What's your strategy for settlers?

[KingKickAss]

When you want to expand and make a bunch of cities, how do you go about it?

[grognardgary]

Depends on who your playing you've got to play according to the strength of your civ.

[Aachen]

Monumentality.

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Depends on who your playing you've got to play according to the strength of your civ.

Name the civs that have a bonus to Settler production.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Depends on who your playing you've got to play according to the strength of your civ.

Name the civs that have a bonus to Settler production.

I think you misunderstood, or assumed something they did not type here.
You normaly place cities in places that Benefit your civilisations strenghts.
For example if you want big cities, you need a lot of ameneties and land to build things like farms. If you want small cities you can place cities closer together and make the city borders overlap.

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Aimee:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Name the civs that have a bonus to Settler production.

I think you misunderstood, or assumed something they did not type here.
You normaly place cities in places that Benefit your civilisations strenghts.
For example if you want big cities, you need a lot of ameneties and land to build things like farms. If you want small cities you can place cities closer together and make the city borders overlap.

I mean, the thread topic is about how to mass produce settlers.

[ayrtep]

You can start tall. Don't build settlers until you reach the soft cap or have nothing else to build. Use chops to for wonders and districts.

Or start wide. Build settlers as soon as you can. Use chops for more settlers.

Which to do depends on everything. At some point you can switch between the two. Maybe play tall until you get the ancestral hall then switch to wide.

You can also forget settlers altogether. Just build units and allow the other civs to build your cities.

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Aimee:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

I mean, the thread topic is about how to mass produce settlers.

Seemly you are not the best in wording yourself in english then, since there is no notion of ''mass producing settlers'' anywhere in your post before this one.

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

When you want to expand and make a bunch of cities, how do you go about it?

Does it not go without saying that "Making a bunch of cities" requires you to make a bunch of settlers? I think you just didn't read beyond the title because ironically there's absolutely nothing in the thread topic that's related to placing and growing cities like you somehow thought earlier.

[Harris]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

When you want to expand and make a bunch of cities, how do you go about it?

I always take Magnus governor for my capital, mostly because I want to grab Provision promotion which allows training settlers without draining population so my capital keeps on growing. Magnus also has nice things of his own such as +20% growth which is always nice to have on your capital, and notably the ability to get production from every nearby city's factory instead of just one (industrial zones in range of 6 tiles).

This has nice synergy with a bunch of civs/leaders that reward building a little tight empire so that everything is in 6 tiles of your capital and/or on the same continent: Tokugawa, Nader Shah, Trajan/Caesar, Lady Six Sky, Nzinga among them. With some of them you are better trade internally via domestic trade routes, which again has a Magnus synergy by giving your cities that are trading with the capital +2 food. After all, not spending the whole game to build up your new cities is an important part as well.

Back to settlers. You can build Government Plaza and Ancestral Hall building there, which would give a nice 50% to settlers production, and grant a builder in every new city. As much of a great bonus as it sounds, it takes a while to unlock Government Plaza let alone build the Hall, so you end up getting your new cities later than you should be, which is suboptimal. You can of course delay this by training some settlers before building Ancestral Hall, but that means its bonus goes to waste. So realistically you should pursue this only if you want to train A LOT of settlers and all of them would have where to go.

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Name the civs that have a bonus to Settler production.

Phoenicia is the only one that comes to mind, Cothon gives another 50% to settlers. It's a unique naval district, so it might be situational depending on the map. While there is an obvious temptation to stack 50% from policy card, 50% from Ancestral Hall and then 50% from a Cothon - by the time you actually start building any settlers all good land is already taken because other civs just trained settlers the conventional way.

This leads us to a conclusion that most of the time you are better off just grabbing Magnus and simply building a bunch of settlers once Provision upgrade is up. At this point in the game having lots of gold or faith is out of discussion, so high production is realistically your only option.

While a range of civs get better production than others, Barbarossa, Victoria and Japan among others, their bonuses come online too late to be useful for this exact purpose. I suppose you could use Australia and to get someone declare a war on you so you trigger the 100% production bonus for a bunch of turns, using it to quickly pump settlers. But timing this up might be tricky.

[Maya-Neko]

I myself prefer to go with Pingala first though, so that i'm more flexible in what i need to do the first few turns. That obviously means, that i need to pay for the settlers with pops, but since i'm playing with shuffled techtrees, i need to make sure, that i can get the needed amount of cultural production to unlock the settler production bonus, which might be locked behind other techs sometimes, which Pingala really helps with. And Pingala also allows me to stall campusses and theatres for a littlebit longer, just in case i need it.

Also it gives me more flexibility later on, since once i've reached my maximum in size, Magnus gets to be somewhat useless for the rest of the game in my playstyle (i'm not the fan of removing tons of woods or bonus ressources for example) and i would rather invest the 2 gouvernor points somewhere else instead. But that gets down to your preferences.

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Does it not go without saying that "Making a bunch of cities" requires you to make a bunch of settlers? I think you just didn't read beyond the title because ironically there's absolutely nothing in the thread topic that's related to placing and growing cities like you somehow thought earlier.

"Making a bunch of cities" could imply both "how to massproduce many settlers", as well as "how do you try to place multiple cities near each other effectively". There's no attempt from you to clearify that in neither the title, nor the comment itself.

And given, that mass producing settlers is quite trivial (given that there's not really that much you can do about it early on except from just beelining the obvious things with Magnus and the settler production bonus), it's not that far fetched to assume, that you're rather asking about the placement itself.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Originally posted by Aimee:

Seemly you are not the best in wording yourself in english then, since there is no notion of ''mass producing settlers'' anywhere in your post before this one.

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

When you want to expand and make a bunch of cities, how do you go about it?

Does it not go without saying that "Making a bunch of cities" requires you to make a bunch of settlers? I think you just didn't read beyond the title because ironically there's absolutely nothing in the thread topic that's related to placing and growing cities like you somehow thought earlier.

First off ''a bunch'' is the wording for a group of things without a number or size description. It can mean 3 it can mean 5, it can mean 10. Thinking that ''a bunch'' has the same meaning as ''mass producing'' is just not knowing english very well. I get that you can confuse the two, but being clear in your discription can help to get the right responses.
Second, yes i read the very little and non discriptive text you have writen completely and without failure. And all i can do is take the Literal meaning of the words you write, not assume some underlaying meaning. Since this is a text based chat, i cant see inside of your head with what you mean with something you dont say.
Lastly, making settlers is literaly related to placing and growing cities. You cant make setlers effectively if you dont first grow out your capitalcity, and placing them is pointless if you dont have a plan of what to do with them.

It seems you are assuming a lot from people, while others need to assume what you mean because you dont word it yourself. Thats on you mate, there are no hard feelings but you need to explain yourself better if you dont want these kind of responses.

[fmalfeas]

Play Ottoman. One-city challenge yourself until you're surrounded. Take all their cities.

Bombard is the best Settler.

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Aimee:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Does it not go without saying that "Making a bunch of cities" requires you to make a bunch of settlers? I think you just didn't read beyond the title because ironically there's absolutely nothing in the thread topic that's related to placing and growing cities like you somehow thought earlier.

First off ''a bunch'' is the wording for a group of things without a number or size description. It can mean 3 it can mean 5, it can mean 10. Saying that ''a bunch'' has the same meaning as ''mass producing'' is just now knowing english very well. I get that you can confuse the two, but being clear in your discription can help to get the right responses.
Second, yes i read the very little and non discriptive text you have writen completely and without failure. And all i can do is take the Literal meaning of the words you write, not assume some underlaying meaning. Since this is a text based chat, i cant see inside of your head with what you mean with something you dont say.
Lastly, making settlers is literaly related to placing and growing cities. You cant make setlers effectively if you dont first grow out your city, and placing them is pointless if you dont have a plan what to do with them.

It seems you are assuming a lot from people, while others need to assume what you mean because you dont word it yourself. Thats on you mate, there are no hard feelings but you need to explain yourself better if you dont want these kind of responses.

Its so weird watching you try to talk down to someone over their use of English when you're getting very extensively tripped up over it, as well as spelling things wrong. What I said was simple, sure. But talking about amenities and where you place cities on the map is pretty far from the basic question of creating "a bunch of cities". Any native English speaker is going to take "A bunch" as "a lot", its even defined as "A large number or quantity". "A few" would be more appropriate for talking about say, 3 cities like you thought I could have meant. No hard feelings but yeah, keep dragging on and having an attitude over a misunderstanding lol.

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Does it not go without saying that "Making a bunch of cities" requires you to make a bunch of settlers? I think you just didn't read beyond the title because ironically there's absolutely nothing in the thread topic that's related to placing and growing cities like you somehow thought earlier.

"Making a bunch of cities" could imply both "how to massproduce many settlers", as well as "how do you try to place multiple cities near each other effectively". There's no attempt from you to clearify that in neither the title, nor the comment itself.

And given, that mass producing settlers is quite trivial (given that there's not really that much you can do about it early on except from just beelining the obvious things with Magnus and the settler production bonus), it's not that far fetched to assume, that you're rather asking about the placement itself.

I mean sure, but in the end it doesn't make much difference because you're still making a lot of settlers. What someone is going to do with all the settler's they've made and what the cities are going to be used for and how they will be managed is mostly irrelevant beyond the pursuit of settlers.
I always go Magnus and then the Government Plaza/Policy card as a baseline(If able), so I was inquiring on other things or ways people might go about rapid expansion, maybe building settlers from multiple cities, or how they try to set up their capital for it, buying settlers and how they would get that money for it, so on and so fourth.

Unrelated but I see you everywhere in all the forums I visit. We must have a lot of games in common lol

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

When you want to expand and make a bunch of cities, how do you go about it?

I always take Magnus governor for my capital, mostly because I want to grab Provision promotion which allows training settlers without draining population so my capital keeps on growing. Magnus also has nice things of his own such as +20% growth which is always nice to have on your capital, and notably the ability to get production from every nearby city's factory instead of just one (industrial zones in range of 6 tiles).

This has nice synergy with a bunch of civs/leaders that reward building a little tight empire so that everything is in 6 tiles of your capital and/or on the same continent: Tokugawa, Nader Shah, Trajan/Caesar, Lady Six Sky, Nzinga among them. With some of them you are better trade internally via domestic trade routes, which again has a Magnus synergy by giving your cities that are trading with the capital +2 food. After all, not spending the whole game to build up your new cities is an important part as well.

Back to settlers. You can build Government Plaza and Ancestral Hall building there, which would give a nice 50% to settlers production, and grant a builder in every new city. As much of a great bonus as it sounds, it takes a while to unlock Government Plaza let alone build the Hall, so you end up getting your new cities later than you should be, which is suboptimal. You can of course delay this by training some settlers before building Ancestral Hall, but that means its bonus goes to waste. So realistically you should pursue this only if you want to train A LOT of settlers and all of them would have where to go.

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Name the civs that have a bonus to Settler production.

Phoenicia is the only one that comes to mind, Cothon gives another 50% to settlers. It's a unique naval district, so it might be situational depending on the map. While there is an obvious temptation to stack 50% from policy card, 50% from Ancestral Hall and then 50% from a Cothon - by the time you actually start building any settlers all good land is already taken because other civs just trained settlers the conventional way.

This leads us to a conclusion that most of the time you are better off just grabbing Magnus and simply building a bunch of settlers once Provision upgrade is up. At this point in the game having lots of gold or faith is out of discussion, so high production is realistically your only option.

While a range of civs get better production than others, Barbarossa, Victoria and Japan among others, their bonuses come online too late to be useful for this exact purpose. I suppose you could use Australia and to get someone declare a war on you so you trigger the 100% production bonus for a bunch of turns, using it to quickly pump settlers. But timing this up might be tricky.

I completely forgot about the Cothon, good catch! But yeah, that's also the same issue I've run into, as well as one of the main reasons for making the thread asking in the first place since if you don't start making settlers right away and instead try to set yourself up for dedicated settler production, you're ironically not going to get as much land for yourself. Its almost like focusing on getting all those settler creation bonuses actually hinder your expansion. And with how loyalty works, you can't just make up for it by building a bunch of settlers to try and catch up. The hall is a big risk in itself, but I found that if you can make some cities early and put them far from your capital(establishing the perimeter first), you can benefit from settler production bonuses without the worry of loyalty and getting your land snatched up. Not giving open borders, strategically blocking tiles with units or by purchasing them to block off the AI, etc.

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

Play Ottoman. One-city challenge yourself until you're surrounded. Take all their cities.

Bombard is the best Settler.

That's the only way to play them in my mind. If you have Niter, you're entitled to the entire continent.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Its so weird watching you try to talk down to someone [...] "A few" would be more appropriate for talking about say, 3 cities like you thought I could have meant. No hard feelings but yeah, keep dragging on and having an attitude over a misunderstanding lol.

If you think other people have an attitude when you respond like this, and clearly cant handle the fact that multiple people had to call you out on a bad discription is honnestly just terrible self reflection. The only person that is projecting their feelings from us two, is you. I have not assumed anything from you nor your feelings, yet you seems to only be able to reflect your own frustations on me being ''the bad guy''.
I did not intend to talk down on you, thats your assumtion. I dont want to have a misunderstanding, I want to clear up your request so I can help you better with your question. All the negative things you assume of me, is realy just your own feelings, not my intentions or goals. But im sure you know better what some random person you never met, spoken to nor seen; feels, intends, and wants out of a conversation with you. (that last part is sarcasm)

But since you clearly have a habbit of picking out problems. Ill leave you to your own issues and those that you create and remove all my posts that have helpful information.
Good luck starting fights over literaly nothing, im sure you will find many issues with other people anywhere you go with that mindset.

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Aimee:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Its so weird watching you try to talk down to someone [...] "A few" would be more appropriate for talking about say, 3 cities like you thought I could have meant. No hard feelings but yeah, keep dragging on and having an attitude over a misunderstanding lol.

If you think other people have an attitude when you respond like this, and clearly cant handle the fact that multiple people had to call you out on a bad discription is honnestly just terrible self reflection. The only person that is projecting their feelings from us two, is you. I have not assumed anything from you nor your feelings, yet you seems to only be able to reflect your own frustations on me being ''the bad guy''.
I did not intend to talk down on you, thats your assumtion. I dont want to have a misunderstanding, I want to clear up your request so I can help you better with your question. All the negative things you assume of me, is realy just your own feelings, not my intentions or goals. But im sure you know better what some random person you never met, spoken to nor seen; feels, intends, and wants out of a conversation with you. (that last part is sarcasm)

But since you clearly have a habbit of picking out problems. Ill leave you to your own issues and those that you create and remove all my posts that have helpful information.
Good luck starting fights over literaly nothing, im sure you will find many issues with other people anywhere you go with that mindset.

Good job projecting and proving my point lol. You're way too invested in a simple misunderstanding.