[BTS] Help and advice with progress

[guyyee]

Ok, I converted to WBsave and set the difficulty to Noble.

Progress:

1. Researching Animal Husbandry
2. Sent Warrior down South to explore, came into contact with a new Civ > Aztec
3. Building Settler in the first city.
4. Worker built farm on 1W, cottage on 1S of city and cottage on 1E of city.

Plan:

1. Build a Warrior after Settler pops out - to escort settler for new city placement.
2. Chop tree on 1NE and 1N for increasing Hammer.
3. Research Writing.

Question:

1. Still not sure where is the best place to start 2nd city. Seems like there are many Civ close to my settlement.
2. Was my tile improvement sequence okay? What would you have done different?

 

[guyyee]

• Growth: The city must gather 22 food to grow from size 1 to size 2. Currently there is no food in the "bin". This food is acquired from the tiles the city works, such as the wheat.
• 3 + 1 / turn: This is the production in the city. Since you are producing a worker, both food and hammers go into the build (normally only hammers).
• Worker (20/60): This is what the city is currently producing, so a worker. There are 20 food+hammers (see above) into the build so far, and you need 60 to complete the worker. With 4 production per turn, it takes 10 more turns.
• The city produces 10 , 2 and 4 per turn. This is essentially what the Palace does, plus the few tiles you can work. Later these numbers will be much higher, when the city is larger and can work more tiles.
• Maintenance: This is a cost that is accrued throughout the empire, for all cities. It's added up (but rounded down), so once you get at least 1 maintenance, you will have to pay it. You never actually pay anything when you only have 1 city, but once you get more, you need to start paying maintenance. It's a mechanic to make sure you can't just spam cities willy nilly without crashing the economy. This is why cottages can be important in the early game, or other great commerce resources like gems, gold and silver.
• 10/100 This is the culture in the city. Currently culture/culture needed to expand borders. So once the city reaches 100 , the borders will expand.

PS: When building workers or settlers, the food goes into producing them instead of growing the city. That is why cities can't grow while building for instance your initial worker. When it is complete and you start building e.g. a warrior, food will increase in the city's food bar, and once it has gotten 22 food, it will grow to size 2. This is why Granaries are so important. It saves half the food. Which means that if this city had a granary from the beginning and it grew to size 2, it would have 11 food in the "bin" after it reached size 2. That means it is much faster to grow cities with a granary than without. This again increases the efficiency of whipping -- but that's a more complex topic that can wait until later.

Concerning the Growth: Let's say the number is 17/24, so it means I have 17 Food, I just need 7 more to upsize the city - correct?

About Production and Unit Building Progress: Say I churn out 5 Food and 2 Hammer / turn; a settler is 36/100 (36 F+H in, 64 more to make it 100), why does the computer say it needs 10 turns to complete? If my math is correct, 64/7 should be 9.14 = 9 turns, no?

 

[AcaMetis]

Concerning the Growth: Let's say the number is 17/24, so it means I have 17 Food, I just need 7 more to upsize the city - correct?

About Production and Unit Building Progress: Say I churn out 5 Food and 2 Hammer / turn; a settler is 36/100 (36 F+H in, 64 more to make it 100), why does the computer say it needs 10 turns to complete? If my math is correct, 64/7 should be 9.14 = 9 turns, no?

Correct.

You need to meet or exceed a unit or building's production requirement to finish that unit or building. There's no dividing or rounding going on, the game just adds up production until you've accumulated enough. In that specific scenario, after 9 turns you'll have 36+9×(5+2)=99/100 invested in the Settler, which is not enough to finish it. The turn after it'll exceed the required 100, meaning the Settler finishes production and you get 6 worth of overflow to put into your next unit/building/etc.

You're right in that the game tends to truncate decimals in places where it shouldn't, you'll encounter that a few times as you'll pick up some more advanced strategies and tricks, but city production is not one of those situations (thankfully).

 

[5tephen]

In the absence of other suggestions, how about 2S1E of the copper for city 2. The rationale being that if you double click on your capital there's a purple culture bar - hover your mouse over this and you'll find it's about to fill up - at this point your capital's borders will expand to take the copper. The BFC of a city in my suggested location will claim the copper and several FPs and riverside grassland which are all good tiles. Were your capital not about to expand its borders I'd suggest settling closer to the copper so you can use it immediately - unlike the capital your second city doesn't make culture unless you build certain buildings.

Your grasp of food and hammers invested is vastly better than mine at a similar stage. Now might be a good point to discuss whipping. Having researched bronze working you have access to your first civic change; slavery. You can review your civics by pressing 'F3.' A good time to change to slavery is often when moving your first settler. Slavery enables you to 'whip' away population of your city for 30 hammers per 1 population*. To do this find the top left button on the panel of your city screen, to the right of the units/buildings you can build. There is a penalty to whipping of 1 unhappiness per whip which lasts 10 turns and is additive if you whip again within 10 turns (see the happy/sad faces in the top right of the city screen.) Because of the unhappiness penalty it is usually recommended to whip at least 2 population if you are using this. Given a total cost of 100 to 2 pop whip a settler you'd need a city of at least 4 population (can't whip more than half a city's population), more than 40 invested in the settler (2 pop whip generates 60) and less than 70 invested in the settler (can't whip away more settlers than hammers needed.) Particularly once you have a granary which speeds the regrowth after whipping, whipping can be a very good way of building things quickly.

* Later there are some positive and negative modifiers to this value especially for wonders but don't worry about this for now.

 

[AcaMetis]

One thing I'd like to note about whipping: Don't be afraid of the penalties. Yes, whipping causes unhappiness. Yes, whipping weakens your cities by dropping it's population. Yes, it's possible to whip a city to the point where it's crippled by unhappiness, or crippled by it's perpetually low population, if not both.

Whipping is the most powerful mechanic in the game. Learn how to use it well, and you will be able to succeed in many a situation that Tribalism can only blankly stare at, waiting for a miracle.

The full rundown of tips, tricks, inner mechanics, etc., can wait for later. For now just remember that whipping penalties are part of a complex mechanic we'll get into explaining fully later, not something that should scare you away from using it entirely.

 

[lymond]

@guyyee Have you been introduced to the BUG mod yet? I can't tell as your pics seem to be cropped. You can find it here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-bts-unaltered-gameplay-bug-bat-and-bull.268/

Install BUG and BULL into Custom Assets (BUG install has the option) and BULL is just copying stuff (directions in txt). Install this way and it will work for this game - mod is not loaded. BUG greatly improves the UI/info plus some other helpful features.

Also, as per my recommendation, you did not create the WB save from Turn 0. Find the autosave in save/auto and start over. All your food and research was wiped clean when you generated a WB save at the point you did so. (I can tell in your game as your event log was erased)
....on that note, something seems off with the timings here likely due to how you did the WB save. You should have more population and start your settler earlier at size 3.
1NW of cows to the E is decent too for some cottage sharing.

Bring your warrior back..way too far scouting. Priority is immediate region for city spots.

Another option would be to settle on the Wine. Like 5tephen said it crabs copper later from Wash pop, and can share wheat some. Gets deer later.

edit: Converted Noble save attached (also attached WB save in case folks want to use a mod)
Removed The Wheel as no free tech on Noble.

(Note: With this start, on Noble, I'm inclined to go Mining>BW>AH first before Pottery. Farm a Flood Plain. This allows one to start chopping sooner)

 

[guyyee]

@guyyee Have you been introduced to the BUG mod yet? I can't tell as your pics seem to be cropped. You can find it here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-bts-unaltered-gameplay-bug-bat-and-bull.268/

Install BUG and BULL into Custom Assets (BUG install has the option) and BULL is just copying stuff (directions in txt). Install this way and it will work for this game - mod is not loaded. BUG greatly improves the UI/info plus some other helpful features.

Also, as per my recommendation, you did not create the WB save from Turn 0. Find the autosave in save/auto and start over. All your food and research was wiped clean when you generated a WB save at the point you did so. (I can tell in your game as your event log was erased)
....on that note, something seems off with the timings here likely due to how you did the WB save. You should have more population and start your settler earlier at size 3.
1NW of cows to the E is decent too for some cottage sharing.

Bring your warrior back..way too far scouting. Priority is immediate region for city spots.

Another option would be to settle on the Wine. Like 5tephen said it crabs copper later from Wash pop, and can share wheat some. Gets deer later.

edit: Converted Noble save attached (also attached WB save in case folks want to use a mod)
Removed The Wheel as no free tech on Noble.

(Note: With this start, on Noble, I'm inclined to go Mining>BW>AH first before Pottery. Farm a Flood Plain. This allows one to start chopping sooner)

Progress:

1. Installed both BUG and BULL
2. Built second city

Questions:

1. How do I take advantage of BUG and BULL? My beginner skill didn't quite pick up any interface changes?
2. My concern is that the second city (New York) is one tile away from the border of Spain - is this a legitimate problem?
3. There is one turn that I wanted to chop trees (1NE of Washington), then realize I didn't have Bronze Working, ended up building a road - is this a mistake? Since we are in the topic of building roads, how important is this early in the game?
4. About the gameplay, even after I pre-select the movement route for a unit when the turn ends, the system still requires me to select the direction of movement when the next turn starts. Is this normal?
5. Why does the beaker drop to 90% - I'm sure I didn't dial this down myself.
6. Washington will be growing to size 4 in 6 turns, will that be a good time to whip?
7. What else should I be doing now?

Plan:

1. Use the worker from New York to improve the tiles (1E Cottage and 1W Farm and 1NE Mine)
2. Tech to research: masonry (to build quarry to mine Marble), horseback riding (? for stronger combat units)
3. Building granary in first city

 

[guyyee]

In the absence of other suggestions, how about 2S1E of the copper for city 2. The rationale being that if you double click on your capital there's a purple culture bar - hover your mouse over this and you'll find it's about to fill up - at this point your capital's borders will expand to take the copper. The BFC of a city in my suggested location will claim the copper and several FPs and riverside grassland which are all good tiles. Were your capital not about to expand its borders I'd suggest settling closer to the copper so you can use it immediately - unlike the capital your second city doesn't make culture unless you build certain buildings.

Your grasp of food and hammers invested is vastly better than mine at a similar stage. Now might be a good point to discuss whipping. Having researched bronze working you have access to your first civic change; slavery. You can review your civics by pressing 'F3.' A good time to change to slavery is often when moving your first settler. Slavery enables you to 'whip' away population of your city for 30 hammers per 1 population*. To do this find the top left button on the panel of your city screen, to the right of the units/buildings you can build. There is a penalty to whipping of 1 unhappiness per whip which lasts 10 turns and is additive if you whip again within 10 turns (see the happy/sad faces in the top right of the city screen.) Because of the unhappiness penalty it is usually recommended to whip at least 2 population if you are using this. Given a total cost of 100 to 2 pop whip a settler you'd need a city of at least 4 population (can't whip more than half a city's population), more than 40 invested in the settler (2 pop whip generates 60) and less than 70 invested in the settler (can't whip away more settlers than hammers needed.) Particularly once you have a granary which speeds the regrowth after whipping, whipping can be a very good way of building things quickly.

* Later there are some positive and negative modifiers to this value especially for wonders but don't worry about this for now.

"Given a total cost of 100 to 2 pop whip a settler you'd need a city of at least 4 population (can't whip more than half a city's population), more than 40 invested in the settler (2 pop whip generates 60) and less than 70 invested in the settler (can't whip away more settlers than hammers needed.)"

Ok, I lost you there ... I read this sentence no fewer than 10 times, I still don't quite follow. Can you give more examples and simplify it further?

 

[guyyee]

Correct.

You need to meet or exceed a unit or building's production requirement to finish that unit or building. There's no dividing or rounding going on, the game just adds up production until you've accumulated enough. In that specific scenario, after 9 turns you'll have 36+9×(5+2)=99/100 invested in the Settler, which is not enough to finish it. The turn after it'll exceed the required 100, meaning the Settler finishes production and you get 6 worth of overflow to put into your next unit/building/etc.

You're right in that the game tends to truncate decimals in places where it shouldn't, you'll encounter that a few times as you'll pick up some more advanced strategies and tricks, but city production is not one of those situations (thankfully).

This is very clear, now I get it.

 

[Jarno]

"Given a total cost of 100 to 2 pop whip a settler you'd need a city of at least 4 population (can't whip more than half a city's population), more than 40 invested in the settler (2 pop whip generates 60) and less than 70 invested in the settler (can't whip away more settlers than hammers needed.)"

Ok, I lost you there ... I read this sentence no fewer than 10 times, I still don't quite follow. Can you give more examples and simplify it further?

Whipping is an excellent mechanic to turn your citizens into hammers, a few things to bear in mind:

• When the whip is applied, up to half of the citizens (rounded down) can be converted to 30 each (so for a size 6 city, maximum whipped citizens is 3, for size 4 or 5 the maximum is 2)
• The number of citizens that will be whipped depends on the amount of you require to finish the current build, in this case a settler
• If you need more than 30 x half of your city size, you simply cannot whip

So in this case you want to build a 100 settler. Cold whipping (i.e. whipping with no invested) will give you a conversion penalty, we will leave that out of consideration right now. Let's say you've spend 1 turn building the settler with the 5 + 2 you're generating right now, so now you have 7 invested in the settler. To whip this into completion you'll need 100 - 7 = 93. Since 1 whipped citizen generates 30 you'll need to whip 4 citizens (= a 4-pop whip in civ lingo). Taking into account that you can only whip half of your citizens, your city should be at least size 8.

Let's turn that around: when you have a city of size 4, you can whip up to 2 citizens, each generating 30. In order to apply this whip, your settler should have at least 100 - 60 = 40 invested (otherwise whipping 2 citizens would not complete the build), that's where the '40' comes from. Now what if you have 70 or more invested in the settler? You'd only need 100 - 70 = 30 to complete the build, only requiring a 1-pop whip. Note that this could be already applied in a size 2 city.

Last but not least: all overflow you generate will be invested in your next build. So sometimes it can be advantageous to wait until you have e.g. 69 invested into the settler, and than apply a 2-pop whip. This will result in an overflow of 29 which can be invested into another build. This is especially useful when you have only little production in a city.

Good luck in handling your whip, you'll find out that is a very useful tool!

 

[guyyee]

Whipping is an excellent mechanic to turn your citizens into hammers, a few things to bear in mind:

• When the whip is applied, up to half of the citizens (rounded down) can be converted to 30 each (so for a size 6 city, maximum whipped citizens is 3, for size 4 or 5 the maximum is 2)
• The number of citizens that will be whipped depends on the amount of you require to finish the current build, in this case a settler
• If you need more than 30 x half of your city size, you simply cannot whip

So in this case you want to build a 100 settler. Cold whipping (i.e. whipping with no invested) will give you a conversion penalty, we will leave that out of consideration right now. Let's say you've spend 1 turn building the settler with the 5 + 2 you're generating right now, so now you have 7 invested in the settler. To whip this into completion you'll need 100 - 7 = 93. Since 1 whipped citizen generates 30 you'll need to whip 4 citizens (= a 4-pop whip in civ lingo). Taking into account that you can only whip half of your citizens, your city should be at least size 8.

Let's turn that around: when you have a city of size 4, you can whip up to 2 citizens, each generating 30. In order to apply this whip, your settler should have at least 100 - 60 = 40 invested (otherwise whipping 2 citizens would not complete the build), that's where the '40' comes from. Now what if you have 70 or more invested in the settler? You'd only need 100 - 70 = 30 to complete the build, only requiring a 1-pop whip. Note that this could be already applied in a size 2 city.

Last but not least: all overflow you generate will be invested in your next build. So sometimes it can be advantageous to wait until you have e.g. 69 invested into the settler, and than apply a 2-pop whip. This will result in an overflow of 29 which can be invested into another build. This is especially useful when you have only little production in a city.

Good luck in handling your whip, you'll find out that is a very useful tool!

Ok, now that makes sense... (sigh of relief). My next question is: Why can't I partially whip a unit to completion. Using a settler as an example: this would require 100, say I have already invested 20, and say I can only whip 2 pop which will give 60, so I have 20 left to complete. Is that possible?

 

[AcaMetis]

1. How do I take advantage of BUG and BULL? My beginner skill didn't quite pick up any interface changes?
2. My concern is that the second city (New York) is one tile away from the border of Spain - is this a legitimate problem?
3. There is one turn that I wanted to chop trees (1NE of Washington), then realize I didn't have Bronze Working, ended up building a road - is this a mistake? Since we are in the topic of building roads, how important is this early in the game?
4. About the gameplay, even after I pre-select the movement route for a unit when the turn ends, the system still requires me to select the direction of movement when the next turn starts. Is this normal?
5. Why does the beaker drop to 90% - I'm sure I didn't dial this down myself.
6. Washington will be growing to size 4 in 6 turns, will that be a good time to whip?
7. What else should I be doing now?

1. The full list of features that BUG/BULL provides would be a very long list indeed. Rest assured, it'll be pointed out as you encounter them. To name one example, BULL makes it so that workers told to chop a forest will automatically stop one turn before the chopping is finishing, and require you to input the chopping command a second time to actually chop a forest. Once we get into pre-chopping, as it's called, we can discuss why BULL makes it easier to do.
2. For multiple reasons it can be problematic to settle that close to an AI, especially an AI capital, yes, but in this case I'd actually recommend doing so. It's a natural lead-in to aspects of the game you wouldn't necessarily encounter otherwise, and on Noble it's very possible to turn that situation to your advantage anyway.
3. No. You did something that'll be useful down the line rather than waste the worker's turn outright, that was not a mistake. Moving him onto the forest a turn too early, that was a mistake, but one even experts make from time to time. Early game roads are useful to have, but not so useful that you'll be building them over building farms, cottages, etc. You want enough roads to connect all of your cities and your resources to your trade network, ideally, but before that you'll want to make sure to improve the important, powerful tiles that your cities want to work.
4. Units will follow their issued commands once every unit on the board has been given or executed a command. What that means is that if you've got a worker who you've told to chop a forest, and you've got a settler that's waiting for orders, the worker will not actually spend it's turn chopping the forest until you've given an order to the settler. Once you've given an order to the settler, say you told it to move somewhere, the game will notice that you've got no idle units left, and the worker will spend it's turn chopping. If you select the worker before giving an order to the settler, however, you will be able to give the worker an order as if it were an idle unit, since it hasn't actually spend it's turn yet, and you could make the mistake of thinking you need to tell it to chop the forest (or move in a specified direction). It might sound like a complex system, but it's very straightforward once you've seen it in action.
5. Short version: You can't afford to keep running the science slider at 100%, and so the game automatically dials it down for you so your empire doesn't run a deficit and goes bankrupt. There's a lot more that can and will be said about the slider in due time, for now just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't fall below what you can afford, and don't be afraid of it dropping being a sign of you slowing down on your research.
6. There are a lot of factors that go into when it's a good time to whip. Great simplification that'll do for now: Take a look at what tiles your city is working. Is it working unimproved junk tiles? Whip. Is it working good tiles and able to grow more? Don't whip.
7. Again, broad question, but generally speaking early game your biggest priority is to expand your empire, be it peacefully or less peacefully, and doing what is necessary to support and maintain that policy. Grow, expand, and prepare to protect your gains.

Ok, now that makes sense... (sigh of relief). My next question is: Why can't I partially whip a unit to completion. Using a settler as an example: this would require 100, say I have already invested 20, and say I can only whip 2 pop which will give 60, so I have 20 left to complete. Is that possible?

You can only whip if it'll finish a build, you can't whip just to add production to an unfinished build that won't be finished even with the whip. As for why, well, it's one of the game's rules. I'm not sure why it's a rule, but I'm sure there's a reason for it.

 

[AcaMetis]

The quick skinny on the slider and how it works:

You've noticed that tiles can yield Food ( ) and Production ( ). The third type of tile yield is Commerce ( ). Commerce is a measure of wealth that isn't directly useful for feeding the populace, producing buildings or raising an army. You can't eat gems, gold makes for poor foundation, silver isn't useful to make axes out of (spoiler alert: Isabella is not secretly a werewolf), etc. The slider, simply put, is a measure of what you want your empire's commerce to be invested into. If you want to research new techs quickly, you'll want to invest in beakers. Or if you want to spy on people, you'd invest in espionage. Of course in most situations you only ever need to focus on beakers, so don't worry about what to do with the espionage (and, later, culture) slider for now.

Why did the game automatically turn your slider down to 90%? Well, that's because putting down a second city means that your city maintenance costs increased to the point where you need to actually spend gold to maintain your empire (such as it is right now), which brings us to one of the more complicated aspect of commerce: Commerce ( ) and Gold ( ) are two completely separate things. To support your cities, pay for your armies, etc., you need gold. Commerce is not gold, so where do you get the gold from to maintain everything? Well, if you run less than 100% research slider, say 90%, where does that 10% of your empire's commerce go? It gets converted into gold. That gold goes through your empires various expenses, and any left over gets added to the treasury. If you've got enough gold in your treasury to pay for your empire's expenses for a turn you can turn the slider back to 100%, since you won't have to convert anything into gold to avoid running into a deficit.

If you're curious check the F2 screen, which is the financial advisor. It'll provide an overview your empire's treasury, your total commerce income as well as their sources, all three (later four) sliders and what they're producing with what amount of commerce you've allocated to them, all of your empires sources of gold income as well as total gold income, and all your empire's sources of expenses and total expenses. It's a big screen, but a good summary of a lot of information.

Note that as time passes and you get more techs you'll discover ways to get gold without having to convert commerce, ways to generate beakers or espionage or culture or what have you directly, etc., but that can wait for later. For now just juggle the slider to keep it at 100% research whenever the money in your treasury permits, and keep an eye on your tile yields. Commerce isn't the most important tile yield, that's unquestionably food, but it's important if you want to research a bit more quickly.

 

[migalhone]

Ok, now that makes sense... (sigh of relief). My next question is: Why can't I partially whip a unit to completion. Using a settler as an example: this would require 100, say I have already invested 20, and say I can only whip 2 pop which will give 60, so I have 20 left to complete. Is that possible?

No. In that situation you would need a 3-pop whip to complete that settler's production, which meant you had a city at least with 6 pop. You can only whip a number of citizens equal to half of the city size, rounding down: a 5 pop city can only do 2-pop whips, for example.

 

[lymond]

Ok, now that makes sense... (sigh of relief). My next question is: Why can't I partially whip a unit to completion. Using a settler as an example: this would require 100, say I have already invested 20, and say I can only whip 2 pop which will give 60, so I have 20 left to complete. Is that possible?

That's completely counter-intuitive to how the mechanic works. Whipping a build completes the build, and the calculation of when you can whip/how much pop is based on completion at the item's production cost. You also generally get some hammer overflow from whips which can be quite powerful planned right.

I'll expand on a few items from your questions above.

BUG has UI improvements all over. The advisor screens have all been enhanced. (And yeah, this won't be all that noticeable to you since you've not played the game long, but trust us, it is better). Note you now have a Great General and Great Person bar at the top of your screen, and Field of View slider is on the screen. The commerce sliders now have incremental buttons. Many tools tip info has been improved or added. The city screen has been enhanced.

Also, note that BUG provides a dot map tool using ALT+X or CTL+X.

BULL installed as well further enhances the BUG features and provides some nice features itself like the already mentioned worker pre-chops (so nice not to have to manage that as you want to time your chops), and the sentry-heal button on units.

Lastly, the scoreboard has been enhanced a lot pulling out some info that was located elsewhere, such as the red fist icon next to leaders that are plotting war.

Roads, one needs to be very judicious in how you place roads. Roads require worker turns. As I mentioned earlier, worker turns are very important. So when you place a road it must have vital importance like hooking up a resource or connecting a city for the trade route. But ask yourself at a given point in time if that resource yet needs to be hooked up. Also, rivers can connect things as well so keep that in mind. For instance, in your game, if you settle 1NW of the cows to the east, then Wash and that city are on the river with shared culture so the trade route is automatic.

Just curious, but did you restart the game based on the new Noble save I provided?

Settling next to Izzy not such a big deal on this level, but personally I don't care for that spot. I suggested other options for you that I think were more productive faster and had nice tile sharing with Wash.

Your warriors should not be in your cities at present...not need this early. Better to do what we call spawnbusting outside borders, especially near potential city spots. A units spawnbust a 5X tile area from where the unit stands - or in other words 2 tiles in each direction. No barb will spawn in that area. It's a good idea of getting in this habit especially before thinking about moving up levels.

I generally don't like starting a new worker in a new city - unless maybe it already has a strong improved resource. Just start of granary if you have Pottery or another warrior if needed to grow. You have two workers which is ok for now, but you should be prepared to have a worker helping a new city asap.

Please look at Washington and tell me what is wrong.

Once you settle your first city, your maintenance increases and you start hitting deficit research. This means you start losing gold per turn (GPT). I won't go into detail on this as it's a bit too complex at the moment, but once this happens get in the habit of running 0% or 100% research. Run 0% research until you bank just enough gold to fund finishing the next tech at 100% research. Go 100% as soon as you can, don't just bank tons of gold.

Commerce was explained some above, but I'll simply provide a few points on this subject. Commerce is represented by the icon. It is not to be confused with gold . It is rather then game's representation of economic activity. You see on certain resources like gold and calendar resources. Trade routes directly provide commerce. And, ofc, cottages. River tiles always start with 1 which is why cottages are so nice on those tiles, and commerce resources (like gold) are boosted by rivers..
Commerce directly feeds and is manipulated by the sliders in the top left of the screen. Commerce can be turned into research, culture, espionage and gold. Gold is generated from commerce whenever the slider is lowered. So in a sense is a life-blood of this game.

 

[guyyee]

That's completely counter-intuitive to how the mechanic works. Whipping a build completes the build, and the calculation of when you can whip/how much pop is based on completion at the item's production cost. You also generally get some hammer overflow from whips which can be quite powerful planned right.

I'll expand on a few items from your questions above.

BUG has UI improvements all over. The advisor screens have all been enhanced. (And yeah, this won't be all that noticeable to you since you've not played the game long, but trust us, it is better). Note you now have a Great General and Great Person bar at the top of your screen, and Field of View slider is on the screen. The commerce sliders now have incremental buttons. Many tools tip info has been improved or added. The city screen has been enhanced.

Also, note that BUG provides a dot map tool using ALT+X or CTL+X.

BULL installed as well further enhances the BUG features and provides some nice features itself like the already mentioned worker pre-chops (so nice not to have to manage that as you want to time your chops), and the sentry-heal button on units.

Lastly, the scoreboard has been enhanced a lot pulling out some info that was located elsewhere, such as the red fist icon next to leaders that are plotting war.

Roads, one needs to be very judicious in how you place roads. Roads require worker turns. As I mentioned earlier, worker turns are very important. So when you place a road it must have vital importance like hooking up a resource or connecting a city for the trade route. But ask yourself at a given point in time if that resource yet needs to be hooked up. Also, rivers can connect things as well so keep that in mind. For instance, in your game, if you settle 1NW of the cows to the east, then Wash and that city are on the river with shared culture so the trade route is automatic.

Just curious, but did you restart the game based on the new Noble save I provided?

Settling next to Izzy not such a big deal on this level, but personally I don't care for that spot. I suggested other options for you that I think were more productive faster and had nice tile sharing with Wash.

Your warriors should not be in your cities at present...not need this early. Better to do what we call spawnbusting outside borders, especially near potential city spots. A units spawnbust a 5X tile area from where the unit stands - or in other words 2 tiles in each direction. No barb will spawn in that area. It's a good idea of getting in this habit especially before thinking about moving up levels.

I generally don't like starting a new worker in a new city - unless maybe it already has a strong improved resource. Just start of granary if you have Pottery or another warrior if needed to grow. You have two workers which is ok for now, but you should be prepared to have a worker helping a new city asap.

Please look at Washington and tell me what is wrong.

Once you settle your first city, your maintenance increases and you start hitting deficit research. This means you start losing gold per turn (GPT). I won't go into detail on this as it's a bit too complex at the moment, but once this happens get in the habit of running 0% or 100% research. Run 0% research until you bank just enough gold to fund finishing the next tech at 100% research. Go 100% as soon as you can, don't just bank tons of gold.

Commerce was explained some above, but I'll simply provide a few points on this subject. Commerce is represented by the icon. It is not to be confused with gold . It is rather then game's representation of economic activity. You see on certain resources like gold and calendar resources. Trade routes directly provide commerce. And, ofc, cottages. River tiles always start with 1 which is why cottages are so nice on those tiles, and commerce resources (like gold) are boosted by rivers..
Commerce directly feeds and is manipulated by the sliders in the top left of the screen. Commerce can be turned into research, culture, espionage and gold. Gold is generated from commerce whenever the slider is lowered. So in a sense is a life-blood of this game.

Thank you @lymond.

"Please look at Washington and tell me what is wrong."
To be honest, I opened up the city screen and was not really sure what I'm seeing. Then when select one of the workers, the tile on Wheat was highlighted. Then it occurred to me that I have not built a road to connect the Wheat tile (which I immediately did upon realization). Is that it? So I was under the false assumption that the Wheat resource was automatically available upon farming it?

Can you give me a roadmap on how to read a city like an expert - what to examine, what to watch out for?

Progress:

1. Sent my warrior in Washington out to fog-bust. He's now stationed near the Cow tile southeast of Washington. I'm thinking of settling this city (building a settler at the moment).
2. Sent worker from New York to mine Copper in west coast.
3. Sent another worker to mine the hills near Washington.
4. I am worried about sending my warrior from New York out to fog-bust because it's so near Isabella and there is nobody to defend the city - wrong? I'm building another warrior in New York.
5. I now have granary in Washington.

Question:

1. Somewhere along the way, the computer announces that New York and Washington is now connected - I'm baffled. How did that came about? I didn't build a road connecting the city and the river does not appear to connect the two cities. What's the implication of two cities being connected and how do I exploit that?
2. How should I be thinking of tech researching queue now?
3. What about religion at this stage - I have not seen it mentioned so far.

 

[AcaMetis]

1. Somewhere along the way, the computer announces that New York and Washington is now connected - I'm baffled. How did that came about? I didn't build a road connecting the city and the river does not appear to connect the two cities. What's the implication of two cities being connected and how do I exploit that?
2. How should I be thinking of tech researching queue now?
3. What about religion at this stage - I have not seen it mentioned so far.

1. Can't check the save right now for an exact answer, but know that cities can be connected by any combination of rivers, roads, coast/ocean tiles, and maybe some other stuff. A road that's connected to a river connects the two together, so a city along that river will be connected to the road. Mind you that some of these things require techs to work, however (Astronomy, for example, allows over uncultured Ocean tiles). As for the benefit, it means that your cities will share resources they have available (Washington's Wheat, for example, provides +1 when it's connected. But if a city if not connected to your trade network it won't have that wheat available, and thus not get the health bonus), and they will form a trade route. Neither mechanic is really worth getting into more deeply than that at this stage: Just know that connecting cities is good, and should be done if there's nothing more important to do.
2. Focus on the early techs that advance your goal of expanding, teching, and protecting your gains. Archery, for instance? You don't need it if you have Copper nearby, because Axes will keep you well safe. If you had/have no Copper nearby? Well, it's not needed on Noble, ideally it's never needed, but if you're lacking better units than non-AGG Warriors it's not the worst tech to grab. Fishing? Well, America starts with it, but aside from that if you had no fishing resources you could comfortably skip it. Pottery, which enables Cottages and Granaries? Yes, need that. Writing, for libraries and open borders? Yes, need that. Horseback Riding or Iron Working? The units they unlock are attacking units, you don't need to chop jungles, stables aren't necessary unless you're doing a Horse Archer rush, so skip those for now.
3. Ignore religion entirely for now, it's a trap more often than not. Grab Mysticism if you really need early border pops and can't wait for Writing/Libraries, but otherwise just completely ignore that entire part of the tech tree for now. What you really need early on are the early economic and military techs (Read: Bronze Working) that help build your empire and start your economy, founding a religion and investing into spreading it will only distract you from that. There's situations where founding a religion is beneficial, there's situations where it's worth going out of your way for Priesthood, but just ignore that for now. Focus on expanding, economy, and military (insofar that you need barb defence). Religion is just a distraction.

 

[dankok8]

@guyyee

I looked at your save. I have a few suggestions.

-- Washington should be working the flood plains cottage not the grassland hill. Always ensure that tiles are improved and that the cities are working these tiles! If a city isn't working a cottage, it's not doing you any good and the cottage won't grow.

-- Generally build as many improvements as a city can work in the foreseeable future. In this case you build a few too many improvements around Washington because the city is still at size 4 and building a Settler. Building a grassland hill and roading the Wheat is not important. Your workers should be building flood plains cottages around New York. Right now that city is working an unimproved tile which isn't good. Using Workers efficiently is maybe the most important thing in this game.

The post above mine answered your questions pretty well.

 

[Pangaea]

Can you give me a roadmap on how to read a city like an expert - what to examine, what to watch out for?

Maybe something like this would be useful?
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/st...in-improvements-resources-and-city-placement/

Many articles are outdated with bad advice, and they look odd currently, it used to be different with other formatting, more pictures. Not sure what happened there. However, this one does at least explain tile improvements and the like, which will hopefully be mostly correct. Other than that, I recommend to look up the Civopedia inside the game -- which is even better now when you have got BUG up and running. You can look up all the city improvements, units, etc in there and get information about them.

As for where it's smart to place cities, this is something one needs to learn from experience I think. But some good rules of thumb are:
* Food is King (ideally, all cities should have food, and no food without a city)
* Try to place cities so that the food is in the inner ring, meaning the initial 9 tiles of the city's culture (unless you are Creative, then borders expand after only 5 turns, which is fine)
* City overlap is good. No need to place cities like a matrix, spaced out 7 tiles from each other or something. You only need two tiles of clear space between cities. This means you can swap tiles between them, which is very handy.

Perhaps this too is a bit outdated now, I've heard some criticism at times, but it's still a good video I think for explaining some of the core mechanics (unless my memory is too fuzzy, it's been some years since I saw it).

(Obviously no need to watch everything, that will take more hours than you perhaps want to invest, but the first few episodes could be a good idea)

 

[guyyee]

Regarding the BUG and BULL mod...

BUG is auto-enabled when I launch CIV4, but I have to load the BULL mod everything I launch CIV4. Is this the normal way of things or did I install it wrongly?