WoundedKnight's Strategy Guide (Revised)

Hmm, I thought "whatever" when the author said creative is a weak trait. Everyone has his own opinion.

But when I got to the part about the coal plants I was :eek: :crazyeye: :confused: WTF?!

...And I just stopped reading. And actually after going through the first few parts of this guide - I don't intend to read the rest of it at all.

And just for the record:
COAL PLANTS' -2 HEALTH PENALTY IS REMOVED WHEN YOU SUPPLY THE CITY WITH AN ALTERNATIVE POWERSOURCE!!!

So I suggest the author tries to get some multiplayer or high level AI experience before being so direct and explicit in his strategy guides and proposals.

Anyway, thumbs up for the time spent to write this, but try harder that's my remark.
 
CITY IMPROVEMENTS

I tend to manually control workers (at least until very late in the game) as the computer automation leaves much to be desired and lacks strategic foresight.

Farms. +1 food initially, +2 food (total) at end-game when you have biology. Recent tests have led me to change my strategies and begin building large numbers of farms initially in order to quickly increase city size. When cities are near the max of their happiness and/or health, then I start converting the farms to cottages for the economic benefits. In contrast to watermills and windmills which offer economic and production bonuses in addition to food, farms offer only food. The advantage is that they are available almost immediately in the game with the agriculture tech. I prefer wide proliferation of farms in the ancient era, with removal of some farms and transition to cottages and watermills when you are near the maximum sustainable city size for health and happiness. Especially on higher difficulty levels, spamming too many farms may quickly bring your cities over the happiness and/or healthiness levels they can support, resulting in revolters and no "we love the king day" events. Automated workers tend to overdo farming and so I prefer to direct workers manually. Use farms wisely, but be careful that they don't push your cities into unhappiness or unhealthiness. You may need to expand your growth capacity as your city’s happiness and health limits increase, so keep an eye on this.

Cottages: Cottages make up the foundation of economic and research productivity of your civilization. Especially if you have the financial trait, cottages produce great bonuses when they grow into towns, with full techs and civics: commerce +7, production +1 (requires universal suffrage civic). Cottages can be built anywhere, but their production bonus comes late (after full growth into towns) and only with the correct civic.
I often wait until cities are close to their health or happiness limit to start building large numbers of cottages because farms offer more immediate benefit by increasing city size and therefore production and the number of workable tiles. Cottages only progress into hamlets, villages, and towns when they are being worked. There is no point in rushing to place cottages on all 20 workable tiles of a level 2 city (for an extreme example), as the cottages will not begin to develop at all until the city is large enough to work them. My tests and those of others have demonstrated that in most cases, a better long-term economic outcome is achieved with early farms to grow your city quickly and then building large numbers of cottages that the city is able to work, as opposed to immediate cottage spamming resulting in slow growth and many unworked tiles in an immature city.
The downsides of cottages include that they take a long time to grow: cottage->hamlet 10 turns, hamlet ->village 20 turns, village ->town 40 turns. This can be cut in half with appropriate civics, but still it takes 35 turns in the best possible case to grow from a cottage to a town. In a game that lasts only 400 or 500 turns (and may be decided long before then), that is a big chunk of game time. Also, cottages can be easily pillaged by an enemy. Cottages are particularly valuable around your core research cities, but think twice about building cottages on frontier cities close to aggressive neighbors. In any case, the long maturation time of cottages requires that they be built as early as possible to maximize their benefits. Having cottages that have grown into towns while your neighbors are still dealing with hamlets and villages can prove decisive.

First off, great guide - very helpful.:)

Your strategy (bolded) makes alot of sense. I have found myself in the past trying to cottage spam, yet no one is working the tiles so it's really pointless.

I do have a question however. If I remove a farm and put a cottage, won't that affect my food supply and could I potentially find myself in a situation when the growth is stagnant, even starvation?

Or, do I simply harm the times that give me >+2 Food supply so that once I remove the farm, I end up with a +2F, which is enough to feed that tile?

This to me would make sense. If I farm a tile that has initially a +1F, with the farm, has a +2, when I remove the farm, I will go back to +1F, which is not enough to feed the citizen of that tile.

Am I making sense here?

Thanks again for the guide.
 
Or, do I simply harm the times that give me >+2 Food supply so that once I remove the farm, I end up with a +2F, which is enough to feed that tile?

As a rule of thumb keep it simple. Simple means working enough food sources so you have +3-4F (5-6 if you count 2F from the tile the city is founded on) while the rest of your citizens work cottages.

Wounded Knight: In sum, I think that spiritual and creative are the two weak traits of CIV
:confused:
 
This guide is very old and as such a lot of what is written in it has changed. About the cottages there is an entire article devoted to it, but to sum it up, yes you don't want to work any 1 food tiles pre-biology at least(plains tiles), better to convert the grassland to cottages earlier.
 
If WoundedKnight or someone else is willing to edit the corresponding Civ 4 War Academy article, I can provide several minor corrections to it. Is there any interest in revising this great article? It would remain focused on Civ 4 Warlords, since updating it to also cover BtS would be a major edit.

孫子武
 
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