So, I'm interested in starting as these lads and ladies, but thus far, I haven't had any luck and mostly just fall behind. Starts like the Harrapans, Egyptians, and Babylonians are easy enough, and actually come off as incredibly strong, possibly because its the most "vanilla civ" thing to do. Harrapans and Egyptian starts have catapulted me so far ahead of everything else while other stuff hasn't lended itself to the explosive economies they can generate remotely as well. I was never really one for the dust factions in Endless Space and Legends, so maybe that contributes somewhat but the disparity just seems so drastic.

I feel clueless trying things like Aesthete and Merchant starts, (like how do I generate any money at all before rushing writing and trading is just a one time boon, right?) so feel free to lay down some basics.

I've noticed that if you pick a merchant culture, the AI is more keen to trade and laid back.

Of course they will still attack your scouts if they are superior on military, but if you hold them off, you should be able to keep trading with them.

Luxury resources are the key to any early merchant culture.

Porcelain specifically can increase your gold income in the first turns, dye is also very good, thanks to it's flat boost to industry.

Acquire as many luxuries resources as possible, to prevent the stability to drop down, keep only Byblos (Phoenicians capital) and build outposts on territories with a luxury and strategic resources.

When time will come you can merge them to your capital.

If you need to build another city but that AI has claimed the territories around you, there are two paths...

First option: you could look for Independent People and include them into your empire, this is not super optimal though because they usually got just one city which has already been enveloped in other players territories.

Second option build a Bireme and already start looking for nearby islands if you have a hint of coastal water nearby and you suspect it to be the new world, you can then start planning your next cities there with the benefit of exploiting the resources there, try to beline the right tech for it in the tech tree, Norseman culture can help with early colonize.

I was lucky and found a set of islands with the great barrier reef, this allowed me to build good harbors thanks to a lot of coastal water present around the islands.

Their EQ is not too bad, but it can be improved a bit more, because I think in most scenarios, the Nubians have better overall traits, what could help Phoenicia could be either an increasing in the gold output from the harbor or give harbor +2 influence per the amount of coastal water exploited, so that it might help you with your outposts settlements, maybe even increase the amount of coastal luxury resources could be useful.

I thought about making Phoenicians a 50% discount on the sailing tech at the start of the game, but I realized that if they are going to implement a polinesian culture, that could better suit them.

They can be good, but are very situational and definitely needs a slight buff.

Still my favorite culture of all, with the Norsemen.

For me its always your starting conditions which define culture I want to pick. Have a close neighbor which prevents you from expansion? - take militarists. Have a good production area (rocks, mountains, maybe forests) - take production ones, and so on.

So far have 2 phoenicians starts and both were successful (playing fast and 'country' difficulty) - in both cases I started on the coast and had 4+ coast territories, which means 4+ harbors.

Having high gold income means that you can efford to buy nearly all available resources (including strategic) from all known neighbours. Resource bonuses stacks, so your science/production/food values do. Also use gold to speed up nearly completed projects in your cities - saves a couple of turns here and there, making cities development efficient.

The big thing to remember with the unique harbor empires is their unique harbor does not consume your one harbor per territory limit. So definitely make as many as you can to double dip on the great coastal tiles. Get the extra sources of resources from coastal tiles as soon as you can. Also you can make the unique harbor on an outpost territory at an influence cost. Assuming you have some to spare.

Promethian wrote:

The big thing to remember with the unique harbor empires is their unique harbor does not consume your one harbor per territory limit. So definitely make as many as you can to double dip on the great coastal tiles. Get the extra sources of resources from coastal tiles as soon as you can. Also you can make the unique harbor on an outpost territory at an influence cost. Assuming you have some to spare.

I understand that and it is probably a very useful mechanic, but again I think a bit too situational, because if you spend your influence on building cities or outposts near the cost to make full use of the harbor, then you are not exploiting territories with luxury resources, which will hamper your economy and negate you the merchant stars. Very rarely you can get a coastal territory with good resources on it too, this usually pushes you more inland, they should increase the spawn rate of the coastal resources.

If you follow the harbor tactic, everything will come to fruition much later, and you will have to lag behind for a good time in era score, I'm not sure, that's just my impression.

Maybe there should be a way to incentives laying down a city literally on the coast, maybe you would get low production but tons of food, this might help with harbor adjacency, since then it would be easier to surround it with maker's quarter.

Will say that Phoenician + Carthage + Norse gets very OP

One advise I have is that if you have an island only one tile away, then the seaport will act as a "bridge" allowing you to build districts on the other landmass.

I just did a whole play-through starting as the Phoenicians. I first focused mainly on building 1 (or a few) workers district(s) to speed up construction so you could buy everything with money after 1 or 2 construction turns. However, to make my population grow faster I took Celts as a second culture and then proceeded to go to Norsemen for a bit of expansion and quick acquisition of war fame to speedrun towards the Dutch empire to again collect money. By this time I bought all the trade nodes of all empires that had one and those that had some rivalry with me were easily dispatched as a good food income originating from the Celtic period allowed me to quickly raise an army and still have enough population in my cities to do general resource acquisition. 

Finally, my tech was lacking a bit behind so I chose the Swedes and chose the active ability of this culture in one of my biggest cities to quickly get all the tech I needed. I ended the game in around 240 turns (against 10 AIs) unlocking all the tech, but had enough to do anything I wanted basically.

I hope this is somewhat of a help, take care

Ghost492 wrote:

So, I'm interested in starting as these lads and ladies, but thus far, I haven't had any luck and mostly just fall behind. Starts like the Harrapans, Egyptians, and Babylonians are easy enough, and actually come off as incredibly strong, possibly because its the most "vanilla civ" thing to do. Harrapans and Egyptian starts have catapulted me so far ahead of everything else while other stuff hasn't lended itself to the explosive economies they can generate remotely as well. I was never really one for the dust factions in Endless Space and Legends, so maybe that contributes somewhat but the disparity just seems so drastic.

I feel clueless trying things like Aesthete and Merchant starts, (like how do I generate any money at all before rushing writing and trading is just a one time boon, right?) so feel free to lay down some basics.

Merchants can buy resource extractors pretty cheaply with their unique ability.  So it's useful to go as a Merchant culture start if you have at least 3-4 resources near you (luxury is better, but even quickly building strategic resource extractors saves you valuable time in your build queue).

My favorite strategy is Phoenician + Carthage + Dutch. You are really will be swimming in gold.  Since you can have 3 harbors per district and VOC gets bonus for adjacent harbors.

The only problematic part is to survive up to a point when Carthage can get elephants, but after than as smooth sailing as it gets.