Mastering the first 50 turns is real....

[Doc McStuffins]

So, got hooked on this game lately. Put 120 hours in and still not have completed a single game. Don't get me wrong, I've started 30 games or so, but it seems like as soon as it hits a new era, certain mechanics get activated/deactivated and not prepared always seems like a take one step forward and one step backward. Realized that those starting city bonuses are crucial to get ahead on the A.I./Barbs/city states early. But as soon as the modern era hits I get scrubbed. Is there some sort of basic ratio for type of districts your building? What wonders do you go for early?

[Vlad von Carstein]

"but it seems like as soon as it hits a new era, certain mechanics get activated/deactivated and not prepared always seems like a take one step forward and one step backward."

not sure what you mean by this, care to elaborate?

I tend to get a holy site in first city asap, as well as campus, i prioritize getting campuses early on, and then mainly focus on whichever district has the best potential adjacency bonus in other cities.

Oracle is the first wonder i go for, pyramids is great, etemenanki is great if you have marshes+floodplains, stonehenge and hanging gardens are generally traps and not that worth it. The best wonders in the game are usually the ones that give an extra policy slot(forbidden palace, potola palace, alhambra, and big ben). Kilwa, apadana and colosseum are also top tier. Great library is a trap but oxford university is op.

[Doc McStuffins]

Okay yea gotta delve in that civpedia reference more. I go for holy district after queuing 2 scouts, to get that pantheon bonus, either settlers or fertility rights. How many cities are you settling by the end of ancient?

[Vlad von Carstein]

I rarely take free settler or builder pantheon, since golden age to faith buy civilian units exists. I normally take divine spark or whatever gives best yields based on start(increased faith for golden age is good).

What i do almost every time is put magnus in my capital, upgrade him to make settler not cost a population, and when golden age hits, i faith buy as many settlers as i can, and settle the best locations, settling as many cities as i possibly can.

If you want to limit yourself on the number of cities, 6 cities with a governor in each is a good limit.

I also tend to snipe the capital of the nearest civ if they take to long to build walls.

[Rift]

Generally, you can ignore campuses for a while, and outright ignore Amphitheaters for just about the entire game (unless going for a Culture victory, and even then they're "meh"). Culture is more important than Science early game (ironic?), especially if playing Multiplayer.
Commercial Hubs and Harbors are your priority builds early game; you want trade routes. Trade routes give much needed early game income as well as extremely useful for getting new cities up and running quickly (domestic). In most cases, I build a monument in new cities first to get the city to expand it's borders faster and the extra culture. Ideally, I try to crank out 2 settlers ASAP and then build the Government Plaza with Ancestral Hall in my capitol, and then start cranking out more settlers (preferably with Magnus and No Pop Consumed promotion). I might even drop down a couple Holy Sites just for the faith per turn, especially if I can get a Golden Age in the first 3 eras; then I take Monumentality and print Settlers / Builders (as needed). Prioritize first government in Civis tree, and then Feudalism is another extremely important one to shoot for.

Wonders: Oracle is extremely good, Pyramids is always a plus (fairly competitive), Etemenanki if you can find a spot with lots of flood plains (extremely competitive), Temple of Artemis is a good one, especially if you have a lot of plantations and pastures nearby. Find a good coastal spot with lots of useful coastal tiles and build Mausoleum (AI hardly builds this) for the +1 Engineer Charge (2 Da Vinci charges? Yes, please!). I also typically go after all the wonders that give free policy card slots: Alhambra, Forbidden City, Big Ben, Potala Palace. Kilwa Kisiwani is an extremely good one if you can dominate city-states.

All-in-all, a fairly bland and standard start for most people. Obviously, victory conditions, nearby neighbors, available land to settle, etc., will all influence what you do. E.g., maybe you're boxed in and can't settle more than 3 or 4 cities? Early war. Early wars are always very beneficial, IF you can win fairly quickly.

Edit: As for pantheons; in almost every case, taking the free Settler is the way to go, unless playing Khmer. In that case, you want River Goddess. Otherwise, pick your favorite? I'm an odd ball, and almost always take God of Craftsmen, especially if I'm playing Age of Steam Vicki. I tend to play Huge maps and drop cities all over the place near strategics once I discover all the strategics after Niter.

[Sstavix]

Barbarians are probably your biggest hindrance in the early stages of the game, am I right? Keep in mind that it is possible to turn them off. if you're still getting your feet wet and trying to figure out how the game works, i actually recommend it.

Once you get the mechanics of city planning and empire building down, go ahead and turn them back on. If it helps, try out the "Jadwiga's Legacy" scenario. In that one you have to deal with endless hordes of barbarians, but it also serves as a good trainer for learning how to deal with them through the use of city walls and figuring out where to place encampments to create choke points. It helped me learn how to deal with those annoying barbarians in the regular game. Now I consider them more of a nuisance, rather than the game stopper that they used to be.

[grognardgary]

What you do depends to a great extent on map size and time setting and what victory condition you wish to acheive And everyone has their own preference. Mine is for huge maps, I'd go bigger but I don't have enough ram to make it work reliably, and marathon time setting.

[gdshore]

Your title is correct, the first 50 turns are the most important. You have to build at least 1 - 2 cities beyond your capital in that first 50 turns. At the same time you need to build a 'Holy and Campus' districts. The campus district allows you to stay within sight of the advances of your opposition, which as you add more campuses will allow you to overtake then surpass your competition, but the holy district is more important, it helps with loyalty. This very important if travelling the conquest route. Converting conquests is made easier and extends your grasp.
I only explore with warriors (or fighter/scouts), yes scouts are faster, see better, yada, yada, warriors can usually fight and defeat whatever 'Barbs' they find in the first 50. Knowledge is power in this game, and knowing where the enemy is before he/she knows where you are is sweet. The only time I ever have a scout is if I "find" one as a result of stepping on a 'goodie village'.
I usually play on Archipelago, Continents and Islands, or just Continents, I prefer the sea powers a kink of mine since I was a teenager.

[grognardgary]

My first three builds on huge map marathon are slinger best melee slinger. and then a settler. I kill barbs as soon as I find them. You have to be a bit more careful with a slinger but it can be done.

[grognardgary]

In my mind I almost always try to get stonehenge for a religion and to make up dip mana with pagodas. Since I genereally try to take clear my home continent of other civs by Classical. Abd then populate the whole thing during classical using all the cheapies from monunental Gold. And no it probably can't be done much above king depending on who your neighbors are.

[jmerry82]

Stonehenge? Really? Sure, it'll get you a religion - but that religion will have a ton of trouble spreading. Passive spread from one holy city is not enough to convert your other cities; you need missionaries. Which means you need a holy site. In the Stonehenge city, which is the only one that has your religion so far. And that means you could have just built the holy site and run a prayer project or two to get the prophet. Or maybe built holy sites in all your early cities so you didn't need the projects.

[gdshore]

Yes Stonehenge spread can be a bit of a pain, after you have 2-3 more cities, you can afford the time/resources to build a Holy Site and buildings. From that point spread is easy. I have done it a couple of times but it is dependent on having stone within your city shadow.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by jmerry82:

Stonehenge? Really? Sure, it'll get you a religion - but that religion will have a ton of trouble spreading. Passive spread from one holy city is not enough to convert your other cities; you need missionaries. Which means you need a holy site. In the Stonehenge city, which is the only one that has your religion so far. And that means you could have just built the holy site and run a prayer project or two to get the prophet. Or maybe built holy sites in all your early cities so you didn't need the projects.

Not worried about spreading it immediately just worried about getting it early enough to get the picks I want. When I have everything going my way I don't have to worry about spreading it until ocean travel is possible because there are no competitors left on the continent upon which I spawn.

[plaguepenguin]

If you are consistently getting scrubbed when you hit the modern era, the problem back in the first 50-100 turns of the game (I'm assuming standard speed) isn't that you built the wrong or no wonders, or the wrong ratio of districts. You didn't expand or grow enough, with expansion meaning more cities, and growth meaning more population in your cities.

Growth and expansion are how you snowball. You have to snowball, progress geometrically rather than just linearly,or even against the AI, you will eventually fall behind. The AI can't do strategy as you can, but instead relies on a program. Even that very limited and inflexible program will eventually get them to expand and grow to a certain level,and you have to at least match that result to keep up,much less claw your way to the top. You do that by focusing your strategy, your ability to react with flexibility in pursuit of a goal, on growth and expansion.

It's great, for example, to get a lot of campuses as early as you can, because you need to move up the tech tree faster than the competition, and campuses and their buildings yield research points and great scientist points. But, campuses don't let you get the next level building until the mid-game, so you don't snowball that way, directly through the campus. and increasing your research points You snowball, even just in terms of science, by having more campuses, and having more total population in your empire. Another settler is almost always much more important for your progress up the tech tree in the early game, than another campus. If you have a cramped start and that limits your peaceful expansion,building units to conquer enemy cities can become the only way to expand.

It is also true that campuses aren't even necessarily the best district pick, assuming that some district is better right now than another settler or more military units, even if progress in science is the goal. You also need to claw your way up the civics tree, in order to get a better govt with more card slots, to give your builders more charges, etc,etc. More gold is handy for all sorts of things, and it may actually be better, purely in terms of your science effort as well as your overall snowball, to build a harbor or commercial hub before the campus, so that later on you can buy the campus buildings, or buy a great scientist.

You win in the end by having more districts than the AI, but their yields only become the predominant immediate and short term concern in the end game. In the first 50 turns I not infrequently build no districts, much less wonders. I grow and expand in order to set up a district buying spree later on.

I ignore wonders entirely in the early game beyond those few that help growth and expansion. The Pyramids are amazing, because a free extra builder charge -- forever,in every builder -- is amazing for growth, but the AIs are programmed to go for them, so you rarely have a shot even at low difficulty levels. Etemenanki can be great for growth as well, especially if you have the Lady of the Reeds and Marshes pantheon, and, unlike the Pyramids, is sometimes neglected by the AI.

I do growth and expansion in the early game instead of wonders so that by the mid game I have so many cities I can spare one for a try at a wonder, and so many cities with production high enough to get the wonder in a reasonable amount of time, that a wonder makes sense as part of my strategy. My game by then has advanced to a point that I actually have started to look forward to my particular victory condition for this game, and generally how to get there. This gives me a much better idea of which wonders will help my strategy. The fact that by focusing on growth and expansion early I have built a big empire with many high-production cities, and gotten at least even with the AI in climbing the tech and civics trees to unlock the wonders ahead of the competition, means that I can be competitive,if not dominant, for any wonder I choose to go for.

I don't have solid and fixed benchmarks. Sometimes, especially at higher difficulty, you don't claw your way to the top of the tech or civics trees until quite late, so no stress if your numbers look bad in comparison to the opposition in this game, or in comparison to your other games, much less somebody else's games. Getting to, say, 8 cities,or 100 science per turn, by turn 100 is nice and reassuring,but especially at higher difficulty I often fall far short, and still have a viable plan to reap the rewards of the growth and expansion I am doing at that point, and can look forward with confidence to breaking into my game-winning district yield snowball by turn 150.

The one step backward for one step forward thing is built into the game. You have to give up something nice to get some other nice thing. At best,you devise a strategy that lets you get two steps forward in exchange for the one step backward by deciding between the relative niceness of each of your choices. Even for that, you need a strategy. Thank goodness the AI can't do strategy, which makes it so that even your inglorious crab walk progress by fits and starts lets you win consistently after you have a fair amount of experience with all the ways and means of putting together different advantages pulled from all over the game's many disparate game mechanics

[usmcg_tskfrc58]

120 hours? Oh you sweet summer child. These Civ games have taken years of my life ever since the very 1st one. 6 is my least played at 2600 hours.