Qin it is (Chinese)

[Lacero]

Mine was disorganised you're right. This way seems more productive

1.
We have mining and agriculture, our workers are guaranteed to have something to do and we need them to chop rush. We should therefore build a worker before a settler, probably after one warrior to explore.

2.
Tundra / ice. I think we need some kind of rough plan for this case.

[Kataphraktoi]

1. Research Bronze Working.
2. Research Pottery.
3. Any techs that are handy, or just go straight to forges.
4. We pick up a later religion.

1.We build a worker as first build and chop rush a worker. This is risky but produces massive turn advantage. Then a settler is chopped and city placed. We can chop rush two cities at a time[1 worker per city chopping, so the new one dosnt wait till it has its own worker].alternativly if little wood, 1 worker then immediate settler would work.

2. Our big mass of workers (by now) starts putting in cottages. Specialist only cities for gathering huge commerce are great. Later filling in with 3x3 spacing at least as a single cottage when upgraded can give 8 commerce so its like having Gold.

3.More specalist cities focus on shields, with barracks etc so they can make our troops. The commerce cities will have little production.

...conventional play AFAIK.

[Kataphraktoi]

For some references, a few strategy threads of note relating to starting. I dont know if these will be remotely usefull to anyone, but here they are.

Here is some good talk on starting positions. There are a number of starting postion names too.

Beyond the Slingshot talking about using slingshots etc. Dont use slingshots myself, but it should be considered.

early growth and optimising it. you see, 2 workers and a settler is best for speed as i said, though of course we may be safety minded or whatnot, as this is a long game timewise.

Theres too much there to read...

[binTravkin]

2.
Tundra / ice. I think we need some kind of rough plan for this case.

Well, with oversight I doubt we will be having too-harsh-climate problems. It's most possible that even if we have tundra/ice nearby there will be a stretch of land in some other direction available for instant settling.

1. Research Bronze Working.
2. Research Pottery.

Seems reasonable to me.

3. Any techs that are handy, or just go straight to forges.
4. We pick up a later religion.

We should be clearer here.
At least have 2-3 options.
One as I understand is going straight for forges after pottery. Is there a religion close or in that b-line?

1.We build a worker as first build and chop rush a worker. This is risky but produces massive turn advantage. Then a settler is chopped and city placed. We can chop rush two cities at a time[1 worker per city chopping, so the new one dosnt wait till it has its own worker].alternativly if little wood, 1 worker then immediate settler would work.

Ok, the only argument I see against this is that it would leave our exploration efforts somewhat low.
Do you think it's justified Kata?

2. Our big mass of workers (by now) starts putting in cottages. Specialist only cities for gathering huge commerce are great. Later filling in with 3x3 spacing at least as a single cottage when upgraded can give 8 commerce so its like having Gold.

Okay, seems good.

3.More specalist cities focus on shields, with barracks etc so they can make our troops. The commerce cities will have little production.

We should make one hammer-specialised city very early.
Like our 2-4th city for an early grab of our first wonder.
The better if we happen to find stone/marble.
Can it be fit in your plan?

I would like to hear from Chaunk in this matter aswell.
He mentioned playing on Emperor, so he's probably quite skilled.

[GeoModder]

Coastal start with crab/clam/fish within the fat cross (especially fish)

- start research Fishing
- produce warrior

By the time Fishing is finished, the warrior will be ready as well and then:

- produce workboat
- [insert most screamed for research here, probably Bronze Working ]

Thing is, a worked fisheries brings in a large amount of food and gold at the same time, and will expeditate the production of settler/worker the quicker, and puts our research a turn, perhaps two, quicker.

[binTravkin]

Interesting scheme Geo.
Warrior costs 15 hammers and workboat 30, so that's cheaper than worker!
Besides while producing first worker choprush is not possible anyway as there's no worker who can chop so that leaves us with a little turn advantage.
And the third and biggest point that while out opponents wont be growing while producing that worker we will and will even faster once the workboat turns productive, therefore resulting in a pop advantage to be used in outputting more settlers/workers in shorter time.

If only we get that much sea nearby..

EDIT: that also gives us a fair amount of exploration in turn resulting in better base placement (preferably more coastal ones) and sooner acquiral of crucial land resources.

[Lacero]

I agree with the sea resource plan, unlikely to happen but would be nice if it did

My point about tundra was that we need a plan for fast expansion if our capital doesn't have too much good city land nearby. This also applies to coastal peninsula starts, we may need to do some land grabbing far from our capital quickly.

Although with oversight our capital will definately be viable, a bad position might mean we have to expand like crazy and build ourselves a new palace to save us from upkeep distance costs. I guess that's not really "early" game but we should bear it in mind in the beginning.

I suck at specialising cities, so I'll leave that debate to others.

[Chaunk]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi
1. Research Bronze Working.
2. Research Pottery.
3. Any techs that are handy, or just go straight to forges.
4. We pick up a later religion.

For pottery we need the wheel. I'd suggest wheel->Bronzeworking->Pottery so we can link up any nearby resources to our city. This also helps to make defense easier as we'd be able to move our troops to where they are needed a little faster.

It's worth noting this strategy is dependant on workers, as so we need to build one first off, i.e. before a warrior for defense. Otherwise, we should probably go for a different beeline; It's not much good increasing the number of things our workers can do when we don't have any!

1.We build a worker as first build and chop rush a worker. This is risky but produces massive turn advantage. Then a settler is chopped and city placed. We can chop rush two cities at a time[1 worker per city chopping, so the new one dosnt wait till it has its own worker].alternativly if little wood, 1 worker then immediate settler would work.

The main drawbacks to this strategy are the loss of health bonus from the forests (Not a major deal on Prince I don't think) and the lack of chopping for a wonder. As we're playing an industrious civ, wonders are a major part of our strategy. To lose 60 mins towards a wonder is a lot, and although the turn advantage can be quite large, we may easily run out of things for our workers to do in the early years.

Also consider we will need to get warriors out to investigate the terrain around us, and to keep it visible so barbs can't spawn too close to our cities. A sensor net of warriors on hills can keep barbs away for years in this game.

2. Our big mass of workers (by now) starts putting in cottages. Specialist only cities for gathering huge commerce are great. Later filling in with 3x3 spacing at least as a single cottage when upgraded can give 8 commerce so its like having Gold.

3.More specalist cities focus on shields, with barracks etc so they can make our troops. The commerce cities will have little production.

...conventional play AFAIK.

This seems like a mix of two strategies to me, specialist and cottages. Cottages are useless unless worked (Obviously) but when they are worked, they usually only give 2 nuts. That's only enough to feed the worker they're using.

However, you're talking about using cottages with specialists, which is only possible when you're using tiles that don't contain cottages (In order that they produce more nuts). Seems to me that we would need to either focus on few specialists and many cottages, or focus on nuts, many specialists few cottages. I feel the former works to the strengths of the Qin, where the latter works to the strengths of phil civs.

[binTravkin]

For pottery we need the wheel. I'd suggest wheel->Bronzeworking->Pottery so we can link up any nearby resources to our city. This also helps to make defense easier as we'd be able to move our troops to where they are needed a little faster.

I guess we will be able to finish bronzeworking before or soon after our first worker is operative.

The main drawbacks to this strategy are the loss of health bonus from the forests (Not a major deal on Prince I don't think) and the lack of chopping for a wonder. As we're playing an industrious civ, wonders are a major part of our strategy. To lose 60 mins towards a wonder is a lot, and although the turn advantage can be quite large, we may easily run out of things for our workers to do in the early years.

- someone should test out the thing with health bonus
- I think we should use what we can at start to create advantage, later we can think up something.
- run out of things to do for workers? Seems no problem for me - just build roads to future base locations and do some preparing there, so settler arrives in already well-workable place. If we still run into problems, we can cease building workers and instead output some exploration/defense.

Also consider we will need to get warriors out to investigate the terrain around us, and to keep it visible so barbs can't spawn too close to our cities. A sensor net of warriors on hills can keep barbs away for years in this game.

We could output a warrior as first item in our second city or output it after settler in our first.
What do you think?

This seems like a mix of two strategies to me, specialist and cottages. Cottages are useless unless worked (Obviously) but when they are worked, they usually only give 2 nuts. That's only enough to feed the worker they're using.

However, you're talking about using cottages with specialists, which is only possible when you're using tiles that don't contain cottages (In order that they produce more nuts). Seems to me that we would need to either focus on few specialists and many cottages, or focus on nuts, many specialists few cottages. I feel the former works to the strengths of the Qin, where the latter works to the strengths of phil civs.

So basically if we go for cottages we should have:
1.some very foody squares for maximum growth
2.several cottages
3.a couple of hammer-oriented squares
for each city.

I think it's doable - we can use not very good squares for cottages and the excellent ones for specialised production.

[Chaunk]

I'm not sure on the numbers with the sea resource plan. With growth happening while we build a warrior and then a work boat, we'd likely have a size 3 city when we started work on a worker. I very much doubt we'd get that worker particullarly soon.

Imagine a city containing a mix of grassland (2nut), forests (2nut,1min or 1nut,2min) some coast (Useless, except for the resources, lets say fish, 2nut3energy, 5nut3energy when workboated) and a rice resource (3 nut, 5when farmed).

Starting with a warrior:

Working forest 2n1m: warrior (15min) in 8 turns. nut box 0:22

turnNum	mins	nuts	tech
1	2:15	2:22	1/6	fishing (Specifically, 9/turn and 57 cost.
2	4:15	4:22	2/6
3	6:15	6:22	3/6
4	8:15	8:22	4/6
5	10:15	10:22	5/6
6	12:15	12:22	6/6
7	14:15	14:22	1/14 	bronzeworking. (Specifically, 9/turn, 171 cost)
8	16:15	16:22	2/14	Warrior produced! Workboat started.
9	3:30	18:22	3/14
10	5:30	20:22	4/14
11	7:30	22:22	5/14	Growth! Size 2. 

Probably end up working another 2n:1m (We will need those mins to make the boat,
after which we could probably use a better square).
12	10:30	2:24	6/14
13	13:30	4:24	7/14
14	16:30	6:24	8/14
15	19:30	8:24	9/14
16	22:30	10:24	10/14
17	25:30	12:24	11/14
18	28:30	14:24	12/14
19	31:30	16:24	13/14	Work boat produced!

However, we now have a choice. We can wait for the city to grow some more (2turns) so we can get more nuts towards the worker we make next, or we can start on the worker straight away. Assuming we wait, our worker takes 29 turns to produce, not waiting, also 29 (Strange how those things happen!) Both assume we can immediatly work the fish square, and two 3nut/min resources. A settler then takes a further 13 turns for waiting (to grow), and 16 for not waiting, meaning turn 42 or 45. Both assuming no chops.

Consider then, a worker first, to farm that rice square. Working a three nut rice square.

turnNum	mins	nuts	tech
1	4:60	0:22	1/9	the wheel(Specifically, 10/turn and 85 cost.)
2	8:60	0:22	2/9
3	12:60	0:22	3/9
4	16:60	0:22	4/9
5	20:60	0:22	5/9
6	24:60	0:22	6/9
7	28:60	0:22	7/9
8	32:60	0:22	8/9
9	36:60	0:22	9/9	the wheel! Choose bronze working, 14 turns
10	40:60	0:22	1/14
11	44:60	0:22	2/14
12	48:60	0:22	3/14
13	52:60	0:22	4/14
14	56:60	0:22	5/14
15	60:60	0:22	6/14	Worker produced.

Just in this short example, it's clear to see that by going for a worker first, we can work a 5 nut square 2 turns earlier, and also that the worker can help improve more than just one tile. The work boat does have the advantage that it also generates 3 additional energy/turn, but we do not have the option to chop a settler/worker/whatever.

I think that early work boats are great for civs with fishing, but for those without, it's not optimal. Also consider that the wheel has direct applications to defence (roads) is on the line to cottages, and allows a chariot. Fishery allows... fishing. Bah!

I've attatched a save file I tested this with. Note that I chose to work the 3 nut square (or 2nut1min) early, and not the 3nut1energy square. It's more likely we'll get the former than the latter, but using the latter actually helps the second strategy more than the first (Quicker to bronze working with the chopping worker).

[Chaunk]

Originally posted by binTravkin
I guess we will be able to finish bronzeworking before or soon after our first worker is operative.

Very shortly afterwords, probably at the ideal time after the worker has farmed a resource and hooked it up to the capital with roads.

- someone should test out the thing with health bonus
- I think we should use what we can at start to create advantage, later we can think up something.
- run out of things to do for workers? Seems no problem for me - just build roads to future base locations and do some preparing there, so settler arrives in already well-workable place. If we still run into problems, we can cease building workers and instead output some exploration/defense.

It's easier to run out of things for workers to do than you might think. You can only build roads outside of your culture, and so you can't prepare a base in advance, except by hooking up any resources with roads. I've certainly had games where I've had workers with nothing to do. They usually just end up roading every square

We could output a warrior as first item in our second city or output it after settler in our first.
What do you think?

Usually my build queue would be worker->Warrior->Warrior->Settler, although with lots of forest I may add a worker in between the two warriors. A warrior is usually the first thing I build at a second city, then whatever else it requires. The warriors easily handle any barbs that appear (Usually animals at that stage) and get some experience, which is vital in the later stages.

So basically if we go for cottages we should have:
1.some very foody squares for maximum growth
2.several cottages
3.a couple of hammer-oriented squares
for each city.

I think it's doable - we can use not very good squares for cottages and the excellent ones for specialised production.

Yep thats about it. It's possible to ignore the hammer squares with slavery and massive food squares, but then not ideal. Any strategy needs some very food orientated squares though. Or at the very least, it helps a lot!

[Kataphraktoi]

Ouchies chaunk keep the pain away...

For pottery we need the wheel. I'd suggest wheel->Bronzeworking->Pottery so we can link up any nearby resources to our city. This also helps to make defense easier as we'd be able to move our troops to where they are needed a little faster.

Thats actually what i do, i just didnt mention it as i was keeping my post vague. When i dont have resources though i still grab bronze first. I like going wheel first when i do have something though.

The main drawbacks to this strategy are the loss of health bonus from the forests (Not a major deal on Prince I don't think) and the lack of chopping for a wonder. As we're playing an industrious civ, wonders are a major part of our strategy. To lose 60 mins towards a wonder is a lot, and although the turn advantage can be quite large, we may easily run out of things for our workers to do in the early years.

Sometimes i save trees for a needed wonder. Just need to make sure they are all used, or have plans. That health bonus is useless imho on this difficulty.

Very shortly afterwords, probably at the ideal time after the worker has farmed a resource and hooked it up to the capital with roads.

Exactly.

t's easier to run out of things for workers to do than you might think. You can only build roads outside of your culture, and so you can't prepare a base in advance, except by hooking up any resources with roads. I've certainly had games where I've had workers with nothing to do. They usually just end up roading every square

Same here. However early workers are always busy. Dont need to keep spamming them later if its not needed.

This seems like a mix of two strategies to me, specialist and cottages. Cottages are useless unless worked (Obviously) but when they are worked, they usually only give 2 nuts. That's only enough to feed the worker they're using.

However, you're talking about using cottages with specialists, which is only possible when you're using tiles that don't contain cottages (In order that they produce more nuts). Seems to me that we would need to either focus on few specialists and many cottages, or focus on nuts, many specialists few cottages. I feel the former works to the strengths of the Qin, where the latter works to the strengths of phil civs.

I use a city focused only on food for great people farming, a city using mostly cottages for econ and cities focused only on minerals for units etc. Ussualy i farm some grass for food and cottage the other tiles. We will want 1 city to go with lotsa specialists anyway for a GP farm.

[GeoModder]

Thing is with chop rushing that the game will most likely start after the next patch is available. And with all the "overpowered" calls on several forums, a good chance exists that this feature will be reduced in effect. So if that proofs to be correct, a good look should be done if it is still worth it, especially when we want to save forests for our first wonder rushing as well.

But I sure agree that the Wheel should be one of our earlier inventions as well. It opens up to Writing which in turn gives us a leeway to a religion in case the early ones are spoken for.

[Lacero]

Originally posted by Chaunk
I think that early work boats are great for civs with fishing, but for those without, it's not optimal. Also consider that the wheel has direct applications to defence (roads) is on the line to cottages, and allows a chariot. Fishery allows... fishing. Bah!

I guess I thought if we have fish and no other farmable resources we should go for fishing, I'm pretty sure I've never had a start with fish and wheat/rice before. Cows and pigs are another question mark, animal husbandry isn't cheap.

Otherwise I'm convinced, we have farming so if we have farmable resources we concentrate on those first.

Also, my workers don't usually run out of things to do until well into the mid game. But my cities do run out of workers to use those improved squares. At what point is a worker working on squares that can't be used worse than having built another settler earlier and having 1 more city?

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Thing is with chop rushing that the game will most likely start after the next patch is available. And with all the "overpowered" calls on several forums, a good chance exists that this feature will be reduced in effect. So if that proofs to be correct, a good look should be done if it is still worth it, especially when we want to save forests for our first wonder rushing as well.

Forgive me for chiming in, but I must say I agree with Geo. There should be a contingency plan.