Average Turn "routine"?

[Blitzstrahl]

Folks; I've been playing Civ 4 long enough that I should be doing better. I'm not the best at keeping track of the myriad details in the game, so I'm now looking to fine tune my processes just a little bit.

What are some folks' average turns like? Is there a method or a process? Is there a checklist? I've read here and there that city management can be an every-turn process, or that it doesn't need to be. What I find is that if I spend every turn going through my cities I lose track of the "forest for the trees".

I've thought about making some charts per city specialty of the planned building queue, so that I can be better prepared when one building finishes and another is due.

I find that I miss so many details, such as checking on AI research processes, diplomacy changes and so on.

I've got BAT 3.0 installed, so that has certainly helped keep track of a lot of data on the front screen, but I wonder if there are any good tips for a "routine" of sorts for the average turn.

Cheers to all!

 

[s.bernbaum]

I wouldn't call it a routine but here is what I do more often than not. I'll number them for convenience but I don't follow any particular order when playing. I am a bit of a micro manager and enjoy that aspect of the game.

1. Every turn, I review the list of what events have occurred and inspect every city where something has changed. (That's events as in city growth, culture expansion, etc. not random events or quests.)

2. Nearly every turn, I check the diplomacy screen to see if any resource or tech trade opportunities have arisen.

3. Every few turns (depending on what is going on in the game, it would be anywhere from 1 to 10 turns approximately), I look at every city to see what tiles are being worked, what specialists are being used, what the happy/unhappy and healthy/unhealthy numbers are, and what the growth and culture rates are.

4. As for AI research, if you are playing vanilla, I would check that every few turns. If BTS, I keep that showing on the scoreboard in the lower right corner.

I think this is the sort of thing you were asking. If not, ask a bit differently.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

I usually fall into a pattern. A couple games ago the micro got pretty overwhelming by mid-game so I did in fact set up a checklist of sorts- two nice little columns of Alt-S signs out in the ocean where I could read them. This was the gist of it:

1. Workers. I had about two dozen workers all over the map hooking up resources. I did that first because...

2. Diplomacy screen. Selling all the resources I just hooked up to milk all the AI's GPT. Also checking for tech trades. Every few turns I'd look to see who's ticked off at who. While I'm dealing with other civs...

3. Espionage screen. Quick adjustments of EPs based on who's trying to out-EP me, and who I'm trying to find out more about.

4. City production. Is everybody working on the right thing? And who might need a little encouragement from the whip?

5. Peaceful moves. Caravels circumnavigating, work boats and explorers out there wandering, etc.

6. The War. I was busy crushing Tokugawa.

There were other things, and of course the list changed over time. But yeah, if I don't remind myself I'll go 50 turns without remembering to do something that got lost in the shuffle.