General noob question grab bag

[FlorbFnarb]

I've played every version of Civ (including AC) except the new Beyond Earth and the one that was for consoles. Played Civ I back in the DOS days; I was a serious addict when it came to Civ's spiritual descendant Master of Orion.

So I'm not a Civ-noob...except that I kinda still am. My practice has almost always been fairly completion-ist and methodical:

• I tend to secure a new spot, build a city carefully, and build everything in it that can be built.
• I don't usually over-do military building, relying on a technological edge instead.
• I almost never willingly start wars.
• I loathe trading technologies except perhaps to a weakling.
• I assiduously avoid open borders unless I am alone on my continent.
• I usually concentrate on geographical expansion and research until I reach all the end-tier civics, then I make moves to win - whether conquest or another method.

...and yet...I'm starting to suspect most of this is wrong, or at least only sometimes right:

• I am hearing that building everything in a city is bad - that most buildings aren't worth the opportunity cost, presumably that the hammers could be better spent on churning out longbowmen or tanks, or just cranking out culture or research.
• I am getting the impression that I'm missing a lot of opportunities from smart tech-swapping.
• My isolationist tendencies might well mean missing out on chances as well.
• I have avoided using slavery, seeing the loss of population as counterproductive to my goal of maximizing city pop size, but I am hearing that it's quite an effective method of speeding production.

Sooooo...somebody school me on my misconceptions. When I started civving way back when on my steam-powered mechanical difference engine during the Grant administration, we didn't have the interwebs around for me to glean methods from the number-crunching min-maxers, so it's time for me to get up to speed.

 

[Seraiel]

• I tend to secure a new spot, build a city carefully, and build everything in it that can be built.

You're right with your discovery that most buildings aren't worth the opportunity cost. This is true. You need a Granary in all cities, except maybe a city that gets founded late and won't grow much, and that's about it. All other buildings are situational. This means, that in the capital, you will surely want a Library, a Forge, a Barracks, probably even a Market, an Academy, maybe even an Aqueduct, but that's about it then again. More buildings are only needed in non-military-victories.
You also don't need all those buildings in your arbitary cities, if a city has a luxury-resource, think about maybe a Library, if it shall produce troops, think about maybe a Barracks, definately think about a Forge, but that's all you need already.

To evaluate the opportunity-cost, look at what a building costs, and divert the cost through the gain, so you get the number of turns until it will have returned it's cost, so if you i. e. build a Laboratory in a Spacerace and that costs 225 and gets you 10 / turn, the building takes 23 turns of producing Research and then it'll overtake plain research production.
Don't forget though, that plain Research and Wealth is always instant, and sometimes, like when you race for Lib i. e., instant is everything.

• I don't usually over-do military building, relying on a technological edge instead.

Why not rely on numbers and tech?

• I almost never willingly start wars.

And you do so, because you're inexperienced with them and because you're afraid or because you like builder-style, but wars get you cities, well developed cities, and those cities are your powerhouses that make up your empire. There's almost nothing in CIV, that can beat having even only 1 additional well-developed city, even the non-developed ones pay for themselves via Traderoutes once you have Currency.

To lose your fear before war, you must fight wars, and you'll find that the CIV-AI is actually horrible at fighting wars and mainly sits in its cities and defends. Nothing to be afraid of, unless you make major errors like i. e. forgetting to protect your troops against mounted units.

• I loathe trading technologies except perhaps to a weakling.

Trading is the biggest advantage the human has over the AI in CIV. You can always trade first for a tech on the turn that AI researches it, so check your tech-screen often (if not every turn) , and try to get as many techs as you can via trade, except, you shouldn't trade military-key-techs to future opponents.
Tech-trading helps you keep and expand your tech-advantage.

• I assiduously avoid open borders unless I am alone on my continent.

Open Borders give you +2 on relations and come with no downside. AI doesn't spy on you or crazy things, it's just free +2, until maybe very very very lategame (like space-wars) , then AI does sometimes spy, but then you can always close the borders again.

• I usually concentrate on geographical expansion and research until I reach all the end-tier civics, then I make moves to win - whether conquest or another method.

The earlier you get an advantage, the longer it lasts. Cities are a great advantage, so the earlier you get them, the more they can benefit your empire.
There are multiple ways to win classical, medieval or even ancient wars, you just have to learn them.

Hth.

 

[traius]

I've played every version of Civ (including AC) except the new Beyond Earth and the one that was for consoles. Played Civ I back in the DOS days; I was a serious addict when it came to Civ's spiritual descendant Master of Orion.

So I'm not a Civ-noob...except that I kinda still am. My practice has almost always been fairly completion-ist and methodical:

1• I tend to secure a new spot, build a city carefully, and build everything in it that can be built.
2• I don't usually over-do military building, relying on a technological edge instead.
3• I almost never willingly start wars.
4• I loathe trading technologies except perhaps to a weakling.
5• I assiduously avoid open borders unless I am alone on my continent.
6• I usually concentrate on geographical expansion and research until I reach all the end-tier civics, then I make moves to win - whether conquest or another method.

...and yet...I'm starting to suspect most of this is wrong, or at least only sometimes right:

7• I am hearing that building everything in a city is bad - that most buildings aren't worth the opportunity cost, presumably that the hammers could be better spent on churning out longbowmen or tanks, or just cranking out culture or research.
8• I am getting the impression that I'm missing a lot of opportunities from smart tech-swapping.
9• My isolationist tendencies might well mean missing out on chances as well.
10• I have avoided using slavery, seeing the loss of population as counterproductive to my goal of maximizing city pop size, but I am hearing that it's quite an effective method of speeding production.

Sooooo...somebody school me on my misconceptions. When I started civving way back when on my steam-powered mechanical difference engine during the Grant administration, we didn't have the interwebs around for me to glean methods from the number-crunching min-maxers, so it's time for me to get up to speed.

1. building every building: Most buildings suck.
If it's not an AP building that gets free hammers, and you're not going cultural victory, all religious buildings suck. If not going cultural, all other culture things suck. Custom houses REALLY suck. Harbours are good if you have the great lighthouse and the city trades with foreign cities, but otherwise suck. Universities kind of suck, though for a space game, getting enough to build oxford in the capital is okay. Markets and grocers suck, because you don't need that health or happiness most of the time if you trade for resources effectively, and their 25% gold is all-but-worthless (ignore if in a major shrine city though, as that can be very useful). Courthouses are okay if organized, but otherwise suck. Most late-game buildings other than factories and power buildings suck, and even then, only the coal plant is actually good, as the others come too late (and nuclear plants can blow up your cities).
What is good? Granaries, forges, barracks, and key wonders (mids, the great lighthouse, the great library, mausoleum of Mausolus, the parthenon maybe, and the Taj Mahal).
In other cases, using those hammers on wealth or research or failgold wonders is superior. If a market costs 450 hammers on marathon, those hammers could be 450 gold instead. If the city building the market has a gold income of 20 (decently high!) that market will take 90 turns to pay back, after it is completed. And of course, you're trying to build enough wealth and failgold to keep the slider at 100% science most of the time, which implies that the market will be giving a 25% boost on 0 gold, or in other words, would take an infinite number of turns to pay for itself.

2. Overdoing is always bad . But yeah, usually you get to/close to a military tech advantage tech, then build units as fast as possible (sometimes building units to upgrade to that tech, like horse archers to be upgraded to cuirassiers or similar). The point of this is to make an army to wipe someone out entirely. Those hammers and pop spent on those units will become many cities, which pays itself off quickly.

3. Start wars. The AI is bad at war. Exploit this weakness. Just make sure you're doing it when you're strong and they are weak, like right after getting military tradition or rifles or cannons. Or even elephants and catapults.

4. Tech trading well is something that takes time to master, but it is key to higher difficulties. On higher difficulties, every AI researches faster than you. If you never trade, you'll fall behind for sure. Instead, the goal is to research techs few AI's/no AI's have, and trade it to all of them. Yes, the AI screws you on tech deals, but when you get the bad end of the trade, you didn't actually LOSE your tech; you still have it to trade to someone else. So if I make trades with 5 AI where each AI got 1.5x what I got, I get 5 techs worth of beakers and every opponent gets 1.5 techs worth. Or 3.5 techs ahead of everyone. This is a major gain in comparative lead. When I play isolated games and get astronomy, it sucks to "give" it away to everyone else, but I often find that in a matter of a few turns, I can go from being the clear backwards civ to being one of the front-runners.

5. Open borders with anyone who will let you (usually, everyone but Tokugawa). This nets more commerce for you per turn, and boosts relations with the AI's eventually. This boost in relations could be the difference between them declaring war on you or someone else. Diplomacy stops wars being declared on you. Similarly, strongly consider giving away resources to anyone and everyone for the same reason (I give something to every AI every game).

6. Expanding is always fine. but you need to decide what you plan on doing to win long before you make the final civic choices (WAY before environmentalism is ever unlocked). Usually you want to unlock liberalism, and you should know what you plan on doing to win well before that choice. But that choice often essentially is what sort of "declares" your intentions (ie got mil tradition, going for military expansion/very possibly domination/conquest/diplomation. Printing press and stop all tech, cultural, etc).

7. See 1.

8. See 4.

9. See 5.

10. Slavery is king. It allows 1f>2H if the city is small, which means corn/pig tiles can become major production tiles. It's also great for emergencies, and rapid military build-up when a new military advantage tech is reached. Whipping out tons of units at key moments like Military tradition (cuirassiers/cavalry), rifling (though for rifles specifically, drafting is better), or Steel (cannons) is what allows you to have those units before the AI gets to the techs and upgrades all of its units essentially for free (one of the AI's major bonuses).

 

[FlorbFnarb]

I think my aversion to open borders comes from Civ I, where there were no borders, and the AI loved to plop cities down in the middle of my area, which couldn't removed short of war. I suppose these days I tend to try to use my borders to block people from pushing through me and starting a city on the other side of me.

As for wars...have the developers ever admitted to fudging the rolls for combat in favor of the AI? Before catapults cities seem to be impossible to take. A pair of archers seems able to hold off six times their number. I see catapults and trebuchets directly attacking fortified riflemen and winning. I right now have a three-ship frigate squadron that the computer has simply marked for death; if I move them north, American frigates roll in and kill them out of hand, if I push east a different frigate moves in and kills all three. Literally, they have been marked to automatically lose their next fight without talking a single enemy with them. I understand that the game uses the same random number seed if you reload, but I'm not even fighting the same battle when I reload; I go a different direction, fight a different battle, but they're guaranteed to lose completely in any battle.

It's a bit frustrating, because I'm at a point where I can't make myself trust the numbers as corresponding to reality. When I ALT-mouse over an enemy, see a 30% chance to win, and know that I'm definitely going to lose...it's just frustrating. Any even fight seems to automatically be won by the computer; if I outnumber them grossly, I have a chance to win, if it's anything like even numbers I know ahead of time they're going to win.

Frustrated.

 

[traius]

I think my aversion to open borders comes from Civ I, where there were no borders, and the AI loved to plop cities down in the middle of my area, which couldn't removed short of war. I suppose these days I tend to try to use my borders to block people from pushing through me and starting a city on the other side of me.

As for wars...have the developers ever admitted to fudging the rolls for combat in favor of the AI? Before catapults cities seem to be impossible to take. A pair of archers seems able to hold off six times their number. I see catapults and trebuchets directly attacking fortified riflemen and winning. I right now have a three-ship frigate squadron that the computer has simply marked for death; if I move them north, American frigates roll in and kill them out of hand, if I push east a different frigate moves in and kills all three. Literally, they have been marked to automatically lose their next fight without talking a single enemy with them. I understand that the game uses the same random number seed if you reload, but I'm not even fighting the same battle when I reload; I go a different direction, fight a different battle, but they're guaranteed to lose completely in any battle.

It's a bit frustrating, because I'm at a point where I can't make myself trust the numbers as corresponding to reality. When I ALT-mouse over an enemy, see a 30% chance to win, and know that I'm definitely going to lose...it's just frustrating. Any even fight seems to automatically be won by the computer; if I outnumber them grossly, I have a chance to win, if it's anything like even numbers I know ahead of time they're going to win.

Frustrated.

Indeed, the RNG does not reset when reloading unless you specifically set that option (don't; it will just make you cheat). It sucks when you lose units, but that's why you have many units . As for "definitely losing," at 30%, I won a 1.4% catapult battle in my last game. The cat died in the next battle though. The RNG isn't the best one in existence, but it does its job well enough. The AI does not get any bonuses or hindrances on it at any level of difficulty.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

1. building every building: Most buildings suck.
If it's not an AP building that gets free hammers, and you're not going cultural victory, all religious buildings suck. If not going cultural, all other culture things suck. Custom houses REALLY suck. Harbours are good if you have the great lighthouse and the city trades with foreign cities, but otherwise suck. Universities kind of suck, though for a space game, getting enough to build oxford in the capital is okay. Markets and grocers suck, because you don't need that health or happiness most of the time if you trade for resources effectively, and their 25% gold is all-but-worthless (ignore if in a major shrine city though, as that can be very useful). Courthouses are okay if organized, but otherwise suck. Most late-game buildings other than factories and power buildings suck, and even then, only the coal plant is actually good, as the others come too late (and nuclear plants can blow up your cities).
What is good? Granaries, forges, barracks, and key wonders (mids, the great lighthouse, the great library, mausoleum of Mausolus, the parthenon maybe, and the Taj Mahal).
In other cases, using those hammers on wealth or research or failgold wonders is superior. If a market costs 450 hammers on marathon, those hammers could be 450 gold instead. If the city building the market has a gold income of 20 (decently high!) that market will take 90 turns to pay back, after it is completed. And of course, you're trying to build enough wealth and failgold to keep the slider at 100% science most of the time, which implies that the market will be giving a 25% boost on 0 gold, or in other words, would take an infinite number of turns to pay for itself.

2. Overdoing is always bad . But yeah, usually you get to/close to a military tech advantage tech, then build units as fast as possible (sometimes building units to upgrade to that tech, like horse archers to be upgraded to cuirassiers or similar). The point of this is to make an army to wipe someone out entirely. Those hammers and pop spent on those units will become many cities, which pays itself off quickly.

3. Start wars. The AI is bad at war. Exploit this weakness. Just make sure you're doing it when you're strong and they are weak, like right after getting military tradition or rifles or cannons. Or even elephants and catapults.

4. Tech trading well is something that takes time to master, but it is key to higher difficulties. On higher difficulties, every AI researches faster than you. If you never trade, you'll fall behind for sure. Instead, the goal is to research techs few AI's/no AI's have, and trade it to all of them. Yes, the AI screws you on tech deals, but when you get the bad end of the trade, you didn't actually LOSE your tech; you still have it to trade to someone else. So if I make trades with 5 AI where each AI got 1.5x what I got, I get 5 techs worth of beakers and every opponent gets 1.5 techs worth. Or 3.5 techs ahead of everyone. This is a major gain in comparative lead. When I play isolated games and get astronomy, it sucks to "give" it away to everyone else, but I often find that in a matter of a few turns, I can go from being the clear backwards civ to being one of the front-runners.

5. Open borders with anyone who will let you (usually, everyone but Tokugawa). This nets more commerce for you per turn, and boosts relations with the AI's eventually. This boost in relations could be the difference between them declaring war on you or someone else. Diplomacy stops wars being declared on you. Similarly, strongly consider giving away resources to anyone and everyone for the same reason (I give something to every AI every game).

6. Expanding is always fine. but you need to decide what you plan on doing to win long before you make the final civic choices (WAY before environmentalism is ever unlocked). Usually you want to unlock liberalism, and you should know what you plan on doing to win well before that choice. But that choice often essentially is what sort of "declares" your intentions (ie got mil tradition, going for military expansion/very possibly domination/conquest/diplomation. Printing press and stop all tech, cultural, etc).

7. See 1.

8. See 4.

9. See 5.

10. Slavery is king. It allows 1f>2H if the city is small, which means corn/pig tiles can become major production tiles. It's also great for emergencies, and rapid military build-up when a new military advantage tech is reached. Whipping out tons of units at key moments like Military tradition (cuirassiers/cavalry), rifling (though for rifles specifically, drafting is better), or Steel (cannons) is what allows you to have those units before the AI gets to the techs and upgrades all of its units essentially for free (one of the AI's major bonuses).

Ok, good to know. So then the idea is to avoid building culture/gold/research buildings, get culture/gold/research directly instead? Is this something fairly new that just came along in Civ 4, or did it hold true in Civ 1-3 as well?

Also, boost production with slavery sacrifices of population gained by focusing on use of food tiles? Interesting.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

Indeed, the RNG does not reset when reloading unless you specifically set that option (don't; it will just make you cheat). It sucks when you lose units, but that's why you have many units . As for "definitely losing," at 30%, I won a 1.4% catapult battle in my last game. The cat died in the next battle though. The RNG isn't the best one in existence, but it does its job well enough. The AI does not get any bonuses or hindrances on it at any level of difficulty.

Yeah, my head tells me it isn't, and that the only "cheating" is in the form of research bonuses to AI on higher skill settings...but the odds have not worked out that way this entire match. Saladin had a city with four archers that could basically hold off six axemen without losing a single unit in the process. A city of ONE, and it was just short of invulnerable.

Just streakiness in the RNG, I guess. I play a lot of World of Tanks, so I know how series of random numbers tend to show streaks.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

Yeah, I just reloaded a few turns back, went to a completely different area, and American frigates killed two of them without losing anything. Those frigates basically automatically lose to any frigates they face, every time. This can't be a case of the same RNG seed returning the same values on a reload, because I reloaded a couple turns back and went to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLACE and still they always lose.

WTH? How is that possible?

 

[traius]

Well, if the AI doesn't use the RNG for anything at all different between those turns, than why would the seed be in a different place when you go farther back? Moving the frigate to a different location does not require any use of the RNG, and the AI does not need to use the RNG to see where units went (BTW, the AI can cheat with unit sight too, seeing in all directions a unit could move. So if a boat that could die from an enemy boat is anywhere in range of that boats movement in a single turn, the AI will always know exactly where it is and kill it).

If it frustrates you so much, and you don't mind cheating, just set a unit to auto-explore then cancel the orders when it's done. Auto-explore uses the RNG, so it will change the outcomes. A differing outcome could still be death of course, just with damage being slightly different or w/e.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

Yeah, it finally turned out differently. I'm not big on reloading until I get the result I want - it really is cheating, almost like playing Doom (OLD SCHOOL, BABY) in god mode - it just got a little frustrating to see an enemy frigate and basically know I'm screwed unless I have a major advantage.

 

[Pangaea]

Yeah, my head tells me it isn't, and that the only "cheating" is in the form of research bonuses to AI on higher skill settings...but the odds have not worked out that way this entire match. Saladin had a city with four archers that could basically hold off six axemen without losing a single unit in the process. A city of ONE, and it was just short of invulnerable.

Just streakiness in the RNG, I guess. I play a lot of World of Tanks, so I know how series of random numbers tend to show streaks.

Axes against archers isn't a walk in the park really, especially if that city the archers are guarding is on a hill. This is also why Axe-rushing is practically impossible on higher levels. Axes simply aren't good enough to overpower an AI, and at higher levels you'll quickly face tougher defenders than archers too. 6 Axes against 4 archers is nowhere near enough. The first 4 axes will fight a fully healthy archer, as you always fight the best defender. The last two axes are probably fighting close to fully healthy archers too, as they will have winning odds, especially on a hill, so you're bound to lose unless you have extreme luck on your side.

 

[elitetroops]

6 Axes against 4 archers is nowhere near enough. The first 4 axes will fight a fully healthy archer, as you always fight the best defender. The last two axes are probably fighting close to fully healthy archers too, as they will have winning odds, especially on a hill, so you're bound to lose unless you have extreme luck on your side.

This. 6 axes vs 4 protective archers is a lot worse. I wouldn't expect to kill a single one in that battle.

HAs are usually the best for early rushes against archers. If no horses, you might want catapults, depending on difficulty. Or then you need to figure out ways to lure those archers out of the city.

As for the RNG, you just have a selective memory, as most people tend to do when it comes to probabilities. If you were to keep track of your battles over a statistically significant sample, you would most likely find that the RNG is doing a very good job.

 

[Fippy]

AIs are usually bad at war, but there are certain rules (like those archers = good defenders you cannot just roll over). Like others said, you deserved losing those battles

So you should stay away from thinking about the rng or reloads for battles, and maybe go to strategy & tips and learn stuff.
You are getting no freebies in this game, unlike in most new games (sadly).

 

[Pangaea]

As for the RNG, you just have a selective memory, as most people tend to do when it comes to probabilities. If you were to keep track of your battles over a statistically significant sample, you would most likely find that the RNG is doing a very good job.

A problem with the RNG, though, is that it has a sad tendency to SUCK MAJOR AMOUNTS OF ARSE WHEN YOU LEAST NEED IT!

Just lost 8 straight 50-60% battles. Of course, if the RNG was fair all the time, I'd win 4 or 5 of those, not lose the whole lot.

They've simply used a poor random function when programming it (I remember the code divers said so), which means that if you first get a poor "draw", you're likely to get many in a row. That's probably what happened here. Vice versa, you can get several wins in a row that you'd expect to lose. It does happen, but not as often as typically we have winning odds if we do things right, so will notice it more when the RNG rides us. There is selective memory too, but not all the time. It does in fact behave erratically at times. With 1000 vs 1000 troops it would be pretty close to what you'd expect, but with e.g. 20 vs 20, you can get screwed.

 

[FlorbFnarb]

Streakiness I expect, I was just stunned at the tendency over the entire game for a low-but-not-tiny chance to basically be always a loss. I don't think I won a single contest around 30%.

Just a frustrating situation, I guess, which triggers the ol' pattern-recognition part of the brain to get unjustifiably suspicious.

 

[Doshin]

Humans tend to play safe and attack at high odds (80% +) and expect to win. So when we lose more than 1 in 5 battles, it seems like the RNG has it in for us.

The AI will attack at low odds. If they launch 20 attacks at 5% then, sooner or later, they're going to get lucky. Humans perceive the 19 wins as "fair" rolls from the RNG, and the 1 loss as "unfair." And if this occurs twice in a row (hundred of battles fought in a game of civ... imagine losing two battles @ 90% odds) then it makes us unjustifiably suspicious, as you say.

BTW, don't attack Protective Hill Archers with Axemen. You might need 3+ Axes per defender... it's very hard to shift them.

 

[elitetroops]

With 1000 vs 1000 troops it would be pretty close to what you'd expect, but with e.g. 20 vs 20, you can get screwed.

The problem is that at smaller sample sizes, people expect the wrong things. If you fight 6 successive battles at 50% odds, you should expect to lose at least 4 of them 35% of the time and you should expect to lose at least 5 of them 10% of the time. And you should expect that every once in a while you will lose them all. If this didn't happen, the RNG would be broken.

I remember reading somewhere that first strikes aren't correctly accounted for in the odds that show up on screen. Is this true?

 

[Pangaea]

Yikes!

Axe was even injured. Thankfully that doesn't happen very often.

Sorry for taking this a bit OT btw.

 

[Tatran]

6 lost battle rounds in a row is nothing compared to the 14 lost battle rounds in a row I had.
From memory I lost 2 100% healthy infantry.

Btw, you guys have work to do. OP has started another thread and seems to be desperate.

 

[Fippy]

Rng has it's errors, Pangeas example shows that.
He lost 8 combat rounds and won 1, so we would need the chances for 7x in a row outcomes and that's 1 : 127. Not 1:1000 like odds of 99.9% would suggest, the true combat odds here was "only" ~99.1%.