Civ 4 (original) Beginning to dominate Warlord, time to level up?

[War Master in Training]

Additional health has no immediate effect if you aren't losing . If strong growth in the city is important and I don't have something better to do in the city I will build the health building early in anticipation for future . Aquaducts are generally not a great way to get health. They cost too much for just 2 and have no additional benefit. I try to build granaries, grocers, or harbors for resource synergy when I can so I can get the additional benefits these building bring. (if you somehow don't already have a granary, which you probably should)
As to getting a high XP unit for West Point, I don't really know. I usually try to combine baracks Vassalage and Theocracy to get as much initial xp as possible then send it into battle.

 

[War Master in Training]

Oh, I think that hospitals also heal military units in the city faster. Not usually a strong bonus though.

 

[Calvin Beck]

I haven't asked myself those city specific questions. I guess I play more at a macro level. I do try and manage my cities more while they are young, to get the most balanced level of bread, hammer, and gold. Is it a bad idea to "build out" a city before it has the citizens to work all of the improvements just to give my workers something to do? I've heard that on the highest difficulty levels you should check on every city every turn. This seems very micro to me, but if one doesn't mind playing a 100 hour game I guess it couldn't hurt. I wish the game would give you a pop-up every time a city grows, so it would be easier to manage citizen tasks instead of having to check every turn.

 

[War Master in Training]

Everyone has their own preference to how much micro they do. It got more fun for me once I figured out whip cycles. I find that having a balance of is usually not has good as having cities that specialize more. Some cities that are for getting a ton of commerce and some that have no commerce but high labor for example. I remember when I first played I tried to maximize how much of those things I got in each city without specializing and I think it was to my detriment. Micro is about adjusting things to meet short-term goals faster so your macro strategy goes better.

 

[mycophobia]

I haven't asked myself those city specific questions. I guess I play more at a macro level. I do try and manage my cities more while they are young, to get the most balanced level of bread, hammer, and gold. Is it a bad idea to "build out" a city before it has the citizens to work all of the improvements just to give my workers something to do? I've heard that on the highest difficulty levels you should check on every city every turn. This seems very micro to me, but if one doesn't mind playing a 100 hour game I guess it couldn't hurt. I wish the game would give you a pop-up every time a city grows, so it would be easier to manage citizen tasks instead of having to check every turn.

Ah, well, have I got an interface mod for you:

Thread 'City Growth Pop-Up'

Aug 29, 2024

I dunno if this is part of BUG or if it's been done before or anything but it took me a long time to figure out how to do so I reckon I'll share it!

These modifications will make it so a pop-up will appear whenever a city grows a size, allowing you to zoom to the city screen for that city or dismiss the pop-up. This will only work if the city governor is OFF, so be sure to uncheck it (or just unassign and reassign a worked tile) when you build a city to turn it off and get the popup when it grows.

In either a new mod containing copies of the following two files and their directories, or...

• mycophobia
• Replies: 6
• Forum: Civ4 - Mod Components

• 

As far as your workers question, well, you want to be as efficient as you can be. It obviously would be ideal to only have just the amount of workers you need improving each tile right as it would be worked by one of your cities, but that's not always possible. It is an ideal you can strive for though, and it is particularly important in the early game to always be accomplishing something that you're going to need in the near future.

 

[Calvin Beck]

Thank you for the link to the mod, mycophobia. I've never modded anything before though. I don't want to screw something up. You said either in a new mod or an existing mod to add the code... What is a new or existing mod? Sorry to sound so ignorant but aside from some html/css/javascript I have no experience with programming. I found where to put the code, do I just put it in there and then run the game or is there something else?

 

[mycophobia]

You can just put the code in those files if you want, or you can also make a copy of the files in question and put them in [your Documents folder] > My Games > Civ4 > CustomAssets, where you'll find the same folder structure as the game's Assets folder. The game will load files from there first before it loads stuff from its own Assets folder. So you could copy CvScreensInterface.py into CustomAssets > Python > Entrypoints, and CvEventManager.py into CustomAssets > Python, and then make your changes to those so you can just delete them if you mess something up or don't like it or what have you.

 

[Calvin Beck]

Do I have to start a new game or can I do this and continue to play the game I'm playing? Thanks.

 

[mycophobia]

You can continue your current game and it should work fine. I'll emphasize that if any of your cities have the "Automate Citizens" button turned on (in the cluster of buttons at the bottom right corner of the city screen) then the popup won't come up, you'll want to turn that off if you want the notification for that city.

 

[Calvin Beck]

Cool. I'll give it a try.

 

[a pen-dragon]

Also, what's the best way to get a military unit to +5 XP so that I can build West Point? Do I just keep attacking with the same unit while taking turns to heal in between?

Do not worry about building West Point. Just attack as you always do and eventually a unit will hit the level threshold. +4xp in one city is nothing that exciting.

IMHO West Point is too expensive to pay off, except in the late game, after industrialization, anyway. Before that I would rather put the into units.

 

[Calvin Beck]

I guess I just like to build everything that I can. I don't want to "miss out" on something cool.

 

[War Master in Training]

One of the hardest habits to break is building a bunch of buildings in cities. I still struggle with it.

 

[Calvin Beck]

If I'm going to get better I have to learn how to specialize my cities like I've heard some of you talk about. I'm not sure where to get started with that. I too have a habit of building every building in every city.

 

[Calvin Beck]

BTW War Master, what is a whip cycle?

 

[War Master in Training]

If I'm going to get better I have to learn how to specialize my cities like I've heard some of you talk about. I'm not sure where to get started with that. I too have a habit of building every building in every city.

I would start with making a few specialized commerce cities that are there only for commerce-related things. These cities are often best placed in grassy rivers or coasts. They should only need to build a granary, lighthouse (if applicable), and library. cities are a little harder. You need to have a place with labor resources and/or lots of hills. The tricky part is that you also need lots of in those cities to maintain citizens who are mining. That kind I am less good at. There are also more advanced specialisations like specialist cities but I am not good enough yet to set them up and to use them effectively.

 

[War Master in Training]

BTW War Master, what is a whip cycle?

A "whip" is rushing a build with slavery. Whip cycles are getting into a rythem where you can put a little into a build, whip 2 or 3 pop, recover, and repeat. It is one of the most difficult micro management techniques and also one of the best. I am still very beginer at it, but I see how much it improves my early game snowball. This is also what makes resources so valuable.

 

[Calvin Beck]

Thank you war master for the food for thought. I appreciate your time. One question comes to mind though; what is the goal of specialization? How does it improve your performance? It seems to me from my spy reports that the AI doesn’t specialize. Is this what makes it advantageous?

 

[mycophobia]

I've heard it said "food is king" in Civ IV, because aside from making your city grow, you can also turn it into any other yield. There's the obvious benefit of just letting you work more tiles and pull yields from those, but you can also get Hammers through Slavery, and Science/Gold/Culture through Specialists. Generally speaking if there's a spot where a city can go and work at least one 4+ food tile when improved, it's probably worth founding there at some point.

So food is always good no matter what the city does besides. As far as specialization goes in the early game, my general rule of thumb is: if there's a lot of grassland, I'll probably have it work cottages; if there are a lot of hills, I'll focus it on production; if there's just a lot of food but not a lot else going on with the land then I'll run specialists or whip stuff as needed. There's more flexibility as workshops and other such improvements become available but that's my basic idea of how to direct cities, more or less. Accordingly, you'll want to build stuff according to whatever the city is specializing in: Forges and factories and stuff for production cities, Libraries, observatories, etc for those geared toward research, perhaps you'll have a gold-generating city that you'd put a market and bank in, and so on. Granaries go in every city because it's a direct increase of food, and food is always good.

Thank you war master for the food for thought. I appreciate your time. One question comes to mind though; what is the goal of specialization? How does it improve your performance? It seems to me from my spy reports that the AI doesn’t specialize. Is this what makes it advantageous?

Specialization is good because you're sharply limited for most of the game as to what improvements you can build on what land. Once you get stuff like Biology and boosted workshops you can basically pull food and hammers out of thin air, but you need to get an edge long, long before those come along. Your capital is usually in a spot where it can be sort of a jack-of-all-trades (though typically one that leans more toward commerce), but the surrounding land won't be so accommodating, and you need that land, so you'll need to make the most of it. As far as buildings, well they just generally cost a lot of hammers so you hobble yourself by trying to build everything in every city; you won't get as much benefit from building a Library and a Market in the same city as you would building a Library and then spending the same amount of turns building Research as you would've put into that Market. Civ IV is about getting as much as you can out of each turn, and early turns matter the most, so you're constantly having to weigh the opportunity cost of each decision.

 

[War Master in Training]

It seems to me from my spy reports that the AI doesn’t specialize. Is this what makes it advantageous?

Anything that you can do that is more optimal from the ai is advantageous. The easiest example is from BTS espionage. Early on (and really almost always) you want to spend 0% of your on . On the other hand, the AIs will usually immediately set it to 10 - 20% from what I am told, which gives a nice edge to your research pace. [Speculation] I think the AI doesn't specialize and makes its new cities based on how good the spot is on its own without too much consideration for macro strategy.

Specializing is optimal because you can make buildings that augment the city's specialty and ignore the others. For example, a city can build a forge and forgo any buildings for . This makes it ready to start pumping out units and wonders faster. It also means you can invest more into things to improve its output with a stronger return on investment.

Imagine two scenarios where your empire has the same total output.

Scenario 1: all cities have the same and two buildings that take advantage of it (ex library and maybe market.)
Scenario 2: half of your cities have high and lots of buildings to boost with it, and half of your cities have none but can forgo building those buildings all together and just produce units (and also have the time to build a forge if return on investment makes sense)

The second scenario is just better in general.