Need help with early game....

[jadlakha]

I am trying to play on Regent, and I am playing on huge map with 16 civs, with all the other map settings set in middle(everything balanced). Well I always seem to get far behind the AI in everything and it becomes impossible to catch up very early on in the game. In fact when I make contact with the civs for the first time, they always have around 4-6 more advances then me, and I have absolutely nothing to trade them for them, I am always dirt poor, very stupid and technologically backwards, and I can never seem to find decent spots for cities. Can anyone who has been successful on Regent with my settings give me hints on how to start out? My early game seems to be the weakest. BTW I did play my first game on cheiftan, and I won quite easily, but the advantages made it to easy.

[HunterAssasin]

I have the same problem, I played my first few games on Warlord and beside my very first Civ 3 game I beat the heck out of the comp, launching ICBMs and laughing as the other civs are ripped apart by them and they are still in the industrial age.

Then I tried to up the difficulty to Regent and I can't catch up with the other Civs they are all more advanced then me and some are twice as big even.

[Beau]

I started on reagent and I am currently playing on it against 8 cpus one I wiped out by the 13th century.If you want to get ahead you have to do the following.

Until about 10 AD or you have 15 cities nothing NO BUILDING of anything but settlers and warriors except for the cities which excell in shield production not food production, those can build structures or wonders. Also pump out a worker every 2-5 turns til you have about 10-15.

Land grabbing is the most important thing. Build cities anywhere that don't have tundra or dessert. The rest of the terrain can be manipulated later on so don't get picky. Try to center all of your cities around your capital, then later on conquer another civ take over his already fixed up land and build a forbidden palace and cities on his land. I have currently done this to the english after wiping them out I placed 8 cities on there ex-territory and a forbidden palace. I now have 24 cities in 1400 AD and plan to make them all very productive by the 18th century. I have over 30 workers working all the land and I have all my main older cities producing calvery sending them down to the new cities and selling them for a 20 shield per calvery boost to each production.

With the lack of things to build this is perfect to help the newer cities get ahead fast. Then inbetween building calvary build whatever new improvements you get along the way.

I am currently at war with the entire world and I am not dieing. I am technologicaly superior to all civs and I am in 4th place with score which won't matter when I get nukes because I will have 24 cities producing nukes non-stop and wiping the world away.

Hope this helped.

[HugoHillbilly]

I recently won a game on Warlord which wasnt too challenging so Id thought Id up the competition a notch. Holy Sh*t is regent hard. Ive lost twice in a row now. Discouraged, im gonna go back to Warlord for a couple of more games. Then with new confidence will I tackle Regent again.

Its hard to find an in-between I fine, your either whooping the AI ass which is fun for a bit, but then not, or they're whooping your ass which isnt very fun at all.

[Beau]

Well for me on reagen I am currently in a stalemate with the world. My newer cities keep getting bombarded by dumb japanese frigates. Theres so many of them that there destroying the population and roads and irrigation and mines its annoying.

But the cpu and I are in a dead stalemate I don't know that I could hurt anymore of them even if I wanted to I'm just defending my land trying to get 8 new cities in the 16th century up and running which is hard with all the damn bombardments.

[FeathersMcGraw]

Originally posted by Beau
Until about 10 AD or you have 15 cities nothing NO BUILDING of anything but settlers and warriors except for the cities which excell in shield production not food production, those can build structures or wonders. Also pump out a worker every 2-5 turns til you have about 10-15.

I'm still playing on Warlord, so YMMV, but I've been playing Religious civilizations (primarily for the Anarchy-minimizing attribute) and I find that building a temple in all new cities produces excellent returns, both in terms of keeping civil unrest at bay and at assimilating rival civilizations who decide to park their own cities right outside your borders.

On standard and smaller maps, it's very difficult to expand more quickly than the computer and maintain adequate defenses. So let the computer expand, and take his cities from him bloodlessly.
On larger maps, however, the rabid expansion strategy is the superior one.

[remconius]

I have the same problem. In the mid-game I catch up, but I tend to get behind in the start. When there is a civ close to me they have 10 cities when I have 5.

What is the best/fastest way to build the first 10-15 cities?

[Sniffer]

The tips I found in the Hurricanegaming guide helped a lot with the early years of the game (which is when the AI seems to play its best and cheapest). I started to focus a lot more on either increasing culture, my military, or on taking pure territory instead of doing all of them. That way, I didn't become number 2 or 3 at everything. By taking a strategy and sticking with it through most of the game, I was able to get a great game together. I'm almost done with the current one, and I have 2700 points by 1850! I figure that by winning with the space race and after 50 or so more turns of gaining ground, I can get over 4000 points from this one. Not bad.

[SirSebastian]

Well, I was getting kicked around on Warlord =P But now I'm winning a Regent game with 8 AI on a normal random map... and I'm the most technologically advanced by 4-6 techs in the Early Industrial Age and the gap is increasing.

a) Don't be afraid to lower science early on in favor of gold... use the gold to buy technology, and then sell it to someone else.

b) Get into Republic. This is obviously a preference...

c) Manage Corruption. My Empire (at least on my starting continent) runs west to east across the whole continent (however... the decision to do that made me very thin north to south.. but I have ports on both sides). In the far west is my palace, in the far east is my forbidden palace. Corruption is minimal in Republic with courthouses. I'm playing as Indian (for some bizarre reason which I'm not sure of)

d) Pay attention to Luxuries! If you have marketplaces and several luxuries, you can easily get by with 0% luxuries... you will need this freed up money / sci. This is how you will get ahead!

e) I managed to take over 2 Zulu cities with culture... Every little bit helps.

f) The Germans are certainly the axis upon which the world turns... with their ironically French allies. I've had several skirmishes with them. So far, I've only kept 1 city of theirs... but the location is very important (think Hawaii... the German and French are on a diff. continent... this island and a few others are in the middle). Earlier on, they declared war on me and got the Zulus to attack me (very smart, since they wanted me out of the way and couldn't immediately get to me). I knew I was in trouble. So, I bought the bullet, and I paid off the English to fight the French (it cost me... big time), and the Japanese to help me with the Zulus. The Zulus lost several cities, sued for peace... I am a nice guy, and accepted. Unfortunately, the English fell entirely, even though I started giving them tech like crazy. Better them than me.

g) So here I am... with a few extra cities... and ... guess what, I can research tech amazingly fast. So, I could just keep it.. but... at one point I had 50 gold per turn in the Late Middle Ages just from selling tech off. Again... there's an extra 10% you can lower your taxes and throw it into sci, with 0% luxuries... the cycle just keeps supporting itself.

h) I THOUGHT I would take a few cities on the main "European" continent. I was checked by a German Army though... ugh! I hadn't expected that. And.. they just got gunpower. Either I'm going to have to get tanks or go heavily on Artillery. One interesting note is that I can now Mobilize for War.... I might try that if I can't start making ground before it's WWI all over again.

Thanks for listening.

[HunterAssasin]

I'm doing good for the first time on Regeant my basic strategy so far is basically whenever I get a new tech I sell it to most civs for as much gold per turn as I can(taken from this board ) and now in the late middle ages I get about 100 gold a turn with 9-10 in science and I'm keeping ahead in tech while slowly gaining new ground through military conquest.

First I took the English through a long war, then the Russians, now I'm looking to get the Germans while keeping nice with the Americans, Iriqois, Aztecs, and Egyptians so I can sell new tech to them.

[conquistadore]

Expansion is most important at regent level. Expand aggressively. After your first city, build a worker and a settler and send them far away in the direction you want to expand and have them establish a city there. Likewise, establish the next few cities in a similar way so that you can mark out your nation " border" early in the game.

Culture is important in these border cities and after you are done with them, start building interior cities to "fill up" your civilisation.

At regent level, you will never be far ahead of your rivals' technology. Start a war only after careful planning and fight slyly. Do things like securing choke points, cutting roads and resource supplies, etc...
Mornachy is the best government form up till the medieval age IF you want to wage war. But i had no problems waging wars while using democracy in the industrial age as i rushed the Universal Suffrage wonder and had police stations to quell war wariness.