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Im trying to document some hints and tips for players new to CTP2, specifically for online multiplayer games.
Below is some text from an email I sent and would be interesting to see any comments or additions anyone has?
NB. what is written below is aimed as a basic introduction to initial empire development.
One thing that is important to remember is achieving an overall balance and trying to stay on what I would call the critical path. The critical path being most effiecient and speedy expansion, rate of research and attainment of new government types.
Some of the tips below are generalisations and there may be game scenario's which require a different approach i.e. finding yourself right next to your opponent, however for the vast majority of games you should aim to stick to the key tips below.
1) Maximise growth. This is the most essential target and far outweighs anything else you should do. Growth dictates your overall power, rate of research, income etc as your growth rate increases exponentially i.e.
My general starting tactic e.g. during our last game with 3 settler was thus: (i'll break this down by city and build order)
City A - Warrior, Warrior, Settler (D), Warrior, Coracle, Settler(G), Warrior,
City B - Warrior, Warrior, Settler (E), Warrior, Coracle, Settler(H), Warrior,
City C - Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler(F), Warrior, Coracle, Warrior
City D - Settler (I), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City E - Settler (J), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City F - Settler (K), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City G - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City H - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City I - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City J - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City K - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
As you can see from above its very easy to quickly get to 10+ cities. Note the build order isnt exact and later in the game i.e. during the development of cities G - K I may stop building settlers. My aim is to get as many cities as a Government type will allow i.e. Tyranny = 10, Monarchy = 20, Republic = 20, Facism = 35. be very careful not to exceed the max number of cities by Government type as eacg extra city creates +1 Empire unhappines.
2) Forget about using workers in cities, these are not necessary and reduce the overall efficiancy of a city. For example if your in a size 2 city and change use one Farmer, though your increasing the city growth rate in the short term your reducing the production rate and science rate. The overall impact is a negative as it takes you longer to build settlers and science/discoveries will be slower.
3) For science your initial goal should be to go for Monarchy by the quickest route (you can set Monarchy as a goal in the Science window), as soon as you discover Monarchy change Governments. Only deviate from this path if you feel you need Archers for better military in scenarios where your oponent is nearby or Coracles to speed the transport of settlers or if your on a small island/peninsula.
4) Exploration is very important but you need to find a blance of building military units to explore, some to guard (fortify one in every city), and building settlers. As you can see from section 1. Initially I built 5 Warriors, 1 for each of the 3 cities and 2 to explore. I would have built more than 2 to explore had I not been on a small island (maybe 3 or 4 exploring warriors). Having more exploring units helps as you find ruins quicker and ruins can give you goodies. Its a fine balance between exploration and growth but I hope ive hightlighted how I balance this.
5) Other buildings.. Dont bother with any other buildings until youve reached your maximum number of cities by Government type. The only exception is during harder difficulty level games where you base happiness level is lower and youll need maybe Theaters and or Shrines. At higher difficulty games you get more time to build more things as discoveries take longer (less science output). As youve already noticed at the level we played you discover things so quickly there is hardly time to build anything, dont let this ditract you, build what are the highest priority (units and settlers).
6) Empire Manager. Keep the bars set for maximun efficiancy, i.e. Food slider (left) all the way to the left, Production (middle) all the way to the right, Economic (right) all the way to the left. As the game progresses you may need to modify these slightly, only do this as necessary as you want to maintain a maximum mean happiness of 73, any higher and your wasting efficiancy, a happier empire doesnt give you and real benefits. As you get more cities (certianly more than 3), youll notice your further cities are less happy, this is because the further away from the capital the less happy a city is. You can improve a city happiness by +1 for a unit, +1 for Shrine, +2 for Theatre. Building Ramanyana gives all cities +2 happiness.
With the varying happiness levels of cities by distance from the capital after the early stages of the game (1st 20 turns) you may find you need to move an empire manager slider to account for this. Never move the Food one, try and switch between using the Production or economic one. If you look at how many turns left till you discover the next advance (F6) sometimes you can move the economic slider without increasing the number of turns. Overall, try and average out the happiness of all cities so they are the same do this by having more units in cities (or happiness building improvements) that are furthest away from your capital.
7) Public Works. Keep public works set to 0 at the start of the game. After you have 5 cities you can think about increasing it, but do this by incrasing to 90% for one turn rather than leaving it on say an average of 30%. During the 90% turn take the advantage of using your cash to rush buy nearly completed buildings or units, i.e. filter the Build Manager (F2) screen to 'turns remaining' those with the lowest turns will be more efficiant to rush buy. Using this technique you'll maximise your usage of money and the Public Works income. Later in the game I alternate terms PW 0%, PW 90% and rush buy.
8) Tile improvements are very important but not at the expense of early exploration and building settlers/expanding. Your better having 8 cities size 2-3 than 4 cities with farms size 3-5. As with point 7 above, later in the game after the early rush to expand you will need to get some Public Works points, use this to build farms, nets or roads. When deciding what and where to build these consider if you need roads to help your settler move quicker or help move units quickly to bolster defence in certain cities? I tend to leave roads until as late as I can, and build a few farms 1st, note building a road on a forrest tile costs the same as building a farm. Other thing to consider is terraforming grass to plains (though dont do this till you have your maximum number of cities by government type, eg. 10 for Tyranny).
Summary...
Lots of pointers and suggestions above and probably a little confusing and difficult to obsorb all together. Ive tried to explain some of the basic do's and dont's. If you implement the above you'll see a massive change in your game. Do remember to play each game as a one off, and review and vary your tactics slightly depending on your position, avialability of land to expand, vicinity of your opponent. i.e. during the last game if id found you on the same land mass or an adjacent island id of built more units for a circular defence and this would of slowed my settler production/expansion. BY circular defence I mean forward units beyond my empire boundaries to anticipate and spot any attacks you would make. This would give me 3-4 turns to switch production and build more units if I saw an attack coming, I could of also repositioned some of my units from other cities.
Maq, I also sifted through the archieve threads and found this link to the hints and tips site you created - http://www.geocities.com/ctp2strategy/
Below is some text from an email I sent and would be interesting to see any comments or additions anyone has?
NB. what is written below is aimed as a basic introduction to initial empire development.
One thing that is important to remember is achieving an overall balance and trying to stay on what I would call the critical path. The critical path being most effiecient and speedy expansion, rate of research and attainment of new government types.
Some of the tips below are generalisations and there may be game scenario's which require a different approach i.e. finding yourself right next to your opponent, however for the vast majority of games you should aim to stick to the key tips below.
1) Maximise growth. This is the most essential target and far outweighs anything else you should do. Growth dictates your overall power, rate of research, income etc as your growth rate increases exponentially i.e.
My general starting tactic e.g. during our last game with 3 settler was thus: (i'll break this down by city and build order)
City A - Warrior, Warrior, Settler (D), Warrior, Coracle, Settler(G), Warrior,
City B - Warrior, Warrior, Settler (E), Warrior, Coracle, Settler(H), Warrior,
City C - Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler(F), Warrior, Coracle, Warrior
City D - Settler (I), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City E - Settler (J), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City F - Settler (K), Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City G - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City H - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City I - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City J - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
City K - Warrior, Settler, Warrior
As you can see from above its very easy to quickly get to 10+ cities. Note the build order isnt exact and later in the game i.e. during the development of cities G - K I may stop building settlers. My aim is to get as many cities as a Government type will allow i.e. Tyranny = 10, Monarchy = 20, Republic = 20, Facism = 35. be very careful not to exceed the max number of cities by Government type as eacg extra city creates +1 Empire unhappines.
2) Forget about using workers in cities, these are not necessary and reduce the overall efficiancy of a city. For example if your in a size 2 city and change use one Farmer, though your increasing the city growth rate in the short term your reducing the production rate and science rate. The overall impact is a negative as it takes you longer to build settlers and science/discoveries will be slower.
3) For science your initial goal should be to go for Monarchy by the quickest route (you can set Monarchy as a goal in the Science window), as soon as you discover Monarchy change Governments. Only deviate from this path if you feel you need Archers for better military in scenarios where your oponent is nearby or Coracles to speed the transport of settlers or if your on a small island/peninsula.
4) Exploration is very important but you need to find a blance of building military units to explore, some to guard (fortify one in every city), and building settlers. As you can see from section 1. Initially I built 5 Warriors, 1 for each of the 3 cities and 2 to explore. I would have built more than 2 to explore had I not been on a small island (maybe 3 or 4 exploring warriors). Having more exploring units helps as you find ruins quicker and ruins can give you goodies. Its a fine balance between exploration and growth but I hope ive hightlighted how I balance this.
5) Other buildings.. Dont bother with any other buildings until youve reached your maximum number of cities by Government type. The only exception is during harder difficulty level games where you base happiness level is lower and youll need maybe Theaters and or Shrines. At higher difficulty games you get more time to build more things as discoveries take longer (less science output). As youve already noticed at the level we played you discover things so quickly there is hardly time to build anything, dont let this ditract you, build what are the highest priority (units and settlers).
6) Empire Manager. Keep the bars set for maximun efficiancy, i.e. Food slider (left) all the way to the left, Production (middle) all the way to the right, Economic (right) all the way to the left. As the game progresses you may need to modify these slightly, only do this as necessary as you want to maintain a maximum mean happiness of 73, any higher and your wasting efficiancy, a happier empire doesnt give you and real benefits. As you get more cities (certianly more than 3), youll notice your further cities are less happy, this is because the further away from the capital the less happy a city is. You can improve a city happiness by +1 for a unit, +1 for Shrine, +2 for Theatre. Building Ramanyana gives all cities +2 happiness.
With the varying happiness levels of cities by distance from the capital after the early stages of the game (1st 20 turns) you may find you need to move an empire manager slider to account for this. Never move the Food one, try and switch between using the Production or economic one. If you look at how many turns left till you discover the next advance (F6) sometimes you can move the economic slider without increasing the number of turns. Overall, try and average out the happiness of all cities so they are the same do this by having more units in cities (or happiness building improvements) that are furthest away from your capital.
7) Public Works. Keep public works set to 0 at the start of the game. After you have 5 cities you can think about increasing it, but do this by incrasing to 90% for one turn rather than leaving it on say an average of 30%. During the 90% turn take the advantage of using your cash to rush buy nearly completed buildings or units, i.e. filter the Build Manager (F2) screen to 'turns remaining' those with the lowest turns will be more efficiant to rush buy. Using this technique you'll maximise your usage of money and the Public Works income. Later in the game I alternate terms PW 0%, PW 90% and rush buy.
8) Tile improvements are very important but not at the expense of early exploration and building settlers/expanding. Your better having 8 cities size 2-3 than 4 cities with farms size 3-5. As with point 7 above, later in the game after the early rush to expand you will need to get some Public Works points, use this to build farms, nets or roads. When deciding what and where to build these consider if you need roads to help your settler move quicker or help move units quickly to bolster defence in certain cities? I tend to leave roads until as late as I can, and build a few farms 1st, note building a road on a forrest tile costs the same as building a farm. Other thing to consider is terraforming grass to plains (though dont do this till you have your maximum number of cities by government type, eg. 10 for Tyranny).
Summary...
Lots of pointers and suggestions above and probably a little confusing and difficult to obsorb all together. Ive tried to explain some of the basic do's and dont's. If you implement the above you'll see a massive change in your game. Do remember to play each game as a one off, and review and vary your tactics slightly depending on your position, avialability of land to expand, vicinity of your opponent. i.e. during the last game if id found you on the same land mass or an adjacent island id of built more units for a circular defence and this would of slowed my settler production/expansion. BY circular defence I mean forward units beyond my empire boundaries to anticipate and spot any attacks you would make. This would give me 3-4 turns to switch production and build more units if I saw an attack coming, I could of also repositioned some of my units from other cities.
Maq, I also sifted through the archieve threads and found this link to the hints and tips site you created - http://www.geocities.com/ctp2strategy/
You were surviving at the end to research Tanks, i also remember you had really bad land like Jungle and desert, although i did start with a lot of forest too which is why i attacked so late.
and then start changing things
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