Ask Me Anything

[Txurce]

Funak, I was genuinely surprised that you go for international trade routes early in the game. You've mentioned recently how strong you feel food and hammers are compared to the global yields....so I thought you would be internal TR all the time!

I had the same question, but figured I had asked enough of them.

 

[Funak]

Early on with an herbalist I'm getting 3F/1 hammer off of a forest, comparable to a farm ring on plains and doesn't require near as much terraforming. Then it goes to 3F/2H with the lumbermill, 3F/2H/1S with the university. Farms are going 4F/1 H at that point (at least river ones)....the forests definitely seem better overall to me...and of course go to 3F/3H/1S with the workshop.

Farms and mines are better because the yields are more focused, you generally never want to work half mines and half farms, you want to either work all farms or all mines (and of course any bonus resources). And with that said you can easily get +2 adjacency bonus on a good portion of the farms, assuming you mow down all the forests blocking your tiles. with +2 from adjacency, +1 from rivers and +1 from the improvement, grassland farms are at 6 food, which is a number that can sustain growth even if you're forced to work specialists. +3 food tiles aren't.

Also I'm really weirded out by the fact that you're comparing plains farms with grassland lumbermills, makes it look like you're trying to bend this to your favor somehow. Plain forests are stuck at +2food, which is mostly really bad for growth.

Funak, I was genuinely surprised that you go for international trade routes early in the game. You've mentioned recently how strong you feel food and hammers are compared to the global yields....so I thought you would be internal TR all the time!

Well, because trade-routes with city-states provides about the same amount of food as internal trade-routes does, along with gold and influence?

If you're talking about trades with other civs however. It is because you can easily manipulate your tech-path to get 4 or 5 science from your trade-routes. along with a bunch of gold. These yields are both really powerful early on, gold makes sure your newly founded cities can get their infrastructure up and makes sure you can supply an army big enough to keep your enemies off you.
The science makes sure you can beeline for powerful techs to give you military or infrastructure advantage (which techs depends on the civ you're playing and the situation you're in).
I don't have a problem with getting free gold or free science, especially not early on, but I'm painfully aware of how little these science-numbers actually start accounting for later on. However at that time you've hopefully gotten enough enough tourism over the target to make the growth-bonus worth the investment.
International trade-routes also makes my neighbor slightly less likely to attack me, which is nice.

That being said, if all available international trade-routes are garbage I do send food to my capital with an internal trade-route. At least before I get access to caravansaries.

 

[Txurce]

Farms and mines are better because the yields are more focused, you generally never want to work half mines and half farms, you want to either work all farms or all mines (and of course any bonus resources).

I follow the logic of everything else you said. Could you explain what you mean by not working half and half, and why?

I can see you might mean farm hills where possible, but don't understand the "all mines" at all.

 

[Stalker0]

Also I'm really weirded out by the fact that you're comparing plains farms with grassland lumbermills, makes it look like you're trying to bend this to your favor somehow. Plain forests are stuck at +2food, which is mostly really bad for growth.

Well, because trade-routes with city-states provides about the same amount of food as internal trade-routes does, along with gold and influence?

I was trying to show comparable yields, but the point is fair. A plains forest will give you 2 F/3 Hammer with the lumbermill. While its bad for growth, it does allow you almost as much production of the mine (4 hammer), but can maintain growth at the same time. That said, your point about doing a specialized switch back and forth does make sense.

How does the international one provide as much food? If you use it to get friendship with a maritime CS, you get +3.5 food in the capital, as opposed to +6 for an Internal TR, and commonly that quest will not keep you as a friend for long with that CS. Now of course if the trade route quest is particularly good than of course go for it, but I don't see that working out in general....at least in terms of food.

 

[Funak]

I follow the logic of everything else you said. Could you explain what you mean by not working half and half, and why?

I mean that when you want to grow you want to work all food-tiles, when you don't want to grow you want to work all production-tiles.
Farms are pure food tiles(unless they are on hills or plains) and mines are pure production tiles.

Let's give an example, you have a city at population 10, your goal is to get it to population 20 and build an aqueduct, a forge a market a library, a caravansary and a university.
The most efficient way to do this is to start your city on full production, working no food-tiles at all (except the ones you need to keep the city from starving), at this point you're making 0 excess food and a lot of excess hammers. You start working on the forge and then the aqueduct, when the aqueduct finishes, you switch all the hammer-tiles over to food-tiles grow the city as fast as possible to 20 pop, when you reach 20 pop, you once again switch all your food-tiles to pure hammer-tiles and finish the buildings you need as quickly as possible.

This is the absolute fastest way to meet your goal, the forge adds hammers to the mines you're working and an engineer, which speeds up the aqueduct slightly, the aqueduct makes sure your full food-focus is as efficient as possible. Being at 20 pop instead of 10 when building the market, the library, the caravansary and the university makes sure you have higher production available, as you can work more mines.

If you were using lumbermills instead you would have no ability to focus your yield-gain, which is why farms and mines are usually superior to lumbermills.

I can see you might mean farm hills where possible, but don't understand the "all mines" at all.

Farmed hills are pretty bad tiles when it comes to yields, you mostly farm hills to help with adjacency bonuses.

How does the international one provide as much food? If you use it to get friendship with a maritime CS, you get +3.5 food in the capital, as opposed to +6 for an Internal TR, and commonly that quest will not keep you as a friend for long with that CS. Now of course if the trade route quest is particularly good than of course go for it, but I don't see that working out in general....at least in terms of food.

I was talking about he traderoute quests, they usually provide quite a bit of food and you get the food instantly instead of over time (of course that means it doesn't get multiplied by growth, but whatever). That being said if the quest is bad, there is no reason to go for it, but they usually land you like 30 influence and maybe 80 food, which combined with the gold and possible science is definitely better than an internal trade-route (at least imo).

 

[BliTTzZ]

Do villages recieve additional hammers and gold when it is placed on the way of foreign trade route?

 

[thunderbird_14]

Unrelated to above, why haven't you considered having an avatar?

 

[Funak]

Do villages recieve additional hammers and gold when it is placed on the way of foreign trade route?

Yeah, any trade-route works, afaik. Haven't actually tested it in the latest version but the last time I checked it did work anyways.

Unrelated to above, why haven't you considered having an avatar?

Mostly because I'm just as bad at drawing as I am at answering questions .
I don't see the point of using an avatar that someone else is also using, I mean it's meant to be unique, and the only real way to get a unique avatar is to make it yourself, which I can't do since I'm terrible at drawing.
Also I have absolutely no idea how to add one and I'm not really motivated to try and poke around.

 

[pandasnail]

and unlike vanilla getting a great merchant doesn't slow down your great scientist production

Is this true??? It worked like that?? I played very little vanilla and let the AI do most of the city stuff, even picking buildings sometimes from the blue triangle, so I wouldn't have noticed. Was Firaxis being lazy, or did they think this made sense? I guess I can see it a historical immersion if I squint, but how does it make gameplay sense? Was fixing this the very first thing Gazebo did when he created the CPP? Or was it the thing where AI ranged units never ever moved? Or the one worker per tile thing?

 

[Funak]

Is this true??? It worked like that?? I played very little vanilla and let the AI do most of the city stuff, even picking buildings sometimes from the blue triangle, so I wouldn't have noticed. Was Firaxis being lazy, or did they think this made sense? I guess I can see it a historical immersion if I squint, but how does it make gameplay sense? Was fixing this the very first thing Gazebo did when he created the CPP? Or was it the thing where AI ranged units never ever moved? Or the one worker per tile thing?

Yeah it is true, vanilla completely punished you for getting any GP other than scientist (the 3 cultural GPs didn't count however).

This was actually not the first thing G changed, there were mods doing that before, and I think communtias also changed this. However the vanilla GP system was in CPP for quite a while before it was changed unless I remember it wrong.

 

[pandasnail]

Yeah it is true, vanilla completely punished you for getting any GP other than scientist (the 3 cultural GPs didn't count however).

Wow. That does not make any sense at all to me.

 

[Gazebo]

Is this true??? It worked like that?? I played very little vanilla and let the AI do most of the city stuff, even picking buildings sometimes from the blue triangle, so I wouldn't have noticed. Was Firaxis being lazy, or did they think this made sense? I guess I can see it a historical immersion if I squint, but how does it make gameplay sense? Was fixing this the very first thing Gazebo did when he created the CPP? Or was it the thing where AI ranged units never ever moved? Or the one worker per tile thing?

It worked like that, yep. I think it was a logic holdover from Civ 4 (in Civ 4, all GPs pulled from the same pool, and there was a % chance of getting one versus the other).

Whoward fixed it, not me. But I incorporated it into CP.

Yeah it is true, vanilla completely punished you for getting any GP other than scientist (the 3 cultural GPs didn't count however).

This was actually not the first thing G changed, there were mods doing that before, and I think communtias also changed this. However the vanilla GP system was in CPP for quite a while before it was changed unless I remember it wrong.

CP changed it. Communitas spoofed it, poorly.

G

 

[tu_79]

I thought there were two pools: one with engineers, scientists and merchants, and the other with cultural people. And the rest, generals, admirals and prophets, were independent.

 

[Funak]

I thought there were two pools: one with engineers, scientists and merchants, and the other with cultural people. And the rest, generals, admirals and prophets, were independent.

Almost right, Engineers scientists and merchants(and great artist in vanilla vanilla) shared a pool, the rest were independent.

 

[BliTTzZ]

In situation where you first of all build up your road network and only after send your caravans - they will always move using roads? Because right now in my current game they don't, so few villages placed on the roads don't get bonuses from trade routes.

 

[Funak]

In situation where you first of all build up your road network and only after send your caravans - they will always move using roads? Because right now in my current game they don't, so few villages placed on the roads don't get bonuses from trade routes.

I think that's a bug, they are supposed to prefer roads over non-road (assuming the roads aren't spiral nightmares) because the road-tiles consume less movement. I have noticed situations where they don't however, so you're not alone in this.

 

[Gazebo]

In situation where you first of all build up your road network and only after send your caravans - they will always move using roads? Because right now in my current game they don't, so few villages placed on the roads don't get bonuses from trade routes.

I think that's a bug, they are supposed to prefer roads over non-road (assuming the roads aren't spiral nightmares) because the road-tiles consume less movement. I have noticed situations where they don't however, so you're not alone in this.

Depends on how efficient your road network is.

G

 

[BliTTzZ]

I think that's a bug, they are supposed to prefer roads over non-road (assuming the roads aren't spiral nightmares) because the road-tiles consume less movement. I have noticed situations where they don't however, so you're not alone in this.

Yeah, in my current game it's a total craziness all around my territory. Caravans do some stupid zigzags around my villages placed on the roads. Like if the crime level in these puny little towns is so high and gangsters wait merchants behind every corner.

 

[Rolepgeek]

So, given that overall yields of forest/jungle times are better than farms or mines (especially if you don't have enough open flatlands to really get into those adjacency bonuses), would you say that having a few available to work during production, in large cities in particular, to support the food, is a good idea? Or in puppeted cities where you don't have the choice?

 

[Funak]

So, given that overall yields of forest/jungle times are better than farms or mines (especially if you don't have enough open flatlands to really get into those adjacency bonuses), would you say that having a few available to work during production, in large cities in particular, to support the food, is a good idea? Or in puppeted cities where you don't have the choice?

I don't really know, I don't really puppet cities.