[BTS] General advice wanted - how to tech/grow faster?

[Fish Man]

I've played CiV for about 1000 hours now, so I can win deity there about 50% of the time. However, I don't know how to approach Civ IV at all. During my first game on prince I was destroyed by a stack of doom. On my second game I took over Germany, who had good land, but I got so behind tech-wise, commerce-wise, and population-wise that I lost on turn ~400 to culture (I was ~20 turns from winning science). There are so many techs and civics; what is the right one?

I've heard the two ways to get beakers and commerce are cottage and specialist economy, but I have troubles with both, mainly due to lack of food and happiness. Luxury resources in this game seem to be even more sparse than CiV. The bigger problem, though, is I can't grow with either strategy. Farms can only be built next to fresh water and don't even give +1 more food until industrial era. Even if I farmspam I can't get my cities over ~10-12 pop until then. If I spam cottages or specialists my cities grow even less. How do I resolve this issue?

From what I've seen the way to do it is to go on a crazy rampage and just knock out a civ or two for their land, since Civ IV rewards going wide significantly more than CiV, and diplo penalties are less. If so, how do I do that?

Saves of two games are posted. The first is when I'm on a continent with all other civs. The second is when I've just early-rushed Japan and am isolated (no other civs on continent). Any specific advice on those base on what you all see?

 

[lymond]

hey undefeatable...welcome to the best game ever

First thing I will tell you is basically throw everything you know about V out the window in terms of Civ IV. Pretty much everything. Except maybe at an extreme meta level, V otherwise does not translate well to IV, which is a far more complex game. Even 1 of your 1000 hours of V doesn't really help you much here..ha.

A few golden rules:
1) Food is King
2) Slavery is a God civic
3) Granary is the most important building (think Aqueduct in V)
4) Worker is the most important unit, and worker first is almost always your first build

So, to knock a few V things out, I will say foremost don't get so caught up with growth of cities in terms of population. Population does not equal science so the need to grow large early is not important. It is perfectly fine to have smaller cities (4 to 6 pop) for some time..it is how you use them that is important. Next, you will need to refocus tech priorities. V tends to have a fairly straightforward path in teching in most games..plus you have to tech everything yourself. In IV, you will at some point in the early game be able to trade techs. This allows you to have a more focused tech path in the early game that is geared toward important worker techs, strat techs, and writing..so on. Lastly, while you say that going wide is essentially easier in IV, it still must be done judiciously. V hindered the player with the stupidly simplistic global happiness mechanic. IV on the other hand has far more complex maintenance mechanics at play, including city and distance maintenance. Population is maintenance. So early game you need to expand wisely and cautiously (peacefully or violently) until you have things in place that allows for a sustainable economy. Otherwise you will break the bank and bring your research to a halt. (edit: oh..and don't build scouts...ha)


With those things said, back to a very important concept. I mentioned that growing large pop cities is not as important but rather how you use those cities. That plays into the first golden rule "Food is King". In V, food was about growing your cities as large as possible so you tech faster (pop=science). Well, in IV, food is production. So you turn growth and the power of the granary into production by whipping population with the Slavery civic. This concept is one of the key aspects of success to IV. It will take time and practice to learn this stuff.

Economies: throw cottage and specialist economies in the can for now. While there are different ways to play this game, the most valuable way to go for now is the hybrid economy, i.e., cottages and specialists. The idea of a cottage or specialist economy is rather out-dated. And really, the point is you are generally always going to want some cottage cities, and you are always going to want to run some specialists and generate great people. Generally, your first and foremost "cottage" city will be your capital, if your cap is setup land wise for this. Cottage capitals become Bureau caps, which is another very powerful civic in the game.

Taking a quick look at your saves, I see some issues with your tech path and workers. Also, the game with the cow/horse is not really a great start. We call that a "cow glitch" start. It's just too low of food for a starting cap. The other one is coastal and has reasonable food, although honestly coastal starts in general are kinda special/complex for newer players.

I recommend playing Pangaea maps for now while learning, as playing the one land mass will allow you to deal with more of the early aspects of the game including diplomacy. (I actually play Fractal personally myself a lot, but Fractal maps are highly unpredictable and often prone to semi or total iso maps, or large swaths of empty land that can cause you problems.

Nice that you took out Toku with warriors, but that may actually cause you some early issues due to the proximity of that city. I recommend focusing now on just the basics of early (peaceful) expansion and economy building.

Oh..and try to roll starts with at least one good food resource in your cap, like wet corn or grass pigs. plains cow is a good individual tile, but not sufficient as a stand alone food resource.

So, typical start is settle your cap in place (although move warrior/scout to make sure a better spot is available). Build worker. Tech food tech(s) unless you start with what you need. Tech Bronze Working for Slavery. Oh..and BW gives you forest chops too. Get the Wheel if you don't start with it to connect cities for trade routes (important). Then to Writing via Pottery or Animal Husbandry (if you needed it early). Try to get Library fairly soon in capital and run those first to scientists to pop a GS for the academy in your capital. Start your first settler usually at size 3 and likely at some point be able to help speed him up with chops. Later settlers will likely be 2 or 3 popped out of cap until secondary cities can take on some of that role.

Be judicious with worker turns. Worker management is very important in IV and each missed turn or wasted turn impacts your results. This is felt more and more as you move up levels. Don't waste turns building roads all over the place. Only build roads you absolutely need early on to connect trade routes or important resources. (and note that rivers can help connect stuff so you may not need a road on a resource if it is already connected via river. Keep that in mind..you can always check the city screen to see if a resource is connected. Rivers can also help connect cities as well when within culture)

Don't be afraid to overlap cities. Two main reasons for this. A) it cuts down on city distance from cap maintenance B) Tile sharing is a good thing early when cities are generally going to be small. So when you say ..whip city A...City B can take stronger tiles City A was working before. Also, help with cottage building in cottage cities like your cap. So, it lets you get around the whole growth issue early on if happiness is lacking.

However, likely after the 2nd or 3rd settler whip, you do want your cap to stay as large as possible so that a) it can run those first scientists b) work more cottages. Cap will be the bulk of your science early on, and probably for much of the game. Once it hits its happy cap you can slow/stave growth running scientists or adjusting tiles.

Well, that is some advice. As you did above, posting games is a good way to learn. I recommend posting a start and getting advice from turn 0. IV is complex and the early game is so important.

edit: Note that you can chop a tile before improving it to get the hammers. As you get more savvy with the game, you can learn to manage/time your chops better to get the most out of your production. Also, you can partial chop and partial improve a tile. (oh and improving a tile does not destroy an improvement already there)

edit2: Highly recommend the BUG/BULL or BAT mods for UI enhancements. (BAT is BUG/BULL with some graphic enhancements all packaged up in a stand-alone mod..I use it the most). However, BUG/BULL installed in Custom Assets folder is best for forum games as folks can open your save with or without the mods. Stand-alone mods like BAT require the mod to open..although really everyone should have BAT installed.

edit3: I could go on all day..ha..I keep thinking of stuff....and honestly I've been playing this game for about 9 years now and I still learn things now. Anyway, one thing that will help early on during the expansion phase is the concept of binary science. Essentially this is about your sliders, which is a complex concept completely done away with in V (and VI). While you are at one city, you will be able to tech at 100% research for some time. But once you settle your first city...boom..you start running deficit research. You play with huts on (many here do not) so you may get some gold from huts to sustain you for a while. But generally, get those first key techs and then writing. Now, don't be afraid to run 0% research (100%ttax) for some turns to fund expansion and your next tech. Maths is a pretty good early tech after Writing so you can use it as a placeholder until you can fund the research for it (meanwhile build that library and run those scientists) Try to get to Currency fairly early too..one of the most important techs in the game that basically leads to a whole new phase of the game.

edit 4:

AI priority techs (i.e. AIs always focus on these techs)
Archery (I rarely ever tech this myself..to clarify, there are many games I never have this tech at all)
Religious techs
Iron Working
Sailing
Maths
Alpha
Calendar
Feudalism
Machinery
Engineering
Guilds.......

Reason that I'm mentioning the above. Simple...these are often techs you can avoid early and trade for later. now, that doesn't always mean you won't tech some of those yourself, and difficulty level does factor in, of course. But the point is that knowing this can allow you to focus or tailor tech paths better to what you really need. But Maths or Alpha are still not bad choices on lower levels and either one opens up Currency.

 

[Fish Man]

hey undefeatable...welcome to the best game ever

First thing I will tell you is basically throw everything you know about V out the window in terms of Civ IV. Pretty much everything. Except maybe at an extreme meta level, V otherwise does not translate well to IV, which is a far more complex game. Even 1 of your 1000 hours of V doesn't really help you much here..ha.

A few golden rules:
1) Food is King
2) Slavery is a God civic
3) Granary is the most important building (think Aqueduct in V)
4) Worker is the most important unit, and worker first is almost always your first build

So, to knock a few V things out, I will say foremost don't get so caught up with growth of cities in terms of population. Population does not equal science so the need to grow large early is not important. It is perfectly fine to have smaller cities (4 to 6 pop) for some time..it is how you use them that is important. Next, you will need to refocus tech priorities. V tends to have a fairly straightforward path in teching in most games..plus you have to tech everything yourself. In IV, you will at some point in the early game be able to trade techs. This allows you to have a more focused tech path in the early game that is geared toward important worker techs, strat techs, and writing..so on. Lastly, while you say that going wide is essentially easier in IV, it still must be done judiciously. V hindered the player with the stupidly simplistic global happiness mechanic. IV on the other hand has far more complex maintenance mechanics at play, including city and distance maintenance. Population is maintenance. So early game you need to expand wisely and cautiously (peacefully or violently) until you have things in place that allows for a sustainable economy. Otherwise you will break the bank and bring your research to a halt. (edit: oh..and don't build scouts...ha)


With those things said, back to a very important concept. I mentioned that growing large pop cities is not as important but rather how you use those cities. That plays into the first golden rule "Food is King". In V, food was about growing your cities as large as possible so you tech faster (pop=science). Well, in IV, food is production. So you turn growth and the power of the granary into production by whipping population with the Slavery civic. This concept is one of the key aspects of success to IV. It will take time and practice to learn this stuff.

Economies: throw cottage and specialist economies in the can for now. While there are different ways to play this game, the most valuable way to go for now is the hybrid economy, i.e., cottages and specialists. The idea of a cottage or specialist economy is rather out-dated. And really, the point is you are generally always going to want some cottage cities, and you are always going to want to run some specialists and generate great people. Generally, your first and foremost "cottage" city will be your capital, if your cap is setup land wise for this. Cottage capitals become Bureau caps, which is another very powerful civic in the game.

Taking a quick look at your saves, I see some issues with your tech path and workers. Also, the game with the cow/horse is not really a great start. We call that a "cow glitch" start. It's just too low of food for a starting cap. The other one is coastal and has reasonable food, although honestly coastal starts in general are kinda special/complex for newer players.

I recommend playing Pangaea maps for now while learning, as playing the one land mass will allow you to deal with more of the early aspects of the game including diplomacy. (I actually play Fractal personally myself a lot, but Fractal maps are highly unpredictable and often prone to semi or total iso maps, or large swaths of empty land that can cause you problems.

Nice that you took out Toku with warriors, but that may actually cause you some early issues due to the proximity of that city. I recommend focusing now on just the basics of early (peaceful) expansion and economy building.

Oh..and try to roll starts with at least one good food resource in your cap, like wet corn or grass pigs. plains cow is a good individual tile, but not sufficient as a stand alone food resource.

So, typical start is settle your cap in place (although move warrior/scout to make sure a better spot is available). Build worker. Tech food tech(s) unless you start with what you need. Tech Bronze Working for Slavery. Oh..and BW gives you forest chops too. Get the Wheel if you don't start with it to connect cities for trade routes (important). Then to Writing via Pottery or Animal Husbandry (if you needed it early). Try to get Library fairly soon in capital and run those first to scientists to pop a GS for the academy in your capital. Start your first settler usually at size 3 and likely at some point be able to help speed him up with chops. Later settlers will likely be 2 or 3 popped out of cap until secondary cities can take on some of that role.

Be judicious with worker turns. Worker management is very important in IV and each missed turn or wasted turn impacts your results. This is felt more and more as you move up levels. Don't waste turns building roads all over the place. Only build roads you absolutely need early on to connect trade routes or important resources. (and note that rivers can help connect stuff so you may not need a road on a resource if it is already connected via river. Keep that in mind..you can always check the city screen to see if a resource is connected. Rivers can also help connect cities as well when within culture)

Don't be afraid to overlap cities. Two main reasons for this. A) it cuts down on city distance from cap maintenance B) Tile sharing is a good thing early when cities are generally going to be small. So when you say ..whip city A...City B can take stronger tiles City A was working before. Also, help with cottage building in cottage cities like your cap. So, it lets you get around the whole growth issue early on if happiness is lacking.

However, likely after the 2nd or 3rd settler whip, you do want your cap to stay as large as possible so that a) it can run those first scientists b) work more cottages. Cap will be the bulk of your science early on, and probably for much of the game. Once it hits its happy cap you can slow/stave growth running scientists or adjusting tiles.

Well, that is some advice. As you did above, posting games is a good way to learn. I recommend posting a start and getting advice from turn 0. IV is complex and the early game is so important.

edit: Note that you can chop a tile before improving it to get the hammers. As you get more savvy with the game, you can learn to manage/time your chops better to get the most out of your production. Also, you can partial chop and partial improve a tile. (oh and improving a tile does not destroy an improvement already there)

edit2: Highly recommend the BUG/BULL or BAT mods for UI enhancements. (BAT is BUG/BULL with some graphic enhancements all packaged up in a stand-alone mod..I use it the most). However, BUG/BULL installed in Custom Assets folder is best for forum games as folks can open your save with or without the mods. Stand-alone mods like BAT require the mod to open..although really everyone should have BAT installed.

edit3: I could go on all day..ha..I keep thinking of stuff....and honestly I've been playing this game for about 9 years now and I still learn things now. Anyway, one thing that will help early on during the expansion phase is the concept of binary science. Essentially this is about your sliders, which is a complex concept completely done away with in V (and VI). While you are at one city, you will be able to tech at 100% research for some time. But once you settle your first city...boom..you start running deficit research. You play with huts on (many here do not) so you may get some gold from huts to sustain you for a while. But generally, get those first key techs and then writing. Now, don't be afraid to run 0% research (100%ttax) for some turns to fund expansion and your next tech. Maths is a pretty good early tech after Writing so you can use it as a placeholder until you can fund the research for it (meanwhile build that library and run those scientists) Try to get to Currency fairly early too..one of the most important techs in the game that basically leads to a whole new phase of the game.

edit 4:

AI priority techs (i.e. AIs always focus on these techs)
Archery (I rarely ever tech this myself..to clarify, there are many games I never have this tech at all)
Religious techs
Iron Working
Sailing
Maths
Alpha
Calendar
Feudalism
Machinery
Engineering
Guilds.......

Reason that I'm mentioning the above. Simple...these are often techs you can avoid early and trade for later. now, that doesn't always mean you won't tech some of those yourself, and difficulty level does factor in, of course. But the point is that knowing this can allow you to focus or tailor tech paths better to what you really need. But Maths or Alpha are still not bad choices on lower levels and either one opens up Currency.

Thanks for the tips! How exactly do you use slavery again? I've gotten the general gist of it (growspam, build something, wait turns for # sacrifices to be reasonable, dew it) but I welcome any more tips.

Also, my main problem is commerce. I must be doing something wrong, because for some reason I just can't get my commerce up to tech on par with the AIs. Take a look at the new save I posted: I've grown and built best as I can, but India is still another column or two ahead of me. Any specific advice? Feel free to lay down the criticism.

PS, about your statement that Civ IV is the best game ever: I'm inclined to agree, since it appears unlike V the AI actually follows an optimal strategy for once. I just haven't figured it out yet. Or perhaps there isn't one and I just suck, lol.

EDIT: I kinda realize where I went wrong. I prioritized picking spots that, in CiV, would've been perfect for growing size 30+ cities, when I should've put more cities closer together, because I was never going to and in fact didn't need all those food tiles. Because of this, I ended with an unhealthy and unhappy population stagnating in tech, commerce, hammers, etc. Is this an accurate assessment?

EDIT 2: Yeah, I should've set the research slider down to expand more. I have a fatal flaw, though: I'm kind of anal about certain things in civ games, one of which is researching techs which take longer than ~15 turns, just because it feels like I'm wasting so much time. If I took longer to research mathematics but expanded more, I think I could've made it work.

I actually got EXTREMELY lucky in taking Toku's capital. It came down to two fights: one of which had a 5.5% success chance and another which had a 43% success chance. I won both. I don't believe I've EVER been this lucky in ANY game. Too bad I wasted the opportunity :/

Any thoughts? Are there any good playthroughs you'd recommend? How would you have handled this start?

 

[Anysense]

Isolation is always hard, semi isolation with Toku is even worse. Lucky you managed to get rid of him. Your research seems ok for prince, it's just Asoka is one of the fastest techers.
If were you I would settle about 10 more cities. There are so much unsed food. Besides, you need to hook up more resources for trading. I don't know whether lymond mentioned that island cities make better traderoutes (+2 insted of just +1) wich is particularly important when you expand to 10+ cities.
edit: you took a weird tech path, normally in isolation you need optics ASAP to find other civs.

 

[Snowbird]

Also, my main problem is commerce. I must be doing something wrong

1500AD at four cities and no CS?...

Repeat slowly: 'Land is power, slider % is garbage.'

In particualar it's not %centage which does research, but raw beakers. 100% of 20 is less than 30% of 100, right? As rule of thumb you want to settle resources bundles (like fish/corn/iron and other awesome places in your save) and food positive/neutral riverlands.

Why would you actively avoid CS is beyond me. Another thing is exploration, you have access to caravels, but have not met other leaders... Tech trades is the best research multiplier. Cause of this in many games CiV 4 path is actually much of the same (Aesthetics, Paper/Education lines has primary value as trade fodder, since AI's often ignore them.)

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Hey there, it's me, Imperator_Knoedel from Reddit.

Taking a look at your most recent China save I notice a number of things:

First, Civics. Curiously, you never even researched Civil Service, even though it unlocks one of the most powerful civics there is. Also you built the Pyramids, unlocking all Government civics, but adopted Hereditary Rule, which is unlocked at a relatively early tech anyway. Usually when people construct the Pyramids it's to adopt the Representation civic, or maybe Police State if they want to warmonger, but for Hereditary Rule it's just a complete waste of production.

Second, Buildings. You build everything under the sun except Forges, one of the most important buildings there is. The production bonus it provides applies to everything your city produces, even if it's rushed via pop or gold or even if you are just plain building Wealth or Research.

Third, most importantly, number of cities. You have way way way too few cities, like an absurdly low number of them. Five wouldn't even be a decent number by 100BC, and now it's 1555AD. By now you should have literally every tile on your continent under control, but instead you haven't even explored it all yet. You seem to be stuck in the V way of thinking, assuming wide and tall are two ends of a spectrum and you can only be on one, but that's not true in IV. In IV expanding your empire can actually help your cities grow. For instance, in the southwestern corner of your continent are a Deer and a Crab resource, neither of which you have some of yet. The additional health they provide would help your currently unhealthy cities grow faster, or at all for that matter. There are so so sooooo many food resources and river tiles that are not being worked by any city, when you should have settled by them two thousand years ago.

Fourth, improvements. For the most part you seem to have done a somewhat decent job actually, but there's still some problems. It seems all your workers are currently asleep? You should have replaced the cottage on the Iron by Beijing with a mine long ago. In fact, most of the farms around Beijing should be villages or towns by now, boosted by Bureaucracy, but instead you employ a bunch of specialists. Guangzhou and especially Kyoto have lots of forests around them that should have been chopped ages ago. It's okay to keep like two or four forests around for health if they are on, like, dry plains or hills, but riverside forests should always be cut.

Fifth, diplomacy. You could have sold Replaceable Parts to Asoka for lots of cheaper backfill techs, and also sold him one of your many silk resources for 6 Gold per Turn. To be fair, it seems you were isolated for most of the game, so I won't blame you too much for this.

Overall the biggest issue I can see is that you have founded way too few cities. Now this game isn't yet completely lost, but what you really need to do is expand expand expand.

I took the liberty of playing a few turns to get you back on track to victory. I hope you appreciate the name I gave to the save.

Here's what I did:

I traded Replaceable Parts and World Map to Asoka in exchange for his World Map, 150 Gold, Priesthood, Civil Service, Aesthetics and Horseback Riding. I also sold him Silk for 6 Gold per Turn. Then I asked him nicely if he would be so kind as to gift me Divine Right, but he refused. Oh well.

I upgraded both your Triremes to Caravels and sent them to explore the world, hopefully to meet new civs and thus trade opportunities. New land to colonize would also be nice for the future, but as of now you have your hands full settling your home continent still. Incidentally I was the first to circumnavigate the world, huh. I met Frederick and his vassal, Wang Kon; I also met Suleiman and Justinian. With Frederick and Wang Kon I traded lots of techs.

I put all the workers to, well, work.

I researched Drama myself, everything else I traded.

I immediately (well I put one turn of production in first) whipped a settler in every single one of your cities.

I launched a Golden Age with the Great Engineer you had laying around and adopted the Universal Suffrage, Bureaucracy, Serfdom, and Mercantilism civics for the duration of it.

The move out of Hereditary Rule caused some unhappiness which I dealt with by raising the culture slider to 20%. I had Research at 0% and whatever I didn't put in Culture I had in Gold in order to rushbuy basic infrastructure (Granaries, Lighthouses, Forges, Courthouses) in the newly founded cities.

Two Great Prophets were born, I used one to build the Taoist Shrine in Kyoto, and put the other to sleep so that he might trigger a Golden Age sometime in the future.

Unfortunately a number of civs adopted Emancipation, causing even more unhappiness, and I ran out of techs to trade so I couldn't buy Democracy either.

On the last turn of the Golden Age I adopted the civics Representation, Slavery, Free Market and Organized Religion.

I trained some more settlers, you now have 17 cities, and should settle 3 more very soon.

Next turn you should whip the settlers in Kyoto and Guangzhou. Matter of fact, whenever one of your cities becomes even slightly unhealthy that's a good time to whip something. Musketmen or Longbowmen would be good candidates for now, many of the new cities I founded are without a garrison and there's two barbarian cities you should capture as soon as possible.

I marked several cities where you should or could build National Wonders. Oxford in Beijing and Wall Street in Kyoto are 100% the best locations, but I'm not that sure about where exactly to place Forbidden Palace and National Epic. Honestly, if you plan on adopting State Property down the line there isn't really a point to building the Forbidden Palace at all, but if you are sure you will stick with Free Market it might even make sense to build the Forbidden Palace on another continent you colonize, if you ever get around to it before the AI steals it from you. The National Epic should be placed in a city with good food so that it can run a number of specialists, and I marked several potential candidates.

Feel free to ask me any follow up questions.

 

[Pangaea]

^^ Looks like you're getting great help.

I've played CiV for about 1000 hours now

Sorry to hear that, but we all live and learn

 

[Fish Man]

Thanks for the replies everyone. A couple more questions: what is the BO in cap and other cities? I do monument first, but I feel like that's a bad thing. Should I shy away from researching techs that take >15 turns? Why is CS so important?

 

[Fish Man]

Hey there, it's me, Imperator_Knoedel from Reddit.

Taking a look at your most recent China save I notice a number of things:

First, Civics. Curiously, you never even researched Civil Service, even though it unlocks one of the most powerful civics there is. Also you built the Pyramids, unlocking all Government civics, but adopted Hereditary Rule, which is unlocked at a relatively early tech anyway. Usually when people construct the Pyramids it's to adopt the Representation civic, or maybe Police State if they want to warmonger, but for Hereditary Rule it's just a complete waste of production.

Second, Buildings. You build everything under the sun except Forges, one of the most important buildings there is. The production bonus it provides applies to everything your city produces, even if it's rushed via pop or gold or even if you are just plain building Wealth or Research.

Third, most importantly, number of cities. You have way way way too few cities, like an absurdly low number of them. Five wouldn't even be a decent number by 100BC, and now it's 1555AD. By now you should have literally every tile on your continent under control, but instead you haven't even explored it all yet. You seem to be stuck in the V way of thinking, assuming wide and tall are two ends of a spectrum and you can only be on one, but that's not true in IV. In IV expanding your empire can actually help your cities grow. For instance, in the southwestern corner of your continent are a Deer and a Crab resource, neither of which you have some of yet. The additional health they provide would help your currently unhealthy cities grow faster, or at all for that matter. There are so so sooooo many food resources and river tiles that are not being worked by any city, when you should have settled by them two thousand years ago.

Fourth, improvements. For the most part you seem to have done a somewhat decent job actually, but there's still some problems. It seems all your workers are currently asleep? You should have replaced the cottage on the Iron by Beijing with a mine long ago. In fact, most of the farms around Beijing should be villages or towns by now, boosted by Bureaucracy, but instead you employ a bunch of specialists. Guangzhou and especially Kyoto have lots of forests around them that should have been chopped ages ago. It's okay to keep like two or four forests around for health if they are on, like, dry plains or hills, but riverside forests should always be cut.

Fifth, diplomacy. You could have sold Replaceable Parts to Asoka for lots of cheaper backfill techs, and also sold him one of your many silk resources for 6 Gold per Turn. To be fair, it seems you were isolated for most of the game, so I won't blame you too much for this.

Overall the biggest issue I can see is that you have founded way too few cities. Now this game isn't yet completely lost, but what you really need to do is expand expand expand.

I took the liberty of playing a few turns to get you back on track to victory. I hope you appreciate the name I gave to the save.

Here's what I did:

I traded Replaceable Parts and World Map to Asoka in exchange for his World Map, 150 Gold, Priesthood, Civil Service, Aesthetics and Horseback Riding. I also sold him Silk for 6 Gold per Turn. Then I asked him nicely if he would be so kind as to gift me Divine Right, but he refused. Oh well.

I upgraded both your Triremes to Caravels and sent them to explore the world, hopefully to meet new civs and thus trade opportunities. New land to colonize would also be nice for the future, but as of now you have your hands full settling your home continent still. Incidentally I was the first to circumnavigate the world, huh. I met Frederick and his vassal, Wang Kon; I also met Suleiman and Justinian. With Frederick and Wang Kon I traded lots of techs.

I put all the workers to, well, work.

I researched Drama myself, everything else I traded.

I immediately (well I put one turn of production in first) whipped a settler in every single one of your cities.

I launched a Golden Age with the Great Engineer you had laying around and adopted the Universal Suffrage, Bureaucracy, Serfdom, and Mercantilism civics for the duration of it.

The move out of Hereditary Rule caused some unhappiness which I dealt with by raising the culture slider to 20%. I had Research at 0% and whatever I didn't put in Culture I had in Gold in order to rushbuy basic infrastructure (Granaries, Lighthouses, Forges, Courthouses) in the newly founded cities.

Two Great Prophets were born, I used one to build the Taoist Shrine in Kyoto, and put the other to sleep so that he might trigger a Golden Age sometime in the future.

Unfortunately a number of civs adopted Emancipation, causing even more unhappiness, and I ran out of techs to trade so I couldn't buy Democracy either.

On the last turn of the Golden Age I adopted the civics Representation, Slavery, Free Market and Organized Religion.

I trained some more settlers, you now have 17 cities, and should settle 3 more very soon.

Next turn you should whip the settlers in Kyoto and Guangzhou. Matter of fact, whenever one of your cities becomes even slightly unhealthy that's a good time to whip something. Musketmen or Longbowmen would be good candidates for now, many of the new cities I founded are without a garrison and there's two barbarian cities you should capture as soon as possible.

I marked several cities where you should or could build National Wonders. Oxford in Beijing and Wall Street in Kyoto are 100% the best locations, but I'm not that sure about where exactly to place Forbidden Palace and National Epic. Honestly, if you plan on adopting State Property down the line there isn't really a point to building the Forbidden Palace at all, but if you are sure you will stick with Free Market it might even make sense to build the Forbidden Palace on another continent you colonize, if you ever get around to it before the AI steals it from you. The National Epic should be placed in a city with good food so that it can run a number of specialists, and I marked several potential candidates.

Feel free to ask me any follow up questions.

Wow. That's...um, I'm not sure how to feel about those city spots. In V, they'd be regarded a pretty trash and something only the braindead AI would settle, but here I guess everything is different. How would you deal with the crippling maintenance? Especially early on, but also now.

Thanks for the replies everyone. A couple more questions: what is the BO in cap and other cities? I do monument first in expansions to get all workable tiles ASAP, but I feel like that's a bad idea. Should I shy away from researching techs that take >15 turns? Why is CS so important?

 

[Fippy]

No fixed build orders in 4, it's very varied

Monuments..never in your Cap (unless for charismatic +1 happy later).
In other cities you want to look if you can settle food in your first ring, so there's less need for monuments.
They can be and often are still a good first build thou, depends on the quality of tiles you reach. Not worth doing for tiles you will not use early.
With creative you never want them (cept for charismatic again, later).

Tech cost matters, but so does what you gain.
Alphabet i.e. can be very good early (and so writing also becomes important), costing much more than cheaper ones but giving you the possibility to trade for those instead.

Or let's compare Iron Working with Currency, it's usually not even close which is more valuable (Currency).

 

[Snowbird]

Thanks for the replies everyone. A couple more questions: what is the BO in cap and other cities? I do monument first in expansions to get all workable tiles ASAP, but I feel like that's a bad idea. Should I shy away from researching techs that take >15 turns? Why is CS so important?

In cap - worker (sometimes workboat or some other fancy stuff)/grow on warrior/settler further fogbusting units/settlers as needed (there are situation then player should deviate from this severely, but it's at least good idea to follow this line).

CS==Bureaucracy== +50% hammers in cap, +50% commerce. About time player reaches CS, cap is doing, I don't know, 60-70% research so it is a huge boost.

Well, after research covers worker techs+writing, next tech might take quite a bit. On some situations after writing slider goes to zero and does not go back until Academy happens in cap. Might be easily 30+ turns.

 

[Pangaea]

Another benefit to CS is that you can chain irrigate, meaning dry corn (for instance) can become irrigated (sometimes automatically, if it's next to a riverside flatland city or farm).

And it opens up for the rather handy Maceman, although there are some other requirements too.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Wow. That's...um, I'm not sure how to feel about those city spots. In V, they'd be regarded a pretty trash and something only the braindead AI would settle, but here I guess everything is different. How would you deal with the crippling maintenance? Especially early on, but also now.

Well this isn't V, and a city doesn't need that much to become profitable. As long as it has at least a single resource or a river tile to work it's good enough, sometimes it doesn't even need that as you can see from Taipei.

Maintenance can only really be crippling in the early game, once you have Currency and a solid economic base it's never game breaking. Just build Courthouses everywhere and you'll be fine.

Let's look at the absolute worst example here, that hypothetical arctic tundra city in the very south without any resources whatsoever:

Let's assume it will cost 15GPT maintenance in various forms, that is both directly and indirectly by for example increasing civics upkeep. It will take about 50 turns to grow to its max size of let's say 6 or 7, working five Coast tiles and two Tundra hill Windmills or maybe Oil/Coal/Uranium/Aluminum if it happens to pop up. That means it will yield 2×5+1=11 commerce per turn from tiles, plus 4×2=8 commerce per turn from trade routes, makes 19 commerce per turn, plus 1GPT for your holy city's shrine with your religion in it is doubled from Bank, Grocer and Market, plus putting like 5 production into creating Wealth, makes altogether 26-15=9GPT. 50×15=750 debt, 750÷9=83; that means this city will start turning a profit 50+83=133 turns after it has been founded. And that's an absolute worst case scenario.

Thanks for the replies everyone. A couple more questions: what is the BO in cap and other cities? I do monument first in expansions to get all workable tiles ASAP, but I feel like that's a bad idea. Should I shy away from researching techs that take >15 turns? Why is CS so important?

In your capital you usually don't go wrong by starting with a worker, then training warriors until you reach size 3 and then train a settler. In other cities Monuments are usually okay, followed by Granaries. Then there are too many variables to be sure, it depends on your overall situation and what this city should specialize in. For cities founded this late, you usually can just throw in a standard build list of Granary->Lighthouse->Forge->Courthouse and be done with it. You can save build orders btw: Just make a list of buildings in a city, press Ctrl+some number, and then whenever you go into a city and press that number you will put that list of buildings into the build queue.

 

[lymond]

I'll write more later, undefeatable, but I would comment that you seemed to ignore my advice from yesterday. I encourage you to read my post again closely.

However I will repeat the first advice I gave you again: Forget everything about Civ V when playing IV. I mean everything. That includes build orders, openings, etc.

Furthermore, just basically throw away all preconceived notions about Civ or how you think you should play the game and prepare to learn this game from scratch from the good folks here.

Toss your current games. Just delete them. There is so much wrong with them, including settings that they are not a good basis for learning or discussion. (Not a criticism, just fact...if you want to learn the game and get better you will listen)

I and others already mentioned your general first build.

Lastly, your comment about only teching things that take greater than 15 turns is so nonsensical that I don't know to respond. Ha. Please just forget stuff like that.

Again. Best way to learn is to post a start using the settings I mentioned and get advice from beginning. You have so much to learn and honestly not even close in your thought processes from what I read above. YOU NEED A TOTAL REBOOT

TABULA RASA!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Go home, lymond, you are drunk.

 

[lymond]

Go home, lymond, you are drunk.

Ha. No I'm just terrible typing on my iPhone. Im trying to edit that mess.

 

[Pangaea]

Opened the 1555 file and there is a cottage on an iron tile? That is a little unusual

Looks like playing Civ 5 have hurt you more than just the 1000 wasted hours. In this game, you need to settle more cities, it's not Found 3->Win or whatever the formula is over there. Civ 4 is much deeper and more complex. It means more to sink your teeth into, a higher difficulty and learning curve, but also much more rewarding when you start to appreciate all the options and possible paths to the various victories. There are many ways to skin a dog

 

[Fish Man]

Update: with all the advice you guys gave me I gave it another play from turn 36 onwards. This time I spammed cities, owning 8 before turn 120; while maintenance crippled me initially, when cities started growing they really started to pay off. At turn 210 my bpt is 600. All the other civs are half an era if not more behind me; also I founded a religion, which helped tech and happiness significantly. Slavery was, as you all said, OP, with me completing things that would've taken 30-40 turns in 3-4. I was amazed at the tech snowball around medieval era, where I went from 50 to 500 beakers per turn in ~50 turns.

Unless something supernatural happens I should win an SV within ~100-150 turns.

 

[lymond]

lol..well, I give up...honestly don't think you are the type to actually listen....good luck regardless

 

[Anysense]

Update: with all the advice you guys gave me I gave it another play from turn 36 onwards. This time I spammed cities, owning 8 before turn 120; while maintenance crippled me initially, when cities started growing they really started to pay off. At turn 210 my bpt is 600. All the other civs are half an era if not more behind me; also I founded a religion, which helped tech and happiness significantly. Slavery was, as you all said, OP, with me completing things that would've taken 30-40 turns in 3-4. I was amazed at the tech snowball around medieval era, where I went from 50 to 500 beakers per turn in ~50 turns.

Unless something supernatural happens I should win an SV within ~100-150 turns.

That is loads better but you keep doing a lot of horrible things like cottaging iron, settling great persons etc. What you really need is to understand the reasoning behind every decision. You can post saves and screenshots from your game about every 20 turns and discuss it here. If you are to impatient then you can learn from other's threads.
Anyway, I suggest you to start a new game with a few changes: choose some normal map script like continents or pangaea; set difficulty to monarch, that will be a bit more challenging.