Old World – Tips for New Players

Game Advices For The New Players

• 1) First and second cities will naturally grow faster. Carefully select the best 2 nation families available with the best early bonuses: extra unit, growth bonus, civics bonus, extra citizens.
• 2) It’s usually better to clear out and take over important barbarian and tribe spots early in the game, before you start building cities in empty areas. This doesn’t work if you start too close to another country, which is always a hard situation. Try to build cities that are connected to each other. Cities automatically connect when they’re on rivers or coasts, even before you can build roads yourself. So, it’s a good idea to send your military units to these naturally connected areas before you finish exploring all the nearby land.
• 3) It is advantageous to have equal number of cities for each your family. So plan your empire for exact 3/6/9 cities. You can improve family happiness a bit and usually can share family workers if you settle each family’s cities close together.
• 4) Rural specialists on food and marble resources are the most important city early projects. Growth makes citizens (like food in Civ), civic hummers used to train specialists from free citizens. Military production is less important early as you usually can use your single initial unit to fight barbarians early and you are normally too weak to fight major nations during first 50 years.
• 5) For successful military you want to beeline science into Stronghold/Citadel buildings. They unlock your unique units — the strongest ones in the whole tech tree. Do not forget that to build any cavalry units you need hourses/camels/elephants resources.
• 6) Happiness, discontent, luxuries, religion, culture are not critical early. A few early science techs can be useful for faster progress but science rush for the cost of rest is not a solid plan.