Hi everyone,

CivIII fan for years moving to CivIV and moving up the difficulty levels.

Before I get into bad habits, just a couple of questions....

Having put a pasture or a cottage on a square (on the advice of the AI), at a leter time the AI suggests changing this. Is the AI competant enough to say that as things change, there are better ways to develop terrain later in the game?

Secondly, when searching for answers to this I came accross a thread on "roads" which raised more questions. Is there an advantage to roads (and rails) other than the obvious movement advantages and the fact that they link cities to both resources and other cities (own and AI Civs)

John

1. The AI gives decent advice, but when you understand how improvements work you can often do better. Always check the "automated workers leave old improvements" option if you use a mix of manual and automated workers.

2. Roads give no bonus. Railroads give 1:hammers: to mines, lumbermills and quarries.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for that. As ever, the devil is in the detail. I must admit, I've never been a fan of letting the AI control my workers. I tend just to stick with the city governor keeping my citizens happy (although this may just be a throwback to CivIII and my anti-micromanagement ethos)

John

The AI worker routines are really bad. I've watched it replace a town with a workshop, and a workshop with a cottage, simultaneously.

Choose the "leave existing improvements" option (it is called something like that), then micromanage them for the vital improvements only. This is particularly important if you are building cottages and relying on them for income.