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

[Velociryx]

'k....Had to tear my eyes away from the screen at least long enough to do something else....anything else really....so I figured I'd write about civ, rather than play it....at least for a few minutes.

First, let me say that I'm now hopelessly addicted. Sid, Dan, Soren, and the rest of you....DAMN you! LOL....You guys have made a terriffic game, and it's been an honor to explore the world you made!

I've noticed that a lot of folks are complaining about the AI's rate of expansion, and it is my hope that the notes below will help with this somewhat. In my games so far (normal sized maps, regent level), I have been able to keep up with or handily surpass the AI's expansion, putting me in a very strong position.

I played the game organically....trying a few centuries with all the factions to see what their differences were, and found myself naturally gravitating toward the Egyptians as best suiting my playstyle.

Not to say that these notes aren't applicable if you play someone other than the Egyptians, but it IS something to keep in mind as you read these notes.

First off, I have come to the conclusion that there is no resource shortage problem. True, you don't always get the resources you want, and sometimes (esp. as the Egyptians) the lack of a horse resources means I can't even build my special unit, but....::shrug:: If I don't have it, I can simply use what I DO have and trade it with someone...ANYONE....and snag the resource I want. I've probably played thirty games so far, starting a new one as soon as I'm out of the ancient era (which is where I wanted to focus my attention first off), and I've never been so hobbled by resources that it was an issue.

It DOES change the character of your game, however. If you find yourself lacking in iron and/or horses, it makes you tow a much tighter diplomatic line....you NEED friends in order to secure lacking resources, so it alters the flavor of your game dramatically, but I'd count that as a good thing, not a bad one.

Frequent communication with the AI is important too. ohhhh, 'bout every 32 turns or so in the very early game, and definitely every other tech advance you get (and possibly sooner than that!). Even if you miss the Great Library (which I have failed to snag in every game I've played so far), you can keep up tech wise, if you're willing to spend some coin and do some wheeling and dealing. It's an interesting, vital, and challenging part of the game. I love it!

Warfare: Should be entered into very carefully, and with only limited (probably resource or choke point driven) objectives in mind. Don't think that you'll be able to sweep in and wipe a civ out in a single war. Probably not gonna happen (unless you catch them with like two cities in the REALLY early game or something). The game mechanics will put a choker chain on you. So...pick one or two cities, blitz in and take them, and then plan on suing for peace.

Starting gambit to keep pace with the pesky AI:
Step 1) Build your first city on turn one....wherever the settler lands. If it's a less than perfect city placement you can fix that later on, when you get a feel for the terrain, but don't d*ck around looking for just the right spot, cos speed is everything. Build it, get it over with, and start on a warrior.

Step 2) Pick a direction (preferrably with flat terrain, and hopefully with wheat or game in the tile), and start road building with your worker. Your first goal is to see if there's a river reasonalby close by, so you can start irrigation. Just like in SMAC, your overriding goal is to get a good food producing tile for your city as quickly as possible....this is all the more important in CIV3, since the AI will actually HOUND you where expansion is concerned.

If you don't find any rivers close at hand, and there are no freshwater lakes, then don't worry about it. Focus on finding tiles with wheat or game in them....not as good but it'll have to do.

Once you get a Warrior cranked out, send him in some other direction from the direction you sent your worker, and start building another worker.

What? No settler?

Nope. Not yet anyways.

Under despotism, you get four freebie units, you want two settlers and two workers, and you want to start your second worker the moment your warrior is done so you complete him while your city is at size two. Reason: You'll bounce back in pop quicker from size 1--->2 than size 2 --->3. Speed.

Also, with two workers heading in opposite directions road building, you'll speed future settlers along to their final destinations.

So....warrior, worker, warrior, settler. That's how I've been running my initial city in every game played so far. Warriors out on the fringes, looking for goody huts and shroud-busting, workers toiling on roads to new city sites.

After a city cranks out a settler, it'll need some time to bounce back, pop wise (unless you just have a killer food tile, which can happen), so I'll generally build a city improvement, alternating with more settlers as in (temple, settler, walls, settler, barracks, settler). That generally gives me enough time for the pop to bounce back, and steadily improves my cities.

Barracks: I've never built more than two.

Speed building: In the expansion phase of the game, when you're trying to rush settlers, don't bother sacrificing population to build stuff quicker under despotism....unless you're suffering from too rapid growth someplace. Better to assign a couple of workers to lumberjack nearby forest tiles. Not as fast, true, and I do not yet know if it willl help speed build a wonder, but if so, that's one way to give yourself an edge. Save your forests till you start working on a wonder, and then chop everything nearby down to help with the wonder. I DO know that disbanding troops sent to a city working on a wonder doesn't do jack for it.....tried that. ::sigh::

Send warriors out with your settlers! They can't fight, and are the equivalent to two pop points! Lose one in the early game, you'll be hopelessly behind!

If you find you're not alone on the continent, aggressively expand in the direction of your rival to cut him off. You can backfill later, and if you do this, vary your build order in those border towns to:
Warrior, Temple, Worker, Walls. (and no settlers from these unless you've just got some kickin' food tiles). That way, you can protect and improve those towns, build their culture quickly to prevent them from being absorbed by your rival, and improve your chances of absorbing his towns as you backfill and consolidate your position.

Corruption: I've had as many as 19 cities on a normal map, and have been using a non-commercial civ for the majority of my games. Corruption has been an issue, but never a crippling one.

More later, I'm gonna get back to playing! In my current game, I'm on an uber continent with five other civs, and the japanese/chinese(?) are on a nearby continent together (I'm in between the Indians and the Greeks with the Romans just to the right of the greeks).

I managed to stifle the Indians, pinning them in the northern corner of the map, but the greeks have been keeping pace with me (I'm running second overall, just behind the Greeks). Looks like an awesome game so far!

-=Vel=-

[Kuciwalker]

YES!!! Velociryx has Civ3!!!

You'll be making a strategy guide like you did for SMAC, right?

[Velociryx]

Weeeelllll.....

Since I've had the game, I can tell you that I"ve been playing nonstop...LOL....and, as I did with SMAC, I've been making careful notes to myself about what works and what doesn't....and the post above represents the first of many of these.

So....if the interest is there, and considering how much fun I had putting the SMAX guide together.....count on it!

-=Vel=-

[Libertarian]

I really enjoyed and appeciated your strategy notes, Velociryx. (I lived in Columbia for several years!) But I'm confused on one issue, the order of early units. There seem to be some typos or contradictions or something. Or maybe it's just me. Could you clarify these? You said, "warrior, worker, warrior, settler" but then mentioned having the two workers head out opposite ways. Did you mean "warrior, worker, warrior, worker"? Thanks.

[Buck Birdseed]

Don't you have a worker free initially?

[Libertarian]

I think that depends on which Civ you have.

[Whiplashr]

Hello it's my first post here to Apolyton. I wanted to jump in
if I could because of what you said about a city going quicker
from population 1 to 2 then from 2 to 3.

This is not true, at least not for me. (maybe it's
race related, I play as the Romans).

For me to get from 1 to 2 is to fill 20 boxes with food.
And going from 2-3 is also 20 boxes. Assuming a
standard rate of 2 food going into the box every turn
that's 10 turns each. (you seem to always be able
to do 2 surplus food a turn unless you have really crappy
squares around you).

It's been working out that way for me consistently.

Personally I think a good build order for a new city is

spearman (or two warriors, 10 turns)
settler (at this point you are pop2 and he should take 10 turns)
(finishing at the same time as you get to pop3)
warrior (5 turns)
worker (5 turns, right as they get back to pop 2)

this puts the city back to population 1, having made a
settler, a defensive unit or two, as well as a worker.

From here I either build a temple and start to build up
the city, or sometimes I may decide to make a couple
more units (to kill ten turns) and then make another
settler.
(sometimes I will start them building but make another
settler later, when they are at size 4-6 and I'm not ready
to comit to building them up fully yet).

Jim

FWIW I noticed that unlike other Civ/SMAC games you can
have a settler or worker finish on the exact same turn as
the population increase, where in others they would finish
in the turn AFTER they went up. If it says the growth is
in 6 turns and the settler is in 6 turns, it works, you don't
have to delay him). In Civ2 and SMAC you'd get the
warning that they would depopulate the city or whatever
and had to wait till they actually went up.

[The diplomat]

Vel: I hope you do make a civ3 strat guide at some point. That would be a strategy guide worth buying!

In the mean time keep telling us about your games and what you learn. Your thoughts on the game are so interesting.

[Yohan]

Very nice tips! I've been adhering to almost all of them except for the one about not building a settler when your city pop is only 3. Maybe that's why my expansion has been slower than the AI's. I'll give it a try, right now

[Travathian]

Vel,

Another reason to crank out those temples in border towns quickly, expansion of your borders. I've found that the computer has no problem planting cities down as close to yours as it can, but wont put one down inside your territory. This becomes critical if there is any choke point, or even a narrowing of land on the shared continent.

Once seafaring vessels appear, if you have border towns blocking the computer off, it'll send transports around those towns, to head for empty space within your territory if its in its expansion area. Needless to say, this means people need to either build more cities to fill up the space or more cultural improvements to enlarge borders.

I've found the AI to be very predictable when it comes to expansion. On numerous occasions, the computer starts on one side of an empty continent, and instead of filling the continent and moving its capitol, it'll try to expand to islands and continents which 'technically' are closer.

I've heard people complain that the computer expands into their territory, and seem offended by it! lol, if the computer is expanding into YOUR territory YOU are letting it.

Lastly, strategic resources seem to vary a lot, but I also haven't had major issues with them. Its just one more piece of strategy.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I found that the Expansionist/Industrious CSA's are very much to my liking. While I agree with Vel on most points, theres still something I want to add.

Since the Expansionist CSA starts with an extra scout, you don't need to send a warrior out to explore. You can use the Scout (0/0/2) which is twice as fast as a warrior and is 'free'. You can use the warrior as garrison duty. And since being industrious means that your workers work faster, it will help alot when building roads to the next city. Heres what i do at the very beginning

(1) Found city. Like what Vel said, on the first turn. (although if there is a strategic resource or luxery within 1 square, I like to found my city on that so I don't have to worry about getting up my culture and roads etc. un til later)

(2) Send scout in a direciton. The key to sending him towards good terrain and not towards desert in to be able to read your surrounding terrain. Civ3 seems to use a more meteorologically correct (sp?) randomiser for maps. If there is a chain of mountains to your north, there will *most likely* be behind them deserts and plains. (which could be good for incense)

(3) If your city is next to a river, then irrigate. if not, make him build roads in the direction of the scout. If you are on a river, you could follow it upstream or downstream to see if there is another suitable spot to found a city on.

(4) In your city, build a total of two warriors (or other defense units available) One of them use to protect the city, the other goes and protects the worker. Losing one this early can be a killer. If you see an AI workers around, you can go grab them too. An extra worker or two is a great start.

(5) After founding your next city (no more than 6 squares away) your first city should build another settler. After that, it depends on what you want to do. You could get a city improvement or another unit. After one of those, get another worker. Your second city should build a warrior or a city improvement (to get culture up, which ever you want to do.) and then build a settler and then a city improvement or another unit.

This is the order.
Washington: warrior, warrior, settler, unit/city improvement
New York: warrior, warrior/city improvement, settler, unit/city improvement

After the second city, your scout should find a location for another city, and you should also look for a few resources like luxeries and iron (if you have the tech) Then, you should try to find your nearest neighbor. You MUST (and I can't stress this enough) make some sort of binding treaty like peace or alliance or MPP if you know another civ. This is to protect you against all of those jag Warriors desecnding on you like locust.

The AI ignores culture until it runs out of space to expand. This can lead to some easy city taking if you get culture in your cities. You can do one or the other. Found lots of cities with hardly and culture and have a lot of land OR found 3-4 cities with high culture for the era and then assimilate the AI cities and then gain lots of land.

[Velociryx]

Hey again....had to come up for air once more.

Saved the game I mentioned previously to get back to it later, but I was curious how differently it would play on a huge map with sixteen civs vs. "normal" with 8. WOW! Talk about an epic, sweeping game!

I found out that the lumberjacking notion does indeed work with regards to speed building any improvement (including wonders), and it enabled me to easily snag the great library. I've taken to setting aside wide tracts of land specifically for planting trees, then cutting them down when I need to speed build something, and replanting to repeat. Works like a charm!

And, for my first totally unique idea here (at least, it's something I've not read on the forums so far!), may I present:

The Culture Bomb

In my latest game, I was playing the Egyptians again, and found myself with the Germans to the left, Aztecs to the right, and Americans to the north.

Ran through the general expansion program outlined above, and trapped the Germans against the Western edge of the continent, bulldoging my way into a nice, 20-city empire. Much of it is in the jungle tho, and unlike SMAC's jungle, I really despise this stuff, so I created SCADS of workers to get rid of it and drop in some more useful terraforming.

Fast forward to the late 700's AD. I'm running a Republic, and have been for some time. My culture is well above that of my neighbors, and I've had the good fortune to absorb one Aztec city thus far, with several others teetering....I can feel it!

So....as I began to wrap up my jungle conquest, the question came to mind, what the heck to do with all these freakin workers?

Culture bomb.

There's a point where my civ borders meet up with the Aztec, German, and Americans.

There's a few odd tiles of "no man's land" up there....none of it very good terrain, but workable....workable.

So...I gathered up all of my workers, sent a spearman and an archer with them, built roads into the no-man's land, irrigated the bejesus out of it, and then dropped a settler off to build a size one town.

Rushed in a Temple, and added two of the workers to the population.

Rushed in a cathedral the next turn (OUCH! Glad I saved money!).

With that in place, I added two more workers to the general population and began work on a coleseum. In a few turns, that got rushed too, along with an aquaduct, to keep it going.

By the time the city hit size 8, with all the insta-built cultural improvements, the small American city nearby and a lil' German town decided they kinna liked our Egyptian culture.

Never fired a shot, came away with two new towns....cool....

-=Vel=-

PS: I think you guys are right about the free worker maybe being civ-specific. Perhaps some civs get a free scout instead of the worker I've gotten accustomed to. Haven't played the exploration-oriented civs yet, so I'm not too sure. But if you don't start with a free worker, then yep....I"d still delay building the settler until you get your workers out doing their thing....if for no other reason than the convenience of speeding them (your eventual settlers) on their way to city sites via roads.

And good point re: expanding borders and temples!

-V.
(gotta get back to playing! LOL)

[Lawrence of Arabia]

All civs start with ONE SETTLER and ONE WORKER. EXPANSIONIST CIVS start with ONE SETTLER, ONE WORKER, and ONE SCOUT along with the ability to build more scouts (0/0/2) for 10 shields a piece (vs. explorer 0/0/2, 20 shields, requires a tech)

[Admiral PJ]

Yes, a jump in pop. from 2-3 is slower than from 1-2 , velocrix is right, whiplash your wrong.
Thats why its good to make settlers etc from small cities rather than big ones, as much more time and food is needed to get back upto the cities original size otherwise.

It seems a bit strange that you need more growth to get the same amount of workers, but it is an exponential growth thing, each extra pop is about twice as much or so more than the amount before - like the earthquake richter scale.

AdmiralPJ - Peter

[Whiplashr]

No offense but, how am I wrong? I've double checked,
in my game right now when I make a city there are 20
empty grain boxes to fill to go to population 2. When
it get's to population 2, there are again 20 boxes to be
filled. That's exactly the same amount of time.

If you have green squares (2 food) around you you
will get 2 food surplus per turn, which fills the boxes
in 10 turns. When you get the second worker, assuming
you have ANOTHER 2 food square, you'll still be pulling
2 a turn extra, so ten more turns.

Every city I make I do spearman (10 turns) and then
start settler (10 turns) and it takes 20 turns total for
the city to get to pop 3. This assumes again that the
squares in use by the city guys are at least the standard
2 food 1 shield type of grassland. I throw it all out the
window if I have much different terrain.

*shrug* I'm confused. If it's slower for some other
reason then please explain, but the amount of boxes to
fill are exactly the same.

Jim

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Thats in Civ2 Admiral, not Civ3. in civ3, there is a 20 food box between 1-2 and a 20 food box between 2-3

[Admiral PJ]

Sorry, I thought velacroix was right, I'm glad they changed it though.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
Sorry, I thought velacroix was right, I'm glad they changed it though.

Velacroix - isn't that an island in the Caribbean somewhere?

[albiedamned]

Vel - I don't understand why you recommend irrigating early with your first worker. I can understand if it is a plains square, but on grassland, irrigating won't improve your food until you get out of despotism (unless it's a food bonus resource square). I mine (and road) all the grassland early, and change some to irrigation later.

[Drago Sinio]

Vel, I was wondering about the irrigation thing too. I thought it did nothing for you until Monarchy. I also have noticed by clicking around on some of the grassland squares that some of them will generate two gold with a road, and some just one gold with a road under Despotism. Dont know why.

Either I have been playing too much and my brain is fried, or I need to sit down and read the manual. (Or perhaps both) LOL

Love the idea about sending the workers out to build roads. Does the AI use your roads though? I would be annoyed if the Ai used my own road to grab a luxury I was going for! LOL

Also I found in one game that the Lighthouse is quite valuable on some maps. I built it by default because it was the only one available to me at the time. But I discovered it allowed me to be the first civ on my continent to cross the ocean and meet the other 4 civs in the game. This allowed me to act as "technology broker" between the AI's on the two continents . I was getting gold, and luxuries, and technology hand over fist. It was like a techno Golden Age.

[Capt Dizle]

In my first game I was alone on a land mass and irrigated it all for naught as it took forever to get to Republic. I had to send galleys accros the sea (losing a bunch) to make contact. It was ugly. I was stuck in a tech vacuum.

I think mining grassland is the ticket here. There is a cute little trap we are all falling into, applying Civ2 playing concepts to Civ3. Well, can all of the old dogs learn new tricks? LMAO!

I also noticed that you can get to pop three and build that settler pretty quick. I am not sure that ICS has been greatly hampered by the change.

A couple of things I would like to point out to Vel and get his take on....building cities near rivers/lakes so that they can go straight to pop 12 without aquaducts...I am wondering about dense packing cities near fresh water. Can that be parlayed into turn advantage?

Another thing is how quickly you can churn out workers and use them to build up smaller cities. Can this be used to gain turn advantage? What is the cap on using workers to increase city size.

I also want Mr. Vel to investigate the lousy looking return I am seeing on specialists? Ugh..

Being on that island and desperate to escape taught me one thing. Once you get out of the ancient era you can get to magnitism in only four hops, but those can still be long hops when you are isolated and can't trade techs.

Vel, how are we going to deal with this early tech issue?

Lt. Col. jtrick, COC, ret.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Drago Sinio
Vel, I was wondering about the irrigation thing too. I thought it did nothing for you until Monarchy. I also have noticed by clicking around on some of the grassland squares that some of them will generate two gold with a road, and some just one gold with a road under Despotism. Dont know why.

The squares with 2 gold after building roads are probably along river banks. Every square along a river bank (regardless of terrain) gets an extra gold.

Love the idea about sending the workers out to build roads. Does the AI use your roads though? I would be annoyed if the Ai used my own road to grab a luxury I was going for! LOL

No one (human or AI) can use roads in someone else's territory unless they have a right of passage agreement. Anyone can use roads in neutral territory though.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Vel - I don't understand why you recommend irrigating early with your first worker. I can understand if it is a plains square, but on grassland, irrigating won't improve your food until you get out of despotism (unless it's a food bonus resource square). I mine (and road) all the grassland early, and change some to irrigation later.

If the square produces 2 food, then irrigating takes it to 3 which is reduced to 2 by despotism. However, if the square produces 3 (e.g. flood plains) or 4 food (e.g. grassland with cows) then the despotism loss has already been factored in, and irrigating produces an extra food.

[Velociryx]

'k....one more and I'm off to bed.

Yep...I shoulda been clearer 'bout the irrigation thing. I only irrigate tiles that will net me some benefit to do so....most of my worker time is spent road building, and mining if I'm not near some juicy forest tiles.

I also ran more tests on the lumberjacking thing re: wonders. I've gotten it to work twice, but more often than not....nada. I'm not sure why the inconsistency tho.... Will have to keep cracking at it.

Roads: I've never had a problem with the AI making use of my roads. Even if they violate my borders, I keep calling them up every turn and telling them to get out of dodge. The result is that the same warrior/settler combo of the AI keeps milling about, running back and forth along the same basic path (sometimes changing it up to try and sneak past my patrolling warrior), and it buys me time to get my own settler(s) in place.

Early Tech: Not sure about this one, JT....seems like the only good solution at the moment is to rush for the Great Library to tide you over till you get up and running good.

Caveat re: colonization - The end all/be all for the early game is one of those wheat stalks in grassland, esp. if you can irrigate it....sheesh. I had two of those about 8 tiles apart in one of my test games....totally blew the doors off of the AI's expansion. Had rome and greece bottled up so tight they couldn't make any ground, and each time they'd attempt to inch around my borders, their newbie cities would be gobbled up by my culture, so if there's on in your starting radius, or close enough so that you can found your NEXT city near it, you've got the early game made.

Freshwater (Jimmy)Trick: Very cool notion! I hadn't thought of that implicitly, though now that you mention it, I've noticed that I tend to cluster my cities (was about to type the word "bases" there...lol) near sources of fresh water, building along rivers or caddy-corner to lakes and such.

Found that, at least in my tests, coaxing your civ into a GA before you jump out of Despotism nets you some good, but the results aren't nearly what a GA in Monarchy/Rep/Dem would be. Don't know....I definitely see the turn advantage aspects of getting a hyper-early GA, but if you've only got 3-4 cities, it seems that those advantages would be greater by waiting till you've got a dozen or so established ones.

Also found out that the Romans are the WRONG people to pick a fight with in the Ancient era. They were more than a match for my War Chariots. In the test I just concluded, the Romans and I shared a smallish continent, and I had two wheat-stalk-thingies, so I pretty handily shut them down. Limited them to five cities on our continent, and I wound up with 11....(that's how big a difference they make!).

So....after massing troops at the border (6 Spearmen, 6 Archers, and 2 War Chariots), I declared war and attacked Rome.....BAD Idea! Not only did I not kill a single one of his four Legionaire defenders, but on the counter attack, he whacked what was left of my army.....so, I laid off of infrastructure, jumped into building nothing but chariots, ate the loss of three of my towns and retrenched for a big counter.

Finally sacked Rome (his only source of Iron), recaptured two of my three towns, and wouldn't you know it, but the friggin' game locked up!

Ah well....that's fate's way of telling me to go to bed I guess....::sigh::

Anyway....I think I've got the early game nailed down.

My one win thus far (since I'm not playing games to thier conclusion....only to the middle of the second age), came with a VERY early military victory, mixed with some cultural acquisitions of enemy towns.

Gonna get a good night's sleep, and then hit it again tomorrow.....back to normal sized worlds and 8 civs tho....game just takes too long otherwise, and for testing purposes, that's a good basis I think.

Ahhh, and I double checked....you guys are dead on about the size 1--->2 2---->3 thing being identical. And because of that, depending on the disposition of those starting tiles, I've altered my basic strategy to NOT building an additional worker right off, and driving right for the settler to jumpstart the civ. Shaved about 5 turns off of the overall speed, with no real reduction in capability (since, as has been pointed out, you're somewhat limited in what irrigation work you can do, and realistically, you only need 1-2 mined tiles too....I've found that one worker can pretty well keep pace.....of course, luxuries take a backseat with only one worker milling about in the very early goings, but then, that early in the game, their effect is negligible anyway.

'k.....off to bed with me before I break down and fire up the game again....

-=Vel=-

[SixArmedMan]

Well, he DID say (UNLESS IT WAS A SPECIAL FOOD RESOURCE). On normal grassland tiles though, mining IS the way to go until monarchy.

[Mahdimael]

I've been using a strategy that works for me so far in every game I've played (as USA).

1. Found city

2. Build scout (not warrior)

3. Build roads in direction of scout

4. When scout completes, make a settler

5. Next, make warrior or spearman

This has the advantage that you'll be exploring twice as fast, and will be able to discover more minor villages and enemy civs.

In general, this strategy will work unless you have lots of barbarians. The extra scout in the beginning is nice, especially because I invariably lose the first one to barbarians

[Zurai001]

In the many, many games I've played so far, I've found that irrigating grasslands is a *bad* idea, not a good one. Why? because you don't want a city to go above size 21. Specialists only get you 1 extra of whatever they produce, and even with pollution reducers I'm averaging 1 pollution every couple turns with cities over size 20. When they get up to 25, I average closer to one square a turn - sometimes even 2 a turn!

On the other hand, *mining* grasslands doesn't really slow down your food production that much, and it enables you to pump out military units - a key thing since the AI, even on chieftan, tends to build *very* large and well organized armies.

Oh, I've also developed an intense dislike for the Aztecs. They tend to produce swarms of their Jaguar Warriors, and are agressive in the extreme... I've been attacked out of the blue by them twice. What makes it worse is they can set up an 'infinite attacker' type thing with the JWs... attacking until they're at red, retreating, attacking with the next, retreating, through 30 or so JWs, then bringing in another swarm next turn. If you don't have 2-move defenders, there's nothing you can do about it!

[Sarxis]

I wonder if the lumberjacking inconsistencies has to do with borders. Perhaps production netted from cleared forests has to be done within your borders?

[GNGSpam]

In my experince so far, I prefer this method of expansion.

It seems to resemble the AI's pattern

simply

Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler, rinse repeat

Assuming average resources/food for all cities, when you drop down to one, the time it takes to get back to size 3 is enough time to make one warrior (then your size 2 and 9 turns away from size 3) and then a settler (should take 10 turns)

Meaning you hit size 3 and BAM another settler. Its quickest possible AND yields a sizable enough military to keep the AI from being overly aggressive.

However since your mostly warriors, you wont be able to enter offensive wars ethier.

Now I havent tried this beyond Regent, but it seems to work well especially early game.

Im not overly aggressive in combat, prefering the seemingly cheaper culture takeovers, but that may just be due to my unfamiliarity with the new nuiansances of the combat system.

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Roads: I've never had a problem with the AI making use of my roads. Even if they violate my borders, I keep calling them up every turn and telling them to get out of dodge.

The AI does not get benefits from roads inside your borders, unless you have a Right of Passage agreement.

Caveat re: colonization - The end all/be all for the early game is one of those wheat stalks in grassland, esp. if you can irrigate it....sheesh.

Actually, Cows are better. +2 food, +1 shield vs. the Wheat bonus of +2 food.