Thank you; good point! I recently realized that going for lit & putting Heroic Epic on my best producing city was a good war tactic (who would think literature -guess "the pen is mightier than the sword".Depends on who you talk to. Generally, I'd say that cash is interchangeable with research. Yeah, not always 1:1 but it's in the ballpark. Hammers, however, is a more complex issue.
Basically, when you pay cash to upgrade, you're spending money (research) to get hammers.
The alternative is to build new units, which saves money (giving you more research), at the cost of hammers. Your cities could be making infrastructure. The earlier you have a bank (etc) the more benefit you get. If nothing else, you could be producing Research, which turns hammers into beakers at a very good rate.
What turns the argument for me is when you consider the benefits of having a military academy city. Basically a pure production city in which you put the odd great general, heroic epic, and west point. It's nice to make this on the coast, though you don't want a lot of water. Farms and mines. Regardless, this city shouldn't bother making most buildings except as needed for health or happiness. It can then be churning out military units in a steady stream, which can be used to steadily replace your aging units. My last game I was churning out Cossaks with 18xp out of the gate! Barracks/Stable/West Point/military instructors.
Considering that you usually have to have a few production cities anyway (because of terrain constraints it doesn't work for them to be cottaged or specialists), it makes perfect sense to have one of these production cities be your academy city.
As for upgrades, I'm not too wild about it. Since your XP gets dropped all the way back to 10, you're basically saying "I'm going to freeze this guy and never promote him again". In addition, this also means that combat you "waste" on that unit is throwing the XP away. Wouldn't it be better to have a unit get the XP that will actually get promoted?
Usually, after every war, I mothball my army and assume I'm not going to be using those units ever again. Oh, there are some exceptions, such as the cavalry with blitz (blitz gunships are simply too awesome) and cannon or artillery with CRIII (which simply bust enemy cities wide open... essential before you get bombers).
Wodan
The reason you want your military production city on the coast is so you can make ships there too (I don't agree "faster transport" is a big consideration).Now putting West Point in the same place makes sense (can't wait to get "Warlords") and putting it on the coast makes troops readily available for transport.
I have no idea of what you're talking about. By "hammer tiles" do you mean a plains tile?One question: Last game I built a few farms with 1 or 2 hammers & they (the hammers) disappeared upon completion of the farm, could this be a quirk in the engine, memory problem or something -I never noticed this happening before. After 2, I just built cottages on hammer tiles JIC. Any light you could shed would be appreciated!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MothballOh! Concerning "the question not asked is the dumbest", what exactly do you mean when you say, "mothballing" (with respect to your army)?
One question: Last game I built a few farms with 1 or 2 hammers & they (the hammers) disappeared upon completion of the farm, could this be a quirk in the engine, memory problem or something -I never noticed this happening before. After 2, I just built cottages on hammer tiles JIC. Any light you could shed would be appreciated!
Ps - I cheated on a couple of occasions by reloading from the autosaves
Yes; a plains tile, with fresh water -well, you know: production hammers, for building things (you see them with Ctl + Y), the things usually more prevelant on hills for mining or windmills, these needful things, sir, they up & vanish -1 or even 2 o' em gone soon as a make a farm. Din't remember it hapnen in Warlord level. Happens all the time now on Noble level.The reason you want your military production city on the coast is so you can make ships there too (I don't agree "faster transport" is a big consideration).
I have no idea of what you're talking about. By "hammer tiles" do you mean a plains tile?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothball
What I meant was simply that I turn my previous front-line troops into garrisons. Say you have a Maceman army, and you have a Axes and Chariots as your garrisons one each in all your cities. Send one maceman to each city, and as it arrives, disband the axe or chariot that was there.
Again, this is an alternative to spending cash to upgrade your axes and chariots.
Wodan
Hello,
I am in the closing stages of a game of Civ IV, and my economy is losing money - unless I set research to 20%. On my financial advisor's page it says inflation is running at around 200% - this is the main outgoing I have! does anyone know why this is happening?
Greets, all.
4) I can't for the life of me, figure out why the economies are crashing so hard, so reliably. Any thoughts? Bug? Am I just overdeveloping too fast?
Well, over time I have discovered that over-development is not quite as bad as many make it out to be. What you have to do is learn how to manage your over-development. There are certain techs, and related improvements, that are very important. All these are helpful to one degree or another:
Polytheism & Monotheism. Shrines make money. Founding religions is very, very important if you want to land grab as you can generate extra income. And infect your neighbors, allowing better relations.
Pottery allows you to build cottages. You need to split your food production land between cottages and farms. Yes, it will slow down growth, but when you build the granary improvement in the city, you'll gain a lot of it back.
Alphabet allows you to idle cities and convert the production into research. You'll need to juggle this through your empire to maintain a reasonable research rate while you're stuck at a lower-than-100% research allocation and to build necessary improvements.
Code of Laws allows the Courthouse improvement. It is one of the most important city improvements and will cut the maintenece cost of each city in which it is built by 50%. Also allows the Caste System civic, which while more expensive, allows you to force merchants who generate additional gold and great merchants.
Currency allows the Market improvement. It also allows you to ide cities and convert some of the production to gold.
Civil Service allows the Bureaucracy civic which is usually cheaper than Vassalege, even with the unit difference. Plus, it doubles the commerce and production out-put of your capital. If you idle your capital under this civic, you can really get a good boost in gold production.
Certain Wonders help:
Pyramids allows you to select the Representation Civic. It is a "Low" cost civic and provides a research bonus. The Great Lighthouse and Colossus help with ocean-related gold production. The Parthenon to double your Great Person rate.
Stonehenge really helps to generate Great Prophets. These are used in conjunction with (first) founding the Holy Sites of religions. Later, you use them to discover techs and more religions!!! which then allows you to found more Holy Sites. I have, at times, discovered up-to 5 religions and have had a HUGE religion-based gold advantage over the AI.
By doing most of these things, I've won many a tech-race at Noble, or higher, despite frequently dropping down to the 50% or lower research level on a temporary basis.