The Next 20 Turns

The early game is one of expansion. In most Longturn Traditional (LTT) or Longturn Experimental (LTX) multiplayer rules-based games you do not need to worry so much about putting a defender(s) into your new cities right away. Start with Workers to develop the land and build roads between cities. The quicker you can upgrade the Tribal Workers to regular Workers is also important. The Tribal Workers do not gain veteran status and actually have less “work points” than regular Workers. Refer to Managing your Workforce below for more information.

Exploring the Area: Opening up the Map

Every player starts with two (2) Explorers. With the discovery of Seafaring a player can build more if needed (or replace one that was killed by an enemy). Explorers are often your first form of in game diplomacy. As you move your Explorers around (ideally from mountain to mountain for the extra vision) you are going to find your neighbors. LTT/LTX rules enable a “contact” embassy to be created for the current turn if your Explorers comes into contact with another nation’s unit (of any kind). For an Explorer to come into “contact” with another unit, they simply are adjacent to each other.

This is a good opportunity to do two things:

Reach out to the player in game chat or on Discord and start a dialog. Ask permission to explore their territory. This is the best way to A) not aggravate your neighbor and B) keep your Explorers alive.
In the game, open the diplomacy screen via the “meet” button on the Nations View and ask to swap embassies. Many players will agree to the sharing of embassies as it gives important information that both sides can equally use. This is why it is important to do #1 first, so you have already started a dialog with your neighbor.

At a minimum, find out where your neighbor’s capital city and major borders are. It goes without saying that you should not overstay your welcome. There is also nothing wrong with placing an Explorers on a shared border, on a tile inside your border, to act as a sentry.

Note

As opposed to typical single-player AI games, “Armistice” is the default state between nations in LTT and “War” for LTX rulesets. When you meet a player and establish a contact embassy, you will automatically go into Armistice or War with that player.

This setting comes from the initial_diplomatic_state setting in the game.ruleset ruleset file and is not shown in game help.

Deciding on an Initial Strategy

Early Government

Everyone starts with Despotism as their form of government. If you are land constrained there is the City States government available with Iron Working (in the LTX ruleset) that gives some nice benefits, but also has some constraints as well (see game help).

Most players either go the Despotism → Monarchy → Democracy path or the Despotism → Republic → Democracy path. It is easier to reach Monarchy than Republic. There is also a school of thought to abandon Despotism early and go Tribal right away. There are some differences between the two early governments that are worth comparing. For example Tribal has better production at the expense of science (bulbs) output.

This table provides a side-by-side comparison of Despotism vs Tribal for a complete picture.

The First Research Target

There are many ways to go about researching technologies depending on varying goals.

From a Small Wonder perspective (see section on Small and Great Wonders below), here are some ideas:

Ceremonial Burial → Pottery: Gives 3 of the 4 Level 1 Small Wonders right away.
Alphabet (LTT) / Pictography (LTX) → Masonry → Mathematics: Gives Pyramids.
Horseback Riding → Polytheism: First good attack unit (Elephant) plus Statue of Zeus.
Mysticism: Temple of Artemis.
Astronomy: Copernicus’ Observatory.
Bronze Working: Obsoletes Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum and gives Colossus.

Path to Monarchy:

The Monarchy Path is Alphabet (LTT) / Pictography (LTX) → Ceremonial Burial → Code of Laws → Monarchy.

Early Defense and Aggression:

Bronze Working (Phalanx) → Horseback Riding (Horsemen) → The Wheel (Chariot) → Iron Working (Legion or Swordsman) → Polytheism (Elephant).

The long and short of research is that every game will offer competing priorities given the nature of your neighbors, strength of varying players, and other factors that will dictate the technology research path you take.

Note

LTT/LTX games have tech leak enabled. This means that as players learn varying technologies they get cheaper for everyone else following a formula.

The Settler Race

As described in the City Planning section, there are many ways to spread out and plan your city placement. In the first 20 turns, you need to pump out as many Settlers as you can manage and then get those cities built. You are in a race with your neighbors to grab land as quickly as your nation can do so.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Settlers cost two citizen population, so a city must be size 3 to complete the production of one Settlers.
Production happens before growth during The Turn Change Sequence. This means that if the city will grow to size 3 at TC and also finish production of the Settlers at TC, the city will grow, but the Settlers will not be produced until the next TC with some shield waste.
You can rush-buy Settlers with Gold. Many players will do this the same turn that the city grows to size 3 so the Settlers will be finished at TC. This is a good approach to keep from running into the issue in the previous bullet.
Use Workers to pre-build roads to planned settling spots so your Settlers get there faster.
As mentioned before, use a tool such as Inkscape to help you plan out your cities. You can keep the map image as a layer and all the city placement objects as another layer(s) so that all you have to do is swap out the map image layer as you open up the map with your Explorers.

Note

The Freeciv21 client has a feature to export a complete map to a PNG file. See game manual.

Pumping Settlers

The concept of “Settler Pumping” is probably not new to veteran players, however newer Longturn players may need some extra information. The idea is to push Settlers from every city. Nothing else is produced at this phase of the game. Produce them as quickly as possible taking into account growth and production rates. If needed, store shields in more expensive units to allow a city to grow to size 3 and then change production.

Treat this aspect of the game similar to the United States “Manifest Destiny” period in the mid-19th century. You want to spam Settlers so you can grab as much land as possible.

Small and Great Wonders

It cannot be emphasized enough that the collection of Small Wonders and some important Great Wonders that each player can build are very important to a successful civilization’s early growth.

Note

The built-in rulesets shipped with Freeciv21 do not break out wonders into two types. They are all Great Wonders, where only one player can build each. The Longturn rulesets break wonders into two types: Small and Great. As with the shipped rulesets, Great Wonders in LTT/LTX games are the same — only one player can build it. Small Wonders in the Longturn rulesets allow for every player to build them. Many Small Wonders give empire-wide effects, just like Great Wonders do. We do this to offer some balance so really good players do not dominate the wonder race.

This table provides some information on the important wonders before the Gunpowder age.

Table 3 Important Early Wonders
Tech Tree Level	Wonder	Required / Obsolete	Benefits	Notes
1	Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum	Ceremonial Burial / Bronze Working	The city having it will get \(+6\) additional Luxury and will celebrate after size 3.	Build in the city with best production as it is simply a \(+6\) Luxury adder and not based on city size. The city will celebrate early by giving a small Science (bulbs) boost.
1	Mausoleum of Mausolos	Ceremonial Burial / The Republic	City Walls and Courthouses each make one unhappy citizen content.	Courthouses are a must to reduce waste and corruption. City Walls are very important for defense at all stages of the game, except the late game when the power of the units makes them pretty much impossible to defend against.
1	Hanging Gardens	Pottery / Explosives	Makes one unhappy citizen content in every city. This wonder also makes two content citizens happy in the city where it is located.	Good to put in a big city and really helps with empire size issues.
1	Colossus	Bronze Working / Invention	Each tile around the city where this wonder is built that is already generating some Trade produces one extra Trade resource.	Bronze Working obsoletes the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, which is often built in your capital city. You will want to replace the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum with the Colossus as soon as you can to continue to get the Trade (Luxury Goods) benefits. Depending on the size of your capital, you may actually see a higher level of effect.
2	Pyramids	Mathematics / Railroad	Each tile produces \(+1\) Shield, eliminates the Despotism penalty.	Building Pyramids is a must as soon as possible, especially if you do not plan to go straight to Monarchy. It is possible to have the Pyramids by `T15`. Build it in the highest production city. The Pyramids are also important when you are in Anarchy switching to another form of government (e.g. Republic, Democracy, or Federation) so you do not suffer the Despotism penalty.
2	Temple of Artemis	Mysticism / Theology	Makes 2 additional unhappy citizens content in every city with a Temple.	Temples are a must before Republic or Democracy. This wonder will help your cities to celebrate when the time is right.
2	Statue of Zeus	Polytheism / Gunpowder	Eliminates 1 unhappy citizen due to military units abroad, plus each city also avoids 1 Shield of upkeep for units.	Citizen happiness is an important aspect of the early game. This wonder continues to keep your citizens happy as cities grow in size. The second aspect (Shield upkeep) is huge if you are Tribal and/or Republic.
3	Copernicus’ Observatory	Astronomy / University	Each tile worked by the city where this wonder is built produces one extra research point.	Another good one for a big city to get a boost to Science (bulb) output.
4	Sun Tzu’s War Academy	Feudalism / Metallurgy	All your new military land units start with an additional veteran level.	This means that with a Barracks in the city, all your units will be Veteran 2 (175%) right away after production.
5	King Richard’s Crusade	Chivalry / Navigation	Reduces the unhappiness caused by aggressively deployed military units owned by the city by 1. Under governments where unit upkeep is paid in gold, it gives two free gold per city towards upkeep every turn.	The primary benefit of this wonder is the reduction of gold upkeep for military units. With Monarchy, unit upkeep is in Gold. This wonder helps your treasury greatly.
5	Leonardo’s Workshop	Invention / Combustion	Upgrades two obsolete units per game turn.	At about this stage of the game, most players will have a collection of older units that have upgrades available. This wonder helps the player automatically upgrade old units to newer versions for free every turn.
5	Verrocchio’s Workshop	Invention / Industrialization	Upgrades one obsolete unit per turn.	This is a Great Wonder, so only a single player can build it. However, if you are able to get it first, you will have an advantage in the free unit upgrade path.

Note

When thinking about Small and Great Wonders. Keep attention to what obsoletes them. For example, if you decide to build the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum early, you need to keep away from Bronze Working for as long as possible or you will lose its effect.

Note

The table above is not an exhaustive list of all the wonders. It is a reflection of the early wonders that a player might want to pay attention to. See in game help for a complete list. Small Wonders will show up in the City Improvements section.

Tip

With the discovery of Trade, you can build the Caravan unit. This allows you to transport 50 shields of production from one city to another. These units are a great way of rapidly building expensive wonders by distributing the workload across many cities at once instead of keeping it all inside a single city’s production capacity. All good Longturn players will use them for important Wonders such as Verrocchio’s Workshop. You can start and finish a wonder in a single turn with appropriate planning.

Your First 10 Cities

Managing Your Cities

Using an effective micromanagement strategy with regards to managing your cities is very important, especially in the early game. Here are a few points on things to think about:

Concentrate Workers on your capital city. Get it as big as you can (up to size 16) well before you learn Sanitation. Many Longturn players will never produce Settlers from their capital and only let it grow and effectively turn it into a “wonder” city where all the Small and Great Wonders are constructed.
All cities should mostly concentrate on max food for growth. Where you micromanage is around the time for the city to grow to the next size. Any more food that is produced at a new city size is wasted. For example: if you only need one food to grow, but the city is producing \(+2\) food, then you will lose the extra food to waste at TC. Instead move your citizens around in the city dialog to get the city to only produce \(+1\) food and eliminate the waste.

Tip

The larger the city the more opportunity for more production. Do not drastically slow down growth simply for production. Concentrate on growth instead as production comes with the larger size. Larger cities also produce more Gold and research bulbs!
You get a free Granary “effect” up to size 5, so be sure to keep an eye out and build a Granary in your cities at the same time or before size 5. Production occurs before city growth during the turn change process. If you do not build Granary your growth will stall significantly.
Early governments have a martial law effect to keep citizens happy at size 5+. See in game help for more details. This means that with no unit in the city you can get to size 4 and have all your citizens content in the city (with no other improvements in the city such as a Temple). At size 5 you will have one unhappy citizen that can be made happy with a military unit placed in the city. At size 6 you will need two of them and so on.

Tip

Some players build cheap Warriors to help with martial law instead of building happiness buildings or Small Wonders in the early game. The thinking is the Warrior can be upgraded over time to better units with gold or Leonardo’s Workshop. Warriors cost 10 shields and a Temple costs 25. So you can get 2.5 Warriors for every Temple for the same effect. Also with Warriors available you can move them around to quickly balance out any unhappiness in a city while you build other items (such as finishing a Settlers, which will drop the city size down making the Temple unnecessary).
City Improvements that increase Luxury will then create bulbs, gold and happiness.
You need Workers, Workers, and more Workers. Cities become very powerful the larger they are. The more you can put Workers to “work” on the tiles around your cities the better. Irrigate Grassland, irrigate Swamp to Grassland, cut down Forest and convert to Grassland, and then convert Plains to Grassland. Irrigated Grassland produces \(+3\) food per turn and \(+4\) with Farmland (with Refrigeration).

Tip

Do not forget to upgrade the 5 Tribal Workers to full Workers as soon as you can manage. Recall that Tribal Workers are crippled in the rulesets (in different ways in LTT vs LTX, but still less than a full Workers).

Some notes on determining what to build in your cities:

Until you have at least 20 cities or are out of room to plant more cities you should be building Workers and Settlers as quickly as possible. Fill all available space first.
Pay close attention to the effect varying city improvements will give you to determine if something is worth building or not. Think of it as a cost vs benefit analysis.
- An example will help. Imagine you have a city of size 4 that produces \(+2\) Trade and another city that is size 7 and produces \(+10\) Trade. You have learned Currency and want to build a Marketplace in all your cities (a good goal). A Marketplace costs 45 Shields to produce and gives a 50% Tax (Trade / Luxury Goods) bonus to the city. For the first city you will only get \(+1\) more Trade and the second you will get \(+5\) more. This means you have a 1:45 Trade:Production ratio in the first city and a 5:45 Trade:Production ratio in the second. Obviously build (or even buy) the Marketplace in the bigger city and hold off on it in the smaller city. Build Workers instead in the smaller city as they cost 20 Shields and have more utility.
- Another example was given earlier, but good to repeat here. A Temple costs 25 Shields for a single happy citizen and a Warrior costs 10 for the same effect and has more utility.

Note

If you have not figured it out yet, Longturn games are math heavy.

Managing Your Workforce

Workers are a major engine for growth of your empire. There is a simple rule of thumb with regards to Workers — you can never have too many!

Let us start by talking about the veteran levels in LTT/LTX games. What is written here applies to all units, but with different effects.

In the game, the tileset will place a symbol embellishment on the unit to denote its veteran level. The embellishment will vary by tileset.

The veteran levels for LTT/LTX are:

Veteran 1 (v)
Veteran 2 (vv)
Veteran 3 (vvv)
Hardened 1 (h1)
Hardened 2 (h2)
Hardened 3 (h3)
Elite 1 (e1)
Elite 2 (e2)
Elite 3 (e3)

This table shows what effect veteran levels have on all units except Diplomats and Spies.

Table 4 Veteran Levels
Vet Level	Combat Strength	Move Bonus	Promotion Chance (%)
Vet Level	Combat Strength	Move Bonus	In Combat	By Working (per turn)
Green	\(1\) x	\(0\)	50%	9%
Veteran 1	\(1.5\) x (from Green)	\(^1/_3\) (from Green)	45%	6%
Veteran 2	\(1.75\) x	\(^2/_3\)	40%	6%
Veteran 3	\(2\) x	\(1\)	35%	6%
Hardened 1	\(2.25\) x	\(1\:^1/_3\)	30%	5%
Hardened 2	\(2.5\) x	\(1\:^2/_3\)	25%	5%
Hardened 3	\(2.75\) x	\(2\)	20%	4%
Elite 1	\(3\) x	\(2\:^1/_3\)	15%	4%
Elite 2	\(3.25\) x	\(2\:^2/_3\)	10%	3%
Elite 3	\(3.5\) x	\(3\)	0	0

The working capacity of each Workers is given by the base movement points. In the LTT/LTX rulesets, Tribal Workers have a base work rate of two (2) in LTT and three (3) in LTX. Regular Workers have a base work rate of three (3), and Engineers have a base work rate of six (6). You can see this by looking at the “moves” value for the unit in game help. The base working rate is then multiplied by the combat strength value when promoted. For example a v1 (v) Workers has a base rate of \(3\times1.5=4.5\) and a v2 (vv) Workers has a base rate of \(3\times1.75=5.25\) and so on. This is why we ask you to upgrade your Tribal Workers as quickly as you can, that extra move point is huge over the long turn.

Note

Migrants, Immigrants, and Settlers can do work but cannot be promoted, so their work rate remains the same all the time.

Each terrain requires a different amount of work to build infrastructure on it. For example, if you go to the help entry of grasslands (by going to Help ‣ Terrain ‣ Grasslands), you will see something like the screenshot below:

The term “turns” here is a bit of a misnomer from a long-lost era when people used to play short-turn and some rulesets had the Workers move rate set to 1. What it really means is the total work needed to modify the terrain, either by building infrastructure or by transforming it to a different terrain. For the rest of this page, we will refer to these “turns” as “work points”, to avoid confusion with the actual passing of game turns.

The actual number of work points it takes for the modification of the terrain is given by the total work force of the Workers and the total work points needed (e.g. you can put more than one Workers on a single tile and if they do the same activity such as Irrigate they combine efforts). Let us take a particular example: From the image above, you can see that irrigating the grassland takes 5 ”turns” (i.e. work points). Now, If you have a v1 Workers, its work rate is \(3\times1.5=4.5\), which falls short of 5. So the Workers takes 2 turns to irrigate the grassland. However, if you have a vv (v2) Workers, its total work points is \(3\times1.75=5.25\). Therefore, the vv Workers can irrigate the grassland in a single turn! Note that building a road costs two work points, so both Tribal Workers and Workers can do it in a single turn. At this point in the game, it is really useful to optimize your workforce to the fullest by using the right Workers for the right job. E.g. if you have a vv Workers, a v Tribal Worker and a green Workers and want to irrigate two grasslands, the most optimal way to do it is to let the vv Workers irrigate grassland alone and have the v Tribal Workers and green Workers work together on the other grassland. Any other combination will lead to one of the grasslands being overworked (i.e. wasting work points), and the other grassland to be under-worked (thus needing two turns to be completed).

Note

This information is not really displayed in the game. You pretty much have to do the math on your own to determine a complete optimal strategy for each Workers action per turn. You can use the middle-click feature to get a popup that will tell you how many turns it will take to complete the action, but it will not tell you how many work points are being applied to the tile. You have to do that math yourself.

Oh, did we tell you that Longturn is math heavy?

Tip

Never allow a Workers to be idle during a turn (not working on anything). You might miss a chance for promotion. If you need to move a Workers across the map for some reason and it will take more than one turn, stop along the way and build a mine (or something “expensive” in worker points). Then after TC, move the Workers to where you wanted to go and set the appropriate task.

Tip

When you get Engineers with Explosives they can do advanced terrain alterations (called Transform in game). With Engineers you can greatly influence the defense of your cities. Engineers can convert any terrain into Hills (certainly will take a few steps). Hills + City Walls gives a large defensive bonus to all defending units. Use them wisely.

Early Military

Anyone who has played any kind of Longturn game knows that in the early turns, cities are small, not well defended and do not have a lot of production capacity available. This last point means that it takes many turns to build anything, especially military units.

In every phase of an LTT/LTX game, military conflict is effectively a combination of strategy and cunning. However, one thing that gets missed sometimes is military conflict is also a factor of shield and gold production. If you can lose fewer units (e.g. production value) than your opponent, you can often come out on top. The caveat to this, especially during the early game, is that any production you put towards a military conflict is not being used to grow your empire. This early aggression can cripple any growth plans, so you have to be very sure that the military aggression path is in your best interest.

As a general rule of thumb, if you are land constrained it makes sense to go all in with military unit production to take cities of nearby neighbors. If there is room to grow, it would be better to work to block your opponent(s) from taking land from you instead and grow that way.

Note

When going for conquest against enemy cities without City Walls, remember that most land based units will kill off the population. LTT/LTX rulesets have the KillCitizen flag on most land based units. Only ships and aircraft do not cause population loss. If there are more units in the city than the city population, you will destroy the city (create Ruins) instead of taking it. Also remember that entering the city also kills one citizen.