First games on Noble
- Thread starter KROL
- Start date
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
just general thoughts, seems like you're doing fine. these are just some of the big changes from civ2 that were hard for me to get at first, so i'll mention them in case you're still making that part of the adjustment. if you already know all of this, i apologize, i'm the type that would rather have people ask than assume i know something, so this is a symptom of that.
beelining to bronzeworking is good, and you do it, but i didn't see you mention one of the main reasons i (and plenty of folks) do it.
"My second city, Beshbalik, was supposed to be my production city, or factory. I built it in the middle of a bunch of hills, with immediate access to a copper resource. The downside is that there were several squares of desert in the city radius, and the culture was absolutely stagnant. In the time it took to build an obelisk and get the culture up to ten so the city would expand, the population had starved and dropped back to one. So that sucked."
one of the main reasons folks beeline to bronzeworking is to be able to sacrifice population to hurry production, whipping. it's such a huge change from civ2 that i'm noting it. if you use the slavery civic (available with bronzeworking) you can whip. that might have helped get your obelisk done faster, then again maybe you didn't have enough pop to whip in the first place.
bronzeworking also lets you choprush, chop forests to contribute hammers to what the city is working on.
delaying the worker tile improvement techs has worked out for you this time, but i try not to put them off for too long so that i have the option to whip when needed...the faster they grow back, the more whips i can do. and even growing too fast can be a good thing, whipping enough people can bring the city back under your happy limit.
barbs on can be fun, adds excitement, adds exp for your troops (but it's capped at 10). fogbusting is a talent i'm still learning but i'm almost there. i never pick no city razing since sometimes the AI puts cities in places one tile off from where i'd go and that pisses me off to no end!!
oh, and welcome to CFC
beelining to bronzeworking is good, and you do it, but i didn't see you mention one of the main reasons i (and plenty of folks) do it.
"My second city, Beshbalik, was supposed to be my production city, or factory. I built it in the middle of a bunch of hills, with immediate access to a copper resource. The downside is that there were several squares of desert in the city radius, and the culture was absolutely stagnant. In the time it took to build an obelisk and get the culture up to ten so the city would expand, the population had starved and dropped back to one. So that sucked."
one of the main reasons folks beeline to bronzeworking is to be able to sacrifice population to hurry production, whipping. it's such a huge change from civ2 that i'm noting it. if you use the slavery civic (available with bronzeworking) you can whip. that might have helped get your obelisk done faster, then again maybe you didn't have enough pop to whip in the first place.
bronzeworking also lets you choprush, chop forests to contribute hammers to what the city is working on.
delaying the worker tile improvement techs has worked out for you this time, but i try not to put them off for too long so that i have the option to whip when needed...the faster they grow back, the more whips i can do. and even growing too fast can be a good thing, whipping enough people can bring the city back under your happy limit.
barbs on can be fun, adds excitement, adds exp for your troops (but it's capped at 10). fogbusting is a talent i'm still learning but i'm almost there. i never pick no city razing since sometimes the AI puts cities in places one tile off from where i'd go and that pisses me off to no end!!
oh, and welcome to CFC
VoiceOfUnreason
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
- Messages
- 3,663
OK - first suggestion: learn how to take screenshots, and how to post screenshots and saved games to the forum. Pictures of your map and cities do a better job attracting readers, save games allow more experienced players to discover parts of your game that you may not recognize are important.
Also, it can help to clarify that you are playing the vanilla version instead of the Warlords expansion pack.
There are circumstances that call for that sort of approach, but Kublai normally isn't one of them.
The unique unit for the Mongols is the horse archer, so Animal Husbandry (which shows you where the horses are... Oh, unless you are running the unpatched version of vanilla?) is a big deal. That (with the Wheel, which you already know) will allow you to train chariots, which are a decent anti barbarian measure in Vanilla (and much better in Warlords). In addition, AH lets you get the food started. Food is a really big deal in CIV.
Also, the race to Iron Working leans a little bit hard against the production vector while sacrificing everything else. If your neighborhood had precious metals to mine, or hunting camps to build, it would be less of an issue. Also if you already had the technologies to harvest the nearby food.
There's decent odds that you are paying quite a bit of your commerce in maintenance of your cities. It might then be the case that you should be focusing more on recovering your economy (Code of Laws?), rather than Maths - there are other advantages to running up the religious side of that tree, especially if you captured a religion during your conquest.
Have you produced any Great Persons?
I'm at work, so that's why I haven't been able to post up any save games or screenies. I'm off work tomorrow, so I'll post some then.
Last night and this morning I played some more, and I'm currently at about 1100 AD. Just a reminder, this is at Normal Game speed, vanilla Civ4 without Warlords. The game world is continents, normal sea level, temperate climate, etc. Pretty average gameworld.
Last night, I finished conquering the Spanish, taking over Cordoba and Toledo. I spent a brief period recovering my forces and building additional troops. My swordsmen had to travel a LONG way to get to Japanese territory, and I ended up using a worker to build a road to the Japanese to make sending units there easier. The units I had used to conquer the Spanish traveled south to help in beating the Japanese. I discovered mathematics at about this time.
I took a small (population 2) Japanese city with just my swordsmen. No casualties, as I recall. By the time they recovered and headed off for the next Japanese city, I had built a couple of catapults in my Spanish cities, so I sent those with. I went after Tokyo, population 7, and it fell easily with the catapults. It took a few turns for the resistance to go down, and then I built an archer and moved on to Kyoto. I took Kyoto, and then the Japanese landed a force of chariots near Tokyo. That was a pain, and I had to send a swordsman up there to deal with him. By the time I did, he'd done some rather annoying pillaging.
Soon, my swordsmen and catapults headed off to conquer the remaining three cities and completely annihilate the Japanese. That's about where I stopped playing so I could come to work.
I haven't actually counted, but I think I have somewhere around 15 cities. I realize this is probably way too many, and it's taking its toll on my economy. I had to drop my science rate down to about 30% in order to make a surplus income. That sucks. I chose "science" in the building queue for a couple cities in order to try and compensate a little bit.
As far as research, I did a lot of catching up. I got fishing and alphabet and writing and literature, monotheism polytheism meditation, music and construction and machinery and engineering and etc. etc. The cool thing is that a lot of the simpler ones only took one turn now that it's later in the game. So now I'm all caught up, but my smaller opponents doubtlessly have the edge in research.
If I can take out Saladin and Victoria, I'll have control over the entire continent, while the other four opponents are battling each other for control over the other continent. However, this will cripple my economy even more. Even though city razing is turned off, I've noticed the game still asks if I want to keep the city that I capture. Maybe if I say "Burn baby burn" it'll raze it. If so, taking out Saladin and Victoria won't hurt me at all.
I think I'm in kind of a tough spot here, but we'll see what happens. I think at this point, I might as well keep going with the conquest. Any thoughts?
Last night and this morning I played some more, and I'm currently at about 1100 AD. Just a reminder, this is at Normal Game speed, vanilla Civ4 without Warlords. The game world is continents, normal sea level, temperate climate, etc. Pretty average gameworld.
Last night, I finished conquering the Spanish, taking over Cordoba and Toledo. I spent a brief period recovering my forces and building additional troops. My swordsmen had to travel a LONG way to get to Japanese territory, and I ended up using a worker to build a road to the Japanese to make sending units there easier. The units I had used to conquer the Spanish traveled south to help in beating the Japanese. I discovered mathematics at about this time.
I took a small (population 2) Japanese city with just my swordsmen. No casualties, as I recall. By the time they recovered and headed off for the next Japanese city, I had built a couple of catapults in my Spanish cities, so I sent those with. I went after Tokyo, population 7, and it fell easily with the catapults. It took a few turns for the resistance to go down, and then I built an archer and moved on to Kyoto. I took Kyoto, and then the Japanese landed a force of chariots near Tokyo. That was a pain, and I had to send a swordsman up there to deal with him. By the time I did, he'd done some rather annoying pillaging.
Soon, my swordsmen and catapults headed off to conquer the remaining three cities and completely annihilate the Japanese. That's about where I stopped playing so I could come to work.
I haven't actually counted, but I think I have somewhere around 15 cities. I realize this is probably way too many, and it's taking its toll on my economy. I had to drop my science rate down to about 30% in order to make a surplus income. That sucks. I chose "science" in the building queue for a couple cities in order to try and compensate a little bit.
As far as research, I did a lot of catching up. I got fishing and alphabet and writing and literature, monotheism polytheism meditation, music and construction and machinery and engineering and etc. etc. The cool thing is that a lot of the simpler ones only took one turn now that it's later in the game. So now I'm all caught up, but my smaller opponents doubtlessly have the edge in research.
If I can take out Saladin and Victoria, I'll have control over the entire continent, while the other four opponents are battling each other for control over the other continent. However, this will cripple my economy even more. Even though city razing is turned off, I've noticed the game still asks if I want to keep the city that I capture. Maybe if I say "Burn baby burn" it'll raze it. If so, taking out Saladin and Victoria won't hurt me at all.
I think I'm in kind of a tough spot here, but we'll see what happens. I think at this point, I might as well keep going with the conquest. Any thoughts?
Swein Forkbeard
Nintendo Fan
I'm being Kublai Khan for my first Noble game too.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
I haven't got time to look at all of your savegames, so I will just comment on the first and last ones you provided. I will echo the post above and say that a few screenshots are much preferable to a vast number of savegames (though still provide one or two savegame files if you want close critique of your game).
OK, first things first. Your Workers are improving tiles in totally the wrong order. In your first (1280 BC) save provided, you have all of the techs required to hook up your Cows, Rice, and Deer, and yet you have not done so. Even worse, you are wasting time improving near-useless tiles. (Examples: At Beshbalik, you have built a plains-farm (2 food, 1 hammer, 1 commerce) with preference over a Deer-forest camp (4 food, 1 hammer). At Karakorum, your are building more mines than your citizens can actually work with your food level, while your valuable Cows and Rice lie unimproved.) In the early game, food is the most critical thing to get, as it allows your cities to grow and work more tiles, which in turn allows more hammers and commerce in the long run. Thus, you should aim to hook up all of the resources which give a high food yield (such as your Cows, Rice, and Deer) as fast as possible.
You should also have had at least a few cottages up by this stage of the game. Building them early is important, since otherwise your economy will start to fall behind that of your competitors' (more so at the higher difficulty levels).
City placement should, for the same reason, be centred around obtaining as many food resources as possible, while still allowing potential for hammers and commerce. Case in point, I would have settled Beshbalik 1 tile west of your location. It still keeps the health bonus from the river, and the Deer and Copper resources, but gains a valuable Wheat food resource. Alternatively, settling 1 tile north of Beshbalik would have let you access the Gold resource from that city. Regardless, you could have done much better with that city's placement.
There's still some good things that you have done, so don't lose heart. Building the road between Karakorum and Beshbalik was a sensible move, although improving your cities workable tiles should have taken first priority. I would also have founded my second city much closer to my capital, perhaps claiming the Iron resource rather than the Copper, but perhaps that's a personal choice. The fact that you have so many Axemen up so early is indeed another good thing, although I think that it is not wise to be going after a target so far away so early on. I would expand my empire more, build more roads, maximise my production and commerce, and only then roll in for the attack with all guns blazing. Right now, it's difficult for you to effectively mount a campaign, since your reinforcements have to travel so far over unroaded terrain (and you only have two cities to back yourself up militarily).
For your research path, I do not think it was wise to beeline for Iron Working straight from the start, especially with Kublai Khan. Getting the vital Worker techs first is usually more important, along with perhaps some other options (eg founding a religion if you start with Mysticism, getting Archery early to assist your early expansion).
OK, now for the 1700 AD save. My first impression - wow, that's a lot of wasted good land east of Karakorum, especially along the coast. I would have settled all of that a long time ago if I were the one playing, probably even before my first war (since I prefer to get my own empire up and running before claiming other nations' empires). Regardless, you should absolutely have settled it by 1700 AD, and the fact that you haven't is hurting your nation now. This wide open space filled with fog would be killing you if you had barbarians turned on.
As I suspected I would see from looking at the first save, I indeed found that you have a vast lack of cottages in 1700 AD (which is also why you are just now researching Military Tradition, whereas in my games I would be starting to put together the Space Ship). You have too many farms, where they are not needed, and not enough cottages. (Pretty much all of those farms around Karakorum, Seville, Osaka, and many other cities should be converted into cottages.) On the other hand, you have no farms where they are needed (case in point, Ning-hsia), and too many cottages that cannot be worked in these locations. You have far too few Workers for the size of your empire. I would have at least double that number with your empire's size. The Workers that you do have are also not working in the top priority locations. It is useless to improve all of the tiles around a size 4 city, since it cannot use those improvements.
Also, you are working the wrong tiles in many of your cities. Karakorum is working a 3 food farm where it could be working a 3 food, 2 gold lake. Turfan is working a 1 food, 1 hammer plain where it could be working a similar plain with a cottage, or working the sea and growing. There are countless other examples. You seem to place a high priority on production, which is a good thing in the short term, but it hurts you in the long term. Many of your cities could grow much larger under your health and happiness limits, and the short term sacrifice of production for food would pay off in the long term with a much greater yield of production and commerce once your cities have reached their maximum allowable sizes.
Once again, your city sites are not always sensible with regards to claiming resources and food potential, and you leave too much space between many cities. Do not be afraid of a little overlap, especially when it is necessary to take advantage of good resources. You are missing out on many excellent city sites due to your 'spread-out' city placement tendencies.
You are not taking advantage of diplomacy enough (or even at all, as far as I can tell). You have only signed Open Borders with one person (and you have not even bothered to explore their territory!). You have not traded world maps either. As a result, you barely know the borders of your own empire, and have not ventured more than two tiles outside it at most points. By 1700 AD, I would hope that I had uncovered the entire of the map by exploring myself, and trading around with other AI. I would certainly have explored my own continent (by the use of Open Borders where necessary) by the early AD years. Not knowing what lies outside your borders is a massive disadvantage to you - you cannot plan future city sites, and do not have the strategic ability to plan your military strikes in advance (since you don't even know where most of your opponents' cities are!!!).
Your avoidance of diplomacy has also hurt you because you have neglected to take full advantage of tech trading with the AI. In your 1700 AD save, there are many trading opportunities which you have, but you are not utilising. Tech trading is perhaps one of the most important things in getting ahead in Civ4. If you work together with a few good AI friends, then you can become far more advanced than you would otherwise be (especially with the AI on the Warlords expansion patch, who can keep up with you much better in the tech race).
Next, Wonders... I see that you have just started building the Taj Mahal in Karakorum, and yet you have no source of Marble. This is a bad idea, especially since your civ is not Industrious. There's a high chance that another civ with Marble will build the wonder faster once getting Nationalism and take the wonder from you. Even if you do manage to build the wonder yourself, that is a LOT of hammers and turns that could have been invested into something more useful. Worse still, as you have not explored your continent thoroughly, there could be a source of Marble lying undiscovered just out of your line of site, which you could have settled (or taken from the AI).
For the most part, you should try to tilt your Wonder building efforts towards your strengths. If you have stone, build mostly stone-sped Wonders. If you have marble, build mostly marble-sped Wonders. Don't waste your time by trying to gamble against the odds on Wonders which you don't have a realistic shot at.
And another thing. I see that you built the Hanging Gardens, a rather nice wonder due to its Great Engineer points. You generated at least two Great Engineers... but then used them as specialists in your capital!! Most players that I know of would agree that in the early game, this is a very big mistake. With those two Great Engineers, you could have got yourself two other powerful wonders, perhaps such as the Great Lighthouse, Colossus or Great Library, each of which would greatly benefit your economy and/or research.
On to Buildings. Don't build them where you don't need them. You are building a Colosseum in Nara, a city that needs no happiness. You are building an Observatory in Ning-hsia, a city which is producing almost zero research. You are building a Jewish Synagogue in Barcelona, a city deep within your territory which is producing minimal culture anyway, and cannot use the extra happiness. There are many other examples that I could find if I looked through all the saves, I'm sure. Make sure that you really need what your city produces. (On that note, the cities producing research might be better off expanding your [currently very weak] military. For that matter, why are you producing buildings in so many cities at all? You desperately need to expand that weak military of yours.)
As to your military endeavours. First off, a note of praise amongst all the criticism - you are doing well with your production. (You just need to work on the food and economy side of things now, as I mentioned above.) A first glance at the map reveals that there is no defence in Edo, right next to the English border, which is just asking for trouble. You should fix that.
For the makeup of your army... why the obsession with Pikemen? You have far too many Pikemen, and far too few Macemen. (Macemen are much better as city raiders, and experience fewer problems. Their only tough target in the field is the Crossbow, while the Pikeman is demolished by Crossbows, Macemen, and even ancient Axemen. Pikemen are moreover, miserable at city defence. Judging by your use of them in this way, I'm guessing you must be used to earlier Civ games. Get out of that habit!!) You also have far too few Catapults. Catapults are absolutely, totally vital to any successful military, offensive or defensive.
This, I heavily suspect, is why you have been experiencing so much trouble in taking Saladin's lands recently. Many new players underestimate the sheer value of Catapults, with their city bombard and collateral damage abilities. In a regular early game war, my military will often consist of one third to a half Catapults. They are that good. Every city that you take should be bombarded down to low or 0% defence before you send in your main military units (probably Macemen) to do the attacking. If one city has a particularly high number of defending troops inside, then it is often worth 'suiciding' a few Catapults before attacking with your main force. While it is likely that you will lose the Catapults that try to attack the city, they will deal a large amount of collateral damage to most (or all) of the defenders, which will make it an easy job for your main army to finish mopping up the job.
Promotions - you are promoting your troops too early. You should save your promotions up until you actually need to use them. In this way, you can select the most appropriate promotions to use against the troops you will actually be encountering, and at the same time, have an easy healing ability at hand (using promotions restores half of a unit's damaged hit points). It is no use to promote a unit to anti-archery if he'll be fighting an Axeman, for example. At the stage of the game that you are at, the anti-archery and anti-melee upgrades are starting to become obsolete, and are far less valuable than other paths (eg city raider).
Civics - you have made colossal blunder here. You are not using any new civics at all. Many new players to Civ4 underestimate the importance of civics. They can give huge advantages to your civ if you choose them wisely. For instance, Bureaucracy increases both the hammer and commerce output of your capital by 50% - that's massive. Organised Religion increases your hammer output for buildings by 25% in ALL of your cities that have your state religion - again, massive. You should get a pop-up whenever you research a tech that allows a new civic, so take notice of it! F3 is a key you will want to remember - this lets you enter the civics screen, and change your civics if you wish (which you probably will). In your case, I would have switched to Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy, Slavery and Organised Religion a long time ago. The single turn of Anarchy (and not even that if you're Spiritual) is well worth obtaining the new benefits of the civic.
There's probably more I could say, but I think that's all that I'll do for now, since I've got to do some other things. (Plus this is probably already essay-length and more than you can take in at once. ) I hope that this has been of some use to you, and that you don't take my critiques as criticisms. We all start out as beginners at this game, and we only get better by learning. It's a good thing that you're so actively trying to learn more by asking questions on this forum.
Cheers,
Lord Parkin.
OK, first things first. Your Workers are improving tiles in totally the wrong order. In your first (1280 BC) save provided, you have all of the techs required to hook up your Cows, Rice, and Deer, and yet you have not done so. Even worse, you are wasting time improving near-useless tiles. (Examples: At Beshbalik, you have built a plains-farm (2 food, 1 hammer, 1 commerce) with preference over a Deer-forest camp (4 food, 1 hammer). At Karakorum, your are building more mines than your citizens can actually work with your food level, while your valuable Cows and Rice lie unimproved.) In the early game, food is the most critical thing to get, as it allows your cities to grow and work more tiles, which in turn allows more hammers and commerce in the long run. Thus, you should aim to hook up all of the resources which give a high food yield (such as your Cows, Rice, and Deer) as fast as possible.
You should also have had at least a few cottages up by this stage of the game. Building them early is important, since otherwise your economy will start to fall behind that of your competitors' (more so at the higher difficulty levels).
City placement should, for the same reason, be centred around obtaining as many food resources as possible, while still allowing potential for hammers and commerce. Case in point, I would have settled Beshbalik 1 tile west of your location. It still keeps the health bonus from the river, and the Deer and Copper resources, but gains a valuable Wheat food resource. Alternatively, settling 1 tile north of Beshbalik would have let you access the Gold resource from that city. Regardless, you could have done much better with that city's placement.
There's still some good things that you have done, so don't lose heart. Building the road between Karakorum and Beshbalik was a sensible move, although improving your cities workable tiles should have taken first priority. I would also have founded my second city much closer to my capital, perhaps claiming the Iron resource rather than the Copper, but perhaps that's a personal choice. The fact that you have so many Axemen up so early is indeed another good thing, although I think that it is not wise to be going after a target so far away so early on. I would expand my empire more, build more roads, maximise my production and commerce, and only then roll in for the attack with all guns blazing.
Right now, it's difficult for you to effectively mount a campaign, since your reinforcements have to travel so far over unroaded terrain (and you only have two cities to back yourself up militarily).For your research path, I do not think it was wise to beeline for Iron Working straight from the start, especially with Kublai Khan. Getting the vital Worker techs first is usually more important, along with perhaps some other options (eg founding a religion if you start with Mysticism, getting Archery early to assist your early expansion).
OK, now for the 1700 AD save. My first impression - wow, that's a lot of wasted good land east of Karakorum, especially along the coast. I would have settled all of that a long time ago if I were the one playing, probably even before my first war (since I prefer to get my own empire up and running before claiming other nations' empires). Regardless, you should absolutely have settled it by 1700 AD, and the fact that you haven't is hurting your nation now. This wide open space filled with fog would be killing you if you had barbarians turned on.
As I suspected I would see from looking at the first save, I indeed found that you have a vast lack of cottages in 1700 AD (which is also why you are just now researching Military Tradition, whereas in my games I would be starting to put together the Space Ship). You have too many farms, where they are not needed, and not enough cottages. (Pretty much all of those farms around Karakorum, Seville, Osaka, and many other cities should be converted into cottages.) On the other hand, you have no farms where they are needed (case in point, Ning-hsia), and too many cottages that cannot be worked in these locations. You have far too few Workers for the size of your empire. I would have at least double that number with your empire's size. The Workers that you do have are also not working in the top priority locations. It is useless to improve all of the tiles around a size 4 city, since it cannot use those improvements.
Also, you are working the wrong tiles in many of your cities. Karakorum is working a 3 food farm where it could be working a 3 food, 2 gold lake. Turfan is working a 1 food, 1 hammer plain where it could be working a similar plain with a cottage, or working the sea and growing. There are countless other examples. You seem to place a high priority on production, which is a good thing in the short term, but it hurts you in the long term. Many of your cities could grow much larger under your health and happiness limits, and the short term sacrifice of production for food would pay off in the long term with a much greater yield of production and commerce once your cities have reached their maximum allowable sizes.
Once again, your city sites are not always sensible with regards to claiming resources and food potential, and you leave too much space between many cities. Do not be afraid of a little overlap, especially when it is necessary to take advantage of good resources. You are missing out on many excellent city sites due to your 'spread-out' city placement tendencies.
You are not taking advantage of diplomacy enough (or even at all, as far as I can tell). You have only signed Open Borders with one person (and you have not even bothered to explore their territory!). You have not traded world maps either. As a result, you barely know the borders of your own empire, and have not ventured more than two tiles outside it at most points. By 1700 AD, I would hope that I had uncovered the entire of the map by exploring myself, and trading around with other AI. I would certainly have explored my own continent (by the use of Open Borders where necessary) by the early AD years. Not knowing what lies outside your borders is a massive disadvantage to you - you cannot plan future city sites, and do not have the strategic ability to plan your military strikes in advance (since you don't even know where most of your opponents' cities are!!!).
Your avoidance of diplomacy has also hurt you because you have neglected to take full advantage of tech trading with the AI. In your 1700 AD save, there are many trading opportunities which you have, but you are not utilising. Tech trading is perhaps one of the most important things in getting ahead in Civ4. If you work together with a few good AI friends, then you can become far more advanced than you would otherwise be (especially with the AI on the Warlords expansion patch, who can keep up with you much better in the tech race).
Next, Wonders... I see that you have just started building the Taj Mahal in Karakorum, and yet you have no source of Marble. This is a bad idea, especially since your civ is not Industrious. There's a high chance that another civ with Marble will build the wonder faster once getting Nationalism and take the wonder from you. Even if you do manage to build the wonder yourself, that is a LOT of hammers and turns that could have been invested into something more useful. Worse still, as you have not explored your continent thoroughly, there could be a source of Marble lying undiscovered just out of your line of site, which you could have settled (or taken from the AI).
For the most part, you should try to tilt your Wonder building efforts towards your strengths. If you have stone, build mostly stone-sped Wonders. If you have marble, build mostly marble-sped Wonders. Don't waste your time by trying to gamble against the odds on Wonders which you don't have a realistic shot at.
And another thing. I see that you built the Hanging Gardens, a rather nice wonder due to its Great Engineer points. You generated at least two Great Engineers... but then used them as specialists in your capital!! Most players that I know of would agree that in the early game, this is a very big mistake. With those two Great Engineers, you could have got yourself two other powerful wonders, perhaps such as the Great Lighthouse, Colossus or Great Library, each of which would greatly benefit your economy and/or research.
On to Buildings. Don't build them where you don't need them. You are building a Colosseum in Nara, a city that needs no happiness. You are building an Observatory in Ning-hsia, a city which is producing almost zero research. You are building a Jewish Synagogue in Barcelona, a city deep within your territory which is producing minimal culture anyway, and cannot use the extra happiness. There are many other examples that I could find if I looked through all the saves, I'm sure. Make sure that you really need what your city produces.
(On that note, the cities producing research might be better off expanding your [currently very weak] military. For that matter, why are you producing buildings in so many cities at all? You desperately need to expand that weak military of yours.)As to your military endeavours. First off, a note of praise amongst all the criticism - you are doing well with your production.
(You just need to work on the food and economy side of things now, as I mentioned above.) A first glance at the map reveals that there is no defence in Edo, right next to the English border, which is just asking for trouble. You should fix that.For the makeup of your army... why the obsession with Pikemen?
You have far too many Pikemen, and far too few Macemen. (Macemen are much better as city raiders, and experience fewer problems. Their only tough target in the field is the Crossbow, while the Pikeman is demolished by Crossbows, Macemen, and even ancient Axemen. Pikemen are moreover, miserable at city defence. Judging by your use of them in this way, I'm guessing you must be used to earlier Civ games. Get out of that habit!!) You also have far too few Catapults. Catapults are absolutely, totally vital to any successful military, offensive or defensive.This, I heavily suspect, is why you have been experiencing so much trouble in taking Saladin's lands recently. Many new players underestimate the sheer value of Catapults, with their city bombard and collateral damage abilities. In a regular early game war, my military will often consist of one third to a half Catapults. They are that good. Every city that you take should be bombarded down to low or 0% defence before you send in your main military units (probably Macemen) to do the attacking. If one city has a particularly high number of defending troops inside, then it is often worth 'suiciding' a few Catapults before attacking with your main force. While it is likely that you will lose the Catapults that try to attack the city, they will deal a large amount of collateral damage to most (or all) of the defenders, which will make it an easy job for your main army to finish mopping up the job.
Promotions - you are promoting your troops too early. You should save your promotions up until you actually need to use them. In this way, you can select the most appropriate promotions to use against the troops you will actually be encountering, and at the same time, have an easy healing ability at hand (using promotions restores half of a unit's damaged hit points). It is no use to promote a unit to anti-archery if he'll be fighting an Axeman, for example. At the stage of the game that you are at, the anti-archery and anti-melee upgrades are starting to become obsolete, and are far less valuable than other paths (eg city raider).
Civics - you have made colossal blunder here. You are not using any new civics at all. Many new players to Civ4 underestimate the importance of civics. They can give huge advantages to your civ if you choose them wisely. For instance, Bureaucracy increases both the hammer and commerce output of your capital by 50% - that's massive. Organised Religion increases your hammer output for buildings by 25% in ALL of your cities that have your state religion - again, massive. You should get a pop-up whenever you research a tech that allows a new civic, so take notice of it! F3 is a key you will want to remember - this lets you enter the civics screen, and change your civics if you wish (which you probably will). In your case, I would have switched to Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy, Slavery and Organised Religion a long time ago. The single turn of Anarchy (and not even that if you're Spiritual) is well worth obtaining the new benefits of the civic.
There's probably more I could say, but I think that's all that I'll do for now, since I've got to do some other things. (Plus this is probably already essay-length and more than you can take in at once.
) I hope that this has been of some use to you, and that you don't take my critiques as criticisms. We all start out as beginners at this game, and we only get better by learning. It's a good thing that you're so actively trying to learn more by asking questions on this forum. Cheers,
Lord Parkin.
Harbourboy
Deity
Wow - what an in-depth analysis!
Hey, thanks for taking the time to write that. I appreciate it, and I need all the help I can get.
I admit, the reason I don't have any new civics is partly because I have a hard time choosing between them. And also, I'm afraid the cost of the civics will further hurt my already-wounded economy.
As I recall, it was sometime close to 500 BC before I actually realized I wasn't working the cow resource. Rather, I was working it, and it had a pasture on it, but it wasn't connected by a road. Oversight on my part. As for the deer, I didn't even notice it until rather late in the game.
I've decided to ditch the ironworking-rush tactic, since it takes too long to research and I'm missing out on other techs. Also, I didn't even take advantage of the iron (swordsmen) until several hundred years later.
I started a new game last night on Prince difficulty with barbarians turned on. I'm learning just how difficult it can be to defend my cities. Thing is, I can't find the barbarians' cities, and the AI won't trade maps with me. My new game is on Marathon speed, continents map. Kublai Kahn again. I built an army of axemen early and eliminated the Americans by 1500 BC. However, the two cities I gained from them are kind of far from my first two cities, and the barbarians are definitely taking advantage of that. That connecting road keeps getting pillaged.
You raised a good point about settling that open space to minimize problems with barbarian raids. I'm going to restart my current game and use that strategy, and see if it makes things more manageable.
I think one of my problems is that I don't know which tiles to improve with which structures. If I have a plains tile, is it better to build a cottage or a farm? If my growth rate is stagnant, my first instinct is to build more farms, regardless of whether its a commerce city or a production city.
I admit, the reason I don't have any new civics is partly because I have a hard time choosing between them. And also, I'm afraid the cost of the civics will further hurt my already-wounded economy.
As I recall, it was sometime close to 500 BC before I actually realized I wasn't working the cow resource. Rather, I was working it, and it had a pasture on it, but it wasn't connected by a road. Oversight on my part. As for the deer, I didn't even notice it until rather late in the game.
I've decided to ditch the ironworking-rush tactic, since it takes too long to research and I'm missing out on other techs. Also, I didn't even take advantage of the iron (swordsmen) until several hundred years later.
I started a new game last night on Prince difficulty with barbarians turned on. I'm learning just how difficult it can be to defend my cities. Thing is, I can't find the barbarians' cities, and the AI won't trade maps with me. My new game is on Marathon speed, continents map. Kublai Kahn again. I built an army of axemen early and eliminated the Americans by 1500 BC. However, the two cities I gained from them are kind of far from my first two cities, and the barbarians are definitely taking advantage of that. That connecting road keeps getting pillaged.
You raised a good point about settling that open space to minimize problems with barbarian raids. I'm going to restart my current game and use that strategy, and see if it makes things more manageable.
I think one of my problems is that I don't know which tiles to improve with which structures. If I have a plains tile, is it better to build a cottage or a farm? If my growth rate is stagnant, my first instinct is to build more farms, regardless of whether its a commerce city or a production city.
Welnic
Emperor
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2006
- Messages
- 1,057
I deduce from this comment that you think the barbarians come from barbarian cities. Not so. Barbarians can spawn anywhere that you and the other civs can't see. If there is a one tile that you can't see a barbarian can pop up there. So your fog busting needs to be pretty comprehensive to work well. I usually try to keep them from popping up close to me, so that the ones that do show up I have lots of warning about if I need to whip up some units.
The cities show up randomly, also only in areas where no one sees. They do create units, but they also make workers and improve land and so forth. You get money for capturing the city, and if it is in a good spot you can keep it like any other city. I think that they are more of a plus than just the regular wandering barbarian. Though those are good for experience if you have the right units to deal with them.
pigswill
fly (one day)
Certainly going for bronzeworking early is the standard approach so its worth carrying on with that. Switch to slavery asap. If you're going to whip pop for production then its important that your cities regrow which is where it becomes useful to research food techs (agric, AH, fishing depending on starting resources) next and produce worker(s). It can be worth researching pottery soon after so that you can build granaries as well as establish a few cottages. Then it starts getting more complicated...
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
No problem, I had the time so figured I might as well spend it helping someone out.
It can be hard to choose between civics when you're first starting out at the game, and don't have much experience of them. I would recommend playing a 'learning' game as a Spiritual civ sometime, then you will be able to switch around and test out different civics almost as often as you like, with no Anarchy. (There's still a 5 turn delay built into the game before you can switch civics again after switching once, and this is presumably to prevent the Spiritual civs from micromanaging and switching back and forth between loads of different civics every single turn.)
Generally speaking, you will find that the benefits of most civics far outweigh their small upkeep costs. For example, with a reasonable sized empire Bureaucracy might be costing you 10 gold per turn, but your capital might be producing 50 gold per turn, which with the +50% civic bonus would become 75 gold per turn. So you would be making money in the switch (and in addition would be gaining a +50% hammer output in your capital as well). And that's just one example. Almost any civic is worth more than its upkeep cost in the right situation, and there are no truly 'bad' civics (although most people would agree that Environmentalism is certainly one of the less useful ones... though it can still come in handy on One City Challenge games).
You don't need a road, you just need a pasture to gain the food and hammer benefits of the Cow. (The road will, however, provide the health benefits.) In the save that I looked at (1280 BC), you had not yet built the pasture. If this was my game then I would probably have built the pasture by 3000 BC, and certainly by 2500 BC.
By the way, there is a useful little button that I almost always use to more clearly mark the resources (without it, I agree that it can be hard to spot them). It's just above the world map, the second button from the far right (next to the big globe button). If you hover over the button it says "Toggle Show All Resource Display". Click this, and it will display the resources much more clearly for you. I always play with it on.
Going for Iron Working early is still sometimes a good idea, especially if you find that you have no nearby Copper, but it is wise to get the Worker techs (especially Pottery) beforehand, so that you will be able to research faster to Iron Working. Though as pigswill says above, rushing for Bronze Working early is often a good idea (since it allows Slavery and the chopping of forests, two powerful tools to getting an early empire up and running quickly).
That's a good idea. It is often difficult to deal with both an aggressive war against an AI and a defensive war against the barbarian hordes. By greatly reducing the number of barbarians that can spawn, you are doing yourself a favour, and even making your offensive campaigns against the AI easier - since you only need to worry about one opponent at once.
You are correct that if your growth rate is truly stagnant, then farms are always the preferable option (though before Civil Service [Workers spread irrigation], it may be difficult or impossible to get them where you need them). However, before building those farms, just check inside your city screen (by double clicking it), and make sure that your citizens are working all of the food tiles that they can. It's possible that your growth rate could be stagnant simply because you are concentrating too much on production or low food tiles.
Generally, since Farms do not provide as much of a benefit as most of the other improvements you can build, you will want to minimise their presence if at all possible. (Consider that Farms give simply +1 food on normal terrain before Biology, which is a late game tech. On the other hand, a mature Cottage will give a minimum of +4 gold, and up to +8 gold with the right technology, civics and civ choice. A mine will give +2 hammers on normal hilly terrain, and so on. In any case, these benefits are all larger than the +1 food from Farms, so it is worth avoiding Farms where possible.)
How can you minimise the presence of Farms, you ask? That's where careful city placement comes in again. Try to place all of your cities so that they will claim at least one food resource in their future 20-tile 'fat cross' workable radius. (If you do not understand what the 'fat cross' means, please say so.
) Ideally, two or more food resources ensures an extremely high growth rate, and you should not require any farms in that city after improving those food resources. You will be free to build as many cottages and mines as you like. Of course, there will always be some spots that are devoid of any kind of helpful resources. When this happens, you will need to use the Farming strategy, but be careful to only build the number of Farms that you actually need to support your population, and no more.So, I guess the basic rough 'rules' regarding tile improvements are:
- Hook up your major food resources.
- Hook up any other important resources.
- Build cottages and mines as you prefer.
- Build farms where necessary to keep your cities growing to their happiness limits.
- Chop most of your forests and replace them with other improvements (this is a personal decision, but I find that it is mostly beneficial).
- Chop any irritating jungle tiles and replace them with other improvements.
- Build roads, but only as many as strictly necessary to hook up resources and to get from A to B in the early game (remember, roads no longer provide the commerce benefit that they did in Civ3). Extra roads can come later.
These 'rules' do vary somewhat in some situations, and you'll have to use your judgment. But in general they provide a fairly good guideline as to what to do.
Just remember to have enough Workers that they can keep up with improving the new tiles as your cities grow to be able to use them.Krol: In the other thread you wrote
"I'm currently using my axemen to pillage all the improvements around Madrid. Pretty soon, I'm going to assault the city."
And by what I understood you planneed on keeping that city? Pillaging is usually a bad thing to do if ou plan to keep the city (You want to be able to work them improvements later, and thus have to spend alot of worker-turns to re-build them. In case of cottages they also generate alot less cash for a long-long time). If you however planned to burn the evil city to the grund (no offence here frenchies) pillaging it may be a good thing to keep your crusade well-funded and sometimes even self-supporting.
"I'm currently using my axemen to pillage all the improvements around Madrid. Pretty soon, I'm going to assault the city."
And by what I understood you planneed on keeping that city? Pillaging is usually a bad thing to do if ou plan to keep the city (You want to be able to work them improvements later, and thus have to spend alot of worker-turns to re-build them. In case of cottages they also generate alot less cash for a long-long time). If you however planned to burn the evil city to the grund (no offence here frenchies) pillaging it may be a good thing to keep your crusade well-funded and sometimes even self-supporting.
KMadCandy
giggling permanoob
at first i'd quite often save the game before switching, do the civics change, hit enter for each turn til anarchy was over, and then look at my economy and the overall picture. if it seemed like a bad choice, i'd reload and go back. eventually you get a feel for it, but at first you're right, it's hard to know.
