Jungles aren't so bad in civ4 as civ3. It doesn't take long to chop them down at all. The health concern sucks on higher difficulties but it's hardly noticeable on noble. And the great thing is once you chop them down that's all fertile grasslands underneath. The city will start a little slow but will be a great city later on.
GOTM - 01: A New Beginning. Pre-Game Discussion
- Thread starter ainwood
- Start date
Anyone considered moving southwards to get one of the plain hills for a 2food 2 hammer 1 commerce starting city ? (plain hills add a hammer to starting city) Then just mass out warriors and get the first close nation 
Works as a charm on noble. Especially if you go straight for bronze and chop barracks then warrior then either axemen or go for archery if you dont have copper nearby. (or chariots if horses nearby.)
Works as a charm on noble. Especially if you go straight for bronze and chop barracks then warrior then either axemen or go for archery if you dont have copper nearby. (or chariots if horses nearby.)
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
And after you have ruined your economy that way?
Thats easy. Connect every city with roads. (for trade rutes) Try and attack cities on rivers. Make open border for more lucrative rutes with other nations. and BUILD roads to theyre cities.. it pays off.. Go for harbour or commerce. Organized trait will help a lot also. if you ever get down to 20% or lower stop expanding asap and focus on getting your economy up..when its good to go again expand again
One of the reasons i love civ4 is that you have to think all the way and not madly expand etc with no spesific purpose.
One of the reasons i love civ4 is that you have to think all the way and not madly expand etc with no spesific purpose.
Ribannah said:In my test game I found all civs to be on one single continent.
I did a test game last night. Rushing for Iron Working only to discover I was the only one on my island. Praets did take a Barb city for me, though, which ended the game as my largest city. Lost a space race to the Russians.
(Note: I hope the following isn't considered cheating or spoiling - one could easily calculate my results without simulating the starting location; there are only 7 more or less common tiles that matter, so the results apply to most situations and not only gotm1)
I recreated the exact starting location on a duel map for testing purposes, and played the first 50 turns over and over again to get a definite answer on when to build the worker.
There are differences in the outcome, but not as big as you might suspect.
It's obvious that settler first is bad, since it takes 25 turns, and there's no way to get a total population of 7 in the following 25 turns, at which time your capital otherwise can pump out settlers at rate 8-9.
So I started with worker or warrior, built granary, then barracks, finally a settler, and always did one cop. I didn't change gov or religion to get comparable numbers of turns. The results are as follows:
Worker first: Everything finished after 53 turns. Total science value 1090, improvement value 33 turns (5 were lost due to movement and waiting for techs)
Worker at size 3: Also exactly 53 turns. Science 990, improvements 25. A small production bonus (obelisk prebuild).
Worker at size 3, but chop to rush granary before irrigating the corn (my worker even waited 2(road)+2 turns on the silk for bronze working): Took 1 turn more (54), but 1 additional warrior was built. Rest exactly as above, 990/25.
Worker at size 4: 54 turns, science 930, no additional warrior.
Conclusion:
It doesn't matter much if you build your worker first or at size 3. Building it first looks slightly better due to science (100 equals about 4-5 turns at this state of the game) and 2 more improvements, but waiting until size 3 might give you the extra early commerce to grab a religion - plus, you don't have to fear to lose your city immediately to barbarians
. It might even pay off to wait until size 4 if you deliberately focus on founding an early religion.
I recreated the exact starting location on a duel map for testing purposes, and played the first 50 turns over and over again to get a definite answer on when to build the worker.
There are differences in the outcome, but not as big as you might suspect.
It's obvious that settler first is bad, since it takes 25 turns, and there's no way to get a total population of 7 in the following 25 turns, at which time your capital otherwise can pump out settlers at rate 8-9.
So I started with worker or warrior, built granary, then barracks, finally a settler, and always did one cop. I didn't change gov or religion to get comparable numbers of turns. The results are as follows:
Worker first: Everything finished after 53 turns. Total science value 1090, improvement value 33 turns (5 were lost due to movement and waiting for techs)
Worker at size 3: Also exactly 53 turns. Science 990, improvements 25. A small production bonus (obelisk prebuild).
Worker at size 3, but chop to rush granary before irrigating the corn (my worker even waited 2(road)+2 turns on the silk for bronze working): Took 1 turn more (54), but 1 additional warrior was built. Rest exactly as above, 990/25.
Worker at size 4: 54 turns, science 930, no additional warrior.
Conclusion:
It doesn't matter much if you build your worker first or at size 3. Building it first looks slightly better due to science (100 equals about 4-5 turns at this state of the game) and 2 more improvements, but waiting until size 3 might give you the extra early commerce to grab a religion - plus, you don't have to fear to lose your city immediately to barbarians
. It might even pay off to wait until size 4 if you deliberately focus on founding an early religion.
killercane
Deity
What about worker at size 2?
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
These calculations seem wrong to me.
There is no reason for the early worker to have idle turns.
There is no reason for the early worker to have idle turns.
Just checked it: Finished one turn earlier, with 2 warriors built, 990 science and 29 effective worker turns. It doesn't beat the science output of "worker first", but otherwise it seems to be the best option! At first warrior prebuild, but switch to worker at size 2. Move worker on silk, buid road, then chop. It's possible to finish the warrior and get pottery before chopping is finished. Then irrigate corn. Tech order: Road, Bronze Working, Pottery, Farms.killercane said:
@Ribannah:
Certainly there's no need for idle worker turns (except when moving into forests and hills), but my goal was to get 7 pop + barracks + settler at the earliest possible date.
killercane
Deity
That confirms my (untested) suspicions that worker at size 2 is often the best choice. Very nice test.
suspendinlight
Prince
I have a bad feeling that there is some trick here; everything seems too good to be true. We must either have no iron or be stuck on a small island and have no enemy civs to kill with our prats until after astronomy when they are no longer any good.
Anyway, as most are saying I let the warrior go up to the hill and take a look around, then most likely settle on the hill or potentially 1E. If the projected growth is less than the time it takes to build a warrior, I build the warrior then worker. Otherwise build a worker and get to chopping.
As for tech, go for things relevant to infrastructure first. Agriculture is obvious so you can get the food bonus from the farm. After basic infrastructure can be built I might go for Archery to defend against barbs but then I make a beeline for Iron Working so I know where to settle. Early religions are unimportant to me at this point. I might go for CoL for Courthouse if my empire is growing too large (by way of prats of course) and Confuciansim would be a nice bonus there. Either way, on noble this shouldn't be too bad for a first game.
Anyway, as most are saying I let the warrior go up to the hill and take a look around, then most likely settle on the hill or potentially 1E. If the projected growth is less than the time it takes to build a warrior, I build the warrior then worker. Otherwise build a worker and get to chopping.
As for tech, go for things relevant to infrastructure first. Agriculture is obvious so you can get the food bonus from the farm. After basic infrastructure can be built I might go for Archery to defend against barbs but then I make a beeline for Iron Working so I know where to settle. Early religions are unimportant to me at this point. I might go for CoL for Courthouse if my empire is growing too large (by way of prats of course) and Confuciansim would be a nice bonus there. Either way, on noble this shouldn't be too bad for a first game.
Mike Lemmer
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2005
- Messages
- 340
Don't make it out to be worse than it is. If you expect the worst to happen, you'll be too cowardly to risk anything. What I'd expect is a twist, not a punishment.
Take the Roman leader for example: straight Conquest/Domination, right? My basic instinct is to wipe every civilization off the map. But we have not one, not two, but three silk trees next to our starting position. That screams trade goods to me.
I'd predict a partial Conquest game: you have to choose your allies and enemies carefully. Make pals with two or three mostly harmless civilizations, adopt their religions, open trade routes and exchange technologies. Since Continent games usually have multiple civilizations on both continents, this is my plan:
1. Find technology/religion-oriented civilization on my continent. Make friends with them; seal the deal with silk.
2. Quickly wipe out any nearby aggressive civilizations before they become a problem.
3. Expand throughout my continent while leaning towards Astronomy. Build a fleet of caravels, fill them up with missionaries. Send them to the other continent and find a medium-strength civilization. Offer them something for Open Borders and quickly convert their entire civilization to my religion, building an alliance.
4. Use their land as a base for my invasions into enemy territory, because invading by sea sucks.
My goal is to win via Domination while making allies with two civilizations: one on my continent and one on the other.
Take the Roman leader for example: straight Conquest/Domination, right? My basic instinct is to wipe every civilization off the map. But we have not one, not two, but three silk trees next to our starting position. That screams trade goods to me.
I'd predict a partial Conquest game: you have to choose your allies and enemies carefully. Make pals with two or three mostly harmless civilizations, adopt their religions, open trade routes and exchange technologies. Since Continent games usually have multiple civilizations on both continents, this is my plan:
1. Find technology/religion-oriented civilization on my continent. Make friends with them; seal the deal with silk.
2. Quickly wipe out any nearby aggressive civilizations before they become a problem.
3. Expand throughout my continent while leaning towards Astronomy. Build a fleet of caravels, fill them up with missionaries. Send them to the other continent and find a medium-strength civilization. Offer them something for Open Borders and quickly convert their entire civilization to my religion, building an alliance.
4. Use their land as a base for my invasions into enemy territory, because invading by sea sucks.
My goal is to win via Domination while making allies with two civilizations: one on my continent and one on the other.
I doubt they would do that, especially on the first gotm for civ4. Adding challenging situations (like starting on a continent by yourself sometimes) is great. But doing it when you have a civ with one of the best UU's and it's in the classical age would be wrong. It would just make the game less fun. More challenge=good. Less fun=bad.
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
Ribannah said:
I just checked. I can have Rome maxed out in 40 turns (2400 BC), and build the first settler in 46 (2160 BC).
With how many chops and which buildings?Ribannah said:
For me 2160BC means turn 47. In your counting, with 1 chop I get everything at turn 52, settler taking the last 9 turns. At size 7, one chop to rush settler equals 2-3 turns. So I guess with 2 chops for granary and 1 for settler I could achieve the same results.
However, it might even make sense to build worker at size 2, then rush a settler with 2 forests. That will take exactly 8 turns, so you'll get your first settler at 8+12+8=28(27). What will you lose compared to the 46 deal? The production value of the maxed out city times roughly [40/5 - 40/12 = 4.7] turns...which are about 40 shields. You'll also lose a total commerce value, which can be very roughly estimated to 100-200 science, depending on when using the mined gems.
Your second city should make up for the 40 shields within the 20-30 extra turns, but more importantly it will be much more productive in the following 20-50 turns.
The only downside I see is that it will be practically impossible to grab an early religion this way.
You can't if you don't have at least one city with their religion, and you won't want to if not the majority of your cities already got this religion: For every other town you'd lose one happy face and 20% production if in Thecracy.DaveMcW said:
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
Just one chop for the Settler, and only the granary finished of course.karmina said:
Since you don't produce if you are to build the settler at the end of the city's growth, you just lose the two forests.
A valid alternative is to build a second worker at size 3, because that allows you to chop for the granary which reduces lost time to 4 turns to max out. That may well be worth it.
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