Post by kiershar on May 18, 2007 17:47:46 GMT -5
This is a walktrough and a collection of advices on how to survive and be competitive in a multiplayer FFA game. It assume you have a good all around knowledge of Civ4 (Warlords 2.08 patch) and I'd say this guide will be useful for anyone who is not an expert but can at least win on Noble and Prince. Make sure you know all game concepts and have had few multiplayer game experience. It may seem complicated at once, but with some practical experience and time you will do all of these instinctively. Especially in the case of city placing, priorities of workers and battles in the field, experience will make an huge difference.
Unless you are extremely familiar with the game already, I would suggest starting a single player game and following the guide chapter by chapter to get a hold of all the concepts and strategies.
After teaching from scratch how to play multiplayer to my friend, I figured everything I told him could be crammed into a guide with easy to follow methods and no mathematic. When I started multiplayer I looked around for such documents but only found many articles on different subjects. This is a compilation of all the knowledge I got from these articles and my own game experience. I imagine now having possession of this document would have spared me hundreds of errors and set me to higher levels faster so I hope this will be useful for many. I know my guide is not perfect and I will probably update it with information as time goes on. For any comments send emails to "kiershar" on hotmail. Please forgive any errors as my first language is french and my english is not perfect.
On a side note, I prefer running a cottage economy most of the time, but remember that a specialist economy is sometimes viable if you know how to handle it. You'll also notice there is no reference to religions or wonders. That is because instead of making wonders you should concentrate those resources on surviving and killing others and if you get a religion it is only because you got it by chance along the path of technologies that allows you to win by means of war. If someone took the resources and time to make wonders they will most likely not stand the strength of your army. Vice-versa if you made wonders and they built armies.
I - Settings
II - Choosing a Civilization
III - Starting the game
IV - First technologies. Path to war
V - Exploring the land
VI - Tribal Warfare
VII - Worker's Priorities
VIII - Second city : Crucial expansion
IX - Expansion's production
X - Building an Army
XI - Ancient wars
XII - Monitoring your rivals
XIII - Improvements Technologies
XIV - Whipping the Cats
XV - The Big Wars
XVI - Getting the Lead
XVII- Advanced technologies
I - Settings
Verify you have these following options.
From the Main Menu, go to "Advanced" then "Options" and make sure you have these enabled :
- Wait at end of turns You don't want the turns to end by itself. Control everything
- Minimize pop-ups This makes sure you can move your units right at start of each turns. Get used to it.
- Quick moves Don't need animations
- Quick combat (Offense) Don't need animations
- Quick combat (Defense) Don't need animations
- Stack attack Crucial for field battles. Mastering unit selections with Shift, Ctrl and Alt is essential.
- Automated workers leave old improvements
And these disabled :
- Units Auto-promote Eww
- Workers starts automated Gross
Most FFA game will be played according to those settings :
- 5-6 people on small, 7-9 on standard
- Ancient Era start
- Speed : Quick
- Difficulty : Noble
- No Technology trading
- No barbarians Doesn't matter if there are barbarians. More escorts and defense needed, no major change in strategy
Note : Not every game can be won. Someone can start very close to you and take your capital with his warrior while you have only a scout. Sometimes the enemy may have horse or copper right under his capital and have troops on you too quick. I have seen someone get his settler killed on first turn. Sometimes there is no horses, copper or iron at all, meaning you are doomed as soon as someone starts a war on you. Luck of locations makes a big difference in many games. Don't get discouraged if you get killed because of very bad starting location.
II - Choosing a Civilization
There is 3 traits that are extremely useful for warmongering.
- Aggressive means your axeman and spearman gets an anti-melee, medic or extra strength right away. Your armies are much stronger.
- Financial enables you to have a superior economy that will allows you to support a large army and lead in the technology race.
- Creative makes the cultural defense grow very fast and allows you place your second city 2 square away from metals or horses.
Any Aggressive or Financial civilization are solid choices. Here are my favorites :
- Vikings : Financial, Aggressive. Berserkers (Amphibious, +10% city attack, macemen)
My favorite. Big strong army with the cash to back it.
- Rome (Augustus) : Creative, Organized. Preatorians (Strength 8 swordsman)
Creative gives city defense bonus fast and preatorians are very good until machinery comes out.
- Korea : Protective, Financial. Hwacha (+50% vs Melee, catapults)
Hwacha is extremely powerful. Especially good against Rome. Decent archer for early dangers.
- Zulu : Aggressive, Expansive. (Mobility spearmens)
Quick expansion, strong armies, spearman that rushes, pillage and chase mounted. Barracks that gives 10% maintenance reduction.
- Mali : Financial, Spiritual (4 strength, 1-2 first strikes, archers)
Awesome archers for potential rush offense and defense. Financial keeps the money flowing for troops.
III - Starting the Game
Now you have your settler and warrior/scout waiting for your orders. Check around with your scout/warrior and then settle the capital right where it stands unless the scouts see a bunch of floodplains, gems or good food resources a square away. From there you will have to look at what tile you lose to gain the extra floodplain or extra -good- resource. You might also consider settling on a plain hill because it will net you a +1 production and 25% defense bonus (Those are the brown hills. Do not confuse them with green hills or desert hills). Also valuable places to settle are on elephants, marbles and stones; they will net you +1 production. Most of the time, settling right on the tile you spawned on is the best choice because there will never be jungle, peak, tundra or desert in the city radius.
Time to pick something to produce. Usually you'll want to start with a warrior. If you have fish/clam/crab, start with fishing if you think you are safe, making a workboat to exploit the sea food is a very good choice. In this case make sure you improve a fish/clam/crab that is on coast tile so that it produce more commerce and you will want to improve coast fish first as it produce 1 more food than clam or crab. If you decide to go for workboat, just make the first warrior after the workboat or after the first worker if you feel no threat. If you see a warrior roaming near you, just switch the production inside your capital to work hills and plain forests; you'll get your warrior in time most likely.
After you built a warrior, make a worker. When your worker is out switch to Slavery and start chopping forests adjacent to your capital to make a settler. If something approach your capital, you can always whip a warrior. In summary :
Warrior - Worker - Settler - Worker Standard start
Workboat - Warrior - Worker - Settler - Worker Sea food start
Workboat - Worker - Warrior - Settler - Worker Safe sea food start
Workboat - Worker - Settler - Worker - Warrior Very safe sea food start
In all case, switch to slavery right after the first worker or after the settler if you feel safe. Sometime it may be worth it to whip your settler to make the new city as soon as possible, like in the case the copper/horses is outside the capital's fat cross. If theres threats always make extra defense/offense of course.
IV - First technologies. Path to war
Now you will have to pick a technology. First priority of all is getting good units. This means you will start by researching bronze working and mining if you have to before. From there the path splits.
If copper appears within 2 squares of your capital and you have a close neighbor, you will maybe want to try a rush on him. You will research wheel right away and hook up your copper as soon as you can. After producing your first worker, switch to slavery and then make 1 warrior per slice of 70 gold you have (Maybe you got lucky on huts!) and then a barrack. As soon as the copper is hooked, upgrade your warriors to axemens and spearmens, whip out another and command your worker to chop forests adjacent to the capital to produce as much axemans and spearmens possible. When you finished chopping everything adjacent to the capital start improving food resources and set up a few mines. Start marching toward the close neighbor, deny him resources and maybe destroy him. Build your first settler after you have sent 4-5 units toward your enemy and resume the general plan.
If you have no copper and you are very close to someone you might want to go for archery before. Also if your neighbor are Persia, Zulu, Egypt or you are Rome, you might want to go straight for Iron Working.
In all other cases, go for Animal Husbandry. From there the path splits again :
If you have horse within 2 squares of your capital and you have close neighbor, you will maybe want to chariot rush him. Research wheel right away and hook up your horses as fast as you can. After producing your first worker produce a barrack if you have the time. As soon as your horse are hooked, start whipping horses and send them directly toward the close neighbor. Work on capturing workers and do not letting him grab copper, iron or horses. Build your first settler as soon as you think you sent enough chariots to deny him copper and iron, usually 3-4 does the trick if you hooked the horses fast enough.
In all other cases that you have no horses and no copper in your capital, you will have to look around for these and research Wheel when you have located them. If there is no copper or horses within 6-7 squares of your capital go for Iron Working. If you see copper and horses close enough, skip on Iron Working until after you have Construction or maybe even after Monarchy.
V - Exploring the land
Exploring, getting huts and finding rivals locations is crucial. If your civilization starts with hunting, you will begin with a scout, otherwise you will have warrior. Warrior pretty much assure early survival and a potential offense while the scouts will ultimately gather more huts and informations on rivals and surrounding land. Both can perform the most important task : finding a suitable location for your second city.
You will want your warrior/scout to explore toward the best looking tiles and then make a half moon around your capital to see all the closest tiles to your capital while walking on hills to get a better view and huts to make cash and goodies. Once you have your first warrior made, make him go the opposite side of where your initial warrior/scout went and explore the surrounding 6-7 tiles from your capital. If any warrior roams near you make sure not to go too far. If you started with a scout this will be done in no time. Try to finish your move on hills or forests that will let you walk on some plains and grasslands the next turn. Once you're done exploring 6-7 tiles away from your capital you should have a good idea of where to put your second city and should start trying to locate others. Meeting as much people as possible will give a slight bonus to research so try to have contact with everyone!
If you see a close neighbor circle around his border and try to walk on hills to see deep in his land. Notice if theres copper or horses in his capital or around to be able to plan on the right units or even rush to deny him those resources.
Figure 1. Example of early exploration 1
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...ploration1.jpg
Figure 2. Example of early exploration 2
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...ploration2.jpg
VI - Tribal Warfare
In the advent that your initial exploring warrior meet another civilization's border within the first 5 turns, most of the time it is a good idea to wage war. In some case maybe you will want to switch research to archery right away and produce one or 2 archers as soon as possible, especially if you see horse or copper in the enemy's capital.
Sometime you may want to be sneaky and enter by the corner, where you can reach the capital in 2 turns after declaration of war. This way it will force your victim to garrison units right now or die. In any cases, with your warrior you will try to reach the capital proximity as soon as possible and walk ONLY on hills and forests. Try to capture a worker and destroy crucial improvement like horses and copper, but don't attack the capital if it is defended. Just make sure your rival isn't improving his land without having an escort. If he makes any settlers, chase them. Send any new chariots, axeman, spearmen into the fray as soon as they are produced. Attack only when you have odds, stay on hills and forests and try to keep as much units alive as possible; they are your future force to defend your catapults.
If you are the one on the receiving end, just don't attack when you don't have odds. Switch to archery right away and make an extra warrior and then archer. Escort your worker with the warrior or archer to chop forest and do some improvements. Eventually when you produce a settler, make your city right on top of the copper or horses if theres too much pressure. Once you have 2 units and you are camped by 1 units, send the extra troop (often an archer) to pillage the enemy. Deny defensive tile from the enemy and try to negotiate for peace.
The goal of tribal warfare is to deny copper, horse, iron and expansions. It is not to capture the capital of your rival but you can get lucky. Tribal wars are not very profitable but usually pave the way for the catapults to wipe the archers that your enemy stacked.
Figure 3. Quickest way to capital
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...ytoCapital.jpg
VII - Worker's Priorities
First priority is to hook the copper, horses or in the worse case scenario, iron.
Always have your workers on manual!
If there is horses or copper within 2 squares of your capital (Fat cross) your first worker will start by improving the copper or horse and then make a road to the capital or river linking the capital. Note that when you improve a resource tile on a river tile, you do not need to make a road to get the resource but only make a road in between the capital and the resource. Make sure you understand how rivers works.
Figure 4. Basic river setup
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...RiverSetup.jpg
Figure 5. Advanced river setup
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...RiverSetup.jpg
Figure 6. River setup with Sailing
i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...ithSailing.jpg
If no copper or horses are in immediate range, chop forests until the settler is produced. Usually after chopping 2 forests you have a discovered where the horse and copper is for your second city and your settler is 4-2 turns away from creation. Do not start chopping a third forest but instead make a road toward the future city site. When the settler comes out have your worker continue road and eventually follow the settler to the second city's location and start improving the horse/copper and making road all the way back to the capital, making sure to exploit rivers. Usually your second workers helps with the last roads between your capital and second city. Obviously, its is a priority to improve the resource first before making the road, simply because your city is gonna be able to exploit this very good tile right away. Make sure you assign personnaly the city to work the improved horse/copper tile.
After hooking your military resources, you will start improving food and production. This routine usually is the same for all cities :
If you have cows improve them as soon as possible! Then improve pigs, followed by rice/corn/wheat that is close to fresh water (Hover the cursor over the tile to know). Then improve the rice/corn/wheat not near fresh water. The only time you will make a farm is if you have no food resources, in this case you will make one farm ideally on a floodplain. If you have gems
or gold, get a mine on it right when you have a food source up. If you have floodplains, cottage them right after you got one food source and one mine up. Once you have one or two food tile up, make a few mines. Ideally pick the hills on riverside for the extra coin.
Once you have the food and mines going its time to start the cottage spam. First place to cottage is floodplains followed by calendar resource on a river tile. Then you want to cottage grassland on riverside followed by calendar resource not on a river tile and then non-river grassland. Usually you will cottage every calendar resource in your capital because you will not have the luxury to research calendar soon.
In between all that you have to make roads and chop forests. Make sure every city is linked by roads and do not make extra useless roads but make sure you use the shortest path in between your city. Make a couple road toward other civilizations and be sure to chop forests that rivals could take advantage, especially those adjacent to your cities. Good time to have your worker chop forests is after improving enough tile for your population, right after linking a military resource, to make a monument/library/courthouse in a new city or to create an army the fastest possible.
VIII - Second city : Crucial expansion
So here we are now with a settler out and 3 possibilities :
- Have copper or horses 3 to 7 tiles from capital
- Have copper or horses in capital
- Got nothin'
In the first case you will want to settle your second city on a tile adjacent to the horse/copper or even right on top should you feel pressure. its not bad settling on top as it will gives a bonus +1 production to the city, but usually a copper or horse is very good to exploit. Try having at least 1 food resource, 1 hill and as much river as you can in the city's fat cross. If a food source is inside the small city radius along with the copper/horse this will enable you to skip on mysticism for a while. In case there is no food around your copper/horse just settle beside, ideally on an hill, and grab as much green land as you can in the fat cross. From there you hook up the copper/horse as soon as you can. Of course if you are creative, you can make the city 2 tiles away from the copper/horse and get the best location possible.
In the second case you will want to settle your second city on the best spot around. Getting to understand where the good land is and where you don't want cities come with experience and knowledge of what each tiles yield. Let's put it simply. The goal is NOT to have many cities, only good cities. Do not build useless cities as those will cost you more than what they provide. It is normal that large parts of the world goes unused. This is your priority :
1. Food 1.Floodplains 2.Cows 3.Pig 4.Sea Food 6.Wheat,Rice,Corn,Deer
2. Resources Copper, Iron, Horses, Gems, Gold, Elephants -- Good coins, production boost and military units
3. Hills At least 1 hill, 2-3 hills ideally
4. Grassland Green is the good land. Desert and Tundra are useless. Plains are not good
5. Rivers Extra coins, health and fresh water
6. Calendar Resources Better later on, consider this good cottage land. Use plantations on those out of the fat cross
Always have AT LEAST one good food source for per city. The exceptions are if you just want to block the land for strategic purpose or much later in the game if you have lots of unused grassland most likely near a river where you settle a slow growing cash-only city. Next you want to make sure you have a few hills and extra resources to be able to produce units and buildings. You don't want your second and/or third city to be without hammer tiles; they must produce units too if you intend to conquer. Lastly you want to get as much green land in the city's fat cross.
On top of all this, consider making your cities on hills for the +25% defense bonus that cannot be reduced by bombardment. Always consider putting your border cities on hills. Build especially on plain hills, the brown kind, as those gives +1 production.
In the third case you may want to wait until you discover Iron Working to settle your second city. If you feel safe you can just grab the best city spot close just like in the second case and use a third settler to get your iron in the same manner as in the first case.
IX - Expansion's production
Now that you have your second and maybe third city built it is time to review their production priorities. Its pretty much the same routine for all new cities. You may want a warrior for police purpose. In most cases, you will want a monument especially if there are good tiles in the fat cross. You might also want monuments just for the defense bonus, line of sight and territory control. Next you will want a barrack. Consider a library if this is a border city and your army is sufficient or when you're aiming for coins.
Once you have the barrack up, start producing units. There are only 4 buildings you will want. In order of priority : Monument, Barrack, Library, Courthouse. When you have sufficient army go for libraries and when you start having 6 and more cities Courthouse become the priority. Never build a courthouse in your capital. Sometimes if the food is short or you plan on whipping a lot you can build a granary. Beside those buildings, you'll pretty much not build anything else. Also, only start build libraries and courthouse once you have assured your survival. Having a library in the capital early means extra science and should be considered if no threat are nearby.
X - Building an Army
Now that you have your 2 or 3 cities set-up its time to start producing the main body of your army that will go help with your Tribal war, start an Ancient war, defend from invaders or will support your catapults later on.
Simply put at this point you must monitor 3 things in your empire :
- Production tiles
- Food tiles
- Population points
Your capital and expansion(s) has at this point a few improved food tile and a few mined hills. We're talking about 2 to 5 viable tiles per city usually. Your goal is to get those squares to be exploited every turn and the extra population that isn't working on a food tile or a production tile is there to get whipped. This transform virtually every hammer and food points of your empire into units.
Now you don't want to whip as soon as the population exceeds the numbers of good tiles. First off, its best to whip right before the city grows or right after it has grown. It is also best to whip when there was already some hammers invested in the production. If you see that your axeman you are producing says 1 turn left and the bar is nearly full, whipping this unit will throw all the rest of the hammers on the next item that is most likely gonna be produced in 1 turn too. So it is valuable to whip a point of population if it is working a random unimproved tile! This way you can build a lot of troops very
quickly by whipping the population methodically. The problem with constantly whipping is unhappiness.
This brings us to the fact that whipping when there is no production invested in the item will reduce the hammer worth of each whipped population points by half. This is not always a bad thing and here's why. Let's say that you have a city that becomes unhappy. It is likely population 5, 6 or 7 and will occur usually if you have lots of high food tiles, such as sea food. You are producing an unit in this city that has either hammers invested or no hammer invested.
In the case hammers were invested, to fix the problem you have go in the city screens and CTRL + LEFT MOUSE CLICK to insert another type of unit in the queue. If you are making an axeman, pick a spearman or chariot. If you are making a chariot, pick a axeman or spearman... and so on. Then whip this unit for 2 populations. The extra unused hammers from the whipping and the city's production this turn will be thrown into the unit you were producing in the first place. Since it had already hammers invested, the hammers just keep getting thrown on the next unit if it is produced in one turn. This way you may be producing 3 units in 3 turns! In the case hammers were not invested, simply whip the unit for 2 populations to solve the unhappiness.
Repeat until city is happy. This can also be done with buildings to fix unhappiness problems sometimes quicker. Also later on elephants, preatorians and macemens cost 3 population when whipping with no investment. Just remember to keep enough population working the important, high yields, tiles and to let little break for the unhappiness to dissipate. This is the way to solve unhappiness before Monarchy.
Also this means you can have an unit ready from a 4-population city the next turn. This by itself is an unit that you can consider is actively defending your empire.
Unless you are extremely familiar with the game already, I would suggest starting a single player game and following the guide chapter by chapter to get a hold of all the concepts and strategies.
After teaching from scratch how to play multiplayer to my friend, I figured everything I told him could be crammed into a guide with easy to follow methods and no mathematic. When I started multiplayer I looked around for such documents but only found many articles on different subjects. This is a compilation of all the knowledge I got from these articles and my own game experience. I imagine now having possession of this document would have spared me hundreds of errors and set me to higher levels faster so I hope this will be useful for many. I know my guide is not perfect and I will probably update it with information as time goes on. For any comments send emails to "kiershar" on hotmail. Please forgive any errors as my first language is french and my english is not perfect.
On a side note, I prefer running a cottage economy most of the time, but remember that a specialist economy is sometimes viable if you know how to handle it. You'll also notice there is no reference to religions or wonders. That is because instead of making wonders you should concentrate those resources on surviving and killing others and if you get a religion it is only because you got it by chance along the path of technologies that allows you to win by means of war. If someone took the resources and time to make wonders they will most likely not stand the strength of your army. Vice-versa if you made wonders and they built armies.
I - Settings
II - Choosing a Civilization
III - Starting the game
IV - First technologies. Path to war
V - Exploring the land
VI - Tribal Warfare
VII - Worker's Priorities
VIII - Second city : Crucial expansion
IX - Expansion's production
X - Building an Army
XI - Ancient wars
XII - Monitoring your rivals
XIII - Improvements Technologies
XIV - Whipping the Cats
XV - The Big Wars
XVI - Getting the Lead
XVII- Advanced technologies
I - Settings
Verify you have these following options.
From the Main Menu, go to "Advanced" then "Options" and make sure you have these enabled :
- Wait at end of turns You don't want the turns to end by itself. Control everything
- Minimize pop-ups This makes sure you can move your units right at start of each turns. Get used to it.
- Quick moves Don't need animations
- Quick combat (Offense) Don't need animations
- Quick combat (Defense) Don't need animations
- Stack attack Crucial for field battles. Mastering unit selections with Shift, Ctrl and Alt is essential.
- Automated workers leave old improvements
And these disabled :
- Units Auto-promote Eww
- Workers starts automated Gross
Most FFA game will be played according to those settings :
- 5-6 people on small, 7-9 on standard
- Ancient Era start
- Speed : Quick
- Difficulty : Noble
- No Technology trading
- No barbarians Doesn't matter if there are barbarians. More escorts and defense needed, no major change in strategy
Note : Not every game can be won. Someone can start very close to you and take your capital with his warrior while you have only a scout. Sometimes the enemy may have horse or copper right under his capital and have troops on you too quick. I have seen someone get his settler killed on first turn. Sometimes there is no horses, copper or iron at all, meaning you are doomed as soon as someone starts a war on you. Luck of locations makes a big difference in many games. Don't get discouraged if you get killed because of very bad starting location.
II - Choosing a Civilization
There is 3 traits that are extremely useful for warmongering.
- Aggressive means your axeman and spearman gets an anti-melee, medic or extra strength right away. Your armies are much stronger.
- Financial enables you to have a superior economy that will allows you to support a large army and lead in the technology race.
- Creative makes the cultural defense grow very fast and allows you place your second city 2 square away from metals or horses.
Any Aggressive or Financial civilization are solid choices. Here are my favorites :
- Vikings : Financial, Aggressive. Berserkers (Amphibious, +10% city attack, macemen)
My favorite. Big strong army with the cash to back it.
- Rome (Augustus) : Creative, Organized. Preatorians (Strength 8 swordsman)
Creative gives city defense bonus fast and preatorians are very good until machinery comes out.
- Korea : Protective, Financial. Hwacha (+50% vs Melee, catapults)
Hwacha is extremely powerful. Especially good against Rome. Decent archer for early dangers.
- Zulu : Aggressive, Expansive. (Mobility spearmens)
Quick expansion, strong armies, spearman that rushes, pillage and chase mounted. Barracks that gives 10% maintenance reduction.
- Mali : Financial, Spiritual (4 strength, 1-2 first strikes, archers)
Awesome archers for potential rush offense and defense. Financial keeps the money flowing for troops.
III - Starting the Game
Now you have your settler and warrior/scout waiting for your orders. Check around with your scout/warrior and then settle the capital right where it stands unless the scouts see a bunch of floodplains, gems or good food resources a square away. From there you will have to look at what tile you lose to gain the extra floodplain or extra -good- resource. You might also consider settling on a plain hill because it will net you a +1 production and 25% defense bonus (Those are the brown hills. Do not confuse them with green hills or desert hills). Also valuable places to settle are on elephants, marbles and stones; they will net you +1 production. Most of the time, settling right on the tile you spawned on is the best choice because there will never be jungle, peak, tundra or desert in the city radius.
Time to pick something to produce. Usually you'll want to start with a warrior. If you have fish/clam/crab, start with fishing if you think you are safe, making a workboat to exploit the sea food is a very good choice. In this case make sure you improve a fish/clam/crab that is on coast tile so that it produce more commerce and you will want to improve coast fish first as it produce 1 more food than clam or crab. If you decide to go for workboat, just make the first warrior after the workboat or after the first worker if you feel no threat. If you see a warrior roaming near you, just switch the production inside your capital to work hills and plain forests; you'll get your warrior in time most likely.
After you built a warrior, make a worker. When your worker is out switch to Slavery and start chopping forests adjacent to your capital to make a settler. If something approach your capital, you can always whip a warrior. In summary :
Warrior - Worker - Settler - Worker Standard start
Workboat - Warrior - Worker - Settler - Worker Sea food start
Workboat - Worker - Warrior - Settler - Worker Safe sea food start
Workboat - Worker - Settler - Worker - Warrior Very safe sea food start
In all case, switch to slavery right after the first worker or after the settler if you feel safe. Sometime it may be worth it to whip your settler to make the new city as soon as possible, like in the case the copper/horses is outside the capital's fat cross. If theres threats always make extra defense/offense of course.
IV - First technologies. Path to war
Now you will have to pick a technology. First priority of all is getting good units. This means you will start by researching bronze working and mining if you have to before. From there the path splits.
If copper appears within 2 squares of your capital and you have a close neighbor, you will maybe want to try a rush on him. You will research wheel right away and hook up your copper as soon as you can. After producing your first worker, switch to slavery and then make 1 warrior per slice of 70 gold you have (Maybe you got lucky on huts!) and then a barrack. As soon as the copper is hooked, upgrade your warriors to axemens and spearmens, whip out another and command your worker to chop forests adjacent to the capital to produce as much axemans and spearmens possible. When you finished chopping everything adjacent to the capital start improving food resources and set up a few mines. Start marching toward the close neighbor, deny him resources and maybe destroy him. Build your first settler after you have sent 4-5 units toward your enemy and resume the general plan.
If you have no copper and you are very close to someone you might want to go for archery before. Also if your neighbor are Persia, Zulu, Egypt or you are Rome, you might want to go straight for Iron Working.
In all other cases, go for Animal Husbandry. From there the path splits again :
If you have horse within 2 squares of your capital and you have close neighbor, you will maybe want to chariot rush him. Research wheel right away and hook up your horses as fast as you can. After producing your first worker produce a barrack if you have the time. As soon as your horse are hooked, start whipping horses and send them directly toward the close neighbor. Work on capturing workers and do not letting him grab copper, iron or horses. Build your first settler as soon as you think you sent enough chariots to deny him copper and iron, usually 3-4 does the trick if you hooked the horses fast enough.
In all other cases that you have no horses and no copper in your capital, you will have to look around for these and research Wheel when you have located them. If there is no copper or horses within 6-7 squares of your capital go for Iron Working. If you see copper and horses close enough, skip on Iron Working until after you have Construction or maybe even after Monarchy.
V - Exploring the land
Exploring, getting huts and finding rivals locations is crucial. If your civilization starts with hunting, you will begin with a scout, otherwise you will have warrior. Warrior pretty much assure early survival and a potential offense while the scouts will ultimately gather more huts and informations on rivals and surrounding land. Both can perform the most important task : finding a suitable location for your second city.
You will want your warrior/scout to explore toward the best looking tiles and then make a half moon around your capital to see all the closest tiles to your capital while walking on hills to get a better view and huts to make cash and goodies. Once you have your first warrior made, make him go the opposite side of where your initial warrior/scout went and explore the surrounding 6-7 tiles from your capital. If any warrior roams near you make sure not to go too far. If you started with a scout this will be done in no time. Try to finish your move on hills or forests that will let you walk on some plains and grasslands the next turn. Once you're done exploring 6-7 tiles away from your capital you should have a good idea of where to put your second city and should start trying to locate others. Meeting as much people as possible will give a slight bonus to research so try to have contact with everyone!
If you see a close neighbor circle around his border and try to walk on hills to see deep in his land. Notice if theres copper or horses in his capital or around to be able to plan on the right units or even rush to deny him those resources.
Figure 1. Example of early exploration 1
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Figure 2. Example of early exploration 2
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VI - Tribal Warfare
In the advent that your initial exploring warrior meet another civilization's border within the first 5 turns, most of the time it is a good idea to wage war. In some case maybe you will want to switch research to archery right away and produce one or 2 archers as soon as possible, especially if you see horse or copper in the enemy's capital.
Sometime you may want to be sneaky and enter by the corner, where you can reach the capital in 2 turns after declaration of war. This way it will force your victim to garrison units right now or die. In any cases, with your warrior you will try to reach the capital proximity as soon as possible and walk ONLY on hills and forests. Try to capture a worker and destroy crucial improvement like horses and copper, but don't attack the capital if it is defended. Just make sure your rival isn't improving his land without having an escort. If he makes any settlers, chase them. Send any new chariots, axeman, spearmen into the fray as soon as they are produced. Attack only when you have odds, stay on hills and forests and try to keep as much units alive as possible; they are your future force to defend your catapults.
If you are the one on the receiving end, just don't attack when you don't have odds. Switch to archery right away and make an extra warrior and then archer. Escort your worker with the warrior or archer to chop forest and do some improvements. Eventually when you produce a settler, make your city right on top of the copper or horses if theres too much pressure. Once you have 2 units and you are camped by 1 units, send the extra troop (often an archer) to pillage the enemy. Deny defensive tile from the enemy and try to negotiate for peace.
The goal of tribal warfare is to deny copper, horse, iron and expansions. It is not to capture the capital of your rival but you can get lucky. Tribal wars are not very profitable but usually pave the way for the catapults to wipe the archers that your enemy stacked.
Figure 3. Quickest way to capital
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VII - Worker's Priorities
First priority is to hook the copper, horses or in the worse case scenario, iron.
Always have your workers on manual!
If there is horses or copper within 2 squares of your capital (Fat cross) your first worker will start by improving the copper or horse and then make a road to the capital or river linking the capital. Note that when you improve a resource tile on a river tile, you do not need to make a road to get the resource but only make a road in between the capital and the resource. Make sure you understand how rivers works.
Figure 4. Basic river setup
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Figure 5. Advanced river setup
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Figure 6. River setup with Sailing
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If no copper or horses are in immediate range, chop forests until the settler is produced. Usually after chopping 2 forests you have a discovered where the horse and copper is for your second city and your settler is 4-2 turns away from creation. Do not start chopping a third forest but instead make a road toward the future city site. When the settler comes out have your worker continue road and eventually follow the settler to the second city's location and start improving the horse/copper and making road all the way back to the capital, making sure to exploit rivers. Usually your second workers helps with the last roads between your capital and second city. Obviously, its is a priority to improve the resource first before making the road, simply because your city is gonna be able to exploit this very good tile right away. Make sure you assign personnaly the city to work the improved horse/copper tile.
After hooking your military resources, you will start improving food and production. This routine usually is the same for all cities :
If you have cows improve them as soon as possible! Then improve pigs, followed by rice/corn/wheat that is close to fresh water (Hover the cursor over the tile to know). Then improve the rice/corn/wheat not near fresh water. The only time you will make a farm is if you have no food resources, in this case you will make one farm ideally on a floodplain. If you have gems
or gold, get a mine on it right when you have a food source up. If you have floodplains, cottage them right after you got one food source and one mine up. Once you have one or two food tile up, make a few mines. Ideally pick the hills on riverside for the extra coin.
Once you have the food and mines going its time to start the cottage spam. First place to cottage is floodplains followed by calendar resource on a river tile. Then you want to cottage grassland on riverside followed by calendar resource not on a river tile and then non-river grassland. Usually you will cottage every calendar resource in your capital because you will not have the luxury to research calendar soon.
In between all that you have to make roads and chop forests. Make sure every city is linked by roads and do not make extra useless roads but make sure you use the shortest path in between your city. Make a couple road toward other civilizations and be sure to chop forests that rivals could take advantage, especially those adjacent to your cities. Good time to have your worker chop forests is after improving enough tile for your population, right after linking a military resource, to make a monument/library/courthouse in a new city or to create an army the fastest possible.
VIII - Second city : Crucial expansion
So here we are now with a settler out and 3 possibilities :
- Have copper or horses 3 to 7 tiles from capital
- Have copper or horses in capital
- Got nothin'
In the first case you will want to settle your second city on a tile adjacent to the horse/copper or even right on top should you feel pressure. its not bad settling on top as it will gives a bonus +1 production to the city, but usually a copper or horse is very good to exploit. Try having at least 1 food resource, 1 hill and as much river as you can in the city's fat cross. If a food source is inside the small city radius along with the copper/horse this will enable you to skip on mysticism for a while. In case there is no food around your copper/horse just settle beside, ideally on an hill, and grab as much green land as you can in the fat cross. From there you hook up the copper/horse as soon as you can. Of course if you are creative, you can make the city 2 tiles away from the copper/horse and get the best location possible.
In the second case you will want to settle your second city on the best spot around. Getting to understand where the good land is and where you don't want cities come with experience and knowledge of what each tiles yield. Let's put it simply. The goal is NOT to have many cities, only good cities. Do not build useless cities as those will cost you more than what they provide. It is normal that large parts of the world goes unused. This is your priority :
1. Food 1.Floodplains 2.Cows 3.Pig 4.Sea Food 6.Wheat,Rice,Corn,Deer
2. Resources Copper, Iron, Horses, Gems, Gold, Elephants -- Good coins, production boost and military units
3. Hills At least 1 hill, 2-3 hills ideally
4. Grassland Green is the good land. Desert and Tundra are useless. Plains are not good
5. Rivers Extra coins, health and fresh water
6. Calendar Resources Better later on, consider this good cottage land. Use plantations on those out of the fat cross
Always have AT LEAST one good food source for per city. The exceptions are if you just want to block the land for strategic purpose or much later in the game if you have lots of unused grassland most likely near a river where you settle a slow growing cash-only city. Next you want to make sure you have a few hills and extra resources to be able to produce units and buildings. You don't want your second and/or third city to be without hammer tiles; they must produce units too if you intend to conquer. Lastly you want to get as much green land in the city's fat cross.
On top of all this, consider making your cities on hills for the +25% defense bonus that cannot be reduced by bombardment. Always consider putting your border cities on hills. Build especially on plain hills, the brown kind, as those gives +1 production.
In the third case you may want to wait until you discover Iron Working to settle your second city. If you feel safe you can just grab the best city spot close just like in the second case and use a third settler to get your iron in the same manner as in the first case.
IX - Expansion's production
Now that you have your second and maybe third city built it is time to review their production priorities. Its pretty much the same routine for all new cities. You may want a warrior for police purpose. In most cases, you will want a monument especially if there are good tiles in the fat cross. You might also want monuments just for the defense bonus, line of sight and territory control. Next you will want a barrack. Consider a library if this is a border city and your army is sufficient or when you're aiming for coins.
Once you have the barrack up, start producing units. There are only 4 buildings you will want. In order of priority : Monument, Barrack, Library, Courthouse. When you have sufficient army go for libraries and when you start having 6 and more cities Courthouse become the priority. Never build a courthouse in your capital. Sometimes if the food is short or you plan on whipping a lot you can build a granary. Beside those buildings, you'll pretty much not build anything else. Also, only start build libraries and courthouse once you have assured your survival. Having a library in the capital early means extra science and should be considered if no threat are nearby.
X - Building an Army
Now that you have your 2 or 3 cities set-up its time to start producing the main body of your army that will go help with your Tribal war, start an Ancient war, defend from invaders or will support your catapults later on.
Simply put at this point you must monitor 3 things in your empire :
- Production tiles
- Food tiles
- Population points
Your capital and expansion(s) has at this point a few improved food tile and a few mined hills. We're talking about 2 to 5 viable tiles per city usually. Your goal is to get those squares to be exploited every turn and the extra population that isn't working on a food tile or a production tile is there to get whipped. This transform virtually every hammer and food points of your empire into units.
Now you don't want to whip as soon as the population exceeds the numbers of good tiles. First off, its best to whip right before the city grows or right after it has grown. It is also best to whip when there was already some hammers invested in the production. If you see that your axeman you are producing says 1 turn left and the bar is nearly full, whipping this unit will throw all the rest of the hammers on the next item that is most likely gonna be produced in 1 turn too. So it is valuable to whip a point of population if it is working a random unimproved tile! This way you can build a lot of troops very
quickly by whipping the population methodically. The problem with constantly whipping is unhappiness.
This brings us to the fact that whipping when there is no production invested in the item will reduce the hammer worth of each whipped population points by half. This is not always a bad thing and here's why. Let's say that you have a city that becomes unhappy. It is likely population 5, 6 or 7 and will occur usually if you have lots of high food tiles, such as sea food. You are producing an unit in this city that has either hammers invested or no hammer invested.
In the case hammers were invested, to fix the problem you have go in the city screens and CTRL + LEFT MOUSE CLICK to insert another type of unit in the queue. If you are making an axeman, pick a spearman or chariot. If you are making a chariot, pick a axeman or spearman... and so on. Then whip this unit for 2 populations. The extra unused hammers from the whipping and the city's production this turn will be thrown into the unit you were producing in the first place. Since it had already hammers invested, the hammers just keep getting thrown on the next unit if it is produced in one turn. This way you may be producing 3 units in 3 turns! In the case hammers were not invested, simply whip the unit for 2 populations to solve the unhappiness.
Repeat until city is happy. This can also be done with buildings to fix unhappiness problems sometimes quicker. Also later on elephants, preatorians and macemens cost 3 population when whipping with no investment. Just remember to keep enough population working the important, high yields, tiles and to let little break for the unhappiness to dissipate. This is the way to solve unhappiness before Monarchy.
Also this means you can have an unit ready from a 4-population city the next turn. This by itself is an unit that you can consider is actively defending your empire.