Lessons learned beating Emperor

[Bleys]

OK guys, this de-rail has gotten out of hand. However, in an effort to get it back on topic, I will say that "Forest Management" is a skill that you begin to develop around Emperor level, because of the lower starting caps.

I dont think ANYONE looks at their land and decides to chop every single forest they see. I also dont think anyone says "I am not chopping a single forest because in 1600 AD, I will need the health".

I do think people weigh the benefit of an early chop against the detriment to the overall health of a city. Personally, I have noticed that I chop WAY WAY less than I used too, but thats because I dont want to "waste" a chop on something easy to build like a Granary or an Archer. Then, in the mid-game, when I am building Cannons thanks to a good Lib run, I chop a few more forests. Later, when I FINALLY have lots of trade power (other continent, Calendar, access to Grocers, etc) I may chop out the last remaining forests in some cities.

There are no extremes in this game. There is no "universally correct" answer. If I start on the coast and see 4 Health resources in sight, most of which are double-health with an early building (Granary and Harbor, not Grocer or Calendar), then I absolutely play my forests differently.

And one last thing, as a final effort to re-rail this thread. Forest management is more than just not chopping. It includes a LOT of things, here are the ones I can think of:

-I never put a road on an unforested tile if I can avoid it. Roads make the chance of re-growth lower.
-I chop every forest (and jungle) on every tile that the enemy could possibly use as a staging ground for an attack.
-I always try to chop forests on tiles I plan to improve FIRST. So, that Riverside Plains Hill forest is the first to get the axe. Then, the riverside grassland forests. If a Plains has a forest, I rarely cut it before Biology, because I am a stong believer in the DaveMcW theory "Ignore plains until Bio".
-If I need another forest for a wonder/building/unit, I pick the one that has the most forests touching it, and no road, to increase my chances of a re-grow.

There is a lot of advanced strategy that involves terrain of all kinds. Thats the purpose of this thread, advanced strategies that just arent as critical on lower levels. Forest management is a perfect topic for this, but not if we are going to devolve into a flamefest.

Sorry if I stepped on your toes feral, just trying to get this incredible thread back to being incredible, and not 5 pages of whining . .. .. .. .. .iness.

 

[feralminded]

Good points Bleys ... I definitely have a handful of updates to put into the top I've just been swamped. I need to edit the current chopping post because it really doesn't convey the point and kind of conveys the wrong point but I do think a good forest management point is necessary.

 

[feralminded]

I'm going to change the forest tip to:

"Chopping forests is a key speed boost in your early cities to get out critical infrastructure, wonders, workers, and settlers. That said don't chop foolishly or else you may be giving up a some free health bonuses and what will eventually become a production resource on par with mines/workshops. If you need to mass produce units for a meaningful rush or chop out a wonder certainly don't hesitate. Otherwise its generally wise to avoid chopping a forest in a mature city until you need to develop the tile."

I hope this covers everything in a concise and useful enough fashion.

 

[Bleys]

Excellent wording.

 

[feralminded]

Man the lack of spacing between points is killing me. I am going to have to have each point with a boldface title to enhance readability. Also I'm limited to 30 images ... sucks because I would love to edit in all the appropriate and icons.

 

[Bleys]

Dont sweat the current formatting, just stick to getting the points clear and concise. Then, what you want to do, is go to the Articles sub-forum and write it up, using as many posts as you need (you may want to reserve a few slots after you finish the first page). Thats where you can make it neat and pretty.

 

[feralminded]

Well I figure its still in the RFC mode right now so I'm still actively editing it. Certainly in a week or so I'll transition it over for a more permanent formatting. Still its nice doing as much formatting as possible now ... less work later. The boldface topics worked nicely.

 

[Bleys]

Looks really good, I wouldnt even worry about spacing, that is a great layout.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I apologize for my tone and the thread derail. I did another "test chop" game this morning and it was indeed helpful to the early war. I'm somewhat dreading what will happen when power/coal comes on line, but that'll be a bridge to cross when I get to it. The important thing is I was able to turn a boxed-in start into a good position through conquest, which without the chop I might not have been bold enough to go for it. I'm still going to leave far more trees in the IW city, because I'm addicted to huge growth caps there in spite of the IW and unhealthies from power, etc. And I have forests enough to chop elsewhere.

Thanks for being patient with my stubbornness.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

The lower starting health/happy caps were obsoleted in BtS were they not? Prince and above is the same I thought.

 

[gcm4738]

I'm not totally au fait with...

Apostolic Palace: Once the AP goes down get those temples and monasteries up. Each building is like employing an engineer except with all of the other benefits and no food requirement.

But if I understand correctly then once the AP is built then any? civ gets +2 for a temple and the same for a monastary (what about other religous buildings like cathedrals?) of the same religion as the AP only?

(mumbles to self) I still think some mention should be made of diplomacy considerations... either that or I'm in some boneheaded minority that managed to get to Monarch without really bothering at all...

 

[feralminded]

Yes once the AP goes down all buildings of the religion as the AP gain +2 . You don't need to control it, you just need to have that religious and its very much worth spreading ... +4 really helps. Oh and yes cathedrals add +2 as well but they usually serve different purposes since they're so expensive hammerwise you just don't want to spam them (even though you technically can put one in half of your cities). I mean a temple is 80 and a monastery is 60. That means in 40 and 30 turns respectively they pay themselves off ... that's a pretty quick turn around on that investment. Cathedrals are 300 ... so 150 turns ... not really all that compelling for only the .

As for diplomacy ... I didn't crack open that can of worms because its so large I could never really handle it. That said I guess if we could come up with 7-15 tips for diplomacy I could just make its own sub-topic. I just am not the strongest diplomatic player is all. Maybe we could beg TMIT ... I know its about his greatest strength.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unfortunately, it's not as easy to teach diplomacy as it is ways to cheese the AP/UN or warmonger tactics, or city specialization etc.

Being good at civ IV diplomacy is a function of two things: knowledge of the AI tendencies (can be taught) and planning ahead at a macro level (much harder to teach).

My diplo ability hasn't changed much because it's based mostly on the latter. If you want to get strong with diplo to stay alive and optimize certain AIs toward you, you can just download the reference charts. This tells you who declares at pleased/cautious, WFYABTA caps, etc etc.

The tricky part as always, is to apply those correctly once you're playing. To win diplo victories, the only things you're concerned about are getting enough votes and not dying. Still, it's better to risk yourself pissing off non-voters than to get -diplo with "your" votes.

Why is it so hard to teach this? Pattern recognition. You have to be able to tell or guess how the game will unfold, WELL IN ADVANCE OF IT OCCURRING, to optimize diplo decisions. Nobody is right 100%, but you can get close if you play enough games and get used to the tendencies. Still, I'd handle a continent with ragnar and isabella (for example) very differently depending on whether they settle on the same religions. Religion/favorite civic combos can easily get both to friendly if they share a religion, so you have 2 trade partners and minimal pre-astro war threat (only until ragnar hits friendly). If they're in different religions it might prompt dogpiling one, and which one depends on concerns like balance of power and who's closer.

Basically you just want to try to optimize your approach to diplo based on your victory condition goal, situation, and the information in the reference charts. Sounds easy, but seems a smidge more difficult in practice. I don't think I can do too much with a guide past what I wrote about getting diplo points for the UN in that article...just takes practice/watching others' games.

 

[Dirk1302]

Being good at civ IV diplomacy is a function of two things: knowledge of the AI tendencies (can be taught) and planning ahead at a macro level (much harder to teach).

Maybe i quote you out of context here but to me it seems just the other way around. Most good players (including you) can and do plan ahead on the diplo and other info they receive in the main diplo screens, not to difficult if you know the game imo, religious bonus help, civic bonus help, trade bonus help and don't help etc.We plan ahead on these things.Ai tendencies are much harder though, XML and charts help for tendencies but it goes much deeper.....

The real difficulty starts where it's gets fuzzy, the things DanF writes about. Very good players are dimly aware of these things saying based on experience that they don't think that ai A will do thing B but often they're not sure. And sometimes they're just plain wrong. For ages it has been assumed by some of the best players here that an early attack might be averted by a quick build up of one's own power. Niklas and in his wake DanF found out that this is not the case, it's just plain wrong, early power has nothing to do with an ai declaration on you unless you reach the unlikely threshold on immortal/deity that you have ~1.5 of their power. No way.

Other example,if you know how the ai is coded you know with 100% certainty that for instance in DMOC's deity game Cyrus can't attack DMOC, it's just impossible in ai code. Well this isn't documented anywhere, DanF hinted at it and based on his ideas i researched somewhat further and know for sure. To truly master the game you have to know these sort of things but it's a lot more work of course than just planning ahead which every good player does.

 

[gcm4738]

Ok - What about this for a couple of thoughts...

If you don't want to discuss diplo in a detailed way perhaps say that you recognise you're not covering it and that there are good articles elsewhere that the player should read up on, because unless I'm getting it wrong my experience is that, if you ignore diplomacy (which is essentially what I was doing) and make no friends, you will have several enemies and several indifferent civs. You are taking one possible victory scenario off the table, and making the others potentially more difficult as you won't get the benefits of tech trading, tech demanding, votes, help in wars, etc.

Is it possible to still win? - I'm sure it is, but if you choose to go this way it should be done with the full knowledge of what going it alone is costing you. (The old "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" - Geddy Lee, "Freewill")

Some random important things I've picked up: All the leaders have different tendencies (duh!) and experience playing can help with this, as well as charts which will tell you when they're likely to DoW (at "pleased" or no), etc. The player can check WHEOOHRN periodically to see which AI's are in prep for either full war or limited war, or a dogpile (a choice which it makes every turn based on a random number generator I think). The player needs to make some effort to see how the politics are developing, who likes who, who is whose worst enemy, etc. and potentially choose sides (or decide to stay out of it) accordingly. These blocs pretty much develop along religious/geographic lines.

This and a pointer to other references on leader characteristics, tactics for relationship management and a caveat that experience is the best teacher maybe... I like TMIT's observation of "pattern recongnition"... which brings up another point that I don't always follow myself: It's important to keep exploring pretty much the whole game. The more information you have about the lay of the land (how much, how civs are located, what resources they have, etc.) the more information you have about what is likely to happen.

Why does the AI go to war? Means, motive and opportunity. Means is relative strength and proximity also whether the civ is in a war already and the health of their economy and infrastructure. Motive is relationship, land area, resources, personality, relative score. Opportunity could be a weakly defended city on their borders, especially if it's got wonders or resources or a dangling worker or maybe some other things like a military tech advantage or a UU.

 

[feralminded]

Ok wrapping this up and making a strategy article. I will continue to edit it there but thanks to everyone for your contributions.

 

[erikthecelt]

Food Resources: The major ones are Wheat, Rice, Corn, Bananas, Pigs, Sheep, Fish, Crabs, and Clams. The minor ones are Sugar, Deer, Spices, Cows, Whale, Floodplains, and inland lakes next to a city with a lighthouse. Farmed grasslands are an absolute last resort pre-biology. Anything that doesn't produce 3 food or more isn't a food resource. Note that Calendar resources can and should be farmed if possible before you tech Calendar.

Minor food, happy resources make good sites for cottages - think of sugar as flood plain. You only need to put a plantation on one - the rest become good tiles - workshop or cottage - put a watermill on a riverside spice.

Cows are very powerful - work them early.

 

[gcm4738]

Ah - another interesting topic. I haven't wanted to admit it, but I've cottaged over plantation resources. Sometimes the tile's worth as much by the time you get calendar that it's not worth putting the plantation over the village or whatever. Depends on whether you need the resource for yourself or trade, or the other bonus like + that comes with the plantation.

In some cases it's probably the best choice

 

[feralminded]

Yeah thats a really good tip actually. Unless you need to trade them ... definitely cottage/watermill them over. I don't always do this myself but I know I should. That little builder in me still clinging to life from the noble days really likes the land to look all diverse and whatnot even though the rational part of me knows its not the most efficient.

 

[Bleys]

Just read the Article, feral, and I have to say VERY WELL DONE! That is one of the most solid guides I have ever read. You really did a fantastic job. Thank you.