When are you building your second city?

[Ghostpro71]

A few questions:

1. When are you building your 2nd city? How soon?

2. What resources are a must to be near for building cities?

3. Do you concentrate on builders, military? Or a little of both at the start of a new game?

[Desomega]

Military first. Early game it is a must, otherwise somewhere between turns 15-40 one or more AIs have a very high chance of simply declaring war on you, not to mention the barbarians that can easily overrun your cities early on.

I just build a second city whenever, honestly. But i've seen the AI have one as early as turn 12 on King difficulty. So that probably just depends on your situation. If you aren't having barbarian trouble and can afford to expand, do so.

[Freedom]

Scout,Slinger,Slinger,Slinger,warrior, builder, settler. Settler is optional if you have a Target close by.

2nd city, must have a 2nd lux for me.

[Barricade]

I only had two warriors and then concentrated on improving the capital. When I saw Spain take over a city-state, he stompped his ass into the ground with 8 units. I started looking at my warriors like "whelp, it was nice to know you"... I played the same way in Civ V and noticed that the AI's always had a much larger military than I ever did.

Are city developments and upgrades supposed to span throughout the length of the game? You're not supposed to rush and get them done and caught up?

I've noticed that in Civ V, when the AI's rapidly expand their terriorty and I begin to take them over near mid-late game- they have no upgrades to them. Like nothing. Just a city. No extras.

The times that I did try to have a large military, my money would run out from maintenance and my people would be unhappy.

[Explorer]

What I do:
Place your first city in turn one, turn two at most, then...

Create a scout,
create a military unit
create a worker (builder)
create a building for the city,
create 2 or 3 more military units...

...and then my first settler, with one or two military
units to escort it... at this point the scout has reavealed some intertesting places to go.
(and some barbarians in the way)

AND, if you are new to Civ. games...
try lower difficulty settings first.

Good luck ;)

[Freedom]

Ya, I just like military, I build for future boost also. I see no real need to start improving the capital right off the bat.. Much rather have 3 archers to take over a few cities before warmonger penalty's start. You only have the 1st era for free wars.

Chances are you can snab 2 or more settlers for free with 2 early wars. :)

[Barricade]

I just thought that having a well equipped captial meant that your people would be happier, money would come easier, and you'd also have better science culture and pop. growth. Then you could afford a large army. I will have to try and do it your guys way!

[Matthew]

Unfortunately, the AI is a bit broken right now due to game mechanics. They can't upgrade units without strategic resources and aren't programmed to work around the issue, so they run around with warriors and catapults for the entire game. There may be a short second wave of military at knights, but otherwise the AI is stuck on classical era units for most of the game.

Long story short, build military to survive the initial onslaught of ancient era warrior spam, then you are free to do whatever you want for the rest of the game.

If you really want to cheese the AI, just camp their borders and steal all of their settlers.