Pongwa
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2016
- Messages
- 3
Wow this is quite usefull, thanks for the info !
[BTS] General advice wanted - how to tech/grow faster?
- Thread starter Fish Man
- Start date
Wow this is quite usefull, thanks for the info !
Krugi
At heart
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2010
- Messages
- 132
There are far too many city sites left unsettled by this date -- you have the continent for yourself, yet the northwestern island is entirely unexplored, double plains hill gold (one of the best tiles when mined) isn't being worked, food resources such as corn and clams are lying around unclaimed just west of your borders. You don't need to achieve a positive cashflow at 100% research; in fact, if you do, it signals that expansion is overdue.
Island cities give "intercontinental" trade routes, which are especially lucrative.
Justinian has a vassal and will probably gain another soon (Fred); in fact, your tech lead on him is rather small (two techs; he'll get Nationalism in the next few turns). Still haven't met Suleiman yet (who has Nationalism and will GE-rush the Taj Mahal in ~2 turns) even though you have Optics. You should have opened borders with Asoka a while ago, as he's the only friend and trading partner you have while Taoist (he's in Free Religion, so he doesn't care) and maintaining OB gives you a small bonus to relations; crucially, when Astronomy comes in, you will gain valuable intercontinental trade routes into large foreign cities.
In isolation, you should generally tech Optics and Astronomy earlier for this reason.
You should have been running Mercantilism for a while, as you aren't even trading with any of the other civs until either of you discovers Astronomy, and that free specialist per city would benefit from Representation (if you go Scientist, that's already 6 beakers per city at the cost of nothing more its maintenance -- which a single strong production city can easily pay for). Especially with only about a dozen military units, you should have adopted Pacifism as well.
Too few workers, too many useless improvements (e.g. plains farms -- grassland non-riverside farms are also rather marginal before Biology, and mostly inferior to grassland workshops after Guilds + Chemistry + Caste System). You're building structures that improve precisely nothing -- look at Hangzhou, for example. It's building a bank. If you open its city screen, you can see (upper left corner) that it produces zero wealth per turn (do not confuse wealth/gold with commerce -- the latter is represented by a single large coin, and gets converted into research/culture/espionage according to your sliders, with the leftovers converted into wealth -- at 100% research slider, all of it goes to research). The bank, as it stands, improves nothing. Despite being a rather poor and slow-growing site compared to the others, Hangzhou is the only city that has a forge. (Note that forges speed up the whip, as does Organized Religion.)
Your cities have grown into unhappiness. Don't let them do that. Angry citizens don't work tiles, can't be assigned as specialists -- all they do is consume food without gain. Either whip them away, or prevent the unhappiness in the first place (another reason why unsettled gold is so egregious), or build workers/settlers (food is not consumed when building those)
You build a lot of cottages. It's not wrong to build (riverside) cottages as such, but if done in all cities, you will stifle your production. Whipping off cottages is counterproductive: immature non-Financial cottages are weak tiles compared to most other improvements, while post-Printing Press villages and towns are very strong; in either case, you're whipping away the point of cottaging everything.
You should have connected your iron to the trade network by now (to say nothing of mining it) -- while not connecting it does give you warriors for garrison, you're running Representation rather than Hereditary Rule so there's no point after every city is garrisoned with a single unit, and that barbarian city should have been taken a millenium ago (not an exaggeration).
A closing note on production. If your city takes ten turns to grow from size 2 to size 4 (very feasible with a granary even with mediocre food supplies), and the two tiles you gain are both grass mines, then on the turn of growing to 4, it takes 20 turns for the grass mines to pay back what you would gain by 2-pop whipping immediately after growth -- actually longer than that because you're growing back onto a mine soon. If the city cannot grow further (due to happiness or food constraints), the whip is vastly superior. If it can grow further, though, weigh the gains of growing plus the two tiles you're shaving off against 60 hammers right now. If you can grow to size 6 fast and have three strong tiles and 2-3 good ones, 3-pop whipping a settler is usually better than 2-pop whipping something at size 4. Ultimately, for the best effects, you need to calculate it.
There is no "tall vs. wide" in Civ4. You want your empire to have as many cities as possible -- but also as many population points as possible. In fact, one good reason why you want to have as many cities as possible is that growth from size 20 to size 21, everything else being equal, takes longer than growth from size 6 to size 7, i.e. the "wide" empire gains additional pops much faster than the "tall" one. Nothing is more important than population points -- they fuel everything: tiles, specialists, or the whip. In addition, more cities produce either more military units, which take cities, which produce units etc. -- or more workers/settlers, which improve/found more cities, which... -- Lastly, Mercantilism is very powerful alongside Representation and gives its benefits on a per-city basis.
A large workforce is important for late-game especially in Space victories; you want to demolish your towns after researching all the necessary techs ("pre-improving" your towns earlier, so that this conversion can be near-instantaneous), replacing them with workshops / watermills as needed to maximize production while building the expensive spaceship parts.
Island cities give "intercontinental" trade routes, which are especially lucrative.
Justinian has a vassal and will probably gain another soon (Fred); in fact, your tech lead on him is rather small (two techs; he'll get Nationalism in the next few turns). Still haven't met Suleiman yet (who has Nationalism and will GE-rush the Taj Mahal in ~2 turns) even though you have Optics. You should have opened borders with Asoka a while ago, as he's the only friend and trading partner you have while Taoist (he's in Free Religion, so he doesn't care) and maintaining OB gives you a small bonus to relations; crucially, when Astronomy comes in, you will gain valuable intercontinental trade routes into large foreign cities.
In isolation, you should generally tech Optics and Astronomy earlier for this reason.
You should have been running Mercantilism for a while, as you aren't even trading with any of the other civs until either of you discovers Astronomy, and that free specialist per city would benefit from Representation (if you go Scientist, that's already 6 beakers per city at the cost of nothing more its maintenance -- which a single strong production city can easily pay for). Especially with only about a dozen military units, you should have adopted Pacifism as well.
Too few workers, too many useless improvements (e.g. plains farms -- grassland non-riverside farms are also rather marginal before Biology, and mostly inferior to grassland workshops after Guilds + Chemistry + Caste System). You're building structures that improve precisely nothing -- look at Hangzhou, for example. It's building a bank. If you open its city screen, you can see (upper left corner) that it produces zero wealth per turn (do not confuse wealth/gold with commerce -- the latter is represented by a single large coin, and gets converted into research/culture/espionage according to your sliders, with the leftovers converted into wealth -- at 100% research slider, all of it goes to research). The bank, as it stands, improves nothing. Despite being a rather poor and slow-growing site compared to the others, Hangzhou is the only city that has a forge. (Note that forges speed up the whip, as does Organized Religion.)
Your cities have grown into unhappiness. Don't let them do that. Angry citizens don't work tiles, can't be assigned as specialists -- all they do is consume food without gain. Either whip them away, or prevent the unhappiness in the first place (another reason why unsettled gold is so egregious), or build workers/settlers (food is not consumed when building those)
You build a lot of cottages. It's not wrong to build (riverside) cottages as such, but if done in all cities, you will stifle your production. Whipping off cottages is counterproductive: immature non-Financial cottages are weak tiles compared to most other improvements, while post-Printing Press villages and towns are very strong; in either case, you're whipping away the point of cottaging everything.
You should have connected your iron to the trade network by now (to say nothing of mining it) -- while not connecting it does give you warriors for garrison, you're running Representation rather than Hereditary Rule so there's no point after every city is garrisoned with a single unit, and that barbarian city should have been taken a millenium ago (not an exaggeration).
A closing note on production. If your city takes ten turns to grow from size 2 to size 4 (very feasible with a granary even with mediocre food supplies), and the two tiles you gain are both grass mines, then on the turn of growing to 4, it takes 20 turns for the grass mines to pay back what you would gain by 2-pop whipping immediately after growth -- actually longer than that because you're growing back onto a mine soon. If the city cannot grow further (due to happiness or food constraints), the whip is vastly superior. If it can grow further, though, weigh the gains of growing plus the two tiles you're shaving off against 60 hammers right now. If you can grow to size 6 fast and have three strong tiles and 2-3 good ones, 3-pop whipping a settler is usually better than 2-pop whipping something at size 4. Ultimately, for the best effects, you need to calculate it.
There is no "tall vs. wide" in Civ4. You want your empire to have as many cities as possible -- but also as many population points as possible. In fact, one good reason why you want to have as many cities as possible is that growth from size 20 to size 21, everything else being equal, takes longer than growth from size 6 to size 7, i.e. the "wide" empire gains additional pops much faster than the "tall" one. Nothing is more important than population points -- they fuel everything: tiles, specialists, or the whip. In addition, more cities produce either more military units, which take cities, which produce units etc. -- or more workers/settlers, which improve/found more cities, which... -- Lastly, Mercantilism is very powerful alongside Representation and gives its benefits on a per-city basis.
A large workforce is important for late-game especially in Space victories; you want to demolish your towns after researching all the necessary techs ("pre-improving" your towns earlier, so that this conversion can be near-instantaneous), replacing them with workshops / watermills as needed to maximize production while building the expensive spaceship parts.
Last edited:
Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
Okay, you are doing better. Still, you have too few cities, and you retained your irrational phobia of Forges. Eight cities by 1400AD is better than five cities by 1500AD of course, but there is still so much unsettled land. I assume you are playing based on the following premises:
1.: Bigger cities are always better.
2.: You should always invest 100% into Research.
The first premise is the reason you won't build Forges, because Forges cause unhealthiness and unhealthiness reduces food, and the extra production the Forge would provide is not worth the food you lose from it.
The second premise is the reason you expand so slowly, because the increased maintenance would force you to lower your research slider or go bankrupt.
Am I correct in assuming that's your rationale? Because if it is, let me tell you that this thinking is wrong. You have a number of cities that are unhealthy and/or unhappy. Those cities would be ideal whipping targets. Just put a settler in front of the build queue (hold Ctrl while clicking on the Settler), wait a turn, then whip away 2 or 3 population. Presto, your city is healthy and happy again, and you gain a new city to boot, a city that might even connect another health or happiness resource allowing your core cities to grow an additional pop or two before they become unhappy or unhealthy again. And yes, the extra production a Forge provides is almost always worth more than the one single food per turn it could cost you in some cases. Granaries, Forges and Courthouses are like the most basic infrastructure you can't really go wrong with just building everywhere. Everything else is situational.
Someone else already addressed the second premise, but it bears repeating: Yes, founding new cities will force you two reduce your research a bit for a while, but unless you settled those new cities in the middle of the desert with no workable tiles they will pay back relatively quickly. 50% of 200 is more than 100% of 50. Really, as long as you don't run a negative while putting 100% into Gold (that is 0% into Research) there's no harm in founding another city, at least once you have economic key techs like Writing, Currency, and Code of Laws.
Again, every city that has at least one resource or river tile to work is worth founding.
Also you never commented on the name of the savegame I uploaded.
Pangaea
Rock N Roller
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2010
- Messages
- 6,390
Also you never commented on the name of the savegame I uploaded.
Will you play it out and go for a cultural win?
Fippy
Mycro Junkie
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2013
- Messages
- 15,017
Best advice for learning players i can think about (besides all the great basic ones others gave you, like granary & food > all) is cycling thru cities every turn and thinking about what they can do.
This might sound tiresome, but it's what i used to really learn this game.
Basically taking full control, leaving nothing to governors or so.
After some time that can be dropped or reduced again, but it's very very helpful at start.
This might sound tiresome, but it's what i used to really learn this game.
Basically taking full control, leaving nothing to governors or so.
After some time that can be dropped or reduced again, but it's very very helpful at start.
pigswill
fly (one day)
Another potential problem is that you're getting lots of good advice already but you don't understand the basic mechanics of Civ4 enough to appreciate the advice given. My suggestion would be to understand the basics (whipping, horizontal expansion vs vertical city growth, city maintenance, trade routes etc) by maybe replaying the same start several times up to 1ad and trying different things.
Lennier
Emperor
One thing to add to what Imp. Knoedel said about Forges: Forges also are happiness buildings; they give an additional happiness point for gold, silver, and gems. Keeping citizens happy is much more important than keeping them healthy. Unhealthy citizens slow down city growth (and lower maximum size of the city), but are not otherwise a drain on the economy. Unhappy citizens don't work but still increase maintenance costs for the city. Forges are very good buildings.
M3dge
Chieftain
I'm rubbish compared to the others on here but you might find my experience useful - the key learnings that took me from constant frustration to regular Monarch wins and now moving to Emperor.
1 - Never settle great people (other than generals). GS for Academy, Golden Ages esp, if going for domination, bulbing esp. if going Space, GM trade gold if needed to fix economy or (my main use) upgrade experienced but obsolete forces.
2 - Don't build everything that is possible in every city! I still suck at this but try not to
in particular markets, only worthwhile in the capital and if you had any other super cash rich cities. I tend to also avid religious buildings unless I need to supress unhappiness.
3 - Don't make founding a religion a target. You may get one by accident, but generally better to select one based on which AIs you want to do business with; the shrine income is nice, but you'll be stealing that along with the city pretty soon, right?
4 - Don't build random wonders. I tend to only self build a few, and the selection depends on the land. Marble, Stone etc...Oracle is the only one I absolutely commit to, the rest are situational.
5 - Slavery is king. I tend to run it the whole time until forced to switch to emancipation by unhappiness.
6 - Unless you go for an early rush (subject all on it's own and not for a beginner) I would plan my first war once I achieve construction. Siege makes city taking so much easier - not just to destroy defences but also to soften defenders with suicide-cats. Particularly important if facing longbows, which you often will - AI fixates on feudalism. The next big step forward is rifling/ steel - if you have cannon and the AI lacks, you will kick arse. There are other strategies - high end players seem to prefer pure Cuiers due to speed, but I've never mastered that.
7 - If you end up in the modern era - which I am sure you will, it takes a lot of work to achieve earlier wins - nukes have a much lower downside (for you!) than in some other variations of Civ. I have never played V or VI but II and III had massive diplo consequences for anyone getting the football out...caveat, only if you are the only one with them! I finished my last domination win with a 20 ICBM strike and follow up tanks. Worry not about the fallout or global warming, you just need the land, and the huge pop reduction for the AI that pushes you over the domination win percentage.
That's my two penny-worth, hope the better players don't think it's complete swill (but if you do please say so, that's how I learn!)
Good luck and my commiserations for the loss of large chunks of your time, this is really addictive..
1 - Never settle great people (other than generals). GS for Academy, Golden Ages esp, if going for domination, bulbing esp. if going Space, GM trade gold if needed to fix economy or (my main use) upgrade experienced but obsolete forces.
2 - Don't build everything that is possible in every city! I still suck at this but try not to
in particular markets, only worthwhile in the capital and if you had any other super cash rich cities. I tend to also avid religious buildings unless I need to supress unhappiness.3 - Don't make founding a religion a target. You may get one by accident, but generally better to select one based on which AIs you want to do business with; the shrine income is nice, but you'll be stealing that along with the city pretty soon, right?
4 - Don't build random wonders. I tend to only self build a few, and the selection depends on the land. Marble, Stone etc...Oracle is the only one I absolutely commit to, the rest are situational.
5 - Slavery is king. I tend to run it the whole time until forced to switch to emancipation by unhappiness.
6 - Unless you go for an early rush (subject all on it's own and not for a beginner) I would plan my first war once I achieve construction. Siege makes city taking so much easier - not just to destroy defences but also to soften defenders with suicide-cats. Particularly important if facing longbows, which you often will - AI fixates on feudalism. The next big step forward is rifling/ steel - if you have cannon and the AI lacks, you will kick arse. There are other strategies - high end players seem to prefer pure Cuiers due to speed, but I've never mastered that.
7 - If you end up in the modern era - which I am sure you will, it takes a lot of work to achieve earlier wins - nukes have a much lower downside (for you!) than in some other variations of Civ. I have never played V or VI but II and III had massive diplo consequences for anyone getting the football out...caveat, only if you are the only one with them! I finished my last domination win with a 20 ICBM strike and follow up tanks. Worry not about the fallout or global warming, you just need the land, and the huge pop reduction for the AI that pushes you over the domination win percentage.
That's my two penny-worth, hope the better players don't think it's complete swill (but if you do please say so, that's how I learn!)
Good luck and my commiserations for the loss of large chunks of your time, this is really addictive..
ArchGhost
Prince
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2016
- Messages
- 584
I'm not exactly great at this game, but there are a couple things I've found out since playing
-Worker first is almost always your best first build in the cap. An exception would be with a nice Seafood start (like, dual Fish or Fish + Clam/Crab), especially if you are a civ that starts with Fishing tech. If not, you can put hammers in a worker still while you tech Fishing (you'll alway need workers) and then start on your workboat(s).
-VERY important techs to grab early are The Wheel, Mining, Bronze Working and Writing, and should be prioritized after making sure you have your early food techs (Fishing, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry) that apply to your start. Wheel is the start to Pottery (for cottages and granaries) and lets you build roads, which is something you're going to NEED to have at some point for trade routes, hooking resources etc, often sooner than later. In fact, if I can't determine exactly what I need to do most at the moment and still don't have it, I snag it it next without thinking, it's that important. Mining lets you mine hills (and use certain resources), your all important sources of very early production and you need it for bronze working, which leads into the next point. Bronze Working is first and foremost the tech for Slavery, one of the most powerful and certainly the most impactful civics to any game. It also lets you crucially chop forests, which varies in importance based on how many there are and what you want to improve, but suffice to say it's a free production boost at your discretion and you can't improve tiles under them until they are chopped away. Writing is the tech that marks your transition out of the open stages and provides Libraries for running your first specialists (scientists), gets your foot in the door on diplomacy through open borders/resource trades, and is a prereq for a handful of next tier techs (Alpha, Math, Aesthetics, Code of Laws, and indirectly Currency) that define the following stage of the game.
-On the other hand, the only religious techs you should ever really pay attention to are the ones involving the Oracle, if you have a start and civ conducive to trying for it. If it looks like you can quickly build it (you have Marble nearby and start with Mining or Mysticism) or can power chop it (many forests), you'll need Priesthood to build it. Note you'll also want to have Bronze Working/Masonry as applicable and to get a worthwhile tech jump you have to have certain other researched already as prereqs--for instance, slingshotting Metal Casting requires you to have both Bronze Working and Pottery, going for Code of Laws means you have to have Writing (you'll have Priesthood already) done, etc.
-Just in general, as others have said, pay little heed to the science slider in favor of getting done what you need, which is namely settling a few good spots and improving resource tiles, connecting cities with roads, getting the important techs first etc.. It's a race to writing basically before you start major expansion, and then to Currency after you start to take land. You have an variety of ways to get there at this point (run scientists to generate beakers even at low slider, tech/trade Alpha to trade your way forward or build research directly) but it's important to reach Currency so you don't bog down entirely and never dig out.
-Currency is also a major, majorly important tech. As you expand, its array of ways to make gold help you fight maintenance as well as the free trade route in each city softens the blow of each additional site a tiny bit. Trading for lump sums of gold is great way to suddenly rush forward on a tech to complete it in a few turns instead of slowly (and less efficiently, look up binary research if you care to know why) over many. Selling off tech or resource deals for gold can keep you afloat, etc.
-Since Slavery is so powerful, Granaries are very useful for improving the output of your cites. With sufficient happiness, they allow you to create a burst of sustained production from the lesser turns waiting to grow back up.
-Forges likewise improve slavery even more, as the production bonus makes whips stronger for more overflow or easier to reach thresholds. Metal Casting is hard to trade for early from the AI, but you can Oracle it or even self-tech it after trading for Iron Working. Even if you pick it up later, you should immediately dump a forges into any city that you use to produce anything (so, like cities that only run specialists don't really need one).
-Most other buildings don't matter for a considerable amount of time. Granaries are always great except if you intentionally ignore Slavery or the city can't grow well anyway. Libraries are not exactly "spam everywhere" buildings but are integral to helping you along to Currency or grabbing some tech for trade. Forges are great in just about any city if you can get them. The last impactful one for quite a while (like, until Factories) is the Courthouse, but it's more situational as by the time you can build it, you should have several measures to help stay above your maintenance costs in various ways including simply building wealth or banking fail-gold into wonders, for those situations where you can't even trade for gold.
-Pick out a spot with high food, customize the tiles around that city to give as much surplus food as you can and use this as your primary Great Person generator. Running scientists everywhere with Libraries is fine for a while when trying to survive to Currency or just until you get your first 1-2 Great Scientists, but it's really much more effective to specialize one city to generate the bulk of your GP due to the way the mechanic behaves. Snag the National Epic here and leave production and commerce to your other cities.
-If you have crappy land, you'll pretty much have to pick on a neighbor and take some of his/hers. Early war isn't so bad so long as you can hit in numerical force before they get Longbows (Feudalism) and walls with a lot of culture defense, and you can pull it off with some easy to get units if the resources are favorable: Axes, Chariots, even Horse Archers (tech yourself) or Swordsmen (trade for IW, only tech yourself as a last resort). Some civs' unique units also work well. It's also relatively simple to set up too, just get Granaries+ Barracks in your cities, whip out a force and hit early, focusing on improving tiles for food/production over commerce and chop/whip liberally into units. After you take, focus on improving what you have now and use your conquest gold rewards to help fund your way towards the important techs you need normally.
-Just because I didn't state it before outright: don't fear whipping your cities! I know I didn't like to when I was new to this game. The production you get through Slavery is amazing (basically makes food = hammers) and if your cities have a good food resource or two they can grow back with little impact other than stacking unhappiness if you do it too often. You have limits imposed on your happy/health that limit much population growth for quite a while until you can start accessing more resources and better civics, so it's fine to keep your cities smaller and whip them to put that food that they otherwise don't need to good use, instead of being wasted stagnating or feeding citizens who cost more maintenance but do nothing. Not every whip has to be for maximum overflow or timed to never stack anger either; as long as you aren't 1 pop whipping every turn and leaving some recovery turns on your cities to stagger their anger penalties, it's manageable and still improves your overall productive output.
-Worker first is almost always your best first build in the cap. An exception would be with a nice Seafood start (like, dual Fish or Fish + Clam/Crab), especially if you are a civ that starts with Fishing tech. If not, you can put hammers in a worker still while you tech Fishing (you'll alway need workers) and then start on your workboat(s).
-VERY important techs to grab early are The Wheel, Mining, Bronze Working and Writing, and should be prioritized after making sure you have your early food techs (Fishing, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry) that apply to your start. Wheel is the start to Pottery (for cottages and granaries) and lets you build roads, which is something you're going to NEED to have at some point for trade routes, hooking resources etc, often sooner than later. In fact, if I can't determine exactly what I need to do most at the moment and still don't have it, I snag it it next without thinking, it's that important. Mining lets you mine hills (and use certain resources), your all important sources of very early production and you need it for bronze working, which leads into the next point. Bronze Working is first and foremost the tech for Slavery, one of the most powerful and certainly the most impactful civics to any game. It also lets you crucially chop forests, which varies in importance based on how many there are and what you want to improve, but suffice to say it's a free production boost at your discretion and you can't improve tiles under them until they are chopped away. Writing is the tech that marks your transition out of the open stages and provides Libraries for running your first specialists (scientists), gets your foot in the door on diplomacy through open borders/resource trades, and is a prereq for a handful of next tier techs (Alpha, Math, Aesthetics, Code of Laws, and indirectly Currency) that define the following stage of the game.
-On the other hand, the only religious techs you should ever really pay attention to are the ones involving the Oracle, if you have a start and civ conducive to trying for it. If it looks like you can quickly build it (you have Marble nearby and start with Mining or Mysticism) or can power chop it (many forests), you'll need Priesthood to build it. Note you'll also want to have Bronze Working/Masonry as applicable and to get a worthwhile tech jump you have to have certain other researched already as prereqs--for instance, slingshotting Metal Casting requires you to have both Bronze Working and Pottery, going for Code of Laws means you have to have Writing (you'll have Priesthood already) done, etc.
-Just in general, as others have said, pay little heed to the science slider in favor of getting done what you need, which is namely settling a few good spots and improving resource tiles, connecting cities with roads, getting the important techs first etc.. It's a race to writing basically before you start major expansion, and then to Currency after you start to take land. You have an variety of ways to get there at this point (run scientists to generate beakers even at low slider, tech/trade Alpha to trade your way forward or build research directly) but it's important to reach Currency so you don't bog down entirely and never dig out.
-Currency is also a major, majorly important tech. As you expand, its array of ways to make gold help you fight maintenance as well as the free trade route in each city softens the blow of each additional site a tiny bit. Trading for lump sums of gold is great way to suddenly rush forward on a tech to complete it in a few turns instead of slowly (and less efficiently, look up binary research if you care to know why) over many. Selling off tech or resource deals for gold can keep you afloat, etc.
-Since Slavery is so powerful, Granaries are very useful for improving the output of your cites. With sufficient happiness, they allow you to create a burst of sustained production from the lesser turns waiting to grow back up.
-Forges likewise improve slavery even more, as the production bonus makes whips stronger for more overflow or easier to reach thresholds. Metal Casting is hard to trade for early from the AI, but you can Oracle it or even self-tech it after trading for Iron Working. Even if you pick it up later, you should immediately dump a forges into any city that you use to produce anything (so, like cities that only run specialists don't really need one).
-Most other buildings don't matter for a considerable amount of time. Granaries are always great except if you intentionally ignore Slavery or the city can't grow well anyway. Libraries are not exactly "spam everywhere" buildings but are integral to helping you along to Currency or grabbing some tech for trade. Forges are great in just about any city if you can get them. The last impactful one for quite a while (like, until Factories) is the Courthouse, but it's more situational as by the time you can build it, you should have several measures to help stay above your maintenance costs in various ways including simply building wealth or banking fail-gold into wonders, for those situations where you can't even trade for gold.
-Pick out a spot with high food, customize the tiles around that city to give as much surplus food as you can and use this as your primary Great Person generator. Running scientists everywhere with Libraries is fine for a while when trying to survive to Currency or just until you get your first 1-2 Great Scientists, but it's really much more effective to specialize one city to generate the bulk of your GP due to the way the mechanic behaves. Snag the National Epic here and leave production and commerce to your other cities.
-If you have crappy land, you'll pretty much have to pick on a neighbor and take some of his/hers. Early war isn't so bad so long as you can hit in numerical force before they get Longbows (Feudalism) and walls with a lot of culture defense, and you can pull it off with some easy to get units if the resources are favorable: Axes, Chariots, even Horse Archers (tech yourself) or Swordsmen (trade for IW, only tech yourself as a last resort). Some civs' unique units also work well. It's also relatively simple to set up too, just get Granaries+ Barracks in your cities, whip out a force and hit early, focusing on improving tiles for food/production over commerce and chop/whip liberally into units. After you take, focus on improving what you have now and use your conquest gold rewards to help fund your way towards the important techs you need normally.
-Just because I didn't state it before outright: don't fear whipping your cities! I know I didn't like to when I was new to this game. The production you get through Slavery is amazing (basically makes food = hammers) and if your cities have a good food resource or two they can grow back with little impact other than stacking unhappiness if you do it too often. You have limits imposed on your happy/health that limit much population growth for quite a while until you can start accessing more resources and better civics, so it's fine to keep your cities smaller and whip them to put that food that they otherwise don't need to good use, instead of being wasted stagnating or feeding citizens who cost more maintenance but do nothing. Not every whip has to be for maximum overflow or timed to never stack anger either; as long as you aren't 1 pop whipping every turn and leaving some recovery turns on your cities to stagger their anger penalties, it's manageable and still improves your overall productive output.
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civfanchambers
Prince
One of the elite players needs to record a lets play video for civ4 beginners on how to play and perceive civ4 game mechanics. Then post it to the forums and have the post pinned at the top of the s&t forum for new/low lvl players to watch. That's the best advice I can provide. And to the OP of this thread, welcome to civ4. Cheers and happy civing.
Gwaja
King
Considering how much effort and time are required to post videos, it is not an easy request to ask for videos. Look up Lymond, AbsoluteZero, TheMeInTeam and others who have posted a bunch of videos in the past. The best way to learn is to post a initial save and regularly update with summary, with pictures preferred and updated saves. That's how I did it and it helps tremendously.
I still watch those old videos and they are educational despite their age.
I still watch those old videos and they are educational despite their age.
civfanchambers
Prince
I'm well aware of the various YouTube videos of the above mentioned players. Watching them has helped me greatly, and they are enjoyable to view. And yes posting and play along games are great. In the three years I've been a member of the forum I've seen many new to civ4 players come along and have difficulty. Some outright refuse to listen, mostly because the are stubborn, others because they are impatient. What I'm suggesting is a pinned game thread, basic how to for fresh players to see and understand the civ4 game mechanics in action, with the let's player explaining what, how and why. Such a post at the top of the s&t forum board would give new players a jump start without all this laborious posting.
Can I say I used to play Civ IV (vanilla) all the time till about 2017 then it dropped off my radar. I thought I was doing okay with it - got to about nobie level and was winning regularly. At the time I remember coming on this forum and just viewing posts but I never remember seeing anything like this before. (For instance i looked at Sulla's strategy guide etc) All the time before I was reading about specialised economies, the CS slingshot etc.
This time, I thought I would try to do what has been suggested in this thread. I tried my hardest to build at least 10 cities before 1AD. I did not totally succeed, but I definitely got close to it. I also decided that I would abandon all the Wonders, so that way I would concentrate on my early game. I also, after a long while of doing workers, decided to abandon them to automated - again so I could just concentrate on the very core game of building and understanding what was going on.
I cannot believe how much better the game went. Before when I was playing, I would try to build maybe 3 or 4 cities the whole game, unless I was trying to conquer someone. This time I decided to spam those cities everywhere, even in places where I did not think there was any point. Just to get the land mass. I also used the slavery civic a hell of a lot, which kept my cities at low population for long periods, but also allowed me to kill off all the unhappy people. I went for Grannary in every colony, then built some units in order to conquer.
I ignored the Market - I decided to actually look at what that did and was shocked to see it appears to do nothing if you run your research slider at 100%. (It only appears to make any effect when you run your slider at below 100%).
I did find myself initially with an economy that was constantly going into the negative (so I kept switching from 100% research to 0%). However, what I did notice, is that I rapidly leapfrogged everyone else in research.
In the last 6 months I have put a lot of time into Civ V and I have to say that both games appear to suffer from the same problem.
Neither of them appear to broadcast the most important point of their games: POPULATION IS RESEARCH!
Civ V is much more forgiving about not having many cities - you can win that with only 3 or 4 cities, but Civ IV is really not that forgiving. I suspect that is because it is much harder to have a big population city in Civ IV.
If only someone had explained this to me about Civ IV years ago! I had always assumed that the research was somehow related to money you made - as when you put one slider down, the amount of gold you made went up. So to my thinking it was always the case that you were choosing not to use your money to invest in research and thus you got more gpt per turn.
Whereas in fact, it has nothing to do with gold or culture. POPULATION POPULATION POPULATION!
Thank you very much once again!
I know if I want more tips, I have to post up a game save or some such, but actually now I just want to play with the advice already given and try and learn more by myself.
