Early game strategies - production and prestige

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Oaks

Oct 14, 2024 @ 12:16am

Early game strategies - production and prestige

Hello rulers,

I did well on the lower difficulties, so I bumped it up to the next level, whichever the (normal) one is. I've got a pair of questions:

Early game production - my capital does fine with production, however my newly founded cities don't. They start with 4 production, which mean it takes a while to even make a farm.

What's a good way to kickstart production? I give them baskets as amenities, but the single extra production point it gives doesn't seem so significant. Should I instead give them a feast to try to bring them up to the next city level faster?

Prestige - I'm in the middle of the bronze age and the whole game I've been in last place. I figure it doesn't matter so much since I still have a few ages to catch up, but I'm not quite sure why I'm in last place.

This is more a matter of feedback I feel. I see the prestige list that shows what I get prestige for, but it doesn't seem to explain what to do exactly, as mousing over it seems to do nothing.

For example, production or quality of life prestige, do I get it base on crossing a certain threshold, or do I get it based on having better quality of life than other nations?

I like the prestige system, I just feel there isn't enough feedback right now to really focus on getting prestige.

Thanks in advance!

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Showing 1-15 of 15 comments

Jamus

Oct 14, 2024 @ 5:00am

Feast and then Grain Stores are excellent to get your small cities up to Size 5. You get 1 prestige point/turn for every 10 Production your cities generate.

Sylterix

Oct 14, 2024 @ 5:35am

Use population boosters as amenities. Buy a dwelling to put the basket in.

skielb

Oct 14, 2024 @ 5:46am

I normally give feasts to all cities first. You can produce it quite good early on and you get it for free from hunting animals. In my last game, I even did send my scout out for hunting as first step to get a feast ready in round 3. It is not only for the growth bonus, you also add happiness which increases the productivity of your city which can be better than the basket bonus.

I build first a scout to find and collect more things early on. If you have some gold, check when you can speed up production. The gold cost seems to be related to the production of the city, but you can often fairly cheaply speed up the last 2-3 turns. I use this much more often than in other games.

If I have enough food, I build a settler next and then maybe another scout or spearman before I start with workshops or farms in my first city.

skielb

Oct 14, 2024 @ 5:58am

Regarding prestige, I always start behind above normal difficulty and it's a race to catch up before the end of Act 1. Don't know if the AI gets a starting bonus or if this is related to other things. It somehow feels strange to always start like that...
I also noticed up to Duke/grand duke difficulty that after surviving act 1 it gets easy to outpace everyone in act 2.
I am currently trying a mix of different levels to see if it gets more balanced in act 2. I picked 2 dukes, 3 grand dukes, 3 kings and 3 emperors with random civs to not know who is who. I just survived act 1, but there is still some distance to the top.

Oaks

Oct 14, 2024 @ 11:55am

Great info! Thanks everyone!

Originally posted by Jamus:
Feast and then Grain Stores are excellent to get your small cities up to Size 5. You get 1 prestige point/turn for every 10 Production your cities generate.

Interesting. Is the info about 1 prestige per 10 production noted somewhere in the game and I missed it?

mr_root

Oct 15, 2024 @ 6:21pm

you can see the details via pulldown menu in your prestige page.

Fortuna Oct 16, 2024 @ 4:50am

The game is misleading. One of the most important buildings is the simple dwelling. Spam them and place baskets in them. Do so without regard to population limit. You don't need them in your city center. Research furniture and put furniture in them. Research candles and put candles in them. And so on.

Early amenities are for growth, which means Feasts & Grains.

Oaks

Oct 16, 2024 @ 5:08am

Originally posted by mr_root:
you can see the details via pulldown menu in your prestige page.

Thanks, I'll take another look tonight.

Originally posted by Fortuna:
The game is misleading. One of the most important buildings is the simple dwelling. Spam them and place baskets in them. Do so without regard to population limit. You don't need them in your city center. Research furniture and put furniture in them. Research candles and put candles in them. And so on.

Early amenities are for growth, which means Feasts & Grains.

Interesting! It makes sense, since it's the only early game building which adds production other than the hearth. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the info.

Fortuna Oct 16, 2024 @ 5:24am

Originally posted by Oaks:
Interesting! It makes sense, since it's the only early game building which adds production other than the hearth. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the info.

NP. Also, I recommend building stables at size 5 and putting your first expert (size 6) into it. +10 build production helps a lot getting your infrastructure up and running.

Furniture is rather important and can come out slowly at first. You have to examine the production chain (workshops, timber, fabrics, weavers, fur/cotton/silk).

Last edited by Fortuna; Oct 16, 2024 @ 5:28am

vivas

Oct 16, 2024 @ 5:29am

Originally posted by Fortuna:
Originally posted by Oaks:
Interesting! It makes sense, since it's the only early game building which adds production other than the hearth. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the info.

NP. Also, I recommend building stables at size 5 and putting your first expert into it. +10 build production helps a lot getting your infrastructure up and running.

Furniture is rather important and can come out slowly at first. You have to examine the production chain (workshops, timber, fabrics, weavers, fur/cotton/silk).

Good tip, never looked at that.

#10

BKGamesPI

Oct 18, 2024 @ 9:51pm

Dock + Expert gives 20 City production.

#11

MadDjinn

Oct 19, 2024 @ 8:59am

Originally posted by skielb:
Regarding prestige, I always start behind above normal difficulty and it's a race to catch up before the end of Act 1. Don't know if the AI gets a starting bonus or if this is related to other things. It somehow feels strange to always start like that...
I also noticed up to Duke/grand duke difficulty that after surviving act 1 it gets easy to outpace everyone in act 2.
I am currently trying a mix of different levels to see if it gets more balanced in act 2. I picked 2 dukes, 3 grand dukes, 3 kings and 3 emperors with random civs to not know who is who. I just survived act 1, but there is still some distance to the top.

This is the standard "We didn't make an AI that can play the game, so here's a mess of bonuses to keep them from falling off the map". On prestige, you can see how they're just handed bonuses that give them easy per turn extras in every category, so that they'll be well ahead of the player, on points, before the Iron Age.

You can still catch up before the end of Act 1 to get above the cut line, just by growing up and out.

#12

Jeff

Oct 21, 2024 @ 5:21pm

In early game, the largest source of points is when your quality of life (QOL) stats are green (causing you to generate golden era points as well).

When you go up in difficulty, the QOL points for you are red, while the AI are green. So every time you hit end turn, the AI is getting 5 points and you are getting zero. As you work to build your production and improve your QOL, you will start to catch them and surpass them.

The QOL thing does put you in a big hole. Also affects city growth, production, etc.

As you build more cities (and the AI will spam 2-3 more right away depending on difficulty), they each also add 5 more points so then the AI is getting 15 points per turn while you are not.

#13

Oaks

Oct 21, 2024 @ 11:50pm

Originally posted by Jeff:
In early game, the largest source of points is when your quality of life (QOL) stats are green (causing you to generate golden era points as well).

When you go up in difficulty, the QOL points for you are red, while the AI are green. So every time you hit end turn, the AI is getting 5 points and you are getting zero. As you work to build your production and improve your QOL, you will start to catch them and surpass them.

The QOL thing does put you in a big hole. Also affects city growth, production, etc.

As you build more cities (and the AI will spam 2-3 more right away depending on difficulty), they each also add 5 more points so then the AI is getting 15 points per turn while you are not.

Great info, thanks.

#14