So I am trying to get back and good at Civ4. I am playing as Warlord, but struggle a good number of times, especially when playing 5+ other civs.


One of the things I cannot get my head around are the optimal number of cities and improvements in those cities. I feel like about halfway through the game (Medieval Period) that ALL I do is pick new improvements for my cities, and I am not making rational decisions, I just pick some random improvement.

So ... example : I am playing right now on Warlord against just 3 other Civs as Mongolian Empire. I was able to defeat and wipe out the British leaving Egyptian and Roman. I have 12 total cities and I am trying to get Domination, so I am gunning for more and more cities to get the total landmass coverage possible. Every turn, I have between 2-5 decisions on what to improve in my cities. So I just blindly pick - "a market, OK sounds good. Library - yeah I need one of those sure -- Colosseum yeah that gives me culture what the heck" ... seems really really pointless.

What kinds of decisions should I be making about improvements in each city? Should I be going for Wonders more? How many cities should I have -- is 12 too many?

I can't quite get my head around what decisions I should be making. This happens each game I play. It feels like I am just picking whatever improvements blindly and without purpose.

Thanks,
-Dew

There are a couple good guides on city specialization that might help you in the articles section - here's one:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=306619&highlight=city+specialization

I usually pick something for each city - commerce, production, or GP farm - once I'm mostly done settling cities, I'll label them each as well. 12 cities is plenty to win on even the highest levels (I can safely speak for emperor and probably immortal too). In your commerce cities, you'll want cottages, and to prioritize beaker and gold multipliers, so libraries, universities, markets, banks, monasteries, etc..

In your production cities, farms and mines/workshops, and forges, assembly plants, heroic epic, and units should be prioritized. If you're a builder, you can focus on whatever wonders you deem important here too.

Your GP farm should be high food and running as many specialists as you can afford. If not in caste system, then it needs GP buildings, like courthouses, libraries, markets, so you can run those GPs. It should also get national epic at some point.

When you don't have any of the useful buildings to build in your specialized cities, you can build units, wealth or research. In fact, building wealth or research for awhile at emperor and immortal can be key to staying even/pulling ahead in the tech rate. I often will do this in a city or two while trying to get to civil service/COL or other key economic techs.

Well first of all Civilization has a tremendous learning curve. People who have played for years and who can win on high levels still struggle with these same questions: what to build, etc. It isn't always obvious because most of your options will benefit you in some way, its just a matter of prioritizing.

I would start by asking whether you automate your workers and/or city governor. Do you manually decide where to build farms, mines, etc and do you manually decide which of those tiles to work? If you do not, then I would suggest you try it.

Doing this will give you a deeper and richer appreciation of hammers, food, commerce, happiness and health. Once you understand how these all work together, it will become clearer what you need and don't need in your cities and in what order, although there will never be a single right answer. All of the buildings will help you produce more of these things, more happiness, more health, more commerce, more food or more hammers. And you'll have a better sense of which you are in most need of.

And of course, I'd suggest you check the civlopedia with each new build choice to see exactly what benefits these buildings provide and I'd check the city screens to see if you need it. If you still have 3 or 4 health points to grow into, you don't need an aqueduct, etc.

I would start by asking whether you automate your workers and/or city governor. Do you manually decide where to build farms, mines, etc and do you manually decide which of those tiles to work? If you do not, then I would suggest you try it.

Doing this will give you a deeper and richer appreciation of hammers, food, commerce, happiness and health. Once you understand how these all work together, it will become clearer what you need and don't need in your cities and in what order, although there will never be a single right answer.

I have all my workers on automate. I try to get between 1.5-2 workers per city so if they are not automated I feel like the game goes at a crawl. I will try no longer automating. I think all of my problems are based on a lack of fully understanding the details of the game.

I have all my workers on automate. I try to get between 1.5-2 workers per city so if they are not automated I feel like the game goes at a crawl. I will try no longer automating. I think all of my problems are based on a lack of fully understanding the details of the game.

I first played with automation as well. There is just a bit too much to take in if you don't automate to start. Then once you've learned to play with automation, you can step it up by turning it off. This is necessary to get beyond Warlord difficulty, but its not for everybody. As you said, it dramatically slows down the pace of the game.

And some people just don't enjoy the game at that pace. For me, I learned to enjoy micromanagement only after I saw how much better it was making me, how well positioned it made me for the fun parts, the wars. But if you can't enjoy the slow pace, then I'd stay don't sweat it and enjoy the game for what it already is to you, random build choices and all. Unfortunately, the slow micromanagement pace is essential to move on to harder levels.

One more point: I believe (not sure, but I read here somewhere) that the governor options you choose (emphasise production, etc) in a city determine what improvements your Workers will build around that city, so if you want to look at specialisation but not quite micro everything yet, you can try that.

If you specialise your cities correctly, your commerce cities will always have something to build, while your production cities will always be ready to pump out units or wonders. It's when commerce cities have too many hammers and not enough commerce that they run out of things to build; it's when production cities don't have enough production that they never get around to building units or wonders.

I have all my workers on automate. I try to get between 1.5-2 workers per city so if they are not automated I feel like the game goes at a crawl. I will try no longer automating. I think all of my problems are based on a lack of fully understanding the details of the game.

You can still put some of the workers on the Automated Trade Network option (or whatever it is actually called, I haven't played in a month or two) - it will put out resource specific improvements and a road network. In most cases those are the particular improvements you will want on those tiles. Then use the rest to do the farms/cottages/mills.

You will get most of the benefits of controlling the workers yourself while still eliminating some of the micromanagement.


Also, you can queue up multiple orders for a worker (Build Farm here, then a cottage next door, the go start chopping that forest over there....). If you have a fair idea of what you want to accomplish with a city, you can do much of the orders in one batch and not have to worry about it for quite a while.

Ok, you don't really need to worry about major city specialization at Warlord.

I think the most useful thing now would be to understand how :commerce: (commerce) and the :science::gold::culture: sliders and modifiers like libraries work, and a little on Specialist citizens.


Your cites will produce an amount of :commerce: per turn,
This commerce is converted into :science:(Science), :culture:(Culture), :gold:(Gold) or in the Beyond the Sword (BTS) expansion :espionage:(Espinage) depending on how you set your sliders (the one in top left of the general game screen).
If your on BTS the gold slider is invisible, but you can tell what it is by the missing percentage i.e. science is at 60%, culture is at 20% so gold must be at at 20%.


If your not playing BTS then your total science, culture and gold outputs can be found on the Financial Advisor screen (Press F2 or click on the dollar coin symbol in the top right of the normal screen).


As an example lets say a city is producing 10 :commerce:
If your :science: slider is at 100% the ALL your :commerce: becomes :science: so here it will give 10 :science: and this will be boosted only by :science: modifiers such as libraries.
As libraries give +25% to :science: a library here will boost the total to 12.5 :science:

In this case a Market and its +25% on gold will do nothing as no :gold: is produced and therfore is a waste of time and production.


If the slider is set to 70% :science: then your :commerce: is split into 7 :science: and 3 :gold:
Obviously a library here will still be more efficient than a Market if we just take the +25% modifier into account.
The higher a specific slider is, the more effective a building that boosts its output (Library, Market etc) will be.

To increase your :commerce: you can use the cottage improvement or work valuable metals like Gold or Silver.
In general, cottaging most non resource grassland and floodplain tiles, mining hills and metals and improving resources with the appropriate improvmeent (pasture on cows) will get you through Noble.
You can also pretty much ignore the culture slider all the way up to Prince at least.


Now on to Specialist citizens, these are your Merchants, Scientists, Artists, Engineers and in BTS spies.
They can be found on the right hand side of the city screen (after double clicking a city), you can set a citizen to become a specialist by cliking them in the same way you can move them around your cities tiles. Using a specialist will move a citizen off his tile but he can be moved back. You do still need to feed the specialist like any citizen they use 2 food.

Merchants, Scientists and Artists prodce :gold:, :science: and :culture: independant of your :commerce: sliders

Even if your :science: slider was at 100%, a Merchant specialist will still create 3 :gold: per turn which is then increased by buildings like Markets (+25%)

They also produce Great People Points.

These guys are very useful, and understanding them is key to the higher difficulties. But playing around and getting used to them a bit helps on the lower levels too :D


I have all my workers on automate. I try to get between 1.5-2 workers per city so if they are not automated I feel like the game goes at a crawl. I will try no longer automating. I think all of my problems are based on a lack of fully understanding the details of the game.

Automated is fine to begin with, but it would be wise to go to the options screen and tick the 'Automated Workrs Leave Improvements' box, else they screw up your old improvements.
To reduce the amount of management you have to do the Automate Trade Network command thats been mentioned is handy, you can also turn your workers into groups by holding shift and clicking on more than one that are on the same tile.
This is also extremely useful for military units.



One of the things I cannot get my head around are the optimal number of cities and improvements in those cities. I feel like about halfway through the game (Medieval Period) that ALL I do is pick new improvements for my cities, and I am not making rational decisions, I just pick some random improvement.

Spam cottages on grassland and floodplains and you should do fine.
As for city numbers, the more land you havem the more powerful you become. You just need to make sure all your cities are working improved tiles or specialists.


I first played with automation as well. There is just a bit too much to take in if you don't automate to start. Then once you've learned to play with automation, you can step it up by turning it off. This is necessary to get beyond Warlord difficulty, but its not for everybody. As you said, it dramatically slows down the pace of the game.

There are poeple who play Monarch, and I think Emperor with auto workers...

My basic strategy regarding the ideal worker : city ratio is simply however many are nessecary to never work an unimproved tile (including forests) ever. This can vary between 1 - 3 workers for each city, depending on how difficult the terrain is to work (jungles and floodplains require more workers than open ground, for example) and how fast the city is growing. (a slow growing city may only need one worker while a fast city could take three or four to keep up!) Also if I'm running a primarily specialist-based economy, that takes less workers than usual because more of the citizens are in the labs.

Also once cities have all the improvements they need and are no longer growing, their workers can go help another city and save me from having to build unnessecary extras. No point building improvements the city won't be able to work for another hundred years. Also (aside from your first city of course) try to send a worker along with the settler to begin improving tiles as soon as possible. If your new city is stuck working a single three-yield tile for a dozen turns that is a big waste.

None of these guidelines are probably nessecary to win on easy levels, but they aren't hard to learn (as long as you aren't automating workers) and can help a lot.


And on the same subject, a trick I like to use occassionally to get more from worker turns... Suppose you want to improve a tile two squares away on flatland. You could move over there, end turn, and then begin improving the tile. Or you could move one square, improve that tile for one turn (usually a road, but whatever you need), end turn, and then move to the second square and begin working. No time lost and you got an extra worker turn. :p Usually I only do this in online pitboss games though where you have plenty of time to make a single move.

No way you can get away with automated workers on high difficulty levels. Your economy is the foundation upon which everything else in the game depends. Your science, your diplomacy, your military, and eventually your victory depend on your economy. Unlike Civ 3 where you had but 2 choices of improvements, Civ 4 city economies are determined largely by your improvement choices. Planning what improvements go where (I'm talking tile improvements like farms, cottages, watermills, etc) to me is one of the most important aspects of the game. Strategically planning your economy is what can enable you to build that army faster, get that wonder, or research that tech first. Placing workers on automation from the start is almost like playing the game on autopilot. It is a strategy game, right? You have to expect to need to strategize to win. I sympathize with those saying it slows the game down. This is why I almost always play on standard sized maps, no larger. However, later in the game after you have already made your important decisions you can start automating workers. For example I don't manually build my railroads. By that point in the game I've already directed the improvements for my cities and I let the workers auto build railroads and such.

Who knows, if you give it a shot, you may just enjoy the slow, methodical gameplay when you manually command all of your workers. Personally, I love planning out every worker's move - it makes the game much more satisfying for me, knowing that everything in my empire was done by my choice, good or bad.

You really need to manually command more of your workers as you gradually move up in level. As someone else mentioned, your economy is the basis of everything else in your empire. Don't trust the computer to do a good job of it, especially as you get into city specialization.

Once again, you are forgetting that some players do very well with automated workers. TMIT is nearly an immortal if I recall correctly and he often automates.

If a commerce/specialist city has nothing important to build, you are probably mistaken. If not, try to re-arrange the tiles. There is probably at least one hill in that city, stop working it and run another specialist.

Production cities should just build hammer multipliers, units, and if needed happy/healthy buildings. Three exceptions, if you want a wonder(build it) if your economy has crashed and you don't want to pay any more unit maintenance(build wealth can help here) or if you are about to get a new fancier unit with a tech(build another kind of unit like siege or maybe build science)

Pretty sure that covers all possibilities. Good luck.

One thing I like to do to take the tedium out of worker controls is to queue up multiple worker moves at once by holding the shift key. You don't want to go crazy though, because things change fast and you don't want 100 turns of worker turns preselected. I'll usually use it to have a worker move to chop, mine, and road, or something like that. Takes a lot of the worker turns picked off the table for you, while still giving you full control of your workers.

I will occasionaly* have a worker just go nuts and queue up "move to, cottage, move to, cottage, move to cottage, etc." later in the game when I really know what my cities needs will be (and if I'm at a point, like when I hit HR and my cities are gonna start growing again).

[*italics copyright and property of Troytheface]

Once again, you are forgetting that some players do very well with automated workers. TMIT is nearly an immortal if I recall correctly and he often automates.

Not early in the game though. For many strategies early chopping is involved, and you don't want to automate workers there.

I can't quite get my head around what decisions I should be making. This happens each game I play. It feels like I am just picking whatever improvements blindly and without purpose.

You need a plan
sheesh, VOU always says that...

Reality check: the AI is not so smart that you need a plan to beat Warlord difficulty. A better understanding of the game mechanics will get you over that hurdle.

But planning is the most direct way I know of to address the problem of playing "blindly and without purpose".


Using your current game as a starting point: you've decided you want to win by domination. OK, that defines a goal. Now we start putting together some high level decisions.

You'll probably find, looking at the map, that you need to take land from at least one of the two remaining civs. For the purposes of this example, make a decision about which one is your next target.

Next, start thinking about how you want that war to go - in particular, what kind of units do you want to use? When do you want the attack to begin?

Fundamentally, that decision divides into soon vs later. If the answer is soon, then in most cases the answer to what you do in your cities will be "more units". When the answer is later, you start thinking about which technologies you need to acquire, what you are going to do with them, and how your cities are going to advance you to the state you need to be in.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=314007

As a sidenote, a colusseum does not provide culture.