Espaņol / English

The Academy

First Moments

1. Settler farms: You'll need two cities with a great food production if you want to compete with the AI's expansion; these two cities fhould be founded as soon as possible, because they'll control the expansion of your empire.
2. Worker farms: With just a worker farm, you'll have enough for all the ancient era. It should have a good food production (like the settler farm) but with a granary almost every city will do. The target is to produce, at least, a worker per city (but if you can build more, do it without hesitating); use these workers to build a road network, to irrigate the tiles near the cities, build mines, etc. This worker farm is essential for your prosperity in long term, and shold be one of your highest priorities - perhaps the third city you found.
3. City of barracks/city of wonder: if you're going to play as a conqueror, beginning with your fourth city you'll have enough critical mass to start producing units everywhere to crush your nearby opponent. Though, for a non-so-militaristic game, it'll be enough to have a single city with barracks. That city don't need to have a specially good food production ratio, but must have access to many hills and mountains to have a good shield production from the beginning; you should also build a granary there to allow the 'accelerated production' in despotism. If you've decided that the city is going to build wonders in spite of military units, you can forget about the barracks, but you should build the granary anyway. In both cases, there should be a temple, because of cultural reasons and of unrest, and it's good that every city have a worker to work in the nearby tiles. To build deffensive units is optional in a city of wonder, because you can build them in nearby cities.
4. Luxuries/Resources in the Ancient Era: When the first three (basical) points have been accomplished, it's time to think in middle-term, and that means to think in horses and iron. With correct diplomatic agreements, and paying attention to the techtree (the wheel / iron working), you'll discover the location of these resources, and that must attract your attention at once. The same with luxiries (specially, you have to run to reach the most nearby ones, because the tiles with resources give extra trade units).
5. Long-term investments: have you seen the desert you've crossed a lot of times to find proper locations to your cities? What about that dense group of hills in the north, or the jungle in your southern border? Once you've stablished in your terrain as indicated above, you have to colonize these terrain, thinking in long-term investments. The cities you found in those terrains won't grow a lot, and won't be very productive, but will improve your chances to get those really valuable resources in the later eras.

    Following the above advice, it's possible to even (and, sometimes, to make it better) the AI's expansion in Monarch difficulty level.

    To test it, let's see two extreme examples:

• In the first one, imagine that you start in the center of an (at least) mid-size continent. Your capital city (your first city, by default), will be in the center of your empire, no matter how do you decide to expand. The most probable result is that, at least in the beginning, you expand in all directions (a city per cardinal point), changing the exact location of every city depending on the available resources.
      Thus, when you expand  in additional circles around your capital, you'll note an increasing corruption that will force you to build the forbidden palace [ from now on, FP ]. Please note it's not neccessary to change your capital city, and you can easily control the direction of your expansion.
• In the second one, imagine that you start in the extreme of a peninsula, or next to a great desert you've to cross to build interesting cities. In this case, your game will be much different from the first example because most of your cities will have corruption problems, as a result of the long distance to your capital.
      In the game, that means that, even if you can expand as fast as the AI, your cities will be less productive, what will force you to search more cities with more food available than you should have searched in other situation, to produce buildings sacrifficing the population (many people will do normally, but in this situation it's a duty). Of course, the permanent solution is to change your capital to a better place when you have an empire big enough and then build the FP. That will be a disadvantage, because building a palace is not for free. But there are possibilities to improve your position.

   If your capital is in a bad location (i.e, not in the center of your natural expansion circles), you always have to be aggressive. This means that you've to be clever with your expansions, because you're going to use your capital as a settler farm for a long time. A poor starting position means that every colonist much travel more to found a new city, what makes a good road network (one that avoids crossing rivers, for example) in something much more important than usual, because you're going to need all the speed you can get to compete with the AI.

      Of course, you can be agreessive in other senses of the term. You can always act this way, but if your starting position is bad, it's almost a duty!

  1. Military agression: this way has a lot of advantages, because you don't have to build the wonders of the ancient age. Just let the other civs build them while you build an army to steal them. You'll have to build a city with forests nearby (better if there are special resources near) to use it as troop training base. A good reason to do this if your starting position is bad, it that you'll get a leader sooner this way; you will be able to use it to hurry the construction of a palace, thus changing your capital city. In the ancien era, surely you'll have many cities producing few shieldes, due to the losses caused by the distance to the capital; so, you'll be sotpped if you're not able to relocate your capital city soon. A military leader can do this for you. You have also to build cities in a circle surrounding your future capital (normally a nine-cities network; keep those you capture near and burn the others).
  2. Palace Strategy: specially useful if you start in a peninsula, surrounded by your rivals. Probably those rivals will colonize the main terrains of the peninsula to strangle your expansion (it will be intended); if they do that, after a fast movement of your capital to the border and accelerated production of many cultural buildings, you'll attract nearby enemy cities. With these cities assimilated, relocate the palace again (this time, to its final location), so you'll surely get any other cities by your cultural influence
  3. Mapmaking: I'ts specially important if you're in a small continent, or surrounded by a bigger and more culturally advanced than you. Then, you MUST build a ship and scape from that position: find another place to expand, and do it fast - remember that AI expands like a rabbit using Viagra; if you don't find room to expand soon, the AI won't let an empty place for you.

    An isolated position requires a much more aggressive military behaviour, and makes Mapmaking a technology that you must research inmediatly. No matter how do you choose to combat it, it's clear that a bad initial position decides many of your first movements in the game, and have consequences that you'll experience for all the whole game.