Your Building Sequence in the Early Game

[T-hawk]

Warrior-Warrior-Warrior-Granary. First two warriors go exploring; the third one stays at home for police and barbarian defense. That reaches the despotism 4-free-units mark exactly, where the civ stays while the granary builds.

After the granary, it'll be a settler about 60% of the time, a worker 30%, and military to fend off barbs 10%. It's a worker if I'm falling behind on improved tiles. That depends on several factors: how fast the city is growing with food bonuses, whether I'm industrious, the amount of labor required by the tiles at hand, and if I got a free city or settler from a goody hut.

The capital will keep producing settlers at its best rate, building military inbetween if its growth rate can't keep up with its settler-build rate. Cities #2, #3, and #4 will, in turn, be another settler factory at the best food site available (it'll build a granary), a military factory, and either a wonder builder (on lower difficulty) or a second military factory.

Temples usually don't factor in until somewhat later, unless a particular city site REALLY needs it to pull in two or more good tiles. I will usually pick city sites to have good tiles available without border expansion, or by fill-in from adjacent cities.

Just my thoughts, from someone who's registered a half-dozen Deity wins.

[Master Zen]

I've found building spearmen at the start on Deity to be rather helpful. Sometimes the AI has a nasty habit of attacking you after first contact, and having a few spearmen will cause them tremendous losses and force them to sue for peace.

On emperor and below I usually go warrir-warrior-worker-granary (on a non-industrial civ) or warrior-warrior-granary-settler on an industrial civ.

[peterfharris]

I want them spearmen ASAP too in case the AI gets nasty real early (or the barbs get lucky), I am a bit paranoid about the neighbours. oh, and I like to have a barracks very early so my spearmen can start as veterans.

OTH I want a granary ASAP. Usually I start with 2 warriors, (spearman if possible or third warrior) then granary, then settler. If no one is nearby I build another spearmen (or warrior if still no bronzeworking) to accompany another settler. After that it all depends. Could be any of: more spearmen and settlers combos, or a barracks and troops with the odd settler thrown. Meanwhile the second and third cities will be building either granaries to produce settlers or a barracks to produce veteran troops. It will usually be quite a while before I build a second barracks.

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by cumi
Mountain Sage,

We have to try some other civs, too .

Why don't you go to my thread 'Pragmatic Ultimate Power'? There are some saves of different games you can download and lots of screenshots. You could then compare the different achievements and playing styles, yours including, of course... (and post them there )

[trev]

I avoid building improvements in the earliest stages of the game. Two reasons for this

Improvements cost money to maintain, I like a very high science rate for the first half dozen tehs or so, so I can keep level or ahead on techs with the ai's, providing better trading opportunities early - also usually play aztecs and use jags as scouts gaining science from huts as well.

Also the time between settler builds is used to build armies, a larger army deters attacks from ai's ( very rarely am attacked when I build plenty of armies) and also gives the option of early attack on the ai of my choice and I have found that all of my good games have resulted from early attacks on ai's

Once I learn republic I change to being a builder bulding marketplaces for money and temples, cathredrals etc for culture and happiness. Depending on tech available from ai may use zero science rate at this stage

[lmtoops]

After playing a couple of OCC games, I've come to understand that waiting a little to start the REXing process could be of benefit. Building an early granary may be the way to go.

I also like the idea that after a settler build, you only drop to pop. 2 or 3. Droping back to pop. 1 all the time is very inefficient.

I need to try this strategy on my next game.

[Nakar Gabab]

The effects of a granary early on cannot be understated. Unless your capital is in a horrible spot, it's better to get a granary up ASAP ().

In a current game (which I will likely post to the PUP thread), I had Washington build a granary and pump settlers while I had New York set up shop and start building the Pyramids. Granted, I got lucky and got a free settler from goodie huts, but I didn't get it on the first turn or anything and had to move it about fifteen tiles. The result is that your second city or so can start working on a crucial early wonder like the Pyramids or Great Library, and actually have a good chance of getting it, while you still pump settlers like mad from the first city (switch roles if the city is in a bad spot and your first settler founds a 'settler pump' city).

The third and so on cities build barracks and archers (if close to the target foe, as I was to Germany) or spearmen (if in the core or on a peaceful front). The archers go on the hunt, the spearmen spread out to defend. Doing this, I was able to get a territory advantage even before I cleaned Berlin's clock, snag the Pyramids, and have several strong military cities building horsemen to snag a knight upgrade and blast Montezuma in the early Middle Ages.

And it all started from a Scout-Warrior-Granary-Settler sequence.

[cumi]

Finally I finished an excell file. Using it, the building sequence in a city can be very easily simulated.

Ther is a column, where the production queue can be entered and a list of turns with the exact shield, food number, city size etc.

In additional table the terrain can be entered.

The iteration uses these tables as parameter.

....but I am not sure, if I can post such a file in this topic. I am not allowed to post in civ3->Files topic...

May I post it here?

[Master Zen]

Of course you can! I think the board doesn't allow you to post excel files (.xls) but just zip it and post the .zip file.

[Catt]

My build varies based on circumstances, obviously, but I generally try and get an exploration force out and then focus on expansion - that means granaries, settlers, and workers with defense units thrown into the mix when growth-shield production availability calls for it. That might mean W-W-G-S with scouts subbed in for expansionist civs. With a better understanding of my surroundings and my opponents' positions / strengths, and with REXing slowing, I will tend to shift my efforts into infrastructure or units, depending on near-term objectives.

Catt

[cumi]

Here is the file for simulating the building sequence.

Please try it, and feel free to write a feed-back or comment!

P.S.:Sorry, to non-Windows Excell users....

[Gen.Dragolen]

cumi,

Thanks for the spreadsheet. Now the only two things to figure out how to include: 'lumberjacking' of an available forests and pop rushing to get the granary built in short order. Those options should be able to build a granary in very short order.

I usually skip the granary and build a settler first if there is a choice site that the AI will take if you don't have that settler ready. And that is in most of my games, unfortunately. I have only played one game where I was able to REX full tilt, and there I had 3 food bonus squares between the first two cities and a river close by. Managed to get a total of 8 settlers out before it was time to build an army and wreak a little havoc on the neighbours...

D.

[cumi]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
cumi,

Thanks for the spreadsheet. Now the only two things to figure out how to include: 'lumberjacking' of an available forests and pop rushing to get the granary built in short order. Those options should be able to build a granary in very short order.

Yep! I wanted to add things like that.

Next thing will be, that the terrain will be also a function. Let's say: first 5 turns 1 shield, later 2 (after mining). Lumberjacking will be also not so difficult, althogh I almost lost my nerves with excell. Maybe I will try to make the whole sheet in C++.

There is a bug in the sheet. In other topic, Arrian posted, that the shield-production of the newly added citizen counts already for the same turn and not beginning with next.

cheers

cumi

[Master Zen]

Excellent work cumi

I've always wanted to do something like this, but my patience with excel is very very limited...

[Mountain Sage]

Cumi, my

Now, back to the thread: 2 questions for you:

1. If you want to Archer-rush, when do you build barracks and how many?
2. Do you go on rexing, or just build Archers?

[cumi]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
Cumi, my

Now, back to the thread: 2 questions for you:

1. If you want to Archer-rush, when do you build barracks and how many?
2. Do you go on rexing, or just build Archers?

Good questions!

1. I think, Arrian or Dominae didn't wrote anything about barracks. I think the archer-rush can be planed without them. You can train your units on the (poor) barbarians.
2. I don't really think, that rexing and archer rush can go well together...At least for me...

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by cumi

Good questions!

1. I think, Arrian or Dominae didn't wrote anything about barracks. I think the archer-rush can be planed without them. You can train your units on the (poor) barbarians.
2. I don't really think, that rexing and archer rush can go well together...At least for me...

1. From what I understand (I even do it regularly!), the whole point is to RUSH. If you spend your time chasing barbarians...

2. I would agree with you, but then when do you start it? If you have only 2 cities, you get a weak rush and if you wait until you have 5, then it's probably too late...

[Arrian]

MS,

It depends on which type of "archer rush" you're going for.

If you're going to build more than 1-2 archers, I'd say build the barracks.

But I typically try to send out 1 or 2 regular archers (get 'em out quick!) to find potential targets as soon as possible. A warrior will go first. If he sees borders by the time I finish an archer, I que up another archer & send the first one to join the warrior. Then the 2nd archer joins them and I march on the capitol of that civ. If my 1st exploring warrior found them that quickly, they're too damn close.

If my warrior hasn't found anything yet, I will probably sent the archer in the opposite direction (especially if the warrior has uncovered unpromising terrain). I may also decide that I don't want to spend the time building another archer & switch over to a granary. In this case, I've pretty much guaranteed I can't grab somebody's capitol, but I still stand a chance of bopping a settler team - and if I kill some barbs first, I may have myself an elite archer with which to do my damage.

-Arrian

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
1. If you want to Archer-rush, when do you build barracks and how many?
2. Do you go on rexing, or just build Archers?

1. As Arrian said, it does depend on the type of archer rush.

As a rule of thumb, I'd count veteran units to be worth slightly more than the number of hit points. So for a militaristic civ a barracks and 3 archers with 4 hit points each is slightly better than the equal costing 4 archers with 3 hit point each. Although you can divide a larger regular army and heal them more quickly, the casualties are higher.

The big disadvantage of building the barracks is that you might miss a opportunistic target. This is why a strategy of hoping for one is helped by building archers before barracks.

So I'd only build a barracks if I knew exactly what the target(s) is (/are) going to be and expect that it might need that many archers.

It's rarely going to be worth a non-militaristic civ building a barracks for an archer rush unless they're waiting to research warrior code or would lose shields switching from a granary or settler due to a change of plan.

Another thing is that regular spearmen are less worse compared to veteran ones than archers so if I need those, they are often built in cities without barracks.


2. Broadly speaking no for a serious rush. Build as many cities as you need for archers then stop until you are fairly certain that you will have enough.

This tends to mean two cities if you have a close rival you want to take out as easily as possible.



In general archer rushes are too dependant of your current knowledge to give any good rules. I've still not worked out how to get them working all the time so you could ignore everything I've said on that basis.

For example, my capital build order in AU401 just doesn't make any sense out of context:

scout, barracks, archer x4, granary, pyramids.

The last time this topic came up, I criticised Datajack Frenit for building a barracks and too few archers before the Pyramids but it can reasonably happen.

[Arrian]

Good rule of thumb, Nor Me:

If you have a known target and you want them dead or crippled, build the barracks, and then build a bunch of vet archers. If not, such an early barracks might be a mistake.

My early archer builds are typically all about opportunism - I usually do not use archers to conquer. I wait for swordsmen & horsemen. The archers are for harrassment & maybe GL farming (via whacking single AI counterattackers as they appear).

-Arrian