Micromanagement is alive and well in Civ 4!

Zombie69 said:

Getting 60 turns of unhappiness isn't all that bad. I've done it in my games and didn't regret it. Besides, for an island city, the tiles (mainly costal and sea) you could be using provide very little except the standard 2 food just to feed the citizens that work them. Therefore being forced into a lower size isn't a big issue.

If you've got so much food, i suggest making settlers and workers from that city while letting unhappiness go back down a little. Just make sure that whatever you do, you always work the high food tiles, and never waste any food.

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If you are settling solo islands, you probably have nothing better to do with settlers, so I'd focus on making workers.

Zombie69 said:

Thanks! I think we can now safely use this number as our conclusion, do you agree?

Caveats :
- size 8 (higher = less efficient whipping)
- excess foor 5 (higher = more efficient whipping)
- very efficient tiles to work (less = more efficient whipping)
- whipping 3 pop (less = more efficient whipping, because of exploit)

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I think you can make a rule, based on size of food surplus vs size of city. So, if city size > food +3, then work the tiles (all other things being equal). This may vary depending on game speed.

DaviddesJ said:

You can trace diagonally from a lake square, and diagonally from the corner of a river, but not diagonally from the endpoint of a river.

The easiest way to be sure whether a tile has fresh water is to just mouseover the terrain and see what the popup says.

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You can also trace through a city. Too bad you can't trace from a city with an aqueduct.

Zombie69 said:

No. In most cities, i have no specialist whatsoever. Even an engineer specialist is inferior to a cottage, so i'd rather have the cottage.

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What about with representation/philosophical/pacifism? I played a game where I had about 10 cities producing 60 gpp/turn. My capital was cranking around 160. They would leapfrog each other getting GPs. In the late game on marathon I was averaging about 1 GP/15 turns.

I built 6 religious shrines.
I built Eiffel tower and space elevator with engineers.
I built 3 academies.
I culture bombed 3 cities to take over enemy cities. I had always peaceful set, it was the only way, I took 6 cities on culture during the game, including the US's capitol, which started on a penninsula and I blocked him off early.
I added 4 GMs to my capitol, for more food, which let me carry more specialists.
I added about 3 engineers, 4 artists, and 12 GPs as specialists to various cities.

I won a cultural victory without ever moving the culture slider off of 0, in 1866. Yeah, I know, I could have won much earlier, (I had 6 cathedrals, broadcast tower, and either hollywood/rock 'n roll/broadway in my 3 culture cities, +500% culture with free speech) but I was having fun. I had 1 turn to go on the last spaceship part for about 50 turns before that. I was playing around with diplomatic when my 3rd city reached legendary. Diplo is still the one type of victory I've never achieved, dunno how to get them folks to vote for me.

And I wasn't creative or philosophical, I was playing Qin.

Still, you see my point, this game works best with synergy. When you work something, apply all the bonuses possible, and it becomes really powerful.

jesusin said:

This thread made me laugh. Not because is fun or bad (on the contrary, it is very good technically) but because I saw myself reflected on it: I have been using almost every trick described here since I started playing Civ4.

I had never thought of unit prebuilding, it is a very good idea if you are not planning to move the units away immediately. I will start using it.

I had always whipped the turn after growth, when the first angry face appeared. I see now that it is near optimal, but not optimal. It is usually best to whip the turn before.


There are a couple of minor points I would like to contribute to the discussion.

1.- Whip: I have never used the “avoid growth” city option, I can’t see the benefit of doing so. Is it not always better to just whip the turn before you grow, instead of wasting one turn and some food to get to the limit of the box and then whip?

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It depends on the size of your food surplus, and how many pop you whip. Say your food surplus is 5, and you are going to whip 2 population. On marathon, each city size requires 6 more food, so after you whip you will need 12 less food. So if your food box was 17 short of a city pop before you whip, it will be only 5 short after you whip. Voila, with the 5 surplus your city will pop next turn.

jesusin said:

2.- Binary science: I agree with the idea that 100% is not always optimal. My point is that sometimes 0% is not the optimal point either. When you use 0% your total science output is 1 beaker. The factors “prerequisites” and “known by others” are then applied to this single beaker, giving a total value <2, so all these factors are wasted.

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Umm, that depends on how many specialists you are running. In the late game I can run over 1000 science with the science slider set to 0.

Take my typical late game capitol (running representation/merrcantilism/pacifism w/ statue of liberty):
library +25%
university +25%
observatory +25%
laboratory +25%
academy +50%
oxford university +100%

TOTAL: +250%

6 scientists (36 base beakers)
4 artists (16 base beakers)
3 engineers (9 base beakers)
4-5 priests (12 beakers)

4-5 great specialists for another 15 or so.

BASE TOTAL: 88, +250% = 308 science/turn

And, that's 51 gpp, without wonders/national wonders, before multipliers. Too bad that super specialists don't give gpp

Typically, I go for oracle/parthenon/GLH/colossus/sistine?/ankor wat/taj mahal in capital.

eiffel tower/statue of liberty/3 gorges/internet/space elevator in my top production city, along with iron works/forge/factory

Very good article.
I havent read the whole thread but I wonder if the hammeroverflow-whipbug has been fixed In BTS 3.19?
When i have a city with forge and whip a spy thats been built 5/40 (so 35 hammers to complete built) I only get 42/40 hammers and not 60/40. Or am I doing something wrong? Not sure i understand it all but really i want to use the power of getting 60 hammers from one pop.

That's not a bug. With a forge, you get +25% production, so 1 pop provides 37 . Since that's enough to complete your spy, you'll end up at 42/40 and lose 1 pop.
If your spy was at 2/40 before the whip, you'd spend 2 pop and result in 77/40.

Thrar said:

That's not a bug. With a forge, you get +25% production, so 1 pop provides 37 . Since that's enough to complete your spy, you'll end up at 42/40 and lose 1 pop.
If your spy was at 2/40 before the whip, you'd spend 2 pop and result in 77/40.

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No. According to the article the calculationbug will give production equal to the lowest multiple of 30 to complete the build, even if the forge gave enough to complete it so i should get 60 hammers from 1 pop.

The bug is definitely fixed in BtS 3.19 and probably fixed in in some earlier BtS versions too.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu said:

The bug is definitely fixed in BtS 3.19 and probably fixed in in some earlier BtS versions too.

Sun Tzu Wu

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So it now renders Slavery civic much less powerful then?

pepoluan said:

So it now renders Slavery civic much less powerful then?

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Less powerful than it was a very long time ago? Yes.
But its still extremely powerful, to the point that its still easily the best civic in its class for most of most games.

Sometimes the micromanaging can be fun. It will always get tedious after a while, but I've found myself quite amused by planning out efficient moves. The city screen is pretty fun, but there is nothing worse then realizing you haven't developed the land enough and that is killing the city.

"Bush league kid!' and on Warlord -- what an embarrassment.