The "To Do" list

Sisiutil

Sisiutil

All Leader Challenger
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Yes, I'm still playing Civ IV games regularly (at Immortal level). I pretty much think I have the basics covered at this point, but oftentimes I find I'm kicking myself over forgetting or delaying a task or tactic that is important not to overlook--especially at the higher levels. In a complex game like Civ, it's sometimes easy to get caught up in the action and forget about some important choices you need to make, the earlier the better. In the hope of remembering these in my future games (and helping out anyone else who's interested), I thought I'd pass along my Civ IV "To Do" list. Feel free to add to it.
  • Statue of Zeus: I never build this, but it's important to know (a) who has it and (b) where it is. If I'm going to launch a war against its owner, I have to remember to stock up on :) resources and/or buildings beforehand, and also plan my war so I capture or raze the city containing it ASAP. Otherwise, especially later in the game, war weariness becomes intolerable too quickly and I'm wasting hammers on :) buildings instead of units. Sometimes I find myself swamped by WW and desperately push to capture my enemy's last city only to find it contained the SofZ, and it's head-slappin' time. :rolleyes:
  • Heroic Epic city: I rarely forget this one, but sometimes it's unacceptably delayed because I'm being a perfectionist. It's important to select and found (or capture) your HE city early, even before you have Literature to build it. But sometimes I get too picky: "No, that location has a gem mine, it should be a commerce city... No, that city has two fish tiles, it should run specialists..." etc, etc. I have to remind myself to just convert an early city to production; extra food or commerce will just help with whipping, growth, maintenance, etc.
  • Ironworks city: Since I rarely combine IW with the HE, I'm usually looking for another location for this city, and once again I can fall victim to my own perfectionism and wind up delaying the build of the IW until well after I have steel.
  • Forbidden Palace: I often dither on this one, planning on building it in a city I aim to capture in a later conquest, then the war gets delayed, and the city has motherland happiness issues that need to be addressed first, etc., etc, until sometimes I only get it built a few turns before discovering Communism and switching to State Property, making the FP moot. D'oh!
 
Since I always play on maps that have multiple continents or large islands and I like to explore and colonize, I always put off he Forbidden Palace until I have colonized one of the other land masses. It is much more useful there than back home.
 
If I haven't learned anything, it's that sometimes you just want to plop buildings down when you need them as opposed to some perfect combination of NW. Just plop it down, reap benefits now and win the game quicker. Usually when I go "Gee, it's not far enough to house the FP" I already am in State property. So this thing only comes into play when I invade faraway and am running Corps.

But I guess I don't really plan. When I can place a HE or IW, I just look up the 2 cities with the highest amount of hammers generated. :lol:

For me personally, I tend to neglect Wall Street, because it seems I'd be better off just building more units. Inevitably, my banks get built by my capital, another of my best cities, the shrine I captured, and 3 random cities I ending up capturing, with WS going in the Shrine City. :S Normally I'd like to keep my slider high so it doesn't help unless I am rushbuying.

The real problem for me is globe theater. I just forget about it like every game I play. :S

In the end Civ rewards those that balance their future dreams with reality (the present)
 
Do you use stop growth for granaries to build up storage bin (for example, you just build a granary, you're at 28/34 food, you have 5 in the bin. If you stop growth one turn, you'll be at 34/34 food with 5 in the bin, so you "waste 1 food". But next turn you'll be at 15 food instead of 11 food). It actually happens a lot, since it's unlikely you'll build granaries at the perfect time.

Building globe theatre in time for cannon wars.
 
i wouldn't recommend building forbidden palace or ironworks, except in very special circumstances. By the time iron works pays for itself you could have already capitulated a civ or two with a bigger faster cannon force. Forbidden palace + all those courthouses gives only a marginal return unless you don't plan on running state property or have huge maintenance costs for whatever reason.

Globe theater on the other hand is insane, you can usually build it well before you reach a good military tech and as long as you are in slavery and/or nationalism it will pay for itself real fast. Theaters are cheap, good for fighting war weariness, and give a little culture in case it matters.

For heroic epic, remember not to fogbust too well, or you won't eat enough barbs to get a lvl 4 unit.
 
Assign your EPs to someone and do something useful with them. You will usually generate enough EPs to steal at least one tech without touching the slider or working a spy.

If you get a free missionary that you don't need, use it on the civ you plan to spy on, then swap to that religion (if SPI or in a golden age) for a big discount on the theft.
 
VoiceOfUnreason said:
  • Remember to train a 2 mover to explore the neighbor's lands when open borders are signed.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, the "spotlight" games. I can see the small circle of my own territory and nothing else, a sea of blackness.


Sisiutil said:
  • Heroic Epic city: I rarely forget this one, but sometimes it's unacceptably delayed because I'm being a perfectionist. It's important to select and found (or capture) your HE city early, even before you have Literature to build it. But sometimes I get too picky: "No, that location has a gem mine, it should be a commerce city... No, that city has two fish tiles, it should run specialists..." etc, etc. I have to remind myself to just convert an early city to production; extra food or commerce will just help with whipping, growth, maintenance, etc.
  • Ironworks city: Since I rarely combine IW with the HE, I'm usually looking for another location for this city, and once again I can fall victim to my own perfectionism and wind up delaying the build of the IW until well after I have steel.
  • Forbidden Palace: I often dither on this one, planning on building it in a city I aim to capture in a later conquest, then the war gets delayed, and the city has motherland happiness issues that need to be addressed first, etc., etc, until sometimes I only get it built a few turns before discovering Communism and switching to State Property, making the FP moot. D'oh!
Click to expand...

Those are the hallmarks of my game, delaying building a National Wonder out of a sense of wanting to find a better time and/or place to do so! Not now, I need a few more axemen. Not there, I'm sure I could get better production from a city I capture later. That kind of thing. Then I distract myself with other pursuits and it turns out I haven't built them at all. Gee, having Ironworks ready before starting the Apollo Program would have been a real treat. Too bad I didn't get the Heroic Epic put up before ending up in war against a unit spammer.

I would add to the list:

  • National Epic: Deciding where I will get the most benefit from this, a Wonder collector, Seafood heaven, or Flood Plain central. Often it never sees the light of day, sadly.
 
Mec AntiKythera said:
I would add to the list:

  • National Epic: Deciding where I will get the most benefit from this, a Wonder collector, Seafood heaven, or Flood Plain central. Often it never sees the light of day, sadly.
Click to expand...
Interesting--I have never delayed the NE, probably because the Great Library is still my favourite wonder and I try to build it in every game I play. Wherever the GL goes, the NE immediately follows.
 
Do you use stop growth for granaries to build up storage bin (for example, you just build a granary, you're at 28/34 food, you have 5 in the bin. If you stop growth one turn, you'll be at 34/34 food with 5 in the bin, so you "waste 1 food". But next turn you'll be at 15 food instead of 11 food). It actually happens a lot, since it's unlikely you'll build granaries at the perfect time.
Click to expand...

That's not a really smart thing to do. Just remove some citizens from farms and have them do something else. By using 'stop growth' you are indeed wasting resources.
 
strijder20 said:
That's not a really smart thing to do. Just remove some citizens from farms and have them do something else. By using 'stop growth' you are indeed wasting resources.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I was using the "Stop growth" button for awhile, and ran into a similar problem to my OP--I'd forget to turn it off! Bad, bad, bad... so instead, as you say, if the :mad: citizen is of no use to me (i.e. no whipping opportunity coming up soon), then I'll swap tile assignments around. Those are more noticeable than that tiny little stop growth button at bottom right...
 
You could add
  • If you get a Great Merchant and want to send him on a trade mission, figure out where the ToA is. You get a benefit from popping the GM in that city.
 
My biggest thing is lack of fail gold strategies. For example, if I know I'm going to build the National Epic in city C but I can't build it yet because I'm still building the essential buildings/units, I should start it in City B or City A. CaF does this really well in his videos. Also, when I have one of the bonus strategies (Ivory, Marble, Gold, Stone) I need to exploit this for the fail gold.

I was at Immortal a while back, but went down back to EMP because I had trouble keeping my reserves up.
 
vicawoo said:
Do you use stop growth for granaries to build up storage bin (for example, you just build a granary, you're at 28/34 food, you have 5 in the bin. If you stop growth one turn, you'll be at 34/34 food with 5 in the bin, so you "waste 1 food". But next turn you'll be at 15 food instead of 11 food). It actually happens a lot, since it's unlikely you'll build granaries at the perfect time.

Building globe theatre in time for cannon wars.
Click to expand...

Food is only accumulated from the turn you build the granary. Finishing it before you increase size doesnt yield a half filled food bar. Here are screenshots to illustrate. The right city had granary from the start, the left one got the granary the turn before growth (via worldbuilder):

Spoiler :






edit: I can remember someone in these forums said building the granary at 1/3 foodbar is optimal based on some simple calculations...
edit2: I might have missunderstood you... but no time atm, ill check out later

Knightly_
 
Knightly_ said:
Food is only accumulated from the turn you build the granary. Finishing it before you increase size doesnt yield a half filled food bar. Here are screenshots to illustrate. The right city had granary from the start, the left one got the granary the turn before growth (via worldbuilder):

Spoiler :






edit: I can remember someone in these forums said building the granary at 1/3 foodbar is optimal based on some simple calculations...
edit2: I might have missunderstood you... but no time atm, ill check out later

Knightly_
Click to expand...

That's the point of my post? Edit: Knightly, do you test again, but stop growth for one turn in the city that completes the granary as you grow. When it grows it will end up with 5 food instead of 2

For one of the above posters, I don't think you understand. Before you fill your bin, every food you accumulate has double (2x) value. If you grow before you fill your bin, you end up less than halfway so your food has 1x value. If you stop growth, your seem to get 0 value ... but since you're still filling your bin you actually get 1x value.

Growing and stopping growth before you fill your bin are hence equivalent, except if you grow you get an extra tile. But, you get extra efficiency when you're straddling the growth line, since you lose only part of your food to stop growth, but you get the full granary storage, and you get double value food as opposed to single value from the next turn.

If you can get 3 or 4 extra food in every single granary city, and since food is more valuable than hammers, that's a really good deal. And this micro happens a lot in seafood cities with tons of food.
 
vicawoo said:
That's the point of my post? Edit: Knightly, do you test again, but stop growth for one turn in the city that completes the granary as you grow. When it grows it will end up with 5 food instead of 2

For one of the above posters, I don't think you understand. Before you fill your bin, every food you accumulate has double (2x) value. If you grow before you fill your bin, you end up less than halfway so your food has 1x value. If you stop growth, your seem to get 0 value ... but since you're still filling your bin you actually get 1x value.

Growing and stopping growth before you fill your bin are hence equivalent, except if you grow you get an extra tile. But, you get extra efficiency when you're straddling the growth line, since you lose only part of your food to stop growth, but you get the full granary storage, and you get double value food as opposed to single value from the next turn.

If you can get 3 or 4 extra food in every single granary city, and since food is more valuable than hammers, that's a really good deal. And this micro happens a lot in seafood cities with tons of food.
Click to expand...

This is quite correct. While you do lose some yield from the second citizen, the third, fourth.... citizens will start working faster as you have more food overall.

There is actually a breakpoint for every population point and food surplus, but that is another story.
 
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