Dot Map Cheat Sheet

[Zerodoc]

I haven't played a lot of Civ IV, but I found the dot mapping idea useful. I do it before I place most any city and I decided to record my method so I can remember it in the future.

I created 2 pdf files. They're quick and dirty, but if a player has never done it before, these might be a useful guide.

Forgive me if they are erroneous or misguided. I'm still a pretty unsophisticated Civ player. The guides here at Fanatics are wonderful, but time has permitted me to only scratch the surface.

But dot mapping seems well worth the effort, if only to make it easier to manage my workers.

Long live Civ Fanatics!

 

[kossin]

You can use the City tool in the BUG mod (Ctrl-X) to place your city locations.

You'll get something like this.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7368954&postcount=41

Picking a city location is an entire different story however. Usually, you'll just want to have as much food as you can get.

 

[mtr12]

I thought the dotmapper was Alt+X...

 

[kossin]

Both work, no?

 

[Zerodoc]

Wow, thanks for the tip. That would be great!

But I haven't updated to BTS, I'm on Warlords. I don't suppose I'm going to get the BUG mod to work on Warlords?

I have a lot of gripes about the globe view and stategy layer, it's wonderful to see there has been some mod work done in this area.

 

[Optical]

You won't see a Warlords version of BUG, no. Though it is a must-get if you do update to BtS (which is also worthwhile).

 

[kossin]

BTS is a big improvement on the civ4 vanilla and warlord imo. It's also fairly cheap these days so if you can afford it, it's probably worth upgrading

 

[s.bernbaum]

You can use the City tool in the BUG mod (Ctrl-X) to place your city locations.

You'll get something like this.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7368954&postcount=41

Picking a city location is an entire different story however. Usually, you'll just want to have as much food as you can get.

I thought the dotmapper was Alt+X...

Both work, no?

Ctrl-X to only show all dot-mapped city sites. Alt-X to place new ones and also displays existing ones.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

Do you literally use a 3x5 card? You could throw together a spreadsheet or a table that counts everything for you. The counting seems like the least important part to me though, you need to take into account the chosen method for driving your research -- cottages or specialists or workshops or military. I like to plan my cities in a graphics program (Gimp/P-shop) to see how they will interact and try to get the most out of my land. This method works regardless of which expansion you are playing at the time and it leaves you with a picture library of your empires, or at least of their starting territory.

 

[Zerodoc]

Wow, that sounds great Mec. Yeah, what I do is very cursory as I am a very lightweight player.

And yes, I actually use a 3x5 card. But compared to just eyeballing good city locations, I have found this to be super helpful and I enjoy the game about 3 times as much.

It seems that every time I just eyeballed a good city location, it was based on Civ 3 experience. That wasn't turning out so well. So I have learned to at least differentiate between shield and coin towns. I know this barely scratches the surface, and to go beyond noob settings will require much more planning and strategy.

If and when I get to that point, I would love to do some of the things you are suggesting.