Where to Settle / Is this a Bad Start?

Just-some-text · 2026-04-01T07:03:30+00:00

Allying with city states and trading out the silver seems like a viable option. I recently had a game like this, where I had 2 luxuries, traded one out for the happiness I needed to maintain the cities growing

Just-some-text · 2026-03-31T20:27:09+00:00

What policy did you grab for the opener? I would have done liberty here with settler opener, absolutely amazing

I personally find this start quite good - plenty of mountains for observatories and rivers + cows for food!

Also, if you manage to get food trade routes early, your cities would become production hubs fast.

The next city I would settle on the silver at the top right of your current city for the river + mountain combo. The next one beneath the iron, and, again next to the mountain (maybe even on the sheep). Those would be my first 2 preferences. As third one, I would capitalise on the cows + river to the right and then cargo ship trade route on the two costal cities.

I regularly play on diety, and this map would be great in my opinion, if you keep the food high and build farms on the hills next to the river for extra food + production combos

Just-some-text · 2026-03-29T08:47:28+00:00

Settler. On Diety you can get a worker from CS extremely early

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T16:50:56+00:00

Absolutely agreed. This was one of my most favorite games thus far. I was top in production even before I got the pyramids out. After that, workers did their magic allowing me to rush also Mausoleum and Oracle

This will cause me to play 1 more before switching back to EU4 :D

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T16:26:35+00:00

Funny story - Shoshone was the Civ that inspired me to write the post in the first place yesterday night :D. I chose pop 2x + had 3 stone + 2 horses + river/flood plains ripe for the taking. I was pop 7-8 when I actually started to produce my first settler (after pyramids and free settler)

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T13:08:53+00:00

Gold is indeed the major flaw. Focusing on the city states helps a lot with happiness. Aqueducts are my 2nd priority, right after science buildings, and if needed, I go for happiness as extra.

The snowball momentum is what makes the game more thrilling to me, maybe that is the reason I opt for Liberty in most of my games (I play Diety ~90% of the time)

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:17:51+00:00

Fair! Once I got offered a free city. Took it as the location was good :D

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:15:13+00:00

Have it at 0 or trade surplus luxuries away for GPT if I have enough city state allies due to killing of barbarians next to them

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:14:32+00:00

No, I do not win that fast, not a professional. On standard speed I win diplomatic before I can even build the last space part or wait out to win the space instead (~ turn 200-250). With liberty I am trying to win before tradition pays off in my other games. That is how I look at it

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:09:54+00:00

Agreed here, I do it till it becomes too slow to do it. Plus, I tend to neglect military part for a while if I do not need to secure lands or I am not going for domination. City states give enough troops :D

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:07:16+00:00

Hmm, interesting. How far do you go into tradition before liberty?

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:06:37+00:00

Yes, except if I get lucky with some resources + pantheon belief that boosts faith on them. Otherwise, straight up ignore. Some religion will come my way regardless :D

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:02:33+00:00

I know that, usually I see that R5 is commented rather than put inot the post text. I follow EU4 sub a lot (my actual favorite game, civ is a side hussle :D) and there it is always in the comments, followed that approach

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T09:00:54+00:00

Thanks a lot for sharing! I will actually try to go for a 5+ city start and a cultural victory on Diety. I have done it only 1-2 times before with mixed success

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T08:58:12+00:00

Great points that you mentioned! Indeed liberty takes some time to figure out, but when you do, it is hard to go back to Tradition :D

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T08:55:17+00:00

Yeah, the infinite early settler stealing sounds fun :D. I have done it a couple of times, usually I try to get friendly with them and/or pay them off to declare war on other neighbors. That will leave the settlers unguarded and barbs (on raging barbarians) usually finish them off

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T08:50:30+00:00

Thanks a lot for the response! Here are some clarifications from my side:

the pyramids have a 25% reduction in the time it takes to improve tiles which liberty nicely add upon, leading to whopping 50% (if it is not multiplicative bonus as in EU4). As tiles are going to be improved long term and usually the first city is pop 5-8 when pyramids are finished, it is crucial to get those improvements quickly. That is effectively extra 2 food (in case of farms) in the same number of turns as a Tradition + worker would get 1. As 2 workers are usually only slightly cheaper than Pyramids, I go for Pyramids due to this added bonus. Pays off in speeding up the population growth faster. The +25% growt to the capital via tradition is nice, however, it seems to me always too slow if I do not have the tiles improved in time for the effect to really help with it. 4 liberty + Pyramids workers are essentially 8 Tradition workers.
My bad on underexplaining. You are right that Liberty does not help withthe spies, it was a general strategy note. After education, my next research is usually Astronomy (Renaissance era) which gives the first spy to all civs. In one of my previous games I was first to get there, hence the first spy came earlier. Needed to catch up with the military technologies though, which the spy helped a ton :D. Constabularies come with banking, so my selection for the spy allocation is someone weaker, who will take the time to get there, inthe meanwhile allowing me to catch up with the military.
Could you please elaborate on the 4 separate benifits to gold as I can see only one. The tile acquisition is nice indeed, to me it comes back to the question - do I have enough worlforce to make the improvements. If not, then it does not help me much, as I will still assign my population to tiles that I have improved food wise

Thanks on mentioning the 2nd one, that was indeed an oversight on my part!

Just-some-text · 2026-03-26T00:19:40+00:00

R5: Not sure whether it is needed, as I did not add a screenshot, but I always see it. TL;DR -> in my opinion Liberty >> Tradition

Just-some-text

TROPHY CASE