GOTM 12 Final Spoiler

[dojoboy]

Well, not much to tell because I failed to keep notes again. I could paste in the autolog, but... . I did enjoy a close space race w/ Washington. And, btw, this was my first Civ4 victory on Prince. I always wanted to give myself a trophy.

Entry class: Contender
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Mali
Game date: 1983 AD
Base score: 3911
Final score: 9294

 

[godotnut]

I played an entirely peaceful, straight-ahead cultural game this time, going for fastest cultural again because I'm pretty sure Redbad beat me in the Immortal GOTM.

It's been a while, so I can't remember all of the details. Let's see ... settled in place, second city to grab marble, cow, floodplains, etc to the SE. Third city further east on the long central river, on a hill near the corn. These three became my cultural cities. The space where many placed their third city--grabbing the bananas, fish, corn, and copper--was an ideal great person farm: tons of food, good production without wasting food, and since it wasn't on a river, it was clear this was better as the artist farm than the other three spots. Later in the game, I formed a secondary great artist farm in the spot far to the southeast, where there were two seafood resources (fish, I if I remember correctly).

I farmed about a dozen artists or so (can't quite recall) and also a couple scientists and prophets--also one merchant and engineer, if remember correctly. I used the merchant for the trade route cash to buy a couple major religious buildings, and I used the engineer on one of the stone wonders (Notre Dame, I think).

I added four or five artists as specialists, until they were more valuable as end-game culture bombs. I was easily able to run at 100% culture toward the end, with trade cash from my opponents and all the income from the specialists and shrines.

I saved the trees near the capital to chop the Pyramids. I also built all of the early and middle-game marble wonders.

I've been experimenting with upping the cultural slider to 50% to take advantage of the cultural multipliers after I build my first few major religious buildings. This seemed to bear fruit. I should probably go edit my Deity guide to give more details about how to best balance the culture slider during the buying phase.

I was a little worried about the land grab, being on a peninsula and playing a pure builder's game, but it turned out to not be a problem. Louis was slow to expand toward me, and all of the off-shore islands gave me more room than I needed.

I finished my cultural victory in 1705. I was hoping to finish in the 1600s, but it wasn't to be.

 

[Vynd]

I won a Conquest victory in 1846, score: 5107/50,265. It was interesting for me, since I seldom pursue military victories. I attacked Washington shortly after 500AD with Maces and Cats, and took him out pretty easily. I'd had some hope of spreading my religion to Mao and Louis and using them to help get a Diplomatic win. Well Louis did become my Confucian best buddy, but Mao on the other hand converted to Buddhism like Washington, and actually declared war on me while I was fighting the Americans.

So once I was done with the USA I just kept right on rolling into Mao. I foolishly slacked off a bit on military production and suffered a setback where Mao got lucky and kicked me out of a just captured city and left me too weak to advance for awhile. I had him back under control shortly, but mistakes like this demonstrate why it took me until the 1840s to win.

Once Mao was wiped out, and I saw that Louis would probably be my opponent in a vote, I decided to just go the Conquest route. Louis's army was as big and advanced as mine so I had to take a little time to get my economy in order and boost my strength. But once I went to war, I smashed Louis with Maces and some Cavalry. Then I invaded Persia via Galleys. Cyrus had actually out-teched me to some extent, he had Galleons and Riflemen. I had Grenadiers and Cannons to backup my Cavalry, but the Rifles were annoying to kill, especialy when he started drafting them.

I declared on Tokugawa and Hatty as the war with Cyrus was drawing to a close. Those wars were just a matter of shuttling troops overseas as quickly as possible, neither lasted more than a dozen turns or so.

 

[mushroomshirt]

Managed a cultural victory in 1802 with ~20k points.

I was pretty pleased with myself since this was basically my second real attempt at a cultural win. I think with some better GP management I could have done better. I had too many great prophets and even one stupid great merchant (I had a GP city and got mixed up between artists and merchant specialists).

Another mistake was being paranoid about falling behind in tech and continuing to half-ass tech toward rifling when I should have shut off research completely.

I founded Confucianism, Christianity and Islam, took the Hindu holy city from Louis. My luckiest break of the game was probably taking a French city that had Buddhism spread there (Washington's religion). Once he convinced me to convert, we were on good terms for the remainder of the game.

 

[Markus5]

Diplo victory in the early 1900s, if I remember correctly.

Louis declared very early, didn't do much damage. I took a couple of cities then let him send attacker against my well fortified cities. These were frontier cities, and there wasn't much improvements for him to destroy. After a short peace, I removed Louis from the map. Eventually I had the entire continent and most of the smaller islands. I easily built the UN and and switched to Free Rel to get Hatty on my side. I thought about domination by taking all of Japan and Egypt, but took the easy way out.

 

[Lawrence]

Cultural Victory 1695AD.

I wanted to build the Great Library in my capital but was beaten by 3 turns, got other important wonders successfully.

Made a silly mistake to join Washington to declare war on Louis, forgotten that Paris (I took it from Louis already) was nearly undefended and right across the French border, therefore Louis took it with only a horse archer and a sword. I had to took it back after 3 turns. This greatly affected the speed I spread my religions, Paris was meant to be a missionary powerhouse! Other than that, nothing much to say.

Got all 7 religions, founded 5: Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, Islam. Washington founded Buddhism and spreaded it to France. Cyrus founded Hinduism and spreaded to France. I took France so took all those religions. However I have been too slow in spreading the religions and building cathedrals, the final cathedrals was built in the 1600s, only several turns before victory. In hindsight, I was too merciful, should have drawn the whip much more times.

I still don't have a good grip on the balance of economy and religion on cultural wins. Anyway, this victory is faster than my test games, which were won at 1816 and 1745, so maybe next time I can do better.

 

[Hooha]

Seein so many victories makes me a little discouraged, and somewhat apprehensive about posting a defeat (especially with all the "this was a really easy map" messages).

In short, I warred with France, pushing him away from the iron. Problem was, while I was fighting, America was developing high tech. Between Washington and Cyrus, I couldn't get a leg up on technology. I wanted to take Japan, but China declared war on me for no good reason. No, I take that back -- I found oil, and I guess that was their "green light." They had infantry, and I didn't. So I was forced to produce a lot of calvary to throw at their infantry units. Eventually, I was able to make artillery. That threw the tide of battle, and I was able to broker peace while only losing one city.

Anyway, America won a space race victory. I don't really know how the victories come about. Maybe if I had picked up some iron earlier (like when I wanted to make knights), then my France war would have gone quicker. I went clockwise from the north around France's cities, but if I had gone from the SE city, I would have had iron. Thing was, that area wasn't explored on my map, so I didn't know iron was there. Bummer how one or two resources can make a difference.

I don't care what anyone says... these GOTMs are tough.

 

[da_Vinci]

Seein so many victories makes me a little discouraged, and somewhat apprehensive about posting a defeat (especially with all the "this was a really easy map" messages).

I don't care what anyone says... these GOTMs are tough.

Dont' be discouraged! My game (posted) came close to going in a similar direction to yours (from the sense of your game that I have).

In my case, Cyrus was the tech threat, and my constant warring was killing my tech growth with a lot of war weariness. After Cyrus completed his Apollo program, and I saw that the domination wasn't coming quickly enough, I had to scramble to transform my empire to beat him to space.

Playing on any level beyond noble has you playing with a handicap, and thus is tough in that sense. Skill development in the game is a matter of discovering (or being taught) techniques that allow you to manage/overcome/compensate for the handicaps of the higher difficulty levels. I am just begining to learn these, and for me I can't even take prince level for granted. The ability to tech fast with a small empire is not something I have mastered, but the AI seems to be able to do that.

City specialization and managing diplomacy are, I think, two areas that make or break play at higher levels. City specialization includes issues from where to settle, how many to settle/hold, what buildings to make, what tile improvements to make, how to use specialists and great people, and what wonders to build/avoid.

Diplomacy is about manipulating the AI. Control the relationship scores, make advantageous tech trades, get them to war with each other. I can't say that I know how to do all of this yet, but I can see the value of being able to do it.

I would suggest you post more details about your GOTM 12 gameplay in this thread. You are likely to get some helpful feedback that will help your next effort. JerichoHill sent me some advice via PM after my crushing loss in GOTM 10 that helped me to wins in GOTM 11 and 12 (not fast wins, mind you, but I have more limited definitions of success at this point).

I am about to try my first SGOTM, and I think that will be an eye-opener as I will be able to participate in discussions of the (almost) turn-by-turn decisions of a team that has players a notch or two (or more) above me in skill.

So keep the faith! I suspect that only a few subtle strategic or tactical decisions were the difference between victory and defeat in your game.

dV

 

[GenericKen]

Resignation to boredom on turn 205 (1450 AD, I think).

Given that it was a prince level game designed to be more accomodating, I suspected that the starting spot would be ideal (a second gold hills would prove me right) and that I would not be alone on the island (4 other civs, in fact, connected by land). This meant early bronzeworking into military (no-anarchy into slavery is nice too) and skip founding religion to capture louis' holy city. Skirmisher means I can hold off researching feudalism as long as possible to maintain early-game military advantages.

Unfortunately, there's a large span of jungle between louis and me, so an early rush is economically unfeasable. When I miss out on judaism, I take the double gold start, gambit my second city to be costal (financial + lighhouse lake ftw), and make a successful CoL gambit with a safe margin. Bureaucracy is a huge boon in the double-gold double-spice capital for much of the game. I plan to drop in and out of organized religion to the military one, but due to economic woes, I wind up never switching from it.

I start in on louis around 0 bc, clean him up around 450 bc. Unfortunately, my economy starts dipping rather suddenly from all the french jungle, and I get spooked before starting in on the Americans. I have a healthy supply of cats, but no iron (just hooked up french iron) and no swords, so I'm warry of starting in before teching the economy and picking up the next tier of units.

I see an opening with colossus and pick it up, but miss out on the pyramids to cyrus.

So I slow down and tech toward knights and banking. Waste a good 50-60 turns doing so, as Washington is defending with a single stack of elephants and mostly archers, and I have the momoentum with cats and highly promoted axes, and the buddhist holy city would have paid for the American empire on its own. By the time I hit maces and get them to the front, Wash has started building longbows. I decide to take him before he hits pikes, and he rolls over easily to cats and maces, with axes to wipe up. In the meanwhile I find a backward toku and decide to leave him alone, as his fragmented landmasses are puny and probably unneccessary to domination.

While teching, I was hoping to leave astronomy unresearched as long as possible to milk colossus, and pick it up once a rival naval power neccessitated it (or when I ran out of land to conquer). Strangely, the time never came for astronomy, as every single landmass in the game seemed to be accessable by weenie-boats, and the AI isn't exactly famed for its naval prowess.

One nice thing about beeline banking, though, is that it gave me a real appreciation for merchantalism. Almost every city got forges (early gold and later gems), and the free engineer everywhere was very nice. It would have been nicer with pyramids, or with angor wat + early caste system, but I found myself wanting slavery a lot in my new aquisitions.

Anyway, china is pretty hilly, and takes a good 20 turns to wipe up (in addition to a colony and an absolutely evil city on a single land tile that required an amphibious assault; it was quite lightly defended, though, and only cost one mace). In the meanwhile, I pick up paper and buy maps on the cheap, discovering egypt and the gigantic ice cap, and suddenly domination seems less likely. China's done in 1350.

I've got three boats on the other end of china, and holy-city spies in his two biggest cities (save Hatty, the whole world is confucian from early conversion, before I turned on merchantalism). Cyrus nearly has tech pairity for medieval units, but he's too much of a wuss to actually build any of them (except for pikemen, which he seems to like a lot). I declare, drop 4 cats and two macemen, and drop another 6 units. A stack of 15 would likely be enough to finish cyrus, as scouting reveals most of his inner cities to be even more poorly defended than his outer ones. Chemistry pops during the invasion, and I upgrade two tripple-city-raider axemen (as my economy had massively improved from the colossus- banking-fishingvillage tripple-hydra), and I take the capital and pyramids without a loss just as angor wat finishes building, switching to representation-caste.


It's 1450, and I decide to abandon the game. The rest of Cyrus' core will probably fall in 12 turns, dividing his empre into *three* with no military resources, and the rest of the empire would likely take 30-40 turns of just running around. I'm roughtly 9 turns away from military tradition if I change gears (probably picking up the taj), and around 7 turns from my current beeline education->liberalism->economics-> GoldenAge burning off a great prophet (with 1k in the bank and 50gpt). I've got my old core working fevorishly to produce longbows and missionaries to fill newly aquired cities while pumping settlers to try to fill the poles, but domination still seems quite far away. Even with cyrus' total land, I'd be at around 45%.

With tokugawa putting up puny island colonies in the most inconvenient places and astronomy *still* not researched, conquest doesn't seem much nearer.

The victory would likely be domination in the late 1700s, if I'm lucky. The current base score is around 3700, and would likely grow to around 6500 after taking cyrus and hatty's cities and WWs. Ultimately, not the sort of late-game win I was hoping for. I was too warry about the economy before taking on Washington. I should have planned on moving the capital earlier and focusing more on the hydra than the colossus, and should have teched toward macemen rather than knights. Also didn't turn enough of the conquered cities into industrial-military-complexes, and units were taking 10- 15 turns to reach the front lines.

A lesson in planning for me, I suppose.

The final save:

 

[jesusin]

Seein so many victories makes me a little discouraged, and somewhat apprehensive about posting a defeat (especially with all the "this was a really easy map" messages).

Oh, you make me feel ashamed. What can I do to make up with you? If you PM me your 2 first items produced and your first 2 techs researched, and also a picture of your cities placement, I will try my best to point out something you could have done better. Or, even better, post that data here and you will receive more opinions, so you will learn even more.

I have been playing Civ on and off for 20 years, so I guess I have a good grisp of the basics. Maybe in 20 years you will replay GOTM12 and think "it was an easy game".

 

[Khalid]

playing contender, domination win 1595 for som 70k points.

This game being my first game with the goal set from the beginning to the fastest domination win. I would be surprised if I reach it.

The first spoiler ended in 500AD, when I managed to abandon mu builder habits and started to build military. My plan was to establish a solid empire, while Luis was expanding the other way and develop my cities. Its difficult to stop developing, but I succeeded and in 750AD my fresh new army with 8xp from barracks, vasalage and theocracy assembled on the french american border. After the discovery of feudalism I build unit every turn, due to the prebuilds. My empire concentrated mostly on army for the next hundreds of years.

yes, I have decided to skip france (they had longbows) and go after america first, as they were tech leaders. Luis was also my best friend, since i converted him to confu. I also bribed them to join the war, but he did only pillaging and rose in power significantly, so it was only counterproductive at last.

I don't have to autolog at hand, so the dates are quite illustrative. Edit: Dates updated.

Start of the domination:
1) war with america 980AD-?1120AD?
My stack of maces and cats with some spears and HA advanced to america. First time I managed to build enough cats for the war. The war was brief, though washington managed to get longbows at the beginning of war. But thanks to the prince level, he had not enough money to upgrade all archers. I was facing on average 1 longbow per city, wich was quite easy.
But had this been a higher level game, he would upgrade all of them at once and I wouldn't have enough troops to finish him. That's due to the long builder period, which should end sooner. I also got my first high level unit which allowed me to build HE.

Another mistake during the war. After feudalism, I researched guilds to get knihts, as everybody started to have longbows. After I researched it, I was really surprised that I cant build knights. I had no iron
But luckily a mine near Gao discovered a source of iron 3 turns later

So i could upgrade all the HA i have build and which were almost useless against american spears.

2) war against china 1190AD-1420AD
After the american war I though that I should consolidate the empire. But i decided to put my military advantege into the greatest use and attacked china right after elimination of america. My stack with couple medics had no problem healing and advanced to china and crushed them fast. With the help of the first cavaleries (upgraded knights) which were allowed after I used liberalism for military tradition. The most annoying part was the city on an island, which killed my amphibious cavalry

3) war with france 1450AD-1515AD
My next big mistake. I decided to take my army from china back and attack france. They spent 7 turns going back, couple more wlaking through france and next 7 turns going back to china to be shipped to persia. France fell solely to our high skilled 8xp cavalries and french pikes were no match for them.

4) after french war i had some 35% of land and expecting some 5% more when french cities recover from revolt. In the mean time I have switched back to peace civics (OR, bureaucracy) and developed american, chineese and frenc cities.

I switched back to vasalage and thaocracy once i discovered MT to build my cavalry force to destroy france. Since then I switched back to OR and free speach (culture boost) and build almost solely settlers. I could have build less of them and boost some population as I finnished with some 10 useless settlers.

Just with the last french city captured, my eskimo settlers started marching towards the southern icelands. Workers building roads and settlers following. Something stroke me in the brain and i send two cavalries to guard it. Don't forget to guard your settlers. Next turn I met barb warrior, HA, popped hut for 3 barb warriors. But settling the souther iceland madi it up only to about 50% of land, so my land force moved towards cyrus.

5) war with cyrus and toku 1550AD-1595AD
When i realised that settlers will not make it up to the 64% of land i researched astronomy. My galleys shipped my army to the former chineese city, which was on persian continent. This helped really. After 2 turns i had 12 cavalry on the persian border, and 10 other units on ships ready to land. I razed most of persian cities, because it is faster to settle the space than to wait for then to recover from revolt. The race for 64% of land finnished in AD1595 when my 6 new persian cities popped borders for almost 66% of land and 70%+ pop.

In the meantime I settled several islands and took one from toku. In the end, cyrus discovered riffling and i had to kill about 4 of them, which was really annoying and killed some upgraded cavalry. I didn't heal my units during war with cyrus, so i was worried that I would have slow down due to the rifles, but managed to kill them.

If I didn't make those mentioned mistakes, I could have won a century ago. the most delaying mistake was not realizing soon enough that I have to attack cyrus.

Thanks for an interesting map. I will correct the dates, when I come home. Edit: Dates updated.
Edit: Sorry, its quite long

 

[da_Vinci]

If you PM me your 2 first items produced and your first 2 techs researched, and also a picture of your cities placement, I will try my best to point out something you could have done better. Or, even better, post that data here and you will receive more opinions, so you will learn even more.

And if the opinions are posted here, more of us will learn. And some will even dispute the advice!

dV

 

[Vynd]

Seein so many victories makes me a little discouraged, and somewhat apprehensive about posting a defeat (especially with all the "this was a really easy map" messages).

I think there are more defeats out there than one might think. It's just that most people aren't brave enough to post about them.

 

[civ_steve]

Challenger version - another cultural victory, 1880 AD.

Somehow these type of games go much faster than Conquest/Domination ones, so that's appealing, just to finish the game!

I thought I'd try a different approach and use primarily Artist specialists as my source of culture (rather than cottages and commerce). With Sistine Chapel each Artist provides 6 base culture. My 3 cities would be Timbuktu (founded at the starting spot), Djenne (near the Marble, Wheat and Cows) and Kambi Saleh (up the coast from Timbuktu, getting Fish, Wheat, Bananas and Copper). My Workers primarily Irrigated to push population up.

I founded 4 religions (Hinduism early on, Christianity and Confucianism around 500 BC, and Islam later), and when I eventually took all of the French homelands, I also got Taoism (my 5th) which had spread there from America. So I started sending missionaries, building Temples, and Cathedrals in my 3 culture cities. I was primarily in Slavery for most of the game, and swapped back and forth between Organized Religion and Theocracy, depending on whether I was building Maces to take on the French, or Temples/Cathedrals for culture.

Finally started on my culture push in the early 1600's, and switched to Caste System. Also had Pacifism, Free Speech, Representation and Mercantilism going. Since many of the captured French cities had Djenne and Timbuktu as their foreign trade partners, I didn't lose much money in foreign trade, and the extra Artist Specialist helped the cultural cities. I was also able to maintain 100% cultural% by assigning lots of Merchants in my other cities and trading for chunks of gold as it became available. Science rate wasn't too bad because of Representation and all the specialists I was using.

Timbuktu was able to sustain 5 Artist under Mercantilism; combined with several Wonders and the commerce from being the Hindu holy city, it maxed out at a bit over 700 cpt, reaching Legendary status in 1836. KS had 11 Artists going; I had it build Hermitage and Heroic Epic, and it got up to nearly 600 cpt, and was generating about 120 GPP's/turn, all Great Artists. Djenne had 6 or 7 Artists going, and got up to high 300's cpt. I figured I would get a bunch of Great Artists to culture bomb Djenne and KS; problem was I'd generated a bunch of early Great People - 3 Great Prophets (used for Civil Service, Divine Right and to form Hindu holy shrine), 3 Engineers (finished 2 Cathedrals and Taj Mahal in KS), a Great Scientist (Academy, IIRC) and at the end a Great Merchant in one of the captured French cities. Still I had 9 Great Artists to use (a 10th was due in 2 turns after 1880), and popped 6 in Djenne and 3 in KS in 1874. KS goes Legendary in 1876 and Djenne in 1880.

An interesting approach, and it worked to win the game (but not done well enough to be competitive for fastest finish). Definitely needed to capture France much earlier. And KS was a holy city for 2 Religions - would have been better to convert the empire to one of those and found the Shrine in KS - it could use the culture more than Timbuktu. Also, too many non-GA Great People.

Very fun game , and very happy to finish and submit!

 

[Mad Professor]

Contender. 1944AD Space Race Victory, Score: 15961.

The one thing I find frustrating about going for space race victories at this level is that it takes longer than it does at Monarch or Emperor. This is because (I guess) that at the higher levels, the AI’s are teching faster, and so I find myself trading techs all through the game whereas at Prince, once I get alphabet, and trade to fill in the gaps in early science, that’s about the last of the tech trading – I get ahead in tech and stay there, and having to do it all yourself without trades is sure slower.

I had fun getting Djenne (my GP farm) to size 29 I put that east of the gold near Timbuktu and was in between the corn, copper and cows there. (Timbuktu had both gold mines) With lots of farms and the Globe Theatre, a hospital, environmentalism and all the other health buildings, it was size 29 and still growing when the game ended. I don’t think I’ve ever achieved a size 30 city ever, so 29 is about as big as I’ve ever grown one. Djenne was also one of my higher production centres once I slotted in couple of workshops, building one of the bigger space ship parts. It turned out to be quite a city.

Anyhow, you can read my first spoiler at post #58 On page 3 of the first spoiler thread for a description of my start. From there I knew I was cruising, and it was a matter of getting there as quickly as possible, but as I said, it was a little frustrating.

At 1AD, I was at war with Louis and marching on Paris. I took Paris and Tours after that as well as the two I’d already taken before granting peace. A little while later I attacked Louis again as Washington went for him and looked ready to squash him. I went in for what I could get, grabbing another three cities before Washington wiped him out. After that there were a few wars involving Tokugawa – Cyrus attacked him twice, and Hatty attacked him too, but he survived to the end, though not exactly in style. Once I got my share of Louis I decided to give up military dreams from there and built military to keep others off my back. In the end I had defensive pacts with Cyrus and Washington.

As for the space race, Mao had finished the Apollo program and had finished three casings before I launched, but no-one else had even the Apollo program (or even rocketry in a couple of cases)

 

[Sleepless]

Most of my games end in a space race win which I was heading for again. Right towards the end I decided to change and go for a diplo win. I had built the Space Elevator in 1892 and didn't manage the UN until 1898. My relations with the AI when I went for this victory were

Louis - Furious (probably because I had wiped him out in the 1700s) .

Tok - Annoyed due to wiping out his friend above although I had OB with
him for a while !!!! (did meet him very early with exploring
workboat, anybody else send these out)?

Washington - Pleased so a change to US to get him to friendly.

Mao - Annoyed because I wouldnt give him anything all game,

Cyrus - Pleased but he would be my opponent in the elections.

Hattie - Friendly, I had supplied her with lots of free techs and resources
to keep her in the game as Cyrus kept attacking her.

After winning the vote my first resolution was for a diplomatic victory which I fell a few votes short. Mmmmmm 2 ways to go here farm everywhere and grow my cities or amalgamate some of Mao's cities into my empire. I went for the latter. Felt a bit guilty attacking him with modern armour and mech inf but then again if he had voted for me I wouldnt have to kick his butt.

So in 1924 a diplomatic victory for 23242 was achieved.

Another game I really enjoyed and a big thankyou to the staff.

 

[man-erg]

Entry class: Adventurer
Game status: Spaceship Victory for America
Game date: 1998 AD
Base score: 2443
Final score: 2930

Although defeated, I don't feel (too) ashamed as this is only my 3rd full game of Civ4. Prince level is a couple of levels higher than my previous games, so I'm quite pleased that I survived to 1998 without being annihilated, or even losing a city.

I finished 6th out of the 7 civs. This was after being 7th for most of the years AD, I was actually beginning to overtake the other stragglers. If game had continued to 2050, I would probably have got to 4th. I've learnt a hell of a lot from this game and from reading through the other summaries.

A summary of my many mistakes: Biggest problem was that my empire stagnated from around 500 AD to 1900 AD. My ignorance of the new CIV4 mechanics, mainly health and the way happiness is handled were the main symptoms. It seems that now it's a continual reduction of efficiency rather that a sudden 'crisis hit'. Studying the manual helped and eventually I revamped my cities around 1900 and from 12 turns per tech, improved to 3 or 4.

A couple of questions: what is a good way to deal with the health problems? I read that building by fresh water or forest is good. And certain buildings help. But in the later game, I couldn't find much to improve it and it really hit my productivity.

Also, in previous Civs, when a city grows too big, you just build a settler, but this doesn't work in Civ4. So how can you handle city growth when it goes beyond your means to support? I guess you can make more specialists, is there anything else?

I made some silly mistakes I won't make again. Namely doing a city spam tactic (don't laugh!) at the start. Also, a couple of times, I got a science advance but couldn't exploit it through lack of resources. Worst case was when I actually had the resources, but they were 'unavailable'. This caught me out badly with railroad. Even though I had a coal mine, I couldn't build railroads. Eventually (maybe 50 years later) I realised the reason was that I was exporting my coal

Jesusin: I'd like to be able to list the first 2 items and 2 techs, but I didn't switch on the autolog till 1700. In fact, I didn't switch on the other HOF functions till right at the end. Wish I'd had it on at the start! So much more useful information. Looking forward to using this for a whole game next time. I reckon even at my beginner level this could have given me a few hundred extra points.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A couple of questions: what is a good way to deal with the health problems? I read that building by fresh water or forest is good. And certain buildings help. But in the later game, I couldn't find much to improve it and it really hit my productivity.

Maxing on health is tricky, though it doesn't effect you too badly, just restricts growth (or occasionally makes a city starve). Main things you can do are:

1. Hook up or trade for health resources. When you are in your early settling phase, try to make sure you get those resources into your empire.
2. Build buildings that improve health. There aren't many in the early game (basically aquaduct and grocer), but there are some good late game buildings for that. Supermarket for example.
3. Don't build buildings that harm health unless they really will be useful in that city.
4. Research Genetics and Future Techs
5. Switch to environmentalism (though usually the disadvantages outweigh the health benefits for that one)
6. Just put up with the slower city growth.

Also, in previous Civs, when a city grows too big, you just build a settler, but this doesn't work in Civ4. So how can you handle city growth when it goes beyond your means to support? I guess you can make more specialists, is there anything else?

What do you mean 'beyond your means to support'? Unless you mean, beyond the happiness that it'll support, I don't think there's really any such thing as a city that's too big, as long as the population are doing something useful - generating hammers or commerce. (And the population always contributes to your score, which is very useful at the end, if you care about your score ranking )

If you mean that you have unhappy citizens, then you can
1. Get more happiness resources. In the late game that normally means trading for them.
2. Build buildings that improve happiness. Some of those are non-obvious, eg. forge, market. Sometimes you may have to make an effort to spread religion so you can build temples.
3. Use the culture slider (only a good idea if most or all of your cities have unhappiness problems, otherwise you'll needlessly lose a lot of commerce). Also works a lot better if you have theatres and colisseums in your cities.
4. If you are running slavery, poprush (by >=2 pop at a time) to build something useful.
5. If the unhappiness is caused by war weariness, switch to police state, and build jails and Mount Rushmore. Or negotiate an end to the war. Or improve your military tactics so you don't lose as many units.

If you mean you have more population than there are squares for them to work, then yes, just assign them to be specialists. The game will do that for you anyway, though it might not pick the best specialists for your particular strategy so it's worth while checking in the city screen and reallocating as appropriate. You can also cottage/workshop/watermill over farms if you prefer, which reduces population growth while getting something more useful out of the existing population (cottaging is probably not useful in the late game though as there's no time for the cottages to mature).

My experience is that for both happiness and health, the number of different resources you can get is the real key, and will have a bigger impact than almost anything else you do.

Even though I had a coal mine, I couldn't build railroads. Eventually (maybe 50 years later) I realised the reason was that I was exporting my coal

Ummmm. Mutter mutter. Ummm. I just might have done that myself in a *very* recent game. And I regard myself as a pretty experienced player.

 

[Khalid]

A couple of questions: what is a good way to deal with the health problems? I read that building by fresh water or forest is good. And certain buildings help. But in the later game, I couldn't find much to improve it and it really hit my productivity.

Also, in previous Civs, when a city grows too big, you just build a settler, but this doesn't work in Civ4. So how can you handle city growth when it goes beyond your means to support? I guess you can make more specialists, is there anything else?

DynamicSpirit has made a really good summary.

I just want to add, that on higher levels, hapinnes is usually more of a problem in the early game than health. Also in this game there were pigs, cows, wheat and fish nearby, which you should be able to have in your cultural borders and use them. But you had only gold and somewhat difficult to get wines to help with happiness. So with a harbor, granary, aquaduct and fresh water (there a lot of fresh water around) you could have +8 to health allowing you to grow your cities to pop 12 with no penalty to growth and not including forests.

And don't forget that you need certain buildings for specific types of specialist, so don't forget to build those for the specialist you want to have.

I'd like to be able to list the first 2 items and 2 techs, but I didn't switch on the autolog till 1700.

When you play the game longer, you will not need the autolog to list you first 2 techs and production items. These are a vital part of your early strategy and as you will realize, the early game matters a lot. So in the early stages you decide whether to build or attack soon, go for a religion or early trading opportunities. That's your strategy decisions which then form your game so you will easily remeber them.

 

[da_Vinci]

A summary of my many mistakes: Biggest problem was that my empire stagnated from around 500 AD to 1900 AD.

Been there, done that too. I am going to assume that income was going negative, causing you to cut science down to a crawl?

I found that the new maintenence cost in Civ 4 took adjusting to. In Civ 3, waste / corruption only penalized the city it was in, and never went negative. In Civ 4, high maintenance can exceed a city's production of gold and then parasatizes gold output from your other cities. I have found that to account more for stagnation than the happiness or health issues.

This makes Code of Laws, courthouses, and Forbidden Palace a must for large empires. These items, and careful expansion, should keep stagnation to a minimum.

dV