The Complete Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement (v.2)

bhchan said:

I'll have to take your word for it... I'm very amateur-hobbyist when it comes to Civ4, so I haven't got a clue on what would make sense for experienced stategists.
Maybe I'll throw in a multiplier for food and production? 2, 1.5, 1 yield-adjustment for FPC?

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As a ballpark figure, I would suggest a 3:2:1 ratio of values for food, production, and commerce, respectively. But it is going to vary a lot, depending on the situation and what stage of the game you are in.

DaviddesJ said:

As a ballpark figure, I would suggest a 3:2:1 ratio of values for food, production, and commerce, respectively. But it is going to vary a lot, depending on the situation and what stage of the game you are in.

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That's way too extreme in my opinion. Food might be that important in the early stage, but it cannot seriously be like 3:2:1 any more after, say, 1 AD.

Also, if you're playing a non-aggressive game, then commerce could be equally or even more important than production since your research depends on money.

Blkbird said:

That's way too extreme in my opinion. Food might be that important in the early stage, but it cannot seriously be like 3:2:1 any more after, say, 1 AD.

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Yes, it can. One way of looking at it is that 2 food often gets you 1 specialist (maybe 3 food, if unhealthy), and the 1 specialist can generate up to 6 commerce (in Representation) plus 3 GPP (and 1 GPP is often worth at least as much as 1 commerce).

Another way of looking at it is that 1 extra food lets you replace a farm with a cottage, which gets you 3-5 commerce once the cottage grows a bit.

I think 3:1 for food:commerce is actually pretty conservative.

Blkbird said:

Also, if you're playing a non-aggressive game, then commerce could be equally or even more important than production since your research depends on money.

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Sure, and you're going to control that by choosing commerce-oriented improvements vs production-oriented improvements. And those tend to trade off in approximately the 2:1 ratio (i.e., with the same number of citizens working improved tiles, you can typically generate either X hammers or 2X commerce, although this does fluctuate over the course of the game). No planning tool can tell you which of these to emphasize in a particular game.

(This is why the Kremlin is so overpowered, because, with it, it's much more efficient to do everything via cash-rush rather than via production, and you get more flexibility too. And that, in turn, tends to reward cottage-heavy strategies, because you're aiming for Universal Suffrage and so you want lots of towns. But that's a whole separate thread.)

Randwolf said:

I've seen Oil appear in plains and in grassland/jungle

Also Uranium in grassland/forest and by a river

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What I have in the guide is only what I parsed from the xml file. I've seen some of those "no river" resources adjacent to a river in some of my games too, so the purpose of that tag in the game eludes me. I'm going to re-check the xml since the patch. There's a few other things I need to update as well. It seems they've changed the forest health bonus to 0.5, among other things.

Later though...I need sleep right now.

Thanks to help from u guys , I just completed (and won ) my first civ4 game. : .
Of course, not all aspects of the game are yet clear to me, especialy the wise use of Great People, and Religion management, but at least I know more where to put my efforts on the terrain.
I sure will have to come back to this thread later when I need more rafined skills with terrain, ressources and improvements.
Keep up the good work guys!

While I'm grateful for the compilation of existing knowledge on terrain, I was a bit disappointed to find no analysis (or strategy guide) for how to improve the tiles.

A large city controls 20 tiles. If the 20 tiles are all plains, what's the best ratio of cottages to farms?

@Stuporstar: Here is a hint about Forest chopping you may want to add to your guide.

I found some things that could be changed on your guide.

Stuporstar said:

Civilizations: India - Unique Unit, Fast Worker - movement 3 instead of 2

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This doesn't effect the speed that it works, only the speed that it moves. You didn't say it wrong (it does "increase worker speed") but it implies that it increases it's working speed. A clarifcation would be nice.

Stuporstar said:

Production Resources: When Coal, Copper, Iron, Marble, Oil, Stone, Aluminum, Horses, and Ivory are on Plains Tiles Only (not hills) you are able to produce One Extra Hammer when you settle on top of them.

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This also works with grassland/hills and desert/hills. It's better than plains because you get the defense bonus, too.

Stuporstar said:

Environmentalism: +1 happy from Jungle & Forest, +5 health in all cities

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It is currently +6. I think the patch may have changed it.



The rest is accurate and helpful. I wish I had this when I was starting Civ 4.

Thanks.

Non-surplus food (stagnant growth) is normally worth 1.5 hammers, which is the cost of switching from a grassland hill to a grassland farm.


Surplus food is worth (C/G), where C is the value of a new citizen and G is the food needed to grow.

C is affected by available tiles, tile improvements, specialist jobs available, health, and happiness. If the game is going to end soon, C is less valuable.

G is affected by city size and the presence of a granary.

Just a small note, don't forges give a +1 happiness bonus with gems, gold and silver? It should probably be mentioned in the section listing additional bonuses from resources.

Thankyou for this great article. It is so in-depth. Thankyou also to everyone who has been adding comments. I normally just go for a food-hammer 1:1 ratio in most cities and then have a few massive commerce coastal cities with workshops around em to give a reasonable hammer supply. This article is really helping me to expand quicker and get a lot of GP coming out. City placement really is such an important part of the game. You can have the best tech and military stratagies but it will go down the toilet if you have a poorly place city.

I believe that you are incorrect concerning the availability of irrigating tundra. I have, iirc, irrigated tundra squares that are next to lakes. Thus, it would be the availability of any adjacent fresh water that allows tundra/farms. I have not tried to build cottages, so I don't know about those.

Wow, that's great info for a newbie like me. I've been playing the game like CIV2 for a week now

This is great info.

One big error I found: my tests show founding a city on a river commerce tile adds ONE commerce, not two. My guess is that you tested this using a Financial civ, which gets an additional bonus coin because the tile has two commerce.

Also Forges should be added for the extra happy on gold/silver/gems, as noted above. And cathedrals for incense (which stacks! a city with four catherdals gets +5 happy from incense).

Many thanks . This is the most comprehensive and slick strategy article I have seen so far on CIV-IV. This is of the same guality as the excellent and well read Academy articles on CIV-III. Well Done.

Cottages: Cottages grow to .....
.... Normally you can see a little hut icon on the tile that is being worked, but with improvements those icons dissapear, so if your cottages aren't growing, you may need to check which tiles are being worked in your city screen.

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Improvements animate to show your citizens are working them. But it's still hard to see without a graphics mod.

Workers

As this is a comprehensive guide and aimed all newbies, it might be worth mentioning that if the worker has to leave a tile part way through the work the worker turns invested are not lost. Say a workler spends one turn moving to and building a road on flatland but a Barb approaches and the worker has to run away then when it comes back the road will be completed in 1 more turn not 2. This is useful for when you are waiting for an important tech say agriculture (farms) but already have mining but don't need any mines.

Perugia said:

Say a workler spends one turn moving to and building a road on flatland but a Barb approaches and the worker has to run away then when it comes back the road will be completed in 1 more turn not 2. This is useful for when you are waiting for an important tech say agriculture (farms) but already have mining but don't need any mines.

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Or sometimes you're 2 spaces away from the space you want to improve next, so you can move 1 space and improve the intervening space for one turn, then cancel that and move to the 2nd space and improve it. You get one extra turn of work on the intermediate space, and it doesn't cost you anything (because if you move 2 spaces on the first turn, that ends your turn).

whats glaringly missing is what makes a body of water a fresh water lake or not. simply, a lake has less than 10 contiguous coast and/or ocean tiles. this is important because you cannot build sea-related buildings like harbor if your city is by a lake. and you're not likely to find resources in lakes. furthermore, the body of water must be at 20 tiles big before you can build any type of naval units, including workboats.

This is a great article, Stuporstar. Thanks for sharing!

The biggest take I've gotten from this, which should been obvious is that a city has a maximum of 21 tiles its population can work on in its fat cross. The question I have is this: assuming you've improved all the other tiles already that contain special resources that are outside the fat crosses of all cities and build the appropriate improvements on the tiles within these fat crosses based on the terrain yield and your strategy, and finally assuming there are already connecting roads all over the place (pre-railroad), is it still okay to allow your workers to improve the other tiles, building cottages and mines (or mills) within your cultural boundaries? Or is it better to keep your workers idle?

In my last few games, I've just been giving workers order after order to build improvements that seem to never get used. Any advice on how you experts do it will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the guide.

I could be mistaken, but I think you might have the food and production calculations on grassland backwards for windmills. I think it's 2F, 1P, 1C with machinery, 3F, 1F for replaceable parts, 2F, 1P for electicity only, and 3F, 1P for replace parts + electricity.

Probably the most genuinely useful guide I have found in the forums. Very readable. I got a lot of very neat tips from it (and from some of the later posts, Davides just above for example). There is hardly any needless and boring maths, which is all to prevalent in other articles. Good job!