I started playing civilization 4 against a few weeks ago, but this time beyond the sword. I started a 3 v 3 single player game on the 2nd easiest level. But my team is just getting annilated on technology research. I put my science adjustment thing on the highest possible percentage until i run out of money. I don't build too many cottages b/c i want me city to grow faster. But what i don't understand is how are they so far a head on such a really easy difficulty level? And also I have the highest score on there with 2374(mainly from wonders) but my other 2 AIs have like 1500-1600 WTH. And the each of the AIs on the other team is 2100+.
Getting owned in technology research
- Thread starter slammer
- Start date
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Sounds like you might have just got some bad luck with the map and/or AI's that were drawn randomly. If the AI's on the other team mostly have the Financial trait, while barely anyone (or no-one) on your team has the Financial trait, that could be contributing to the difficulty that you're experiencing with keeping up in research. Also, the geography of the map can affect research rates quite drastically. If the other AI team has good land and plenty of room to expand, then they'll be quite advantaged relative to your team in terms of research.
Possibly it is a combination of these factors with the fact that you are playing in teams. In teams, the game can be made either much harder or much easier than the difficulty level would suggest, just based on who your teammates are and where they are located. If your teammates have bad quality land or very little land, then even if you have great land and a good empire, your teammates will drag down your research speed. On the other hand, a team where all the members have great land (and lots of it) will have all its members researching at a decent speed, and often this will make it a lot harder for any rival team to keep up with them.
So basically: if you're finding 3 vs 3 team games quite difficult, either (a) choose the leaders and civilizations in your game carefully, (b) choose the map carefully (regenerate a few times if you don't like the one you're given), or (c) lower the difficulty level a little until you get more used to team games. (The other option is to not play team games at all, but I'm assuming that you'd rather not do that.
)
Hope that helps.
Possibly it is a combination of these factors with the fact that you are playing in teams. In teams, the game can be made either much harder or much easier than the difficulty level would suggest, just based on who your teammates are and where they are located. If your teammates have bad quality land or very little land, then even if you have great land and a good empire, your teammates will drag down your research speed. On the other hand, a team where all the members have great land (and lots of it) will have all its members researching at a decent speed, and often this will make it a lot harder for any rival team to keep up with them.
So basically: if you're finding 3 vs 3 team games quite difficult, either (a) choose the leaders and civilizations in your game carefully, (b) choose the map carefully (regenerate a few times if you don't like the one you're given), or (c) lower the difficulty level a little until you get more used to team games. (The other option is to not play team games at all, but I'm assuming that you'd rather not do that.
)Hope that helps.
Im pretty sure I choose the one map that gives equal distribution to all civs. Forgot the name though but we all have relatively the same amount of land controlled and resources. It also seems like the AIs on my team contribute more to the science output than i do, b/c i can usually only turn mine to like 30-40% anything higher and I will run out of money soon.
To me that sets off alarm bells. I've found out the hard way over and over again that cottages are the work horse of your civilization. Unless you are consciously running a specialist economy you need cottages, and lots of them. You can grow your city to a decent size (18+) just by placing it on a river or on the ocean with seafood and still cover over half the remaining squares with cottages. The remainder can be production squares, resource squares, and farms. If you want to generate any research or gold you need the cottages.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Indeed. I didn't notice that before.
slammer, if you're not able to put your research slider above 30-40% and you're preferring farms over cottages, then that's probably your problem right there. You should always prefer cottages over farms on flatlands (except on special resources) unless a city is very slow at growing.
Reading between the lines, you might also have an issue with city placement. All of your cities should ideally be placed so that they can use at least one good food resource (for instance, Fish, Clams, Crabs, Cows, Pigs, Corn, Wheat, and so on). Ideally two or more food resources is better. Once you have cities placed so that they can use food resources to grow, then you should have no need to build many (or any) extra farms to try and make your cities grow more. That way, most of your tile improvements can be mines (on hills) and cottages (on flatlands).
One other thing - keep an eye on the happiness of your cities. If any of your cities becomes unhappy (you'll see the unhappy face next to the city name on the map), then it's time to stop it growing. (Actually, it's better to stop your cities growing before they become unhappy.) Unhappy citizens are useless, and contribute nothing to your empire. So there's no point in growing if all you're getting from the growth are more unhappy citizens!
If you'd like to upload a screenshot or savegame of one of your games to the forum, then people could see very quickly exactly what you are doing wrong, and you could get some much more specific and helpful advice to improve your game.
slammer,
Are you aware you can tell your AI teammates what to research? When you are playing on a team your research is all combined if you are working on the same techs. Naturally, you should pick the tech you expect to be the most useful and then tell the AIs to research it.
You are possibly expanding too fast if you are dropping to 30-40% science. When it comes to cities, it's generally better to focus on quality over quantity. Make your first few cities really count. Usually your first few cities will be specialised to be your most important ones. eg. GP Farm, Science City, Military City, Shrine City (if you found a religion) etc. After those critical ones you will make most of your remaining cities commerce cities. These cities should be designed with cottages and huge incomes in mind. Coastal cities, cities on rivers, and cities near valuable commerce resources like gold, silver and gems are the best commerce cities.
Are you aware you can tell your AI teammates what to research? When you are playing on a team your research is all combined if you are working on the same techs. Naturally, you should pick the tech you expect to be the most useful and then tell the AIs to research it.
You are possibly expanding too fast if you are dropping to 30-40% science. When it comes to cities, it's generally better to focus on quality over quantity. Make your first few cities really count. Usually your first few cities will be specialised to be your most important ones. eg. GP Farm, Science City, Military City, Shrine City (if you found a religion) etc. After those critical ones you will make most of your remaining cities commerce cities. These cities should be designed with cottages and huge incomes in mind. Coastal cities, cities on rivers, and cities near valuable commerce resources like gold, silver and gems are the best commerce cities.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Er... don't you mean quality over quantity?
But yes, I agree. Aside from the major centers for production and great people, most of your cities should be dedicated to commerce (and thereby research).
Er... don't you mean quality over quantity?
But yes, I agree. Aside from the major centers for production and great people, most of your cities should be dedicated to commerce (and thereby research).
lol woops. It's that time of night I guess.
Supr49er
2011 Thunderfall Cup
Here is a simple research tip.
As soon as you research Writing, build Libraries in your cities and put two citizens to work as Scientist Specialists.
As soon as you research Writing, build Libraries in your cities and put two citizens to work as Scientist Specialists.
yeah I think one of my main problems is not enough cottages. But I always thought that the bigger the city the better because doesn't that mean the city can build things faster if it has a very large population so you can have specialists once you fill up the 21 sqs? I set the game on a tropical temperature so theres a bunch of green land areas(forgot the name).
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Jungle? Forest? Grassland?
Bigger is better, but only if you can get a decent output by working all of the tiles. This is not usually the case in the early game, especially if you don't have enough Workers/happiness/health. It's no use being size 21 if you have 10 sick citizens, 8 unhappy citizens, and all farms around your city. Better to build mines and cottages as you go, and work what you can at a smaller size. Certainly no city (except perhaps your Great Person city) should need more than 2-3 farms (if any) if you're placing them correctly.
This is really sad I just counted I dont think I have more than 10 cottages/villages/towns that are actually being worked. I have so many farms so I guess ill build cottages on some of those, except I wish I could've done it earlier so I could have gotten all the benefits lonnnnnng ago(im like 79 turns away from the end of the game.)
Joshua368
Warmongering builder
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2008
- Messages
- 3,072
Bit too late for cottages now, just run representation-boosted specialists. If you can get a food corp and charge it up it'll really help you out.
Cities definitely shouldn't be judged by their size. A lot of people use specialists in the early part of the game to make a small city useful.
Suppose you have a small coastal city which doesn't have much going for it in its big fat cross except for 2 clam resources. Put fishing boats on both those resources and grow the city to size 4 while building a library and you'll have some nice research just from a size 4 city.
It took me a little while to learn this as well, but cities need to be judged not on their size but on their effective output, whether it be research, gold, military units etc. This can only be done if you truly specialize your cities.
Suppose you have a small coastal city which doesn't have much going for it in its big fat cross except for 2 clam resources. Put fishing boats on both those resources and grow the city to size 4 while building a library and you'll have some nice research just from a size 4 city.
It took me a little while to learn this as well, but cities need to be judged not on their size but on their effective output, whether it be research, gold, military units etc. This can only be done if you truly specialize your cities.
Funnily enough, both of those questioins are very very hard to answer with a simple response.
I don't think many people at all would have a farm to cottage ratio they use. Instead they will tell you to assess the situation as it is, not based on some value someone tells you on the internet. More important in considering whether to cottage or farm is the city specialization. If you want to assign specialists, you may need to farm more. If you have too much population and are perhaps having difficulties with empire-wide expenses you probably need to cottage.
Keeping some forests can be worth it sometimes. Generally if you are playing a tough difficulty, chopping forests in the early game is a strong tactic because it gives you a large temporary bonus for things like completing wonders or building settlers faster. You sacrifice the production and health benefit you get from the forests over time, by cutting them down.
Forests can also be a nuisance around your cities if you have enemies storm into your territory and park themselves in the forest. They become near impossible to dislodge due to the high defense supplied by the forest. This is why one of the most important multiplayer tips is to chop all the forests next to your city asap.
I'm sorry to say this but the best thing you can do is learn for yourself when it is best to cut and when it is best to leave the forests. Perhaps play two different games - one where you chop every single forest and one where you are a tree hugger and never cut down a forest (who cares about jungles though!
) - and then compare the success you had in each game.Hope this helps!
Stolen Rutters
Deity
It depends on what that individual city is doing. Due to the multipliers you get from improvements, and due to the fact that you can only place one improvement type per tile, a city is most productive if it specialized (this does NOT mean "specialist economy", just that each city has a special and limited function within the larger civ). If you have three cities, you may want one to specialize one for building units, and the other two specializing in commerce or science.
This stuff is in the "War Academy" articles (found in the Civilization IV pulldown on top of any forum page).
The ratio between types of cities depends on your goals for the game. More production cities if you plan to war more often, more commerce/science cities if you want to power through the tech tree. Read the articles in the War Academy.
CouNterOrdeR
Chieftain
You know what i would do with a 21pop city and all grassland? Cottage everysingle tile man! Every single one.
Just to throw this out there(sorry if you know this allready).. Keep in mind that Commerce is not Gold. Commerce translates into everything from Research to Gold to Culture etc.. depending how you have your sliders set.
Ex: Say you only have one city and that city produces 20 commerce. If your slider is at 100% Research then all 20 commerce will go to Research equalling a total of 20 beakers per turn(BPT). When maintenance costs and such begin to rise you will need to lower your slider to say 80%. Now your getting only 16 BPT from your 20 commerce but also getting 4 GPT(Gold per turn) which is thrown away to these costs netting you less research.
This is where cottages come in my friend, they give you commerce which in turn gives you everything else. Gotta lovem. Really do.
Edit: Also try to keep in mind that your total BPT is whats important and not that percentage the slider is at. 20% of 100 is = to 100% of 20. Ya see?
Just to throw this out there(sorry if you know this allready).. Keep in mind that Commerce is not Gold. Commerce translates into everything from Research to Gold to Culture etc.. depending how you have your sliders set.
Ex: Say you only have one city and that city produces 20 commerce. If your slider is at 100% Research then all 20 commerce will go to Research equalling a total of 20 beakers per turn(BPT). When maintenance costs and such begin to rise you will need to lower your slider to say 80%. Now your getting only 16 BPT from your 20 commerce but also getting 4 GPT(Gold per turn) which is thrown away to these costs netting you less research.
This is where cottages come in my friend, they give you commerce which in turn gives you everything else. Gotta lovem. Really do.
Edit: Also try to keep in mind that your total BPT is whats important and not that percentage the slider is at. 20% of 100 is = to 100% of 20. Ya see?
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