Civ4 Choices

[Divi Filus]

Played for about 20 of the last 24 hours... generally I like the game, but I get "bogged down" somewhere in the renaissance....

A couple of key questions:
1. What is the optimal expansion rate? --- I usually get the capital up to 4-6 (depending on production and food - use all "high output" tiles) then pop 3-4 settler/ archer combos....

2. Should you always farm grassland/plains/floodplain next to a river in the early game? -- I usually do but I am overgrowing?

3. How do you prevent overgrowth? (Yes - I realize get specialists) - but but the time I notice it is too late? If you turn on the "prevent growth" govenor does it stop overgrowth (to angry citizens).

4. How do you prevent midgame resource drain.... I have tonnes of unhappy citizen producing nothing by the renaissance and my great lead is gone!!

Finally just a point about religion - if you convert a portion (say half) of one of you opponents cities they should not hate you for having a heathen religion (just my two cents) - this is really a problem on small maps.

All in all I really like the game, will have to learn alot again, just like with Civ3.
DF.

[Shillen]

1. What is the optimal expansion rate? --- I usually get the capital up to 4-6 (depending on production and food - use all "high output" tiles) then pop 3-4 settler/ archer combos....

It really depends on the start but typically I build my first worker at size 2 or 3 and then my first settler at size 4.

2. Should you always farm grassland/plains/floodplain next to a river in the early game? -- I usually do but I am overgrowing?

Not always. Cottages are good too. You don't need to work a ton of farms. You can work the forests and hills also. Try to leave some of the forests up because cutting them all down (like the game tries to tell you to) will severely lower the production in your city.

3. How do you prevent overgrowth? (Yes - I realize get specialists) - but but the time I notice it is too late? If you turn on the "prevent growth" govenor does it stop overgrowth (to angry citizens).

This is one of those things you need to micromanage. If you see a city start to have unhappiness icon next to its name then pull some specialists or move some workers to higher production/commerce tiles instead of food tiles.

4. How do you prevent midgame resource drain.... I have tonnes of unhappy citizen producing nothing by the renaissance and my great lead is gone!!

Make sure all your resources are connected. Sign open borders with the AI's and maintain decent relations with them so you can trade for happiness/health resources. You can always go to war to acquire resources as well.

Finally just a point about religion - if you convert a portion (say half) of one of you opponents cities they should not hate you for having a heathen religion (just my two cents) - this is really a problem on small maps.

If you convert enough of their cities and have decent relations with the civ (I know they won't like you due to heathen religion but that's ok) then there will be an option in the diplomacy window for them to convert to your religion. You'll probably have to give them something for them to do it.

[CitizenCain]

Originally Posted by Divi Filus

4. How do you prevent midgame resource drain.... I have tonnes of unhappy citizen producing nothing by the renaissance and my great lead is gone!!

I'm going to assume, and this may be wrong that your cities are maybe size 12+ by the time this starts happening...

Obviously, the most basic tool to handle this is to load up on "luxury" resources - that give you one per resource (silk, silver, gold, etc). If you have any unexploited ones in your territory, exploit 'em, if you can trade and AI for them, do so and then make sure all your cities are connected so they all get the benefit.

The second thing you can do is use religions to your advantage, though this takes more planning. If you have more than one religion in a city, you can build more than one temple. This is even nicer if you also own more than one religion's holy city, so you can get 2, 3 or more gold per city, per turn.

The third thing is, of course, buildings and wonders. By the mid game, you should have a huge number of buiildings that you can use to drive down unhappiness. (If you don't, rethink your tech path, or take a couple detours next time.)

Temples (Preiesthood?), Colloseums (construction), Theaters (drama)- provides 1 happiness per 10% culture rate and there's one financial building that adds an extra happiness for luxury resources... I think it's the market. Those should be your mainstays, and should be more than enough to prevent your problems - the other thing you could look into is forward planning and investment in a happy enhancing wonder like the Hanging Gardens or... Notre Dame (? I think it's Notre Dame.. maybe it's the Sistine Chapel).

If that's not enough, you could always adopt the Hereditary civic (Monarchy) which lets you use up to three troops in a city garrison for one happiness a piece, or the Representation civic (which you probably won't get till much later) whch increases the happiness of your 5 biggest cities.