A few questions from a newbie

[Borgis]

Hi guys! I’m a Civ newbie. A few questions:

1. Is it necessary to improve tiles that cannot yet be worked because city pop is too low? I don’t see the point of improving all the tiles around a new city just because they’re there, considering these tiles are going to cost me gold per turn. However when I watch YouTube videos of players, they’re improving tiles like mad without ever checking if they’re being worked. Am I missing something?

2. How accurate is the game’s suggestions whenever you have a worker about to improve a tile? Do you guys pay any attention to that? Because I have so far. Should I just ignore those and build 1-3 farms then go hardcore trading posts / mines / etc?

3. Could you explain exactly how an aqueduct helps me? I don’t understand the game mechanics around this. Whenever I found a new city I crank out a monument, granary, and then a happiness building like a coliseum (since I usually play wide). I don’t think I’ve ever built an aqueduct unless it was to get to a hospital.

4. What gameplay benefit is there to NOT play on quick speed? Is it just a matter of personal taste? Every game I’ve ever played is on the quickest speed. I just don’t see the point of making the game purposely take longer…but are there any actual mechanics that change for slower speeds?

5. Is there a mod or something that quickly tells you what luxuries all the civs have available that they'll actually trade to you and the the luxuries they want from you? On big maps with 8-12 civs, it gets tedious clicking on all of them one at a time, then clicking trade, etc.

6. When a civ declares war on you, there’s clearly a period of time where he will not make peace with you no matter what you do. Anyone know how long this time period is?

7. Can you give civs gold (for nothing in return) to reduce the odds of them declaring war on you? Several times I fed cash to a civ and it didn’t seem to help.

Thanks in advance guys. Sorry if the answers to my questions are too obvious.

 

[Browd]

Hi guys! I’m a Civ newbie. A few questions:

1. Is it necessary to improve tiles that cannot yet be worked because city pop is too low? I don’t see the point of improving all the tiles around a new city just because they’re there, considering these tiles are going to cost me gold per turn. However when I watch YouTube videos of players, they’re improving tiles like mad without ever checking if they’re being worked. Am I missing something?

The only tile improvements that have maintenance costs are road and railroad segments. The main benefits of improving extra tiles are (1) the ability to switch citizens between tiles of various types without having to wait for workers to improve and (2) the freedom to shift workers to other cities, reducing intercity transit time.

2. How accurate is the game’s suggestions whenever you have a worker about to improve a tile? Do you guys pay any attention to that? Because I have so far. Should I just ignore those and build 1-3 farms then go hardcore trading posts / mines / etc?

Turned off advisers long ago, so can't comment on how good their advice is. Farms, luxuries, lumber mills and mines are top of the list. No TPs in my own cities except on jungle tiles.

3. Could you explain exactly how an aqueduct helps me? I don’t understand the game mechanics around this. Whenever I found a new city I crank out a monument, granary, and then a happiness building like a coliseum (since I usually play wide). I don’t think I’ve ever built an aqueduct unless it was to get to a hospital.

Aqueduct will carry over 40% of the food cost of your most recent citizen, in addition to the regular food overflow. Absent an aqueduct, when a new citizen is born you start at zero food, plus the regular food overflow. If you don't want your cities to grow quickly, skip aqueducts. If you want growth, build aqueducts. Aqueducts also allow you to survive starvation periods (e.g., when you have to crash-produce something or your city is besieged).

4. What gameplay benefit is there to NOT play on quick speed? Is it just a matter of personal taste? Every game I’ve ever played is on the quickest speed. I just don’t see the point of making the game purposely take longer…but are there any actual mechanics that change for slower speeds?

To each his own.

5. Is there a mod or something that quickly tells you what luxuries all the civs have available that they'll actually trade to you and the the luxuries they want from you? On big maps with 8-12 civs, it gets tedious clicking on all of them one at a time, then clicking trade, etc.

Try InfoAddict in the Steam Workshop. I think there are other trade info mods out there.

EDIT: If you go to diplomatic overview you can see how much gold each civ has and how many duplicate luxuries and strategic resources it has. Since the AI pretty much will not trade single luxuries, duplicates are the only game in town.

6. When a civ declares war on you, there’s clearly a period of time where he will not make peace with you no matter what you do. Anyone know how long this time period is?

Minimum 4 turns, but there is an RNG element from that point forward.

EDIT: If the AI was bribed to DOW you or otherwise agreed with another AI to DOW you, it can't sue for peace for 10 turns. (Same applies to the human player if you agree with another civ to DOW an AI civ.)

7. Can you give civs gold (for nothing in return) to reduce the odds of them declaring war on you? Several times I fed cash to a civ and it didn’t seem to help.

That generates a positive "we've traded recently" modifier, but its impact is modest.

 

[tomtom5858]

Browd already did a good job of answering, but I think I'll add my two cents where needed.

Hi guys! I’m a Civ newbie. A few questions:

2. How accurate is the game’s suggestions whenever you have a worker about to improve a tile? Do you guys pay any attention to that? Because I have so far. Should I just ignore those and build 1-3 farms then go hardcore trading posts / mines / etc?

Not very. It asks you to build too many trading posts, IMO. In terms of the number of farms you should build, this is a personal thing. Get however many you need to grow your cities as large as you want, then build TPs and mines.

3. Could you explain exactly how an aqueduct helps me? I don’t understand the game mechanics around this. Whenever I found a new city I crank out a monument, granary, and then a happiness building like a coliseum (since I usually play wide). I don’t think I’ve ever built an aqueduct unless it was to get to a hospital.

This is a pretty commonly misunderstood thing. What an aquaduct does is it adds 40% of your surplus food to its internal reserve every turn. When the city grows, it transfers its total stored food to the city's basket and the cycle begins anew. It doesn't simply set your food basket to 40% on growth when built.

4. What gameplay benefit is there to NOT play on quick speed? Is it just a matter of personal taste? Every game I’ve ever played is on the quickest speed. I just don’t see the point of making the game purposely take longer…but are there any actual mechanics that change for slower speeds?

Build and tech times are slower. This makes the window for, say, Comps from T40-75 on Emperor/Standard to T120-225 on Emperor/Marathon. This allows your units to conquer for a much longer period of time before going obsolete. In addition, since build times are longer, a large defeat is much more dangerous. This mostly works in favour of the human, since the AI is utter garbage at combat. Essentially, slower speeds make the game much easier.

5. Is there a mod or something that quickly tells you what luxuries all the civs have available that they'll actually trade to you and the the luxuries they want from you? On big maps with 8-12 civs, it gets tedious clicking on all of them one at a time, then clicking trade, etc.

Try CivUP, it's got a nice trading screen.

6. When a civ declares war on you, there’s clearly a period of time where he will not make peace with you no matter what you do. Anyone know how long this time period is?

5-10 turns.

 

[LoneRebel]

Regarding the Aqueduct, you definitely should build it especially for a tall empire. For a wide empire it may not be so important, but for a tall empire, you'll notice that the bigger a city's population is, the longer it takes for it to get even bigger (i.e. It takes a lot longer for a city to grow from size 20 to size 21 than it does for a city to grow from size 3 to size 4.)

TL;DR Aqueducts can be very important for a big city.

 

[Borgis]

Great info. Thanks guys.

You guys seem to not big big fans of TPs, and I often have a gold focus so tend to build tons of them.

Of course I will build lux improvements on those tiles, mines on hills, etc. But if it's just flat grassland with no luxuries, I will often build a TP if I already have a few farms. I guess I'm just sacrificing some growth for extra gold. Would this be a bad strategy for a tall empire and a good strategy for a wide one? Or is it more complicated than that?

 

[Unresolved]

Honestly, I never make TP's on any tile except puppet cities and jungle. Farms everywhere with the occasional mine if the production there is bad.

 

[LoneRebel]

Great info. Thanks guys.

You guys seem to not big big fans of TPs, and I often have a gold focus so tend to build tons of them.

Of course I will build lux improvements on those tiles, mines on hills, etc. But if it's just flat grassland with no luxuries, I will often build a TP if I already have a few farms. I guess I'm just sacrificing some growth for extra gold. Would this be a bad strategy for a tall empire and a good strategy for a wide one? Or is it more complicated than that?

Yeah, the decision whether to put farms or trading posts on flat, resource-free tiles is one of those thorny decisions the game has you make. I think it's better to look at it on a tile-by-tile basis than to make a general rule.

As I see it, the big limiting factor to keep into account is happiness. One game I was going wide as Rome and putting down lots of farms. Not only did I have many cities, but they were pretty big ones too. Naturally, my happiness went negative. This is one good reason to build TPs instead of farms - to control your population and keep happiness from going too low.

When going tall I like to have more farms, because I want the population as big as possible to fill all the specialist slots. Happiness is not as much a problem for a tall empire as it is for a wide one.

EDIT: Puppet cities should have mostly TPs, since they are set to gold focus, and that should be their main function - to provide more income for your empire.

 

[tdqtiger]

Great info. Thanks guys.

You guys seem to not big big fans of TPs, and I often have a gold focus so tend to build tons of them.

Of course I will build lux improvements on those tiles, mines on hills, etc. But if it's just flat grassland with no luxuries, I will often build a TP if I already have a few farms. I guess I'm just sacrificing some growth for extra gold. Would this be a bad strategy for a tall empire and a good strategy for a wide one? Or is it more complicated than that?

I use a lot of Trading Posts even going tall, so I don't think it's a bad strategy. It really depends on how you them, which relates back to your question #4. The computer has a bad habit of suggesting that almost everything next to a river get a trading post. If you have Floodplains or Grassland tiles, then that's fine. But if you have Plains or Hills tiles, then I wouldn't follow the TP suggestion. I always farm those so I don't weak tile.

I'd say the overall accuracy of the suggestions is about 50/50 regarding tile improvements.

 

[joncnunn]

#3 Dealing with Aquaduct:
When going Tall, you'll be using Tradition; whose finisher provides free Aquaducts for your first 4 cities; so you won't actually need to build them.
Now if your playing 5 city (semi-tall); then you'll eventually want to build one for your 5th city. Note that there is a quirk in which the cash price for an Aqueduct is cheaper than other buildings costing the same hammers.

Going wide: You still want your capital to grow, so you'll want to build an Aqueduct in your capital. If there's other cities you want to grow, build them in those cities; but in a city you want to stay small, skip.

#4 Accuracy of recommendation: It has no concept of when its in a temporary condition vs normal. (If your global happiness just went negative that turn and will recover next turn, it won't recommend any farms during the unhappiness. If in the last turn of a GA, it will recommend trading posts in just about every tile.)

 

[Cicerosaurus]

Everything that needs to be said has virtually been said, but I would add that Trading Posts (for me) depend very much on the situation of a city. If it has a heap of seafood (or similar) sources that will provide a heap of food I will place TP's on tiles where I would normally have a farm.

Situation dictates a lot.

 

[Maxym]

Re: quick speed, it makes warfare harder as each window of opportunity from new units diminishes and number of turns needed to capture cities, kill units ect. stays the same. Not huge if you just tech towards non domination victories or defend ur own empire, but as tactical weakness of AI is often the only way to get back in the game on higher levels it can be game breaking, roughly equivalent to one difficulty level, so emperor game on quick is like immortal while on epic more like king.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Trading post should be almost the only non reosurce improvements you make in puppets. In normal cities there are a few reasons to build them in non-pime real estate:

1) If you are going to spend a large proportion of the game in a golden age (e.g. with a culture victory or with the Persians, or if u got CI/went freedom) then they can be worth putting in free tiles that don't already produce at least 1 gold, as the extra gold from GA's only works on tiles that already produce at least 1 gold.

2) If you're gonna get the Commerce finisher - this gives +1 gold from TP's.

3) If you're going Rationalism - There's a policy that gives extra science from TP's

4) If you got a lot of jungle and want to keep it from the science bonus from universities. In this case, TP's are the only improvement you can build on them, but they do take ages to build (The normal time + the time it would take to chop the jungle)