After reading Sisiutil's excellent guide for beginners on this forum, I'd like to clear up a few questions I have about the dot mapping technique and city specialization.
I'll start by explaining what I understand from the guide, and you can tell me if I'm going wrong anywhere:
When you want to build a city, you take a screenshot of an area on the map that looks interesting (Print Screen). I tend to do this with the grid and "show resources" (I think that's what it's called: the button that shows how much food, commerce, and production a tile produces) on, because I'm not too good at remembering the statistics off by heart. They ARE listed in the manual, but I don't tend to play with it by my side.
Then, I open up Paint (I could use Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro but Paint is just as good, if not better 'coz it's faster) and do Edit > Paste (or Ctrl+V OR Option+V for a Mac user) to get the screenshot up on the screen. You could also open up the screenshot from the Civilization IV directory under Screenshots, or something like that.
Next, I decide on what I think could be a good place to build a city and draw a big red dot using the paintbrush on that tile (You may need some practice selecting an ideal tile, but you can always just select a random tile and start using that; if the rest of the dot map reveals it to be a poor placement, just try another tile).
Then, draw out what will be the outline of the city's "fat cross" (this is detailed in the manual). Inside this fat cross, cross out every tile that has an output of exactly two food (these tiles provide enough food for themselves). Next, write "-1" on every tile that produces just one food, and "-2" on every tile that produces no food at all (including peaks and deserts). These tiles can't provide for themselves. Then, if any tiles have a food resource on them (such as rice, corn, wheat, cow, sheep, pig etc.) work out how much food that tile will produce once the appropriate improvement has been built upon it. Add a "+X" to those tiles, where X is the amount of excess food above two the tile will produce. Now, look at all the tiles which produce more that two food. Add a "+X" to those tiles, where X is the amount of excess food above two the tile produces.
Finally, add up all the numbers you've written down on the tiles (negating the crossed out tiles as zeros), and you will get either a positive or, most probably, a negative answer. If the answer is positive, your city will produce excess food above supporting the maximum number of citizens the city can hold, and thus NO farms will need to be built in that city (except for the tiles that need a farm to improve them, such as corn, rice, and wheat). If the answer is negative, then you will need to build farms to raise your city's population to it's maximum level, and the number of farms is equal to the result you got multiplied by -1; for example, if your answer was -3:
-3 * -1 = 3 farms
From this, you need to work out whether you can build that many farms in that city's fat cross. Farms can ONLY be built on flatlands that have irrigation (i.e. are next to a river or fresh water, or next to another farm after Civil Service has been researched (and then it still doesn't always work...).
If you can build that many farms, DON'T build a city there. If you can build those farms, decide if building the specified number of farms will still allow for the city specialization that you were hoping for. There's no point in having a production city with only one mined hill and 19 farms, is there?
Now, what I'm having touble with is city specilization. I can't seem to either get enough variety of land to enable all the different specilizations that I want, or I can't get enough food in a city that would be ideal for say, a production city.
From what I understand, the different city specializations are:
Wealth (mix of farms and cottages, buildings + wonders that encourage commerce, preferably a holy city on the coast)
Science (mix of farms and cottages, buildings + wonders that encourage research and Scientist GP production, an academy, and lots of Scientist GP specialists)
Production (lots of hills and enough farms to support the city, buildings + wonders that encourage production and health)
Military (lots of hills and enough farms to support the city, buildings + wonders that encourage production, military production, and health)
GP Farm (lots of farms, buildings + wonders that encourage GP production and food, and lots of GP specialists)
Is there something I am getting wrong? Building enough farms seems to be the biggest problem, and I am also quite weak at military production, because I build top much. Plus, the AI always seems to beat me to the bulk of the land and I never place enough cities (five has been my maximum). In addition, could anyone suggest a suitable tech tree "strategy" in full length, because I can do the early game but after getting to Civil Service I tend to research practically every tech going...
I like to play with "No tech trading" ON, on a Continents map, and at Noble level because I like to play online.
I look forward to some replies!
I'll start by explaining what I understand from the guide, and you can tell me if I'm going wrong anywhere:
When you want to build a city, you take a screenshot of an area on the map that looks interesting (Print Screen). I tend to do this with the grid and "show resources" (I think that's what it's called: the button that shows how much food, commerce, and production a tile produces) on, because I'm not too good at remembering the statistics off by heart. They ARE listed in the manual, but I don't tend to play with it by my side.
Then, I open up Paint (I could use Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro but Paint is just as good, if not better 'coz it's faster) and do Edit > Paste (or Ctrl+V OR Option+V for a Mac user) to get the screenshot up on the screen. You could also open up the screenshot from the Civilization IV directory under Screenshots, or something like that.
Next, I decide on what I think could be a good place to build a city and draw a big red dot using the paintbrush on that tile (You may need some practice selecting an ideal tile, but you can always just select a random tile and start using that; if the rest of the dot map reveals it to be a poor placement, just try another tile).
Then, draw out what will be the outline of the city's "fat cross" (this is detailed in the manual). Inside this fat cross, cross out every tile that has an output of exactly two food (these tiles provide enough food for themselves). Next, write "-1" on every tile that produces just one food, and "-2" on every tile that produces no food at all (including peaks and deserts). These tiles can't provide for themselves. Then, if any tiles have a food resource on them (such as rice, corn, wheat, cow, sheep, pig etc.) work out how much food that tile will produce once the appropriate improvement has been built upon it. Add a "+X" to those tiles, where X is the amount of excess food above two the tile will produce. Now, look at all the tiles which produce more that two food. Add a "+X" to those tiles, where X is the amount of excess food above two the tile produces.
Finally, add up all the numbers you've written down on the tiles (negating the crossed out tiles as zeros), and you will get either a positive or, most probably, a negative answer. If the answer is positive, your city will produce excess food above supporting the maximum number of citizens the city can hold, and thus NO farms will need to be built in that city (except for the tiles that need a farm to improve them, such as corn, rice, and wheat). If the answer is negative, then you will need to build farms to raise your city's population to it's maximum level, and the number of farms is equal to the result you got multiplied by -1; for example, if your answer was -3:
-3 * -1 = 3 farms
From this, you need to work out whether you can build that many farms in that city's fat cross. Farms can ONLY be built on flatlands that have irrigation (i.e. are next to a river or fresh water, or next to another farm after Civil Service has been researched (and then it still doesn't always work...).
If you can build that many farms, DON'T build a city there. If you can build those farms, decide if building the specified number of farms will still allow for the city specialization that you were hoping for. There's no point in having a production city with only one mined hill and 19 farms, is there?
Now, what I'm having touble with is city specilization. I can't seem to either get enough variety of land to enable all the different specilizations that I want, or I can't get enough food in a city that would be ideal for say, a production city.
From what I understand, the different city specializations are:
Wealth (mix of farms and cottages, buildings + wonders that encourage commerce, preferably a holy city on the coast)
Science (mix of farms and cottages, buildings + wonders that encourage research and Scientist GP production, an academy, and lots of Scientist GP specialists)
Production (lots of hills and enough farms to support the city, buildings + wonders that encourage production and health)
Military (lots of hills and enough farms to support the city, buildings + wonders that encourage production, military production, and health)
GP Farm (lots of farms, buildings + wonders that encourage GP production and food, and lots of GP specialists)
Is there something I am getting wrong? Building enough farms seems to be the biggest problem, and I am also quite weak at military production, because I build top much. Plus, the AI always seems to beat me to the bulk of the land and I never place enough cities (five has been my maximum). In addition, could anyone suggest a suitable tech tree "strategy" in full length, because I can do the early game but after getting to Civil Service I tend to research practically every tech going...
I like to play with "No tech trading" ON, on a Continents map, and at Noble level because I like to play online.
I look forward to some replies!
.
