Just a couple of newguy questions here. How soon should you settle your first city? I'm coming over from Civilization 5, where planting your settler down on their start hex was a good move ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but I've learned that's certainly not the case here. Should I just split my starting army and pick a space my settler can get to from what they uncover? Or is it worth waiting half a dozen turns to map the territory you spawn in and poke your nose into adjacent ones before picking a spot?



Also, how soon should you make your second settler? As soon as possible to increase productivity, or wait until you have enough population to be able to spare one? Or just wait until a pacification quest prompts you to expand?

seems kind of similar. every turn you don't settle is one more turn your opponent is getting ahead of you. i'd say if you see something really good a couple hexes away you might want to go for it. maybe a good food hex. otherwise just plop it down. as for the second settler i'd say wait till after your empire plan. each city raises to cost. have the settler built and ready to go if you want to speed that up.

Rule of thumb is:

Look around and settle at first turn. (That mean less than 3 hexes from starting position usually.) Choose anomalies/rivers/forest/more food in that order of importance. That's it. Never wait for second turn. Maybe if you are really good player and playing cultists then it's option, but not otherwise.

myrec wrote:
Rule of thumb is:

Look around and settle at first turn. (That mean less than 3 hexes from starting position usually.) Choose anomalies/rivers/forest/more food in that order of importance. That's it. Never wait for second turn. Maybe if you are really good player and playing cultists then it's option, but not otherwise.

You're contradicting yourself slightly - If there are better resources more than one turn away it is well worth skipping the first turn for. Especially anomalies.

Settle Turn 1 if at all possible.



Settle Turn 2 if the location is truely that much better, and includes a anomaly with +10 Approval.





Second City:

This city should be settled no earlier than Turn 20, provided you set your EMPIRE PLAN on that turn before you settle the city. Cities double the Influence cost of EMPIRE PLANs. Keep in mind by the time you make the settler, and then have him travel all the way to the preferred location several turns have past, so I'd say you're looking at starting to produce a settler at the earliest between Turns 10-14 at Normal Speed.



Typically(depending on faction), you'll want to have your core buildings built first at the very least: Founder's Memorial, Mill Foundry, Seed Storage, Empire Mint, and Public Library



Lastly, if playing on Minor Factions: Hard, you'll need your 2 starting units, 1 hired mercenary, and 1 hero to safely escort the settler to his desired location and likely not incur unit losses.

minor faction on hard = unit loss. heh. really do that part of having an extra unit and hero on escort or you will lose settler. its a great way to play the game because the minor factions actually cause you trouble and require you to try to pacify them. fun but you can't just run around with a single unit like on normal.



but what yamasee said is how i go about it. seems to work well for keeping up with the AI.

Thanks for the advice, everyone! Trial and error was going rather slow for me, it's nice when the community can help you out.



Yamasee, you call those buildings the "core buildings". I understand you just mean they're all vital tier 1 productivity boosters, but should you generally build those before luxury/strategic resource extractors, or is it a case of what you have available to you and when?

Explanation on what i called the core buildings: Founder's Memorial, Mill Foundry, Seed Storage, Pubic Library, and Empire Mint



Getting these down early exponentially increases your growth in nearly all situations...



- They are cheap to build(75 Industry)

- They have great resource bonus(6-10 static FIDS) and 15% modifier

- The benefits of these building is unrelated to terrain; therefore, they're always beneficial



You also have to keep in mind that settling a new city can be rather expensive, as it likely will be a drain on your empires Dust income for at least 10 turns. More than that if you count the army cost to escort the settler their in the first place. So you need your base FIDS to be increased first or the early game negatives on your Empire will be greater than the longterm positives.



As to Luxury and Strategic resources. These will have no impact on your empire till turn 15(i.e. 11 Turns from when they're completed to produce 10 for a potential BONUS), even if you built them first. But you can build these when you hit stop-gaps in your research(when you don't have the next core building's pre-requisite tech yet). Normally I'd take the strategic resource first, but in ERA 1, Spice, Gold, and Wine should be taken ahead of them.