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

[Ahlyis]

About rush building Wonders.

I tested this a lot recently. I was completely unable to get any shield bonus to affect a city where a Wonder was under construction. Furthermore, if I was working on say, a courthouse, and used the forest clearing to add shields, I was then unable to switch to a Wonder.

I didn't try disbanding military units, but I did try rushing smaller improvements, then switching to Wonders. No dice.

As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no way to do anything to add shields to a production of a Wonder or to switch to the production of a Wonder once shields had been added in a city.

Clearing forests does work, just not for Wonder building.

BTW, SS components are the same as Wonders in this respect. I.E. you can't rush their production.

One more note, there is NO penalty for switching production unless what you are switching to requires less shields than you already have accumulated. In that case shields drop to exactly what is needed to complete the item. Other than that, you can freely switch from and to anything without incurring penalties.

[Shiva]

Re: About rush building Wonders.

Originally posted by Ahlyis
I didn't try disbanding military units, but I did try rushing smaller improvements, then switching to Wonders. No dice.

As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no way to do anything to add shields to a production of a Wonder or to switch to the production of a Wonder once shields had been added in a city.

Clearing forests does work, just not for Wonder building.

Disbanding doesnt work for wonders.

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by Barry Brenesal


But in Civ3, switching between a city improvement and a Wonder entails a large loss of accumulated production.

Just to clarify this:

You only lose production that goes 'over and above' the cost of the item you are switching to. If you have, say, only 10 shields worth of production on a wonder and you switch to, say a harbor, you retain those 10 shields in the production queue. If you had 399 though, you would lose most of those but would complete the harbor the next turn.

[SerapisIV]

Re: About rush building Wonders.

Originally posted by Ahlyis
Clearing forests does work, just not for Wonder building.

Works for me, the only way I've been able to match the output of one of the AI cities that is completely surrounded by mined hills.

[Velociryx]

Our Continuing Mission....

Distilled Notes

Standard Disclaimer – None of this stuff is in final form. These are just continuing impressions I’ve gotten as I immerse myself more deeply in the game.
For consistency purposes, I’m playing all my games on standard sized maps, 8 civs (random), at Regent Level

OoO

First, I should say that I have the same feeling in my gut that I get when I’m at the beginning of a long voyage….a curious tickle that is not at all unpleasant, and rather like “butterflies.” I like it.

And, I should say that I’m completely engrossed in this game! From the title screen’s bold music, through the attractive and easy-to-use interface, and then into the game itself…wow. I’m hooked.

‘k…enough ego-inflation for Sid and the gang….strategy!


Opening Gambit
No matter what Civ you play, you’re gonna start with one Settler and one Worker. Some civs get other stuff, but I’ll save the detailed breakdown of all that for later. Suffice it to say that you’ll have, at a minimum, the above stuff.

A lot has been said about the newly juiced up AI, and their ability (indeed, their relentless DRIVE) to expand fast and early, and more often than not, in your face.

This change has caused a re-thinking in many of the classic expansion paradigms, including the ones mentioned in the SMAX guide.

In SMAC/AC, I strongly advocated what was essentially an ISC expansion scheme. Bases stacked close together and churned out cookie cutter style. Terrain was largely irrelevant, since if you didn’t like it, you could dramatically reshape it.

Not true here.

In fact, many of the things we took so much for granted have changed with the advent of Culture, and the new & improved AI. This is definitely NOT SMAC/Civ2 AI. These guys generally do a decent job of coordinating attacks. They WILL try and flank you, they will make decent use of massed artillery, and they will coordinate land and sea units. If you’re not prepared for that, they’ll trounce you in a heartbeat.

All that to say that changes of thinking are in order.

So….what’s the best way?

Once more, the answer is simply that such a critter doesn’t exist. No such beast as a best way….but there are a number of interesting approaches that are shaking out as we all begin to explore the different ways to play the game. Here are a few for your consideration. I’ve tried them all in my various test games, so I can tell you that they’re all effective on Regent….how effective they’ll be on Deity remains to be seen:

1) Slow and steady – The paradigm I began with. All bases spaced four apart, so that their initial borders created an ever-growing “Wall of Culture” that had no exploitable breeches. The problem with this approach is that, if you don’t get lucky with starting tiles, you may find yourself expanding more slowly than the AI, and your overly-structured approach will (potentially) leave you lacking some key resources as the AI cuts you off before you can “steamroll” your borders to that point.

2) Perfectionist – Tends to create smaller Empires and very much a culturally based game. Build only a very few bases, and be quite selective about where they go. Conquer the AI by simply letting him build right up to you, and then let your cultural influence begin nibbling away at the fringes of his empire. The trouble with this approach is that there’s no good way to predict the “when and which” of this. You might absorb bases very quickly, or it might not happen for hundreds of years. True, you can look at the culture histograph and get a ballpark, but that is by no means definitive. Still, it’s an interesting way to play, and the cities you DO found, tend to be….awesome!

3) Patchwork Borders – This is essentially expansion driven purely by resources. Just go where the resources are and plop down cities, worrying about connecting everything later. This is good in the sense that you’ll guarantee yourself lots of juicy resources. The downside to it is, everyone’s borders will tend to jumble together in an unorganized fashion, and getting reinforcements to far flung cities without right of passage agreements may be a daunting task. Of course, if you plan on investing heavily in culture, you may wind up enveloping a number of cities around you as your influence expands, partially solving your problem. Nonetheless, given the hard to predict nature of acquiring new cities in this manner (and given that you run the risk of losing your own far flung outposts in the same manner), there are risks to consider here. In general, if you’re going to do this, have a plan in mind to better connect your new city at the outset, and make sure the resource you’re building the city for is worth it.

4) T-Rex – My affectionate name for it, based on the acronym I’ve seen on the boards for “Rapid Early Expansion.” It is thin expansion, a la SMAC (rapid, no escorts (or casual escorts) for your settlers, and uses the notion of worker road-building to the frontier, in order to speed settlers on their way. The goal here is to create a kind of “donut” of an empire. Your capital city in the center, a wide expanse of open territory, and then “blocking towns” set up to deny the AI access to specific terrain, which you will backfill later (starting coastally, of course, to prevent anyone from sneaking a settler in via ship). These blocking towns are throwaways in the early game, akin to the sea bases espoused in “Doctrine Defensive” in SMAC. Their sole purpose is to isolate a big chunk of terrain for you to play with, and as such, space these bases four tiles apart, build a warrior, then start on a Temple for culture and forget them for the moment. This paradigm is sleek, it’s fast, and it’ll enable you to keep pace with, and often surpass AI expansion….of course, ‘bout the third time your settler gets munched by a back of roving barbarians, you’ll be cussing me for even suggesting it, so it’s not without risk!

Growing your empire from scratch
Your overriding priority is to jumpstart your expansion. To do this, you want every base focused exclusively on the business of expansion. Nothing else matters until you have enough bases to be truly viable (the specific number will vary from player to player based on map size and personal taste, but suffice it to say that you’ll need at least 4-5 bases to be viable (we’ll save discussing OCC for later!)

So….step one, found your city! You can be a little picker with your second city, but the important thing is to start harvesting food! The only times I’d avoid doing this would be if you start in the desert or jungle, cos then you’re really going to be screwed, growth-wise. So far though, in every test I’ve run, I’ve never had such starts, so there may be built in safeguards against it.

Even with an average start, a plains tile produces two food. Add that to the two that you get from your city square, and you get growth in ten turns. Not lighting, but livable.

Things may improve after ten turns, too, when your capitol’s borders expand thanks to the presence of the palace. It may well be the case that there’s a food bonus tile in your radius, and if so, work it!!! Regardless, on turn ten of the game (when you get that initial border expansion) you need to zoom into the city and take a look at where you’re harvesting from. Those early turns are vitally important. One misstep or delay can cost you more dearly than you think!

If step one is building the city, then step two is, by extension, finding something useful for the worker to do. Now, considering that you’re under despotism, there’s not many options here. Optimally, you’ll have him head to the most productive square in your capitol’s radius (the one that’s currently being worked!), and put a road in.

Why?

Cos you get one extra gold per turn, and no corruption in your capitol! The few turns he spends doing this will pay you handsome dividends very quickly! And while he’s doing that, set your production to create the cheapest exploration unit you can. For most folks, this is going to be your garden variety warrior, but for expansionist civs, you’ll have a two-move explorer available. Use it!

Caveat: The best of both worlds, of course, is to have a wheat stalk on a flood plain and a forest nearby. If you have a setup similar to that (one that just nets you silly amounts of food for the early game), it is almost assuredly in your best interest to work the forest tile until you get two warriors churned out. In this way, you get your explorers out in the field very quickly, and once you have them working for you, switch back to the food-rich tile and grow your base quickly. This type of switching was more difficult in SMAC because each unit had base-specific support costs. This new system then, is an important departure from that approach.

Exploration priorities
First and foremost, your explorers need to be on the lookout for a place to found your second city, and if your capitol is in relatively “average” terrain, then your second city needs to be a real kicker, food wise, so be on the lookout for floodplains and cows! Two good food producing cities can run your entire expansion for you, and do it faster than the AI will be cranking out settlers. I know, that’s what I shoot for in every game I play, and I consistently out-expand the relentless AI (using other established cities to build “settlers of convenience” now and again, in between building improvements and workers).

Second priority, an early game mineral-heavy town (and possibly more than one, depending on your game plan). This town (or towns) will be set aside for early game project work. Ideally, this base will have at least 1-2 decent plains tiles and be otherwise surrounded by forest. Hills are less desirable than forests in the very early goings, but work with what you’ve got.

Building stuff
Here’s where it gets variable. Depends on what kind of game you’re looking to run. If you’re going for heavy culture, after the token garrison, build temples….walls optional on fringe cities, none in the interior. Libraries should be high priority anyplace they’ll pay (anyplace that corruption doesn’t KILL you). Barracks are cool, but nonessential, since in the early goings you can get lots of morale boosts by just fighting Barbarians, and that’s another thing. Unless you’re just really hurting for cash, try to get a Barbarian “generator” inside your borders and send new recruits to sit outside of it and “practice” on the barbarians as the come out of the gate. That’s nearly as good as a barracks, and you don’t have to pay any maintenance.

In any case tho, I generally build a barracks in the capitol, or in some city that is very centrally located in the empire. As upgrade options become available, all my troops will route through that town for the latest and greatest in weapons. It’s been my experience that they only lose one “level of experience,” when upgraded (my elite warrior became a veteran swordsman), but more testing needs to be done on this.

Every town should get a worker, devoted exclusively to improving that town. When you’ve worked as many tiles as the “natural” growth limits for the town, target 3-4 towns in your empire for intensive work, and begin reassigning workers en mass to those sites. These will be your mid-game wonder-building cities, science cities, and the like, so pick your spots carefully. Likely, they’ll be cities extending like spokes on a wheel away from your capitol, where corruption isn’t too bad. You want to road everything you can for commerce income (research and cash), and then make sure you’ve got sufficient food sources for continued future growth. You also want to pay LOTS of attention to mineral counts! Mine those grasslands and rocky plains! Then mine the hills and mountains, focusing on tiles that have gold or other resources in them (since you’ll already have a road built through those tiles).

Being a good Despot
The one cool thing about Despotism is the ability to convert food to shields via population. This is an awesome ability, and should be used with great frequency! It can help you improve your cities and deal with discontent “in advance of the problem,” especially in the food rich towns you set up.

As near as I can figure it, each point of population is “worth” about fifteen shields of production, and since food is not affected by corruption rates, it can be used to incredible effect to boost the productivity of outlying towns that are being crushed by corruption. It’s especially useful for building temples, since the people you’re slaughtering increases the level of discontent in your town, nicely offset by the completion of the temple.

Also, if you’re going to do it (and I highly recommend it!), then do it while the town is size 2-3. That way you bounce back from the loss more quickly.

Golden Ages
Having played around with this extensively, my conclusion is to hold off on bouncing your civ into a golden age till you hit Monarchy. You see MUCH better effects under Monarchy than despotism. The exception to this would be in wonder building. Don’t forego a wonder just to avoid a golden age, but keep in mind that when you get it, and the GA it may bring, be looking to switch to Monarchy soon after! And when you’re under the influence of a Golden Age, build as much infrastructure as you can! The boost is tremendous, and you’ll feel like you’re building on speed & steroids combined!

Combating Corruption
Despite the numerous complaints about how debilitating corruption is, there are a number of things you can do about it, such as….

1) Under Despotism, sacrifice your population to further your own glory. Doesn’t matter how bad the corruption is, you get the same benefit, production-wise.

2) Assign a worker or two to each town you’re looking to hurry production in and chop down trees. When you get the tech for it, replant and repeat. Ten shields a pop. Not terribly efficient, but if you need something built fast out on the fringes, it’s better than one shield a turn.

3) The old standby….cash. Use #2 above till you get a good start on whatever you’re building, and rush it with coin for the rest.

4) Troop shuffle. Build troops in towns with good production, shuffle them to the fringe and disband. Won’t help you with wonders, but….

Building Wonders
Long before the wonder you want becomes available, select a town and have it start building a Palace. Good thing here is that multiple towns can be “building the palace” at the same time, so you can set aside a few towns for this if you wanna.

Then, when you get the tech that has the wonder you’re looking to build, make the switch with no loss, and you’re well on your way! Note here, that this means your capitol is probably not the city you’ll be building the bulk of your wonders at, which is why I build my barracks there….while the cities all around the capitol are building and pre-building wonders, the capitol can churn out troops when it’s not building infrastructure, lending a bit of synergy to the growing empire.

Most of the Wonders are of only marginal value (though there ARE exceptions!), but build all you can anyway if you’re going for a cultural win. They all generate a bit of culture, and if you have them and the AI doesn’t, you’ll only further your culture lead.

Early game tech advances
Tech sucks in the early game….but there are a number of things you can do to improve your lot in life, and some of them are:

1) Explore like crazy!!! Not only do you stand a better chance of popping a goody hut and getting tech, but you’ll also be more likely to meet other civs and trade with them. If you get it in trade (or free), you don’t have to research it, thus, circumventing the problem entirely. And while we’re talking about trading tech with other civs, milk them for everything you can! Make as many separate transactions as possible if you have lots of information of value to them. Do they want tech? Make a trade! Maps? Another trade! Communication with other civs? Another trade still! Of course, when they have information YOU want, try to get as many goodies in a single deal as you can…. The thing is….they’re GOING to find out about the other civs anyway….you may as well make them pay you to do it! (note! If you’re planning on an ancient era-war, shoot for monarchy, otherwise, skip it, trade for those techs later, and go straight for Republic…again, depends on your game style).

2) Get the HELL away from Despotism! Monarchy isn’t much better from a research standpoint, but it IS better….make the switch (just milk Despotism for all its worth while you’re under it)!

3) Build roads! LOTS of roads! Why? Yeah, it looks tacky, but hey….roads = money and money can be used for research….but be smart about it…..after you’ve got a basic road network connecting all your towns and their special resources, haul a bunch of workers back toward the capitol and start road building there, where corruption is not an issue, and slowly work your way out. And while you’re at it, spike those mineral counts!

4) Build the Great Library!


OooEnd So FarooO

Now, one question I have in my mind that I’m unable to research (I’m at work….::sigh:: ). The Forbidden Palace. Is it’s effect global (in that it lowers the corruption rates of towns near the city it’s built in), or does it effect just that single city?

-=Vel=-
PS: Comments and commentary are welcomed! This is but the first of many, many essays on the topic of our new game, and only by discussing the finer points will it get hammered into quality condition with lots of shine….

Chris – Good call re: the superiority of cows….however, it’s been my experience that cows are never found on flood plains. So….it’s true that the “cow tile” will net you more food than a wheat stalk, but if that wheat stalk is on a flood plain, you’re talking about an obscene amount of food, summing up all the workable tiles for the town there….

[Garth Vader]

IIRC about the Forbidden Palace, it acts as a second capitol. So the in the corruption calculations distance would be the shortest distance from either palace.

[Kinjiru]

Last night, for the first time ever, I sat stunned as I saw an AI perform a 'human' maneuver flawlessly. To be very brief, the AI performed a culture bomb on me.

Here is the set up...

I am playing the Germans ans quite long ago boxed teh Russians in to the north. I have been building my culture as I go and managed to steal a russian city this way.

This seems to have pissed off the Russian quite badly. About four tiles away from the city that defected to me was another Russian city of size 3 which was still at the first cultural stage (judging from it's borders).

About 12 turns after the city defected to me (time enough for me to place a temple in it), the russians sent an absolute horde of workers down to the border city and irrigated the heck out of the land. I suspect they were also rushing improvments in the city, but I cannot verify that as I didn't have the money to spy on the city.

Meanwhile, I was trying very hard to not be pulled into a developing war on my southeast between France and the English, so skip ahead about five turns...

All of a sudden I get a message saying that the defected russian city has reverted back to Russian control. No big deal I thought, as I had not invested much into it.

But then one of my own cities also defects to the Russians, and my city had a temple, library and colesium (spelling is wrong I know)!! So I check the map and sure enough, that formerly size 3 culturally poor russian border city is now size 12 with it's borders tripled from before. Again, I didn't have the money to spy on the city, but in order to take over my city it had to have all the cultural improvements it could at that point.

I truly could not believe it. The AI did something I did not think it could ever pull off. This morning, I am still a little stunned by it...

[Velociryx]

Brother Kinjy! Wow! You're serious?! The AI CB'd you?!

That's scary!

Cool but scary....



-=Vel=-

[madmario]

The forbidden palace helps nearby cities as well.

My hardest decision is whether to use my first (and possibly only) leader to pop up a forbidden palace in the middle of "oneshieldsuckland" or to make an army so I can make many armies (and possibly leaders ala Heroic Epic) later. It is probably a better idea to pop up the forbidden palace in a choice location, but that can also be less ego satisfying later.

If I were playing a militaristic civ, I might consider the heroic epic route a better idea, but I have yet to playtest this.

Also, 2 move units survive more, and thus are more likely to create a leader (since more will survive, more will survive and remain elite, etc). There may be a certain edge to exceptionally effective civ specific units (iroquois are very good), though of course using them sets the golden age.

A question I have is whether or not the Forbidden Palace and regular palace work in tandem, or independently (if a city is 12 squares from one and 25 squares from the other, is that different than being 12 squares away from each)?

-mario

[Drago Sinio]

Vel, another option for early expansion that has worked well for me has been to play the Egyptians, founding the first city in a good food producing location as you suggest. THen ASAP building small nearby cities in a similar pattern to you "Slow and steady " method.
Meanwhile my scout is out locating the closest enemy civs.

As soon as I get the tech that allows the War Chariots, I build a barracks in every city, and pump out War Chariots. When I get a dozen of them, I attack the nearest civ, heading straight for the capital. This will almost always be only lightly defended , and easily falls to the War Chariots. The way the chariots attack and retreat is deadly to early defenders, if you attack with a dozen at once.
I then go after any other well located enemy cities, ones that have resources , luxuries, or a strategic location. THen I sue for peace, and repeat with the nearest other Ai Civ.

It seems the the capitol of the AI civs are almost always in GREAT locations, and if you take those, the surrounding cities fall very easily in the early game. So, you expanding by taking the other guys territory, which both strenghtens you and weakens him at the same time.

Also this way you get a leader or two, and probably trigger the golden age. Makes for a very strong start.

Assuming you get a leader or two, is it best to rush an early Wonder with him? I think it is if the Wonder you rush is one that doesnt expire and gives you a benefit civ-wide, like the Pyramids, or a science wonder. Maybe the leaders should be saved for mid game in case you are competing for one of the science wonders for your best lab city?

Not sure I like the Great Library, it expires too soon in Civ3. I havent built it, but still seem to be a tech or two ahead of the pack by trading as much as possible.


In my best game so far I conquered Rome and Greece, but left them in the game as trading partners. I only took the best cities, and ones with a resource or luxury. This way I was able to sell the resource and luxury back to them throughout the game. Sort of like using them as cows I can always get milk from, instead of killing the cow for a single large meal. Whenever I see thay have a gold surplus in their treasury, I trade them a tech or whatever it takes to get it from them.

On tech trading, I have been trading away whatever tech I just got to the AI civs, trying to give the same tech to each AI. I think that is better than giving trading three different techs to three different civs and having them trade amoungst themselves, while I get nothing.

The AI gives me tons of gold in trade for the tech, which I use to increase my research allotment to around 70 or 80 percent and still keep a "positve cash flow".

Then I get the techs faster, so I can trade them to the AI faster and get still more gold, etc.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

4) T-Rex – My affectionate name for it, based on the acronym I’ve seen on the boards for “Rapid Early Expansion.” It is thin expansion, a la SMAC (rapid, no escorts (or casual escorts) for your settlers, and uses the notion of worker road-building to the frontier, in order to speed settlers on their way. The goal here is to create a kind of “donut” of an empire. Your capital city in the center, a wide expanse of open territory, and then “blocking towns” set up to deny the AI access to specific terrain, which you will backfill later (starting coastally, of course, to prevent anyone from sneaking a settler in via ship). These blocking towns are throwaways in the early game, akin to the sea bases espoused in “Doctrine Defensive” in SMAC. Their sole purpose is to isolate a big chunk of terrain for you to play with, and as such, space these bases four tiles apart, build a warrior, then start on a Temple for culture and forget them for the moment. This paradigm is sleek, it’s fast, and it’ll enable you to keep pace with, and often surpass AI expansion….of course, ‘bout the third time your settler gets munched by a back of roving barbarians, you’ll be cussing me for even suggesting it, so it’s not without risk!

Hmmm. i never thought of Rex as something with throw away towns. I think of it more like a cancer: It starts at the capital (the center) then rapidle grows in any direction where it can, filling up the space with cities about 4-6 squares apart. In Rex you don't focus on culture, only defense and cities until there is no more land left. Then you build culture in the outer cities to prevent AI culture takeover.

[Velociryx]

Good point guy....but...if you're spacing your towns 4-6 tiles apart, then unless you build a temple, you'll have recurrent gaps in your territory....build a cheese-ball defender and sac. population for a speed-built temple (under despotism), and you solve the border problem....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Velocirabi The Magnificent!

Faction Profile - The Babylonians:

Religious/Scientific
Special Unit: Bowman (replaces Archer)

The Goods:
These guys are all about speed. You've got a special unit with a really short shelf life, and if you're hoping to do any conquesting with it, then you've got to think in terms of right now....and the bowman is a really good early game unit, too! Effectively giving you the benefits of both a spearman and an archer in a single unit.

Your two focuses are among the best in the game, allowing you to build a heinous number of important city improvements on the cheap, meaning that while your infrastructure may lag in the early game as you focus on a quick conquest for an early-Monarchy Golden Age, you'll easily be able to catch up because of your cheaper build times all around.

In short, you are an early game terror, and you can use this to position yourself for late game dominance.

Expansion: Focus on food tiles and forget minerals for the most part (tho your workers can begin to spike mineral counts for you while you attack some hapless soul). If you find yourself with 3+ cows, your opponent is toast, because you can grow to critical mass quickly, and then sac. pop points to speed build a force of a dozen bowmen (upgradable to Longbowmen later, btw), and pretty much ransack anyone close to you.

Tech Tree:
Beeline for Monarchy....you'll need it ASAP for your GA. Republic is, IMO, a weaker choice for you, because you don't wanna have to pay for your burgeoning army in the opening stages of the war(s). Of course, nothing to stop you from conquering a rival Civ or two and then speed switching to Republic when you settle back down.

Timing:
The trick with this civ is to time your attack just so....too early, and the rival Civ won't have built anything of value, but again, keep in mind that your special units have a short shelf life, and you may find yourself having to augment your attack force with swordsmen if you wait too long to attack. Ideally though, the rival Civ will have at least one Wonder under his belt that he can give you in tribute....

Since you don't enjoy the benefits of explorers or industrious workers, your ideal plan is to blitz your neighbors off of your continent so you can build peacetime infrastructure without having to worry about building additional military units (just upgrade all the stuff you build in the ancient era).

Drawbacks:
Your special unit is short-lived, and a not a "fast" unit, so if your neighbors are using these, you'll find the goings a bit tough and will have to fight an agressive/defensive action (taking advantage of terrain on the approach and relying on the Bowman's defensive ability till you reach your target).

Also, corruption will eat you alive at least till you hit Republic, so have countermeasures mapped out to deal with it.

-=Vel=-
(More Civ-Analysis to follow)

Edit: PS ---> If you start out next to the Persians....and you very likely will....take them out first!!!

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I posted a guide on REX. Maybe if you could have a look at it Vel and add your notes/criticisms.

REX guide by L of A

Thanks

[Velociryx]

Hey there L of A! I read the thread you pointed me toward, and it got my mind thinking more on the subject of expansion and revise my notes on the matter....here then, is my latest thinking on the subject of expansion....More detailed notes on early game expansion in Civ3

More detailed notes on Expansion
As I get deeper into the guts of the game, it becomes obvious that there is no simple answer or formula to the question of expansion. Many of the ideas presented in these forums, including my own initial thoughts on the subject, dance close to the heart of the matter, but don’t quite get there.

So…it’s been something I’ve been thinking about, since it lies at the very core of all your future success.

Let us begin then, with your first city. Where it’s founded and the resources you have available to you after ten turns (when your borders expand via the presence of your palace) will determine the pattern and path of your expansion.

If your first city is food rich (at least one bonus food tile), then a good build order would be Warrior/Settler/Warrior/Settler….repeating until your expansion drive has ended. You can do this with one bonus food tile, cos building the warrior will give the city time to grow and it’ll provide you with an additional explorer.

If the first city is VERY food rich (2+ bonus tiles and/or wheat on a floodplain), after your first warrior, build nothing but settlers out of it, relying on the founding of a city near luxury items to quell any possible discontent.

If your first city has only average food (plains, 2 food, or mineral-rich plains 2 food + 1 shield), then focus on warriors in the beginning (3 of them), to fan out and locate a good, food rich spot for your second city.

And of course, if you got a lousy start with wretched food and no luxuries, you’ll probably NOT build your city on turn one, and do a bit of high-risk exploring in hopes of improving your lot!

The first thing to consider, as has been mentioned previously, is food. If you have a food bonus tile inside your capitol’s radius, you’re primed for rapid expansion in the early game. If not, then your second city NEEDS to be founded in an area with access to such a tile, even if it’s not in the most desirable location. Problems of location can be overcome by road development, so that need not dissuade you. The point is, if you want to keep pace with the AI in terms of early game expansion, you need at least two cities with bonus food tiles, and if you don’t have one (a bonus food tile) in the vicinity of your capitol, then you need one wherever you found your second city. Otherwise, your expansion will be slowed by lower overall growth. Of course, it goes without saying that the more cities you have with bonus food tiles in their production radius, the better for you, and the faster your overall expansion will be, so the presence of these bonus tiles should be pretty high on your list when looking for new places to found cities. Also, keep in mind that while you’re running despotism, you can sacrifice population for speedier builds. That’s a stunning ability, and one you should make frequent use of, especially in high-growth cities that are hobbled by corruption. Take advantage of the fact that they grow like weeds by “pruning” the population in order to speed in infrastructure, especially if that infrastructure produces culture. True, the improvements may not pay for themselves in terms of gold, but you’ve got to think of them as long-term investments. The day will come when they WILL pay for themselves in either gold or research…and in the meantime, they’re inoculating your fledgling empire against the cultures of other Civs (making it less likely they’ll defect from your culture to theirs), and making it MORE likely that rival Civs cities will defect to you. Always a good thing, corruption or no.

The second thing to consider is access to one or more tiles worth of some luxury item. Doesn’t matter what specific luxury, so long as you have something. And when you find a luxury, regardless of the character of the terrain surrounding it, you need to plop a city down there and connect it, and the luxury items, with the rest of your cities via roads. Doing this in the early game is vital, because it increases happiness in all your cities, enabling you to forego building temples in the interior towns right away, which allows them to continue churning out settlers without worrying about discontent. Also, the presence of a luxury route will enable you to leave your cities ungarrisoned, freeing the token warrior you build to guard settlers as they make their way to new city sites. (And as an aside here, with the exception of jungle tiles, cities founded in a “luxury patch” tend to be outstanding cities in any case….jungle cities too, but not till later in the game, when you can begin freeing up workers to modify the terrain). Note that this may mean rushing in a temple to expand your borders here, and bring even more luxury tiles under your sway. If the opportunity to do so is there, by all means, take it!

Those two considerations cover the basics, and once you’ve got those things taken care of, you can begin to think in terms of point three, which is blocking.

By the time you’ve dealt with points one and two, your scouts (whatever form they might take), have likely uncovered a goodish chunk of map, and probably even found a Civ or two, so you have some idea of where your rivals will be expanding from.

Take a good look at the terrain here.

If there’s a narrow choke point, drop some warriors down to prevent your rivals from getting through.

If the terrain is too wide to do so, then earmark that place (again, regardless of terrain) for settlement, in order to block the AI from expanding against you. You really need to look at the early game as not so much a race to see who can settle the fastest, but a war, fought without bloodshed. That is essentially the case, and your “armies” are settlers who carry little packets (3x3) of your culture with them to deploy when you found a new city. Expanding those packets is of high importance in the early game….thus, the focus on early temple building, rushing them to completion with a sacrifice in population.

The goal then, of point three, is to secure wide tracts of terrain for your own use and development, and to that end, you must work with the game, and not against it. So…if you see a rival Civ to your north, and begin settling areas in that direction, be mindful of your own cultural influence. For example….let us say that several turns ago, you founded a new city to partially block a rival Civ’s expansion. As soon as it’s population reached 2, you rushed in a temple, and since that time, you’ve experienced a border expansion.

At this point, when “reinforcements” arrive—in the form of a new settler—instead of building your next blocking city four tiles away from your previous city, you can scoot over and build it five tiles out….since the borders of your older city have now expanded, there will be no break in your border by doing so (meaning that when you drop your new city down five tiles out, there will be no break in your border, and thus, no chance for the AI to “sneak” into your interior and found a city.

One caveat to this, however….do not build cities in desert terrain unless it is to secure a big pile of luxury resources (at least two tiles worth), and then, if you do build such a city, write it off for the short term. It’s existence is merely to provide you the luxury items. Nothing more, and desert terrain is so marginal that the city will never be one of your biggest producers in any case.

This “no desert” axiom should hold true, even if allows a rival Civ the opportunity to wander into “your” desert and build a city. Let him. It won’t be his city for long, because it will no doubt be devoured by your empire, culturally (assuming you’ve been expanding all around the desert but not into it). This is good for you in two ways. First, it solidifies your borders in the long term when the city is absorbed into your culture, and second, it costs the AI a settler (and, if there is a single tile of some luxury item in said desert, you can be all but assured the AI will build a city for you there!)

Once you have blocked off your territory, the next step is to backfill, and here’s where you can widely space your cities, allowing cultural growth to fill in the gaps for you. Also, don’t worry about closing the gaps completely! If you wind up with a “hollowed out” interior, build colonists to harvest resources in your interior…you don’t have to worry about the AI founding cities there, cos if you mind your borders, they’ll never get through!

Downshifting:
Once you’ve got blocking in place, you can begin to specialize cities out to specific purposes, and it’s probably wise to do this sooner, rather than later, relying on your high-food-output cities to run the rest of your expansion for you while your other cities begin to do whatever it is they’re best at (which is determined by prevailing terrain conditions).

So…to that end, you need to be thinking in terms of two things:

First – What Civ am I, and what type of game am I playing here? If you’re playing one of the “Ancient Civs” (Babylonians, for example), you might want to start thinking in terms of a quick conquest to throw you into a golden age (especially if you’re verging on, or have already gotten out of Despotism). If so…then the bulk of your cities need to begin cranking out your special unit in preparation for the upcoming attack, setting aside your best mineral producers to work on wonders. If, on the other hand, you don’t have military conquest on the brain, you can begin to break your empire down into logical areas…setting aside 1-2 cities as troop training centers (barracks), deciding if you need to relocate your capitol, and if so, where, and also deciding if you’ve built so many cities that corruption is eating away at your productivity, where you want that to go.

And that brings us to the second consideration. During the “land grab war,” did you go overboard and build a TON of cities so that corruption is now your biggest line item on your budget? If so….you need to think about relocating your capitol and deciding where your Forbidden Palace will do you the most good.

I have found that I generally expand fairly evenly in at least two directions from my capitol, and to that end, I’ve discovered that relocating my capitol “one or two cities over” in one direction, and doing the same with my forbidden palace in the other direction, enables me to dramatically improve my corruption situation. Of course, these are long term investments, and will tie your cities up for a long time, so before you begin that project, make sure you’ve got a good bit of infrastructure pre-built in them so they don’t encounter problems as they grow. To speed the construction a bit, I’ve also found that it’s a good thing to begin work on something else (The Coliseum, for example, comes to mind)…chop down trees and/or build and send units to the target cities for disbanding until the building is almost done, and then make the switch to Palace/FP. That way, your cities finish the blasted things more quickly, and can get back to the business of doing stuff to further expand your influence….one way or the other…

With the above in mind, I generally set my capitol aside as my wonder building machine in the Ancient Era, while the cities flanking it begin working on Palace/Forbidden Palace (potentially getting distracted from that to snag a wonder or two themselves!).

Setting limits:
Usually, with the AI’s ability to expand effectively, your computer rivals will effectively limit your overall expansion, but if for some reason they can’t or don’t, then limit yourself. Too much expansion will kill you and make it impossible for your Palace/FP to counter the corruption of the early land grab.

A meek, submissive AI State off your borders is MUCH better than a corruption laden additional “wing” to your Empire in any case. In fact…if you find yourself on a continent with TWO other Civs, and you’ve expanded effectively, so as to cut them both off at the knees, one truly excellent thing you can do is to make nice with one Civ (the more docile and cooperative of the two), kill the other Civ off entirely, and give the conquered cities to your little buddy (keeping any cities with Wonders tho!). In this way, you strengthen the viability of your trading partner, you deal effectively with the corruption issue, and you make a lasting friend and ally!

By the same token, if you find yourself on an “Uber Continent” with TONS of Civs, once you secure your own position, start thinking in terms of the meta game. Who’s who and why? Answer those questions and make the right friends, supporting war efforts against the Civs you wish to see destroyed (note that oftentimes this does not mean going to war….you can of course, but you can also provide tons of trade and technical assistance to your “chosen horse.” The point is….at this point in the game, you should be looking at consolidation. Civs that got off to a weaker start will be absorbed as the game progresses. Now, if you LIKE one of the weaker Civs (France, for example….if I’m not playing them, they’re a GREAT partner!), you can provide badly needed military aid and help them grow their empire at a hostile rival’s expense. You get the lasting friendship of France, and you eliminate a potential thorn in your side.

On the other hand, if one of the weaker Civs on your continent is someone you’d just as soon see wiped out anyway…call up one of your friendlies and form a warfare partnership (yep…coalition building! LOL). If the corruption is too bad for you to bear, give any cities you snag to your smaller allies.

Note too, that you can sometimes have the best of both worlds here! Let’s say that you and the Egyptians are pals, and decide to gang up on a relatively weak Babylon. In a fast and furious war, you take them out, and give all but two small towns to Egypt to help them grow. The two towns you keep, you turn around and give to the Greeks in order to get them up to “gracious.” But the Greeks are half the freakin’ planet away from you, and so you can expect that your burgeoning culture will absorb those cities back to you in time.

When that happens, rinse and repeat, Giving the cities to some other far off culture to gain favor….odds are that they’ll boomerang right back to you….but your reputation with the “gifted” civs does not suffer in the least, and, while someone else controls them, they don’t contribute to your corruption problem….

-=Vel=-
(random thoughts while at work on a Saturday)