Micromanagement is alive and well in Civ 4!

Cabert, that's not really a problem. For one thing, you don't have to run at 0% science for more than 1 turn at a time. You don't have to do 2 turns at 0 and then 8 turns at 100, instead you can do 1 at 0, 4 at 100, 1 at 0, 4 at 100, etc. No matter what your average science rate is, you always have to do turns at 0 to maximize, so if the rate changes, that doesn't affect you at all. You've done your turn at 0 and you simply have more or fewer turns at 100 depending on what you can afford. The rule of thumb for beginners (of course once you get the feeling for it you can do more advanced stunts) is that if you can't afford 100% science for this turn, do 0%, then go back up to 100% for as long as you can afford, rinse and repeat.

Another point is that most lump sums of money can be forseen some time in advance. You know there's a good chance of hitting hut money when you go scouting. When you send a Great Merchant on a mission the travel time is long enough to give you advanced warning. When you want to trade a monopoly tech for tech and money to all the AIs, you know you'll do so before you even finish researching the tech.

Finally, it's often a good thing to have too much money and too little science done. It means you will be able to run at 100% science for some time. It also means that the AIs may have gotten to certain techs before you did. That's perfect, because it means you'll be getting a bonus on your research for those techs, effectively getting them cheaper. Then you can keep on going at 100% thanks to your reserves to jump right past the AIs. It's usually better to be behind, then ahead, then behind again, rather than to always be even.
 
Qitai said:
Don't think this will work. If I remember correctly the contact bonus is part of the "invisible bonus" just like the pre-requisite bonus. In that case, the only way to track it is to note the difference every turn and adjust accordingly. Now, that is something I will not go into.

You're right.

I guess it becomes pretty much unworkable then as soon as contacts are made. Since i usually play in packed maps when my first contact happens around turn 2 or 3, there isn't much gain to be made here for me.
 
Roland Johansen said:
No, I understand that it is just changing tiles, but more often then not I wouldn't have the right combination of tiles to get to a multiple of 4 on both production and commerce (without using inferior tiles just to get a multiple of 4).

Like i said, i try to keep them at multiples of 4. It's not always possible, but it often is. You'd be surprised how often it can work perfectly if you look carefully enough. By the way, i don't consider a non-river cottage to be an inferior tile to use compared to a river cottage, since you want to grow both cottages eventually anyway, so you might as well start on both right away.

Another thing i like to do in my science cities is to use less advanced cottages at 0% science, so that i can grow them without much penalty. On the other hand, in my cities without as many science bonuses (e.g. no academy), or with more gold bonuses (e.g. market in a holy city), i'll do the opposite and try to use the most advanced cottages while at 0% and grow them while at 100%. There are lots of other tweaks like that which you can use when using the binary science rate to make the strategy even more useful. In fact, i think i'll add this trick to the original article because it may not be obvious to everyone.

When multiples of 4 just aren't possible, like i said in the original post :
- with 25% bonus, 4 > 1 > 2 > 3 (i.e. try 4, otherwise 1, and avoid 3 like the pest)
- with 75% bonus, 4 > 3 > 2 > 1 (i.e. try 4, otherwise 3, and avoid 1 like the pest)
- with 50% bonus obviously, any even number is good and any odd number is bad
 
Zombie69 said:
Like i said, i try to keep them at multiples of 4. It's not always possible, but it often is. You'd be surprised how often it can work perfectly if you look carefully enough. By the way, i don't consider using a non-river cottage rather than a non-river cottage to be an inferior tile, since you want to grow both cottages eventually anyway, so you might as well start on both right away.

I agree partially. Of course all of your cottages must grow, but then again gold/science now is better than gold/science later.

Zombie69 said:
Another thing i like to do in my science cities is to use less advanced cottages at 0% science, so that i can grow them without much penalty. On the other hand, in my cities without as many science bonuses (e.g. no academy), or with more gold bonuses (e.g. market in a holy city), i'll do the opposite and try to use the most advanced cottages while at 0% and grow them while at 100%. There are lots of other tweaks like that which you can use when using the binary science rate to make the strategy even more useful. In fact, i think i'll add this trick to the original article because it may not be obvious to everyone.

When multiples of 4 just aren't possible, like i said in the original post :
- with 25% bonus, 4 > 1 > 2 > 3 (i.e. try 4, otherwise 1, and avoid 3 like the pest)
- with 75% bonus, 4 > 3 > 2 > 1 (i.e. try 4, otherwise 3, and avoid 1 like the pest)
- with 50% bonus obviously, any even number is good and any odd number is bad

Okay, I think that I understand your playing style now. A bit different than mine, but as I said, to each his own.
 
Roland Johansen said:
I agree partially. Of course all of your cottages must grow, but then again gold/science now is better than gold/science later.

However, Universal Suffrage adds +1 hammer to all towns (but only towns). Because you need to leave Representation (which also has its share of interesting bonuses) in order to get there, you want to make the switch at the best possible time. With just a few towns and the rest still villages, hamlets and cottages, you're better off sticking with Representation until you get more towns. Also in the meantime, your towns are probably still being worked, which isn't making anything grow.

Ideally, you'd want every single cottage to turn into a town on the same turn, and to switch to Universal Suffrage on that turn. This accomplishes the following :
- No turns working towns without hammers, which would waste turns that could be used to grow other cottages.
- You get your last town as early as possible, by focusing on the development of your least advanced ones at all times.
- You get to switch civics at the ideal time, letting you use Representation longer than you normally would without wasting Universal Suffrage's bonus since 5 turns of 20 towns is just as good a bonus as 20 turns of 5 towns.

In order to get this ideal switch, you want to prioritize working the least developped cottages in your city rather than the most developped ones. Because of this, you want to switch between them often. For example, if you have 1 advanced one, 2 medium ones, and 1 underdevelopped one, and you can work two tiles, then you want to work the underdevelopped one all the time and switch the other citizen between the 2 medium ones, so that all 4 mature into towns at the same time.

Since you're switching anyway to accomplish this, then it makes sense to attempt to make those switches in a way that insures you always have commerce as a multiple of 4, and also (when using binary science rate) to ensure that you use advanced ones when you get the bonus (science or gold, depending on the city specialization) and the least advanced ones when you don't get the bonus.
 
Zombie69 said:
However, Universal Suffrage adds +1 hammer to all towns (but only towns). Because you need to leave Representation (which also has its share of interesting bonuses) in order to get there, you want to make the switch at the best possible time. With just a few towns and the rest still villages, hamlets and cottages, you're better off sticking with Representation until you get more towns. Also in the meantime, your towns are probably still being worked, which isn't making anything grow.

Ideally, you'd want every single cottage to turn into a town on the same turn, and to switch to Universal Suffrage on that turn. This accomplishes the following :
- No turns working towns without hammers, which would waste turns that could be used to grow other cottages.
- You get your last town as early as possible, by focusing on the development of your least advanced ones at all times.
- You get to switch civics at the ideal time, letting you use Representation longer than you normally would without wasting Universal Suffrage's bonus since 5 turns of 20 towns is just as good a bonus as 20 turns of 5 towns.

In order to get this ideal switch, you want to prioritize working the least developed cottages in your city rather than the most developed ones. Because of this, you want to switch between them often. For example, if you have 1 advanced one, 2 medium ones, and 1 underdeveloped one, and you can work two tiles, then you want to work the underdeveloped one all the time and switch the other citizen between the 2 medium ones, so that all 4 mature into towns at the same time.

Since you're switching anyway to accomplish this, then it makes sense to attempt to make those switches in a way that insures you always have commerce as a multiple of 4, and also (when using binary science rate) to ensure that you use advanced ones when you get the bonus (science or gold, depending on the city specialization) and the least advanced ones when you don't get the bonus.

Hmm, strange. Normally when I read something of you on this forum, I tend to agree. But this time I must disagree. I think that we both play at the higher difficulty levels (good guess?), so we must have the same game experience (The game plays rather different at the lower difficulty levels, don't you agree?).

In my opinion, it is far more important to get some gold now, then to have my towns developed at the same time. In the beginning of the game, I tend to have a rather low research percentage because of all the high upkeep costs. Every coin of gold that I can spend to help my research along to the next building (courthouse, marketplace, etc.) that will help my empire is very valuable. So I tend to use the most valuable tiles first.

I never have a problem with maturing my cottages to towns. They tend to be towns long before I have the technology to use either representation or universal suffrage. The Pyramids have not been a viable option in my last few games (I reduced the effect of chopping forests and then it is very difficult to build it yourself. It was built by AI's that I didn't even know at that moment.) I therefore don't see representation as an alternative to universal suffrage. You need farms to use the specialists from representation and you need cottages to get the most out or universal suffrage. I never switch to representation because universal suffrage is invented shortly after it and it is not worth the turn of anarchy.

We seem to have rather different general strategies. Still, we both win our games, so that's not a real problem I think.
 
I think the main differences in games settings explaining these facts are :

1. Your mod minimizing chops, just like you said. However, i don't always get pyramids either. For example, in my current game i'm playing an industrial civ at immortal and managed to get almost all the wonders, but didn't get the pyramids (got beat to Stonehenge as well). Having no stone didn't help, and having relatively few forest tiles didn't help either. I'm still doing well in that game though.

2. I always play financial leaders. Second trait could be anything really, and i try a little bit of everything, but there's always financial in the mix. This means money is not as much of a problem as it would be otherwise.

3. I like to dominate through warfare and don't put too much emphasis on being ahead in tech. I can always catch up later. I'd rather have 3 gold later than to have 2 gold now. Hammers are generally a more pressing need for me, to fuel my war machine.
 
I'm also playing an immortal game, also doing good. However, I didn't build a lot of wonders (the chopping bonus is normally very useful for building wonders). But I don't care a lot as there are more important things than wonders in this game. Still, some wonders are very nice. Very good for you that you were able to grab them.

I typically play random leaders. Presently playing Bismark, he's expansive and industrious. A pity that I couldn't use the industrious bonus better in this game. I think it doesn't really suit my play style.

I play on huge (mostly continent or archipellago) worlds and without the large chopping bonus, early warfare is rather difficult. So I just expand as fast as possible and then try to build up my land while grabbing some land from the other nations when I think I can do so. I get fairly large in these games, but not all of them are decided by a conquest victory. It also depends a lot on the starting position. A conquest victory from a small isolated island on a huge world is rather difficult.

Different games can lead to different tactics. Good to read about yours.
 
Zombie69 said:
Finally, it's often a good thing to have too much money and too little science done. It means you will be able to run at 100% science for some time. It also means that the AIs may have gotten to certain techs before you did. That's perfect, because it means you'll be getting a bonus on your research for those techs, effectively getting them cheaper. Then you can keep on going at 100% thanks to your reserves to jump right past the AIs. It's usually better to be behind, then ahead, then behind again, rather than to always be even.

good point, indeed, unless you need that tech (even more unless you need to be first one to get it)
 
Are you sure that you actually benefit from that cottage mm? Not developing towns just to make sure you don't lose shields for not beeing in US-civic seems a bit absurd to me. Not because it would be a lot of work, but because it could do more harm now than it would do good later. When I build a cottage it's usually to work that tile non-stop, and when it's developed to a town it's one of the best tiles you can get in this game, shield bonus from US or not. That bonus is not the reason I switch to US anyway, it's all about the ability to cash rush. I find the science bonus from representation to be clearly superior to this shield bonus from towns, representation is cheaper and has happiness bonus to boot.

I'm playing my second game of civ4 now, emperor with Elisabeth. I am thinking about playing Saladin when I move up to immortal. Is there anything that would prevent me from using representation 9 turns out of 10 and cash rush with US in the 10th turn? Does the "can't have a revolution because of resent anarchy" apply to spiritual civs without anarchy?
 
I'm 99% sure theres a 5 turn limit between switching civics with a spiritual civ, so you'd need to do 5 turns in US to cash rush with. Good idea though!
 
cabert said:
good point, indeed, unless you need that tech (even more unless you need to be first one to get it)

Of course, when it comes to military techs and techs that give bonuses to the first civ that gets them, you want to time your research perfectly so that you get them at the end of a long 100% science run. In that case, binary science is particularly useful, because to get tech C, you need to get this :

-> A -> B -> C

It takes you just as many turns total (in fact fewer turns, because by waiting a bit longer for techs A and B, you can get a bigger bonus because more civs will have them by then). However, other civs will get C later, because by being last to A and B, you're not giving anyone research bonus for having those before them.

This was already explained earlier.
 
Sorry if this have been mentioend elsewhere before...

I didn't know about Ctrl-A to cancel worker's action. So I would select the worker(s), and click the GO-TO bottom, to ask him to to the SAME square he is on. This will cancel his current action as well.

***

I really learned something from the post. However, I have some doubts regarding Tech Trading. It might not be good to "let the AI get the techs first, then you follow the food steps to enjoy the bonus" sometimes.

Usually I research something the AIs havn't, so I can trade. I may need to offer a 500 beaker tech, but I get 300 beaker back (free). If there are more than one AI players, then I can probably get more than one 300 beaker tech back from them. I think it is more beneficial, unless you really want to follow AIs footstep for some reasons. For example, the next-level military tech, the AIs all have it but you don't. And you fall behind in tech a lot. Or, the AIs don't really like you.

But that 0% -> 100% switch strategy is still useful in researching novel techs.
 
maltz said:
Sorry if this have been mentioend elsewhere before...

I didn't know about Ctrl-A to cancel worker's action. So I would select the worker(s), and click the GO-TO bottom, to ask him to to the SAME square he is on. This will cancel his current action as well.

Why don't you just click on the stop button instead? That's what i always do since i prefer to micromanage each worker individually rather than ordering all workers to stop at once.

maltz said:
I have some doubts regarding Tech Trading. It might not be good to "let the AI get the techs first, then you follow the food steps to enjoy the bonus" sometimes.

Usually I research something the AIs havn't, so I can trade. I may need to offer a 500 beaker tech, but I get 300 beaker back (free). If there are more than one AI players, then I can probably get more than one 300 beaker tech back from them. I think it is more beneficial, unless you really want to follow AIs footstep for some reasons. For example, the next-level military tech, the AIs all have it but you don't. And you fall behind in tech a lot. Or, the AIs don't really like you.

Tech trading, and the need to research techs that the AIs don't have, is another reason why, like i said, it's better to be sometimes behind and sometimes ahead, rather than always even. And this is exactly what binary research will give you.

I don't think i ever said that you should research the same techs as the AI. If i did, please show me where so that i can correct it.

As for military techs and techs that provide a bonus to the first who discovers them, you obviously want to plan ahead so that those techs fall at the end of a 100% research run. This way, you're even more garantied to get them first than if you had aimed for them with a constant research rate, for reasons that have already been explained.
 
That's a hefty sum of good advice. I usually used clearling forests to finish building buildings, people and so on instead of to start. Never thought about the overflow cap. Thanks.
 
Zombie69 said:
I don't think i ever said that you should research the same techs as the AI. If i did, please show me where so that i can correct it.

You did not, but saying you get a bonus because you research a tech AIs already know implies you research it, isn't it so?
If you don't, you get no bonus at all!
 
Just thought you might want to add this although it is already covered in the hurrying thread.

[Although, this should never work this way in the first place. But until this is fixed, this can be exploited through the below type of micromanagement]

For whipping fans, since the whipped production is always in multiplies of 30. Always time your whipping such that the production left is just slightly above multiplies of 30 and less than the requirement for the next population. The most powerful of this application is when either you are playing on epic where each pop gives 45 production right from the beginning OR when you have build the forge or had organized religion under normal speed. In case one, always whip between 31-45 production left and you will get 60 production for one pop. .In case two and three, always whip between 31-37 production left to get 60 production. This micromanagement is very powerful for early games.

P.S. Don't get addicted to this. I got addicted to it on GOTM 2 and did not realize that I was getting a lot of less useful buildings just because it was so easy to get them. Nearly had every possible building in all my cities which really isn't necessary.
 
Zombie69 said:
For example, in my current game i'm playing an industrial civ at immortal and managed to get almost all the wonders

Reading your CIV IV micromanagment tips is sure interesting, but THIS quote made my eyebrows rise. How on earth are you able to play on immortal level AND get to any world wonder at all (and probably win the game too)??? I'm trying to master the monarch level for weeks now, and have NEVER :mad: been able to win. What is your secret?

BTW: you also mention the possibility of prebuilding improvements on top of improvements. I intend to find out what happens in the following situation: when it's time to change improvements, send a military unit with the worker to that tile. First, the unit pillages the existing improvement, then the worker finishes the next in the same turn...
But maybe some member of this forum already can tell us if this indeed has the desired effect!

Keep up the good work!
 
Campaco said:
Reading your CIV IV micromanagment tips is sure interesting, but THIS quote made my eyebrows rise. How on earth are you able to play on immortal level AND get to any world wonder at all (and probably win the game too)??? I'm trying to master the monarch level for weeks now, and have NEVER :mad: been able to win. What is your secret?

My guess: He times his forest chops precisely for the early wonders (something like 6+ forest chops in one turn by using pre-chopping). He has one or a few great production cities for the middle game wonders and is not far behind in technology (the AI typically doesn't have a city focussed totally on production). He has the right bonus resources useful for wonder building in his territory, possibly by conquest, maybe by trade. He cash-rushes some late wonders. Last but not least, he captured a few wonders that he did not build. When you master this game, then it can be done. There's not one single trick that will help you do it though. The fact that he came up with all these micromanagement tricks means that he understand the game mechanics quite well and thus his strategic (non-micromanagement) game is probably very good as well.

Campaco said:
BTW: you also mention the possibility of prebuilding improvements on top of improvements. I intend to find out what happens in the following situation: when it's time to change improvements, send a military unit with the worker to that tile. First, the unit pillages the existing improvement, then the worker finishes the next in the same turn...
But maybe some member of this forum already can tell us if this indeed has the desired effect!

Keep up the good work!

What's the desired effect? You do get the new improvement that turn, yes. But why are you pillaging? Maybe you think that you get money for pillaging your own improvements which is not true.
 
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