New Player Curious About Early Expansion Strategies – Tips?

[wizzlestick]

I’m pretty new to Freeciv and loving the depth so far. I’ve been experimenting with different nations and map types, but one thing I’m struggling to figure out is the best early-game expansion strategy.

Should I prioritize building settlers as quickly as possible, or focus more on infrastructure and military in the beginning? Also, how far apart do you usually place your cities early on?

Any advice, beginner-friendly tips, or even fun mistakes to learn from would be super appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[easternstaff]

the early game really sets the tone, so your questions are spot on.

In most cases, getting settlers out early is key, especially if you’re not surrounded by aggressive neighbors. Expanding fast gives you control over more land, resources, and production capacity. I usually aim to have my second city by turn 20–30 if possible, depending on terrain and tech.

As for city spacing, I tend to go for 4–5 tiles apart early on. It gives each city room to grow without competing too much for tiles, and keeps road-building manageable. Later in the game, once you’ve unlocked better infrastructure, you can afford to build closer or fill in gaps.

Fun mistake I made early on: I focused too much on wonders and neglected expansion ended up boxed in by AI with no room to grow .

Try experimenting with different nations too some have bonuses that really help early growth.

[LethaJast]

Welcome to Freeciv, and great questions! Early expansion is key, so yes—prioritizing settlers early is usually a solid strategy. Aim to build your second city quickly, ideally after your capital hits size 2 or so.

For spacing, a good rule of thumb is 3–5 tiles apart. Too close and you crowd resources; too far and you delay connecting/supporting cities. Roads help with that!

Don’t ignore defense, but unless you're near a hostile neighbor, military can be light early on. Scout the map, claim good spots fast, and have fun experimenting!

It's important to consider your playstyle and the map situation, and adjust your approach accordingly. What direction are you looking to go in your game?

[Sanguivorant]

I’m pretty new to Freeciv and loving the depth so far. I’ve been experimenting with different nations and map types, but one thing I’m struggling to figure out is the best early-game expansion strategy.

Should I prioritize building settlers as quickly as possible, or focus more on infrastructure and military in the beginning? Also, how far apart do you usually place your cities early on?

Any advice, beginner-friendly tips, or even fun mistakes to learn from would be super appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

I'm assuming you're playing the civ2civ3 ruleset, right?

If you're coming from a different civ, the big difference is that Freeciv plays a lot like the old renditions, meaning that founding a new city is free to a certain extent and the cost of techs/production/units do not increase with civilization size. What that means is that it's critical to grab as much territory as possible in the beginning of the game.

The limit early game is that you start in despotism/tribalism, where you can have up to 10 or so cities before you incur an unhappiness penalty from civilization size. Take a look at this wiki page, but consult the civilopedia:
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Government

If your map size allows it, you should be gunning for at least 10-12 cities by the time you reach Monarchy, or until you have no more land to plot cities on. A decent approach is to start with a few defender units (warriors to start, since they are cheap), then train a settler. Don't worry about workers at this stage. Higher priority tiles are river tiles, as they have food that is good for growth. An ideal city is a river city with a resource tile, like wheat, bison, coal, etc. Then, plotting cities near or on resource tiles is important. Try to secure sea access by having a city on the coast with a whale or fish tile.



Starting from your first city/cities, you should build warrior>warrior>settler. One warrior defends the city, the next one explores to find and put presence on good resource tiles mentioned above. Keep in mind that most units can establish a zone of control around them, meaning that they can block a rival civ from moving past them. With that in mind, you can actually prevent rival civs from expanding just by positioning military units at chokepoints on the map that prevent their settlers from getting to other lands.

Cities you found that have good food tiles you should place a granary there, and it can focus exclusively on settlers and workers. Other cities can make one settler, then you can focus on growing it to a large population, with workers improving the terrain and making roads.

Once you switch to your first government (monarchy or republic depending on proximity to other civilizations and how aggressive they are), you switch up your tempo and focus on growing your city population. You will probably encounter rival civilizations by this point. Have one diplomat go around and establish embassies, then trade for techs. This will likely be the last chance to trade techs until the AI either decides you are their friend or enemy.

As for deciding between monarchy or republic, it depends on your civilization size and how aggressive your neighbours are. Republic generally allows you to do more with less, meaning if you are commerce poor or don't have as much cities, you can make up for that with the commerce bonus you can from republic, although that comes at the cost of requiring production to maintain units, and getting an unhappiness from deploying units outside of your nation's borders. Monarchy is good for military aggression, and you can get up to 3 happiness from positioning your military units in a city, meaning that you can grow cities in monarchy to a larger size before you deal with civil unrest.

You will find that some of your cities will be commerce rich (generally coastal cities and cities on rivers); those are the ones where you want to build improvements like libraries. Marketplaces are good to have in most cities.

Some cities you will find commerce poor but production rich (cities with coal, iron or lots of hills nearby), and you can designate those as your military making cities where you can place barracks and start making more military. You don't need to make these cities huge, only large enough to utilize those high production tiles and maintain population. Regardless, make sure you have workers that are improving your tiles appropriately. You will almost always get a commerce from building roads, so build roads everywhere, but prioritize making roads that connect your cities so you can easily move units between them.

On a more advanced level, you can experiment with specialists, but they aren't really necessary until you have tier 2 improvements (banks and universities). After you have those, it may be useful to have a "science" city, which is in a high food area just has science improvements and scientist specialists.

From here, the game is quite open, but generally by the time you get to 100 BC, you should be finding out which nation you can fight to take their cities. An army of at least five or so knights combined with catapults should be adequate to start a campaign. Keep in mind that the AI will not stop expanding, so after initial expansion, you should by slowly expanding. If there is an island nearby with decent resources, grab it. Otherwise, continue conquering rival nations that are hostile.

From there you are set well for the end game, and you can either go for a science victory or conquest victory.