Tips for extreme beginners

"What context were the 200+ cities comments you have seen been brought up in?" Malganis - post 12.

"You can guarantee a GS as your first Great Person, and get it very early, by simply running 2 scientists in a city till one pops up."

Thanks Ghstage - I found that quite insightful as I didn't know this.
Bare in mind its not an absolute guarantee, if you've built many wonders before, or waited too long to run scientists after building one you won't get any, but 2 scientists in a wonderless city will pop a GScientist after 17 turns on normal speed unless something beats them to it.
However, please explain this ".. enough food to grow respectably .. ".
Its difficult to give precision on this, especially in practical terms where cities don't just fall into the single category of 'commerce' or 'production etc city. But I try to keep a surplus of at least +3 food while growing a cottage city, preferably more if practical. An important note if your not already aware is that citizens working in a city eat 2:food: per turn so the net food of a tile is its yield - 2 meaning the common grassland tile is food neutral and doesn't slow growth making them perfect candidates for cottaging, though floodplains are better.
Plains on the other hand have a net -1 which is why they are considered weak tiles, I tend to avoid working them in any real number until at least Guilds, but more often Chemistry or Biology where stronger improvements can make them profitable. The sole exception however is in a Bureaucracy cottage capital when all better tiles are already in use, then I will consider cottaging a plains tile as its yield will be its base commerce +50%!
 
Limit the number of workers you create
Excess workers crowd your turns
Too many workers ten to make you build too much
Not to beat a dead horse but :deadhorse: That's probably the worst piece of advice for any newbie. Most new players (heck even not so new players) never have enough workers. If anything you want More workers then you need just to learn how to manage them. Chances are you'll still end up with less workers then you need by the time you hit rail anyways.
 
Learn the Tech Tree - especially which techs enable stronger military units

It is possible, and often easier, to win with very few (or no) World Wonders

Choose a friend, trade even if the deal is unfair, try and share a religion

Choose a victimenemy, don't trade with them at all

Most of the strongest game mechanics are combinations - 2 wonders working together- Heroic Epic + Globe Theatre -- or 2 civics working together - or one or more of each

You can choose to put the tech slider below 50%, but your civilization is usually falling behind if you have to put it under 50% (too many cities/not enough economy)

Learn to use F1 and F4 almost every turn, they provide all the information you need to plan your strategy.

Have a plan, set goals

The blue circles when you have selected a settler are recommended sites for placing a new city - they are based upon resource qty and then food qty - up to Noble they are usually worth following
-beware resource rich jungle (no food means slow growth)
-so if it wants you to settle somewhere and you do not see why, it might be a resource that is not revealed yet (could be those horses you are are wishing for, could be aluminum or uranium, which while useful are often not useful for thousands of years)

FOLLOW your plan, if you find yourself getting distracted, take a break, or save the game and come back later
 
You can choose to put the tech slider below 50%, but your civilization is usually falling behind if you have to put it under 50% (too many cities/not enough economy)
You should only use 2 positions of the slider. 0% or 100%. Anything in between and you lose beakers due to rounding errors. If you don't have enough gold to research the next tech at 100%, put slider to 0% until you have, then research at 100%. This also has the benefit that you might get a research bonus for the next tech if an AI researches it in between, and you might also get it in trade before putting any beakers into it.

In addition, you get more value from libaries that come online while banking gold. Let's say you could keep slider at 50% to run break even and research your tech in 10 turns, and you have a library completing in 5 turns. If you research with slider at 50% you get the library bonus on the second half of the tech. If you bank gold 5 turns with slider at 0%, then research at 100%, you get library bonus for the whole research period. When you have an academy or Oxford coming online, it is often worth it to bank gold for a longer time so that you can get max value from the large multipliers.

The slider position you could keep at break even doesn't matter at all anyway. What matters is beakers/turn. A large empire with slider at 30% can often make more beakers/turn than a small empire with slider at 60%.
 
You should only use 2 positions of the slider. 0% or 100%. Anything in between and you lose beakers due to rounding errors. If you don't have enough gold to research the next tech at 100%, put slider to 0% until you have, then research at 100%. This also has the benefit that you might get a research bonus for the next tech if an AI researches it in between, and you might also get it in trade before putting any beakers into it.

In addition, you get more value from libaries that come online while banking gold. Let's say you could keep slider at 50% to run break even and research your tech in 10 turns, and you have a library completing in 5 turns. If you research with slider at 50% you get the library bonus on the second half of the tech. If you bank gold 5 turns with slider at 0%, then research at 100%, you get library bonus for the whole research period. When you have an academy or Oxford coming online, it is often worth it to bank gold for a longer time so that you can get max value from the large multipliers.

The slider position you could keep at break even doesn't matter at all anyway. What matters is beakers/turn. A large empire with slider at 30% can often make more beakers/turn than a small empire with slider at 60%.
Indeed, as I said, you can put your slider below 50%, but when have to you are generally falling behind - if you are not using (at least) half your effort at research you are generally falling behind [or you already have the game won...]

Let's say you break even (or nearly) at 50%, odds are you either A》are falling behind, so need to focus on economy B》just conquered/claimed some land, upped your empire costs, and need to focus on economy, so you can do it again. ..

For very new people growing too fast and stagnating is the biggest danger, no? Imho, learning when to grow is the most important thing for newbies, especially as they are unlikely to be excited about micromanaging right off the bat


Now, there might be reasons, such as maximizing beakers, or your just got a decisive military tech, or whatever, but there is a b I g difference between choosing to lower your rate and being forced to, no?
 
Actually, for beginners it is more often a problem that they fear too much that they are falling behind when the slider drops and therefore don't expand enough early on. Before currency and before you start getting some cottages to work it is perfectly normal for the slider to be very low at break even. Instead of trying to learn how to avoid dropping the slider, you should try to learn how to get it up again once it has dropped during the initial expansion phase.

Also, you should learn how to keep the slider up despite having a gold deficit. There are many more ways to generate gold in this game than through the slider. Sell techs, sell resources, build wealth/failgold, conquer cities, beg for gold, steal it... All of those are better than lowering your slider, because then you get your full beaker multipliers on all your commerce.

If you have a look at the ongoing G-Major 137 in the HoF forum you'll see how the top players are pulling off 700AD deity space victories with huge empires that would barely break even with slider at 0% and huge gold deficits at 100% (-1500:gold/turn or more in the late game). Still they keep the slider up throughout and race through the tech tree at extreme speed. This, if anything, shows that if you play it right, the slider position you can keep at break even has nothing to do with teching speed.

I know it's not for extreme beginners to try to pull off something like that, but it is important to understand that the slider means nothing. The state of your economy is measured in :science:/turn, not in slider position.
 
I think we are arguing semantics at this point. ..

Anyway, knowing the ways to get your slider back up, more importantly the reason it dropped, is how you win the game.

At lower levels keeping slider up and expanding should get you a win. Then is becomes a matter of knowing how to get there faster, through better (micro)management of your empire.

Also, I play vanilla, so can't even touch some of those scores, a city over 20 is rare as there isn't enough food until biology, can't use the executive trick much less found a corporation., espionage is weak and not until Scotland Yard, no great general or vassals among other things....
 
I think we are arguing semantics at this point. ..
Not really. When you look at the top left corner of the screen you look at the slider, or at least that's what you're saying one should look at. I say you should look at the amount of :science:/turn. There's a very big difference there. If you do 60:science:/turn at 1AD, then your economy is in bad shape, no matter if slider is at 100% or 20%. If you do 200:science:/turn at 1AD, you are in pretty good shape, regardless of slider position. The slider position is irrelevant, and you should not look at that at all to decide whether your economy is in good shape or not.
 
Except if you do 60:science: per turn with slider at 20% at 1AD, then you are in pretty good shape as it could mean the 100% output is 300:science: :p

I agree with the point though. It's more important to look at beakers and not necessarily where the slider is when you break even. Both of you are in agreement there, it seems like.
 
Except if you do 60:science: per turn with slider at 20% at 1AD, then you are in pretty good shape as it could mean the 100% output is 300:science: :p
Good point. You are actually doing a lot better if you do 60:science:/turn at break even with slider at 20% than if you do the same amount of beakers at break even with slider at 80%. Another example of how the slider can give you a completely wrong picture of your economy. ;)
 
I often expand and whip so harshly, that I barely break even at 0%. When I break even at 20%, I take that as a sign, that my economy is in top shape.

There are many ways to make :gold: that lets you fuel about any deficit, but getting :science: is a lot more complicated, but also more important. It's most often though, that newbies don't understand, what the difference between them is, because they think :gold: = :commerce: = :science: . :commerce: is the most important, because it can be transformed to :gold: or :science: via the slider. :science: is the next most important thing, because it's much easier to tech techs than buying them. Buying techs also pushes the AI incredibly, so you'd make your opponents harder by giving them a lot of :gold: . :gold is the most unimportant of the three, because you can i. e. transform Forests into huge amounts of :gold: , as you can transform :food: to :gold: . You can trade for :gold: too, which is a major factor on the highest levels, because the AIs have huge amounts of :gold: on those levels.

What elitetroops tried to tell you, are 2 things. 1. that you're better of with researching either at 0% or at 100%, a tactic called "binary research" , that has the big advantage that you can decide on which tech to tech later, because you stay at 0% until you have the money. If you had picked the tech immediately and researched it with 50%, it could have happened, that some AIs get it before you and trade it around, making your tech worthless. Binary research minimizes the time at which this can happen.
The 2nd thing (on which Pangaea and I agree) is, that the slider position is misleading. Beginners think that if they are at 100%, everything is great, and if they are at 20%, things are horrible. This isn't necessarily the case though, because someone having 10 cities with 50 Cottages produces more than 500 :science: at 100%, so if he goes down to 20%, he'll still make 100 :science: . If the same player however had only 2 cities with 5 Cottages, he could easily stay at 100%, which would be 20 :science: though.
 
Bare minimum, no rivers, no time in cottage, non financial leader, no resources, starting civics, just enough pop to work cottages
2 cities makes 7:commerce: costs 1 for expenses, so spends 6 turns at 100% for every turn at 0%
10 cities makes 60:commerce: costs 62 for expenses, so never researches without time or other modifiers.

Certainly rivers, civics, developing beyond cottages, trade routes, all kinds of variables affect this.

But in the 2 city example, I should grow immediately
In the 10 city example, depending on where my empire is in developing, there will be an optimal time for me to grow.

If i can't keep my slider up at least half the time, I likely expanded to fast and am falling behind on tech.

In my games, I try to follow the guideline of if the gold I make with the slider set at 50% is greater than my City Maintenence cost, I should expand. Armies and war keep it from being a perfect guideline and conquest money certainly helps keep the slider maxed if you can keep it steady, but it works very well for peaceful expansion
 
You follow that guide-line, because you're not aware of how to make lots of :gold: to fill your deficit.

And if someone makes 60 :commerce: out of 10 cities, he is either playing Settler or should be. That's also no fair comparison, to compare 2 better developed cities to 10 worse developed cities.
Also, 6,2 :gold: maintenance for every city is very high, at that maintenance, I'd almost consider building Courthouses. Again not fair to assume such high maintenance and such low maintenance (0.5 :gold: / city) in the two examples.
 
That is bare min, no development, starting civics, for either example (used WB to "create" the empires) no assuming was made - biggest difference is one empire needs 50 pop to work 50 cottages, the other needs 5 pop, all those maintenance and civic costs scale by population. ...
Certainly it is unrealistic to have 10 cities with no economy growth, just connecting them with roads or a few settled on rivers would give you positive cash flow, developing the cottages a few levels and you would be rolling in it...

Certainly there are many other ways to make gold/improve the amount of commerce you produce, i still find that if expand more than that without a plan in place to fill the deficit i stall out, or at least slow enough to fall behind

Also, just from a few interactions here, I already found i definitely don't trade enough, techs or resources, as I usually only have 1 or 2 friendly civs, trading at higher levels is def going to improve my cashflow :)
 
That is bare min, no development, starting civics, for either example (used WB to "create" the empires) no assuming was made - biggest difference is one empire needs 50 pop to work 50 cottages, the other needs 5 pop, all those maintenance and civic costs scale by population. ...
Certainly it is unrealistic to have 10 cities with no economy growth, just connecting them with roads or a few settled on rivers would give you positive cash flow, developing the cottages a few levels and you would be rolling in it...

Certainly there are many other ways to make gold/improve the amount of commerce you produce, i still find that if expand more than that without a plan in place to fill the deficit i stall out, or at least slow enough to fall behind

Also, just from a few interactions here, I already found i definitely don't trade enough, techs or resources, as I usually only have 1 or 2 friendly civs, trading at higher levels is def going to improve my cashflow :)

Errors marked in bold.

Here is a realistic 11-city-empire at 1 AD, so one that really existed, and that was built without Worldbuilder:



Empire is breaking even at about 57%, making about 200 BPT.

Here is also a screenshot of the research it could output at 100%, given enough money:



Now you show me a 2-city-empire that matches this. You can use Worldbuilder again if you want ;) .
 
Sry, I was being mean. There is no possibility for a 2-city-emprie to compare with an 11-city-empire.

To understand why this is so, you need to take a close look at your cities next time, especially from Currency onwards. A city basically only needs to be connected via Traderoutes, and it instantly pays for itself. Why your 2-city-empire from the description is so good is because one of two cities got a Palace, and that one is a major source of :commerce: early. To work against this, more cities need more Cottages, until the Palace diminishes in importance. The screenshot shows an empire that is cottaged to the max, and I set 9 of 11 cities to build Wealth, to make a fair comparison. A 2-city-empire can only produce from 2 cities, so an 11-city-empire can set almost all cities to Wealth and still have the same production.
This is also, why more cities are always desirable. The worst case of a city that is connected to the Trade-Network while having Currency, is, that the city can only pay for itself with producing Wealth, then all that city does is to increase the research-"potential" of the empire, which sounds irrelevant, but it's a majorly important factor again, because with enough :gold: (not :commerce: !) , research-potential and research are the same. Then, that city could also produce something, so again better cards for the larger empire.

You're mixing up things like :commerce: and :gold: , which shows, that you (like many others too) haven't understood the difference from both. :commerce: is rare and one needs to work for it, while :gold: on higher levels often exists in abundancy, so that it's a non-factor for a great part of the game. More cities get you more :commerce: , and they don't even cost :gold: , unless being unconnected or having no foreign TRs, but even if they costed :gold: , they can produce enough or it via Wealth, and even if they costed more, it's still a good trade of :gold: against :commerce: .

CIV is developed in that kind, that it's impossible to go broke, when playing well, and the stronger the AIs are, the stronger the player gets too, because he makes the AIs work for him (i. e. let them produce Workers that the player steals, or trading for masses of :gold: and similar) . This is something which I also had to learn, "more cities means more power" . Therefore, it's important that a player learns how to get :gold: , not how he doesn't need so much of it.
 
Maybe I said something incorrect, but I never said a 2 city could match a 10 city, least I never meant to.

Anywho, as I said, I only look at the slider for if I can expand

Btw, I like your posts, they make me think :)
 
Anywho, as I said, I only look at the slider for if I can expand

Btw, I like your posts, they make me think :)
Still no reason to look at the slider. Slider is nothing but a ratio. A ratio means nothing if you don't know what the full amount is.

Please do think about Seraiel's post and how it relates to the slider. He mentions cities that can only pay for themselves, but add to the research potential of your empire. Assume you have an empire that runs break even with slider at 50%, let's say you make 40:commerce: and upkeep cost is 20:gold:. 20:commerce: is invested into science. Now add a couple of cities more that add 5 each to upkeep costs and make 5 commerce to pay for this (2 foreign trade routes+city tile=5). Now you make 50:commerce:/turn and upkeep cost is 30:gold:. Assuming no other income, you must lower slider to 40%. However, you still put an average of 20:commerce:/turn into science. Those added cities didn't affect the amount of commerce devoted to science at all, despite forcing you to lower your slider. (Numbers in this example are not from a real game, just picked nice even numbers to show the principle.)

Now, it is a bit more complex than that, especially when you take into account research multipliers like an academy, which suffer from getting only a smaller part of the commerce in a particular city. However, the example above did not at all take into account any production from the new founded cities, nor any worked tiles except the city tiles, so they will very quickly become a net bonus for you. When you expand aggressively, the slider will often fall very low, if you have no other source of gold income. However, this does not necessarily affect your research negatively, and once the new cities get productive, research will explode.
 
I understand the concept, but unless I am playing a huge lakes or having to found cities on another continent, in my experience, the AI empires end up limiting my growth well before my economy is fully developed, then it becomes more about my military, which is a whole different cost analysis :)

Also population affects maintenance and civic cost, which is why a well executed conquest can keep rolling, smaller cities cost less, and since you keep whipping them down, you use your empires expanded economic power to keep putting more and more units into the field

Depending on where my economy( usually read cottages) is in developing, it is often a better idea to build units than build another city

I also find that if I settle in proper places and use my workers well, I generally don't need to touch the slider much until banks/universities, when I start having to make more choices between infrastructure and units

Also, maybe it is because I play vanilla, but foreign trade routes are much less common, unless there is something I can do to encourage them?
 
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