is a VERY effective strategy. I usaully will pop rush at least twice in each city to build up military/improvements.

As soon as you find the first civ, start sending your settlers towards them. Priority is to grab ANY lux resource between you and them or they will end up getting it. If that means building a city in the middle of a jungle to get the 3-4 spices, do it. If you can get 3 different types of lux in early game, with a big grouping of one, you'll do very well in later trading.

I don't believe in making a nice tight concentric empire around my capitol at first. With the exception of an initial 3-5 core, mine are sprawled all over the place. I fill in gaps later. It's more important to grab luxuries/iron and blockade AI expansion in early game. Play nice-nice w/ AI, trade tech. Meanwhile, choke them off and plan for their eventual demise.

Learn iron working very early. Find iron deposits and deny them from AI if at all possible. This isn't always possible, but I can't emphasize this enough if you can do it. Without iron, your neighbor will be easy to control in Ancient times. Drop everything to deny iron if you have the chance, pop rush, whatever.

When you start establishing solid borders, start filling in your gaps. Build your temples & perhaps libraries. Trade, trade, trade w/ other civs. When you get iron, start building swordsman for your coming war. You must start an early swordsman war, IMHO. Just too many advantages gained not to; territory, tribute, resources, slaves, leaders, etc. Go after the weakest civ that can give you the most. They may have tech you need that they'll give you in tribute when they beg for mercy. Or they may have a field of luxuries that you don't have any of. Or a great wonder. Go after the civ that will give something up to you beside their cities.

I usually try to conquer a whole neighbor before switching out of Despot. Just pop rush until you subjegate them w/ swarming swordsmen. Use the "vassal" strategy to squeeze them for all their worth. Eventually, they're rendered meaningless, at which point you can choose to go all the way with genocide, or make peace and just let your culture absorb the rest. Put the Forb Palace (rushed w/ leader if need be) in the heart of their former empire and you should be able to have 35-40 cities with a minumum of corruption. You should easily have the largest civ at this point and will help keep you in the tech race.

After the war, switch to Republic and start building your infrastructure. Build libraires, cathedrals, markets and all that good stuff. Keep trading w/ other civs. Upgrade all units, ASAP, particularily defenders. I usually have a few well placed barracks and just send my spearmen to get upgraded, one by one. Once you have musketmen & knights, you can consider building an army of them for the next war, or just turtle up and build your culture and keep ahead of the AI.

e

[DK36]

What'cha talking about no flood plains!? They chuck out tremendous food and the people rarely die (for me anyway). I have a city with 9 flood plains and 5 wheets.. so pretty =P