Hello everyone!



So although the AI (non-Wild Walkers) is relatively beatable on Endless difficulty, once you survive to mid game, surviving the early game is mostly a matter of starting regions. If you have a) an amazing starting region, b) relatively protected land (3-4 territories which is not that accessible to the AI) and c) luck, it is ok to pull off. However, I frequently start close to AI's which take control of any eligible colonizable regions relatively quickly (generally they can take 3-4 regions early game before I manage to take one) and I am now officially stubborn enough to not tweak the map setup in order to give myself breathing room.



So if anyone has any hints for a nice build order through which to maximize early settler output without crippling yourself for the remaining early game, I would greatly appreciate it!



My current relatively standard build order is:



Pop->Food till 2 workers

Founders

Pop -> Production

Mill foundry

Seed storage

Pop -> Food till 4 workers

Settler



If I have enough science (Vaulters/Ardent Mages) I sometimes go for Search Party, as I am still living under the illusion that it will help the early game. I obviously micro-manage workers to be as efficient as possible.

1. Mill Foundry - Food Storage - Science Library, always, with the goal of getting mill foundry as soon as absolutely possible. If playing a faction that already has one of those 3 pre researched, replace it with Language Square based on priority. Remember, just because you research language square first doesn't mean you'll immediately pacify villages, some might ask for 10 titanium/glassteel and where does that leave you on turn 3?



2. I usually play on fast speed so by turn 7 I will usually have 3 pop and will also build a settler before turn 10, always, early expansion is what's going to give you the upper hand mid game. Expanding late will give you lots of grief down the road. Never build a settler unless you have a minimum of 3 population. reducing your pop back to 1 will hurt you more than help you. The goal is to at least build a new city between each empire plan, 2 cities if you're booming in food.



3. I will only research Language Square if I can do it in 1-2 science turns tops off the bat, if not it gets a ride in the back seat until the 3 techs I mentioned get researched.



4. I don't bother with search party anymore, I can't remember the last time I researched search party.



That's about as far as I'll go without giving away too much of my strategy.

I find it interesting that people use a static build order despite different starting locations giving you different resource availability. I'm happy to concede that you guys may have thought about it more than me, and you may be right -- but personally I will change my order based on what I already have access to. For example if I'm lucky enough to find a spot with 25+ production, then I consider that sorted for the time being and push production research/buildings way back in the queue. Likewise, if I end up near a couple of decent science tiles, I know that Public Library is not going to be needed.

It really depends on your prefrence. If you are going for a balanced build then building what you lack is fine. If you are going for a specialist build then building more of what you have can snowball one aspect of you game.



For example...with vaulters, if I find a good starting area that has at least one science tile one every square, then build a library and immediately researching goelab can skyrocket my tech. I can literally make it to second age before the first empire plan hits. I will have to be super effecient with my other limited resources, but that leap in advanced weaponry and abilities a full age ahead of others can put me in a favorable position mid game.



I think the best part about this game is that there are so many ways to tackle the same obstecles, from buildings to expansion to market transactions, you can solve the same issues many different ways and finding what's optimal is a complex puzzle I enjoy that changes with every game.

Well i mostly play ardents and even dont research the foundry (due to the quests, giving 2 additional units early yay) . Its a bit lucky since you rely a bit on the ruins at the beginning for dust. the other thing is that you need the area explored anyway with the following quests so far its working good for me this way.

No food either, i try to instabuy the first settler to reduce the time the village get no food. Trading gives you additional science and dust and at midgame you usually can instabuy any building after a few turns. Didnt try it on endless difficult though. impossible was working fine.

DotBeta wrote:
Never build a settler unless you have a minimum of 3 population. reducing your pop back to 1 will hurt you more than help you.

What's your reasoning for this? I've been figuring that losing 1 population costs you 1x(worker efficiency) FIDSI, whether you're dropping from 2 to 1 or 100 to 99, but the lower your pop, the less food you need to earn it back, so building settlers should typically be more efficient the lower your population is.



(Of course, you also get zero food while the settler is building, so if the extra population is giving you enough industry to finish the settler in fewer turns, I suppose that might make up the difference...)

synra wrote:
I find it interesting that people use a static build order despite different starting locations giving you different resource availability. I'm happy to concede that you guys may have thought about it more than me, and you may be right -- but personally I will change my order based on what I already have access to. For example if I'm lucky enough to find a spot with 25+ production, then I consider that sorted for the time being and push production research/buildings way back in the queue. Likewise, if I end up near a couple of decent science tiles, I know that Public Library is not going to be needed.

You could argue the exact opposite, actually--a public library gives you +10 science and +10% science, which means the more science you're already getting from terrain, the more science the library will add. Similar considerations for the seed store, foundry, and mint.

Zottel500 wrote:
No food either, i try to instabuy the first settler to reduce the time the village get no food. Trading gives you additional science and dust and at midgame you usually can instabuy any building after a few turns. Didnt try it on endless difficult though. impossible was working fine.

I try to avoid buying out production on the grounds that it costs more dust than it saves industry. I spend most of the dust I get in the first 40 turns on maintenance and hiring heroes.



DISCLOSURE: Currently in my second game ever, playing Ardent Mages on impossible difficulty. I'm around 35 turns in, currently have 4 cities (which all have the 5 main era 1 buildings) and 4 heroes, building a settler for my fifth city, and I believe I have 14 techs. My next empire plan is going to be prod/sci tier 2 (but nothing else, due to founding so many cities so quickly). But I'm also sharing borders with two Necrophage factions, and I'm not sure how things will go for me if they declare war (my fifth city is going to leave one of them completely surrounded, with nowhere to go but through me, but it's also the last neutral region adjacent to me, so I don't have anywhere else to go, either).

Antistone wrote:
You could argue the exact opposite, actually--a public library gives you +10 science and +10% science, which means the more science you're already getting from terrain, the more science the library will add. Similar considerations for the seed store, foundry, and mint.

You could argue that... but then most things you research early on aren't utilised until you can slot them into your production queue. Unlocking 10 improvements in 10 turns has limited use unless you can actually build them. This might vary in some rush strats of course (where you are targetting a specific T2 tech then running straight at the enemy).

As a standard consideration, I would add that after a new city has two pop, it's time to interrupt the build order to slide in a Boroughs Streets. Besides the pluses that the District adds all on its own, it can also add up to 3 additional hexes (nearly doubling the city size) = more Food, more Industry, more Science more Influence, etc. After that is built, build a Settler and grab another region. Then go back to the regular build queue until pop hits 4. Build another Boroughs Streets, followed by another Settler. Then repeat the process at pop 6, 8, 10, and 12.

Going from 7 to 10 hexes does not double the city size. District should come after most other T1 buildings.

Settler's timing should vary a lot depending on your main quest and amount of technology.

Ideally, it should come after your first/second district and before you enter era 2, as it will become more expansive.